Council Unlikely to OK Accord on Election-System Suit, Roberts Says

The San Diego City Council is likely to reject a settlement reached in a lawsuit over minority-voting rights, Councilman Ron Roberts predicted Tuesday.

Roberts said the “council will be disappointed” by the agreement hammered out Monday by attorneys for the city and the Chicano Federation, which sued the city in January, 1988, charging that the city’s election system was unconstitutional because it hampered the chances of Latino candidates getting elected to the council.

The city’s attorneys briefed Roberts on the proposed settlement Monday evening. He said there are two items that will probably cause the council to reject the settlement.

“The main stumbling block was the request for substantially more money,” Roberts said.

Council members favored an earlier proposal calling for the city to pay the federation about $10,000 in attorneys’ fees, he said, adding that the recent compromise increased that figure substantially.

Fees for Attorneys

“The first proposal said attorneys’ fees were not to exceed $10,000, to now a settlement with attorneys’ bills in excess of $100,000,” Roberts said. “If we agree to that, we might be talking about $200,000 tomorrow.”

Initially, the Chicano Federation lawsuit charged that San Diego’s two-tiered council elections--district primaries followed by citywide runoffs between the two top vote-getters--was unconstitutional. Earlier this year, the city’s attorneys tried unsuccessfully to have the lawsuit dismissed by arguing that San Diego voters approved a district-only initiative in November, making the issue moot.

U.S. District Judge John S. Rhoades rejected the city’s request and allowed the federation’s attorney, Patricia Meyer, to supplement the lawsuit last month with new demands.

Another thorny issue that arose in the settlement is the federation’s demand that the number of council districts be increased from 8 to 10--with new district boundaries drawn up by May, 1991--and elections held the same year in the new districts, Roberts added. That would be a “logistic impossibility,” he said.

The council has already agreed to put the issue of increasing the number of districts on the June, 1990, ballot. But if the initiative is approved by the voters, the City Council wants the first elections in the new districts to take place in 1993, Roberts said. That is two years longer than the timetable suggested by the federation.

‘Way Out of Whack’

“There are discrepancies between districts that are way out of whack. . . . The majority of the council was willing to say the districts are out of whack,” Roberts said.

But, according to the councilman, the federation’s timetable for creating the new districts and having the first elections are all but an impossible task.

“They want to base (new districts) on 1990 census data. But we won’t get the 1990 census data until April, 1991. . . . If we do it their way, we will already be in a period of time when the primaries are under way and people won’t even know what district they’re living in.”

He suggested drawing the new boundaries next year, without the 1990 census figures. The population figures that would be used next year would “be very close to what the census is going to be any way,” Roberts argued. “Let’s do the redistricting now, before the 1991 elections.”

Even if the new districts could be drawn up next year, Roberts said that he and a majority of council members would want the first elections to take place in 1993.

The federation’s lawsuit also includes a provision calling for an independent commission to establish the new district boundaries, which are currently drawn by the council. Roberts said the new settlement calls for an independent commission but one that would serve only in an advisory capacity rather than as “a binding decision-making body.”

According to Roberts, under the proposal agreed to by attorneys for both sides, the commission would be allowed to make all the recommendations it wants, but the City Council would still have the final say on how the district boundaries are drawn.

Federation attorney Meyer could not be reached for comment.

Judge Rhoades ordered both sides to return to court Sept. 13 to discuss the council’s reaction to the proposed settlement.