The Selfish Gang of Five

Because a self-interested Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors stubbornly refused to find a way to settle a lawsuit of evident merit--gaining more and better political representation for the county’s 2 million Latinos--a federal trial to decide the case has begun. U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon has given the board and the plaintiffs, the U.S. Justice Department, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, every opportunity to settle. Since several weeks of pretrial negotiations failed and the costly proceeding is under way, reasonable people can only applaud Judge Kenyon’s stated determination to move the trial along at an unhesitating pace, with the goal of a decision in about six weeks.

At issue is whether the board in 1981 violated the federal Voting Rights Act by dividing Latinos--the county’s largest ethnic group--among three supervisorial districts, thereby weakening their potential political clout. No person of Spanish surname has ever served on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

The board’s private attorneys (whom the board has been good enough to pay nearly $1 million, at taxpayers’ expense) say the board never planned to dilute Latino voting strength; members just wound up keeping the status quo because they could not agree on how to best improve representation. The plaintiffs, on the other hand, have another explanation of the continued existence of the status quo: “old-fashioned . . . racial gerrymandering.” Now it’s up to Judge Kenyon, who seemed to warn this week that once the trial got under way the two sides could forget about settlements. “Once this trial begins,” he said, “it will proceed until this court renders its ruling.” We would hope, however, that if the two sides can still come up with an equitable settlement in mid-trial, the proceedings would not be prolonged.

County officials should keep in mind that should the court find a violation of the federal voting rights act, the judge would have broad powers to remedy the wrong, including expanding the board from its current five members to provide more fair and manageable representation. That means the current board members would have to share more power and more of the millions of discretionary dollars of the county budget with others.

Power-sharing is of course a bitter pill for any politician to swallow. But given the county’s changing demographics, the inevitability of power- sharing with Latinos and others is bound to soon dawn on the supervisors. Unfortunately, in the meantime, the court is burdened with the job left undone by a sluggish, defensive legislative body.