County Redistricting Talks Collapse; Trial Now Likely

Negotiations to settle a federal lawsuit designed to help a Latino win a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors collapsed Tuesday, setting the stage for a trial.

Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund blamed the breakdown in talks on the county’s refusal to compromise on a redistricting plan.

A plan approved last week by the board would force veteran Supervisor Pete Schabarum to run in a new, predominantly Latino district. The ACLU and MALDEF, contending that the county plan does not go far enough, submitted a counterproposal Monday. But in a closed-door meeting Tuesday, it was rejected by the supervisors.

“It looks as if we are going to trial on Jan. 2,” said Richard Fajardo, a MALDEF attorney.

The U.S. Justice Department, along with the ACLU and MALDEF, last year filed suit accusing the supervisors of drawing their districts in such way as to weaken the political clout of the county’s 2 million Latinos. The suit contends that supervisors split up Latino neighborhoods in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

The trial was scheduled to begin last month, but on the eve of trial, a divided Board of Supervisors voted to explore a settlement. Negotiations continued until Tuesday.

ACLU lawyer Mark Rosenbaum accused the supervisors of a “cowardly act to preserve their political self-interests at the expense of the Hispanic community.”

He also accused Supervisor Deane Dana of caving in to Republican pressure by refusing to continue negotiations. The ACLU/MALDEF proposal would have further eroded the GOP base in Schabarum’s new district.

Dana, who spearheaded settlement talks, rejected that accusation.

He labeled the proposal drawn up by the ACLU and MALDEF as “outlandish. . . . It’s just a farce. It’s not good redistricting and it doesn’t provide representative government, which I thought was MALDEF’s whole intent.”

Dana said, “This board made a good-faith effort last week in offering a compromise (redistricting proposal) to the plaintiffs and they have since submitted a counterproposal which I find unacceptable.”

Dana complained that he did not receive the ACLU/MALDEF map until 7 a.m. Saturday. He said that he did not receive enough information to fully analyze it until Monday afternoon. “I don’t call that good faith,” he said. “I call that harassment.”

Dana has been the swing vote on the board that made settlement talks possible. The board’s two conservative members, Schabarum and Mike Antonovich, have consistently voted to take the lawsuit to trial.

Fajardo said the plan drawn up by the ACLU and MALDEF was not meant to be a “take-it-or-leave-it offer,” but rather “a starting point” from which concessions would be made by both sides.

Rosenbaum complained that the county proposal, which would create a district where only 35% of the registered voters are Latinos, does not give a Latino candidate a “fighting chance” to win a seat on the county board. The ACLU/MALDEF plan would divide the San Gabriel Valley into three districts. Latinos would make up 47% of the voters in the proposed new 1st District.

The board’s plan divides the valley between two districts, the 1st and the 5th.

Both plans would leave Schabarum vulnerable. The conservative Republican, whose paternal grandmother was Mexican, has been accused by Latinos of being insensitive to their concerns.

Dana said he would not support any plan that leaves Schabarum in a district with less than 34% Republican registration. The ACLU/MALDEF proposal created a district with only 26% GOP registration.

Dana’s earlier support for the board’s plan, which passed on a 3-2 vote, angered Schabarum. Schabarum appealed to state GOP leaders to denounce Dana’s action.

Speaking on the steps of the federal courthouse after a one-hour private meeting with the county’s lawyers in U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon’s chambers, Rosenbaum said the county presented a proposal “which their lawyers referred to as a starting point, but that starting point turned out to be a dead end.”

A Justice Department spokesman said the department would have no comment.

Supervisor Ed Edelman said he was disappointed that a settlement could not be reached. “County taxpayers have already paid $920,493 in legal fees to a private law firm . . . and nearly $325,000 in additional fees to expert witnesses and consultants,” Edelman said. “Further, the county counsel estimates the cost of a trial at $300,000 a month and could run for two to three months.”

Spokesmen for Schabarum and Antonovich said they were delighted that the case will go to trial, which they are confident the county will win.

Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, meanwhile, said he has privately been pushing his colleagues to reconsider a proposal to expand the board, from five to seven members, to allow for the election of a black and a Latino supervisor “without hurting any other supervisors.”

Hahn has been unable to obtain the third vote needed to advance his proposal. When asked whether he would support expansion of the board, Dana, who has opposed the idea in the past, on Tuesday would only say, “No comment.”

Earlier, about 100 supporters of Schabarum called on the board to hold public hearings on redistricting, instead of negotiating in secret. The crowd, wearing buttons with a red slash through the words “Backroom Deals,” included a number of Latino city officials from Schabarum’s San Gabriel Valley district.

The turnout, which filled about a third of the board room, was far smaller than the packed house that Schabarum had promised. A Schabarum spokeswoman said the holiday and flu season combined with a League of Cities convention in San Francisco to hold down the numbers.