REDRAWING LA - The Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission held one of its last meetings before forwarding its final product to the Council on Wednesday night in City Hall to a relatively full room. Unlike its 2001 predecessor, which I interacted with as a then Council aide, this current commission has been widely seen as politically driven. They are of course all appointed by City Council members, the City Controller, City Attorney, and the Mayor, with the Council President getting two selections and the Mayor three.
Ten years ago, there were only a few “political” issues that created serious friction among Council members- Nick Pacheco’s ill-fated effort to grab a greater portion of downtown away from CD9 for CD14 and the dispatching of a Westside district to the Valley. In both cases, due to the then political strength of Jan Perry and relative weakness of term limits victim Ruth Galanter, there was little drama at the end of the day. CD6 was moved to the Valley and downtown continued to look relatively the same.
This year there has been a revival of the decades-long CD9/CD14 rivalry, with team Eastside appearing to have the upper hand due to Jan Perry now being a political short termer. There is once again an effort to empower the Valley, this time by consolidating the spill-over portions of CD4 and CD5 into one district. This is where things diverge from 2001 as we come to the draft map, released last month.
The 2001 commission was meeting at a time when most neighborhood council boundaries were new or still being determined. Nevertheless, the commission attempted to unite long-divided communities like Van Nuys, which was split up between multiple districts. The latest draft map did more dividing than uniting of communities, particularly Westchester, Hollywood and various parts of South LA. To its credit, the commission did vote late Wednesday night to undue the division of Westchester and to ensure that at least 2/3 of each neighborhood council’s population be contained in a single district.
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(See also: “Wesson, Huizar Big Winners in Redistricting Commission’s Late-Night Meeting”-City Maven [link])
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The most bizarre district in the draft map was the initial drawing of CD4, which managed to sprawl all the way from the Silver Lake Reservoir to Encino in a configuration whose only possible unifying theme as a community is its connection to the film industry (the original Hollywood studios having been located in Edendale and the porn industry being based in the west San Fernando Valley today).
This atrocity of line drawing was averted by the commission and the idea of a single Valley rollover district has for the time being been rejected. We’ll see what the next iteration of the maps look like on Saturday.
So is it surprising that there would be some strange moves made in a political process that is largely taking place behind the scenes? No, but there has been a large change in the public’s attitude toward so-called “gerrymandering” since 2001. The State Legislature and Congressional districts are now all drawn by citizen commissions made up of randomly selected nonpolitical appointees. While many partisans worried openly about the effect that amateurs would have on the line drawing process, the final product was generally positively received and appears to allow for a more accurate representation of the electorate. Ironically, Democrats stand to benefit after their leadership opposed the rules change.
The time has come for the City of Los Angeles to have an impartial redistricting process as well. Whether through a Council-led referendum or citizen-led initiative, the public should demand consistency at all levels of government and assure that the process is seen as being above personal gain.
Neighborhood Councils should seize on such an effort as a way to protect their boundaries the next time around and ensure that their communities are not divided up and their influence spread thin.
Ironically, the greatest legacy that the current commission may leave Los Angeles is a new redistricting process.
(Erik Sanjurjo is the Vice President of the Hollywood United Neighborhood Council and an occasional contributor to CityWatch. He also worked for the Los Angeles City Council for over a decade on policy issues.) -cw
Tags: City Redistricting Commission, Los Angeles, boundaries, maps, borders, Jan Perry, Downtown, Valley
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 14
Pub: Feb 17, 2012