Remap Trial Cost Soars--and It Isn’t Over : Politics: L.A. County has already spent $3 million and could be liable for the plaintiffs’ costs if it loses. Decision could come soon.

A historic redistricting trial that could reshape the political landscape of Los Angeles County already has cost taxpayers $3 million, largely for legal fees paid to outside lawyers, according to the county counsel’s office.

And if the county loses the voting rights lawsuit, it could be liable for the bill run up by the plaintiffs--now about $2 million.

County attorneys defend the spending as necessary to keep local officials in charge of redistricting rather than ceding jurisdiction to the U.S. Justice Department, one of the plaintiffs.

“There is quite a lot at stake,” said John McDermott, whose law firm has been paid more than $1.5 million to defend the county. “Who is it who is going to decide the future of county government?”

Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the plaintiffs, said the supervisors are interested only in protecting their jobs at any cost.

“In terms of keeping five white supervisors in office, the sky’s the limit,” he said.

The suit accuses the supervisors of splintering the county’s 3 million Latinos among three districts, weakening their political influence in violation of the U.S. Voting Rights Act. It seeks to create a predominantly Latino district, from which a Latino would have an improved chance of winning a seat on the county board.

The trial, under way since early January, is expected to end in a few weeks.

Justice Department officials said they have not calculated how much the trial has cost. The federal government has at least six attorneys assigned to the case.

The ACLU and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, another plaintiff, are expect to spend about $2 million on attorneys’ fees alone.

Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said the redistricting case is the most costly in the local chapter’s history, exceeding even the lengthy litigation over school desegregation in Los Angeles in the 1970s.

The county’s redistricting trial expenses are coming from a $36-million fund, set aside each year by the supervisors to pay for legal expenses, including settlement of lawsuits. As a result, no cuts in services are required, said Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon.

No one is predicting what the case ultimately will cost the county. County lawyers have vowed to appeal, at least to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, if they lose in district court.

One of the big expenses, after attorneys’ fees, has been for photocopying of the thousands of pages of exhibits.

“Too many exhibits,” lamented U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon, who says that the historic redistricting trial has produced more paper work than any other case before him in 10 years on the federal bench. “It’s very hard to keep order up here,” the judge said, looking out at boxes full of documents scattered haphazardly throughout the courtroom.

County attorney Richard Simon, pointing to a stack of files, said: “There is stuff in there relating to redistricting in South Carolina in 1867.” The exhibit was used by the plaintiffs to equate the county’s 1981 redistricting with the anti-black gerrymandering in the Deep South after the Civil War.

Costs have been high because both sides have taken more than 160 depositions from county officials and redistricting experts. Both sides also have hired “expert witnesses,” including teams of demographers, historians, political scientists and statisticians.

The demographers have drawn up maps and testified in court on how a district with a majority of Latino voters can or cannot be created. Recently pollster Mervin Field was called to testify as a county witness.

The plaintiffs must prove that it is possible to carve out a district with a majority of Latino voters. County attorneys contend that such a district could not be created during the 1981 redistricting--or today--because many Latinos are not citizens or old enough to vote.

A Caltech history professor hired by the plaintiffs submitted to the judge a 95-page report on county redistricting from 1959 to 1989. Other historians have testified about the history of discrimination against Latinos in California. Among the factors for determining a violation of the Voting Rights Act is whether there has been a history of discrimination.

The legal costs come at a time when county services have been cut because of tight budgets.

Supervisors last fall closed two county mental health centers and cut funding to seven others because of a $3-million budget shortage. The board also voted down a $2.6-million appropriation to provide cost-of-living increases to 50,000 welfare recipients.

Though the county has its own lawyers on staff, the supervisors hired the Century City law firm of McDermott, Will & Emery for the redistricting trial because of its success in winning reapportionment cases. McDermott receives $245 an hour from the county.

For the ACLU and MALDEF, the case has been among their costliest. But not for the county, which spent $13.8 million to fight lawsuits brought by owners of property damaged in Malibu’s Big Rock Mesa landslide in 1983, according to the county counsel’s office.

“Whether the five supervisors are fiscal conservatives or not depends on whether the question is prenatal care for poor mothers or preserving their white incumbencies,” the ACLU’s Rosenbaum said.

But County Counsel DeWitt Clinton said the board is seeking to preserve home rule.

“Ought not your elected representatives be able to determine how the county should be divided, and how the government should be run?” Clinton said. “Or ought it be decided by career officers in the U.S. Justice Department?”

McDermott added that if the county chose not to fight, hundreds of thousands of county residents could be assigned supervisors whom they did not elect and who are unfamiliar with their neighborhoods.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich blamed the plaintiffs for the costs. “The cost of seeking justice and fair play for all Los Angeles taxpayers is the result of a naked power grab by the ACLU and MALDEF,” Antonovich said.

Simon said the county incurred costs in responding to the plaintiffs’ demands for county records.

“We provided to them over 110,000 pages of documents,” Simon said, adding that every page was reviewed by an attorney before it was turned over to the plaintiffs. “The plaintiffs gave us about 30,000 pages of documents to review.”

The case has exacted a cost of another kind. Pointing out that he has worked on the case every day for more than a year, Rosenbaum quipped: “The rumor in my household is I’ve had a child, but I haven’t been able to confirm it.” His wife brought the baby to court last month.