Redistricting: Too Hot for Politicians : A Commission Could See Beyond the Fortunes of Incumbents

The Los Angeles City Council’s seemingly endless redistricting debate was dominated by bitter, personal clashes between various incumbents understandably intent on protecting their own political careers.

But beneath the personal controversy are much thornier--and in the long run, infinitely more significant--redistricting issues.

The first of these concerns the nature of the redistricting process itself. Critics have long argued that few, if any, conflicts of interest in politics are more blatant than the one that occurs when incumbents attempt to redraw the districts from which they will seek reelection.

Focusing on these inevitable conflicts, reformers have argued that reapportionment should be removed from the hands of incumbents and turned over to some form of independent commission.

The commission concept has been rejected by voters twice in recent statewide elections. But over the last six weeks, Los Angeles’ council has done all it could to cast doubt on the wisdom of the voters’ decision. Rarely in the already rather sordid history of redistricting efforts has the ascendancy of personal over public interest been more blatant. Clearly, the commission concept deserves further consideration.

Opponents argue that commissioners are not accountable as elected officials are. If the public disapproves of the reapportionment plan, it can reject elected officials but not commissioners. This argument, of course, ignores the political reality that lines are usually redrawn by elected officials to make rejection of incumbents more difficult, if not impossible.

Defenders of the status quo also assert that an independent commission concept is an “illusion.” Redistricting, it is claimed, is an inherently political process that cannot be conducted in a vacuum of independence and neutrality.

This defense misconstrues the notion of an independent commission. Proponents of the commission approach don’t imagine that it can take conflict out of reapportionment. What they do advocate is that the redistricting debate--vigorous and political as it may be--should be focused on the real, long-term community values at stake and not on the personal political fortunes of a handful of individuals. A properly structured, independent commission would not be a value-free commission. But it would be free of the debilitating need to protect and serve self-interest above all else.

Members of a commission could be chosen by a variety of appointing authorities including the council, the mayor, the city attorney, a panel of municipal court judges or deans and presidents of local colleges and universities.

The emphasis placed on the personal fortunes of specific council incumbents also tended to obscure--at least until the last few weeks--another critical reapportionment issue, the need to accommodate strongly held but conflicting political values.

Specifically, in a multi-ethnic society there is considerable likelihood of conflict between the goal of enhancing the opportunities for minority groups to win adequate representation and the goal of creating districts that reflect geographic, economic, social and political communities of interest.

Problems arise, as they have in Los Angeles, when the pursuit of enhanced minority representation undermines other equally defensible redistricting values.

The conflict is clear in the council’s remapping scheme. The plan takes the growing Latino neighborhoods in the northern and eastern parts of the San Fernando Valley out of the now-defunct district of the late Howard Finn and joins them with heavily Latino parts of Ernani Bernardi’s district--consolidating Latino voting strength and increasing their opportunities for major influence in the Valley.

This enhancement of Latino voting strength, however, resulted in a bizarrely shaped district that wriggles along a thin corridor from Tujunga southwest to Van Nuys, combining communities that have little in common, geographically or otherwise. To make matters worse, the district--in order to include the home of Councilman Joel Wachs--had to stretch even farther south along a slightly wider corridor to Studio City.

Understandably, many Valley residents fumed. Residents recognized that for one reason or another, either to serve the needs of incumbents or the needs of Latinos, they were getting a very short end of the reapportionment stick.

Without question, had the needs of the incumbents not been so paramount on the council’s mind, the conflict might have been avoided. Certainly the council did not have to remake Valley districts in the manner it did. But as Los Angeles’ minority communities continue to grow in numbers and political strength, redistricting conflicts focusing on sensitive ethnic questions will inevitably arise. Which returns us to the values of redistricting by commission.

Balancing the sometimes conflicting redistricting needs of a multi-ethnic citizenry is hard enough. Meshing those needs with the more personal political needs of 15 incumbents is all the more difficult.

Another reform that might ease redistricting controversies in the 1990s would be the expansion of the council. A larger council could more easily accommodate the city’s unique ethnic diversity and would ease the intense group competition for scarce seats on what is--by comparison to other major cities--an undersized city council.