New redistricting battles

Daily Breeze (Torrance CA) = Thursday, August 25, 2011

New political lines for the  Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles City Council and L.A. Unified are under way, making once-a-decade adjustments for population changes. This may sound familiar, since it comes as the dust settles from the reworked state legislative and congressional maps.  Unfortunately, there is one big difference between the local and state redistricting procedures: politics. 

California voters took the responsibility out of the hands of politicians and their cronies for the decennial redrawing of state political lines - but not for local districts. The maps finalized this month by the 14-member California Citizens Redistricting Commission have angered groups including Republicans and Latino activists, who have both pursued legal challenges. But in general the state panel did what it was supposed to, deliberating openly and without obvious favor to office-holders and parties, which is why the results satisfied particular interest groups less than citizens at large. 

Can the city and county match this success? There are reasons for doubt. 

First, there are the obvious conflicts. The county is redoing its district lines the old-fashioned way: The five supervisors are proposing and voting on maps themselves. 

This has already created a political squabble. Plans submitted by Supervisors Gloria Molina and Mark Ridley-Thomas would create a second district in which a majority of voters are Latino. A third plan submitted by Supervisor Don Knabe would keep things more as they have been. 

The move to boost Latino representation drew an angry response from Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, whose district would turn heavily Latino (though he wouldn't face re-election in it before being forced out of office by term limits in 2014). Yaroslavsky and others make the reasonable point that, as it once might have, Los Angeles no longer needs to give Latino candidates a leg up. Latinos have substantial political power throughout the county. The county's largest city, after all, has a Mexican-American mayor. 

It seems increasingly likely the supervisors will be unable to muster the four votes needed to agree on a map by next month's deadline. If that happens, the decision will made by other county officials. Either way, it's the players making their own rules. 

The city of Los Angeles does redistricting differently, but with only the appearance of independence. The redistricting commission's 21 members are chosen by city officials, so the conflicts of interest are once removed. 

Two appointments raise particular concerns: Jose Cornejo, appointed by Councilman Tony Cardenas, is a former Cardenas chief of staff who is expected to run for that council seat once Cardenas leaves. He might well draw the district he will be running for in a few years. Political campaign consultant Michael Trujillo, appointed by Councilman Richard Alarcón, worked for Villaraigosa's mayoral campaign and for Councilman Jose Huizar's most recent re-election campaign. 

Now, proponents of this system can argue it works for the city. They can say it's good to have at least a couple of political insiders on the commission - people who know the real-world effects of redistricting. 

But when the state electorate created the independent redistricting commission in 2008, it was guided by a sound principle: Voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around. 

That's vital if citizens are to believe their leaders are looking out for them instead of for themselves. It doesn't look like that's going to happen here in this decade.