Panel hears ideas on districts - Some want stronger voice in north state

Sean Longoria
Redding Record Searchlight
April 10, 2011

The California Citizens Redistricting Commission held its first public hearing in Redding on Saturday.

The commission is gathering state residents' suggestions on redrawing congressional and state legislative districts based on the results of the 2010 census.

Before, the state Legislature would redraw districts every 10 years, but a recent initiative passed by voters established the commission and charged it to redraw district boundaries by Aug. 15.

About 30 of the nearly 80 people who attended had plenty to say on what California's new districts could look like.

One of the common suggestions for the 14-member commission was to group northern counties - Del Norte, Siskiyou, Modoc, Lassen, Shasta, Tehama and Humboldt - into a single district.

That would ensure voters with common interests and concerns would get adequate representation, many speakers said.

Kenneth Ryan, a Siskiyou County resident, said the far northern part of the state needs stronger representation.

"We have next to no voice up here in terms of

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Sacramento and the Legislature," he said.

Casey Scott of Shasta County said drawing district lines that cut across counties is problematic, a suggestion shared by many in the audience.

"Keep the counties together," Scott said. "Don't carve them up.

Chris Young, Redding planning commissioner and one-time candidate for county supervisor, suggested a different way to draw the new districts.

"Draw the lines in squares and rectangles as much as you can," he said. Young said by grouping people with common interests and concerns into the same districts, many of the same problems with perennial representatives would still occur.

"California's broke and it needs to be fixed," he said.

Young suggested creating districts based solely on population while attempting to keep county and city boundaries intact. Redding is the first stop in a statewide tour focused on redrawing congressional and legislative districts. Shasta County is in the 2nd Congressional District and the 2nd Assembly District in the Legislature. Party politics aren't supposed to come into play when drawing district lines, although critics have long argued that allowing politicians and government employees to do so leads to gerrymandering to protect a party's seat.

But under the Voters Rights Act, community interests now must be taken into consideration when drawing these lines to give smaller sectors of the population, such as different ethnic, cultural and economic groups, more clout in elections.

Anyone interested in commenting still has plenty of time. The tentative deadline for the first draft of district maps is June 10. After that, another set of public hearings will be held throughout the state before a second draft of maps is drawn up around July 1.

After another round of hearings, the final maps will be posted around July 26 and must be adopted by the commission by Aug. 15. Comments can be submitted via email to votersfirstact@ crc.ca.gov, by mail addressed to Citizens Redistricting Commission, 1130 K St., Suite 101, Sacramento, CA 95814 or by fax to 916-322-0904.

For information, visit wedrawthelines.ca.gov.