The County’s $3-Million Mistake

If you want to cut through the legalese and learn why the Los Angeles County supervisors lost the Voting Rights Act case--at a cost to taxpayers of at least $3 million in legal bills--drive out to a neighborhood in Pico Rivera.

I did that Tuesday morning. I wanted to talk to voters about the case and U.S. District Judge David Kenyon’s ruling that the supervisors discriminated against Latinos in 1981 when they drew current district boundaries.

I chose a neighborhood around Rivera Junior High School because it’s the kind of place the case is all about. Over the last 20 years, the pleasant middle-class neighborhood of single-family homes has changed from predominantly Anglo to mostly Latino. That’s happened in similar Southeast Los Angeles County communities and in the San Gabriel Valley.

The demographic evolution in places like Pico Rivera brought a political revolution. Latinos won control of school boards and city councils. The Pico Rivera City Council, 5-0 Anglo in 1970, now has three Latinos.

Congressional and legislative district lines were redrawn to reflect the population changes. As a result, the district that encompasses Rivera Junior High School is represented in Congress by Estaban Torres. Another Latino, Marty Martinez, is the congressman from the neighboring district. Charles Calderon is the state senator. All the Democratic candidates for the local Assembly seat, now open, are Latino, and one seems almost certain to win in the solidly Democratic district.

The 1971 reapportionment was done under the supervision of the courts because the Legislature and governor were stalemated. Judges, looking at the numbers, came up with Latino districts.

Ten years later, another redistricting was undertaken by Richard Alatorre, then an assemblyman, now a Los Angeles city councilman. He revised the court-drawn districts to take into account even greater Latino population growth, and created the district that elected Torres.

But the revolution missed the county. More precisely, the county ignored it. While Alatorre was creating Latino districts, the supervisors were saying it couldn’t be done for them. Alone among government bodies, the Board of Supervisors declined to take note of the population changes in charting its district lines. U.S. District Judge David Kenyon found there were enough Latinos for a Latino district. Thus, he ruled, “the Hispanic community has sadly been denied an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice to the Board of Supervisors. . . .”

Some of the voters I talked to on Tuesday echoed this. Edgar Cavner, hurrying to work after voting, said of his Latino neighbors, “I kind of think they weren’t getting a fair shake.”

And Consuelo Alonzo put it this way: “They’ve done us a big injustice. They’ve split us up like a pie.”

What’s surprising is that the supervisors and their legal advisers pressed the expensive legal fight in the face of demographic realities.

Even before the trial began, supervisors and their advisers had doubts about winning. Republican Supervisor Deane Dana wanted to join liberals Ed Edelman and Kenny Hahn in a settlement, but backed out under pressure from his two conservative colleagues, Mike Antonovich and Pete Schabarum.

As the testimony piled up, the loss began to seem inevitable. Experts testified to the population changes. In mid-trial, the county was hit by an especially strong attack. Dr. J. Morgan Kousser, a Caltech history professor, showed how lines had been shifted since 1959 to prevent the election of a Latino. Kousser’s testimony was cited by Kenyon in his opinion.

So now, there are the legal bills.

The supervisors have been charged about $3 million by the private law firm they hired to defend them. And since the supervisors seem determined to appeal, the meter, as the lawyers like to say, is still running.

In addition, Kenyon could require the county to pay $2 million in legal expenses requested by the civil rights organizations that joined the U.S. Justice Department in the case.

That would be $5 million.

At the supervisors meeting Tuesday, Antonovich complained about the expense. He said the money could have gone to the sheriff, or to jails or the health system.

He’s right--and he is among those who can be blamed for spending it in court.

The money would have been available for all those good causes if the supervisors had read the political arithmetic of the county, as the new numbers added up in Pico Rivera and other growing Latino communities. It might, for instance, have been available for the county library in Pico Rivera.