Board Still Stalled on Districting : Supervisors: ‘Survival’ factor makes carving a Latino district difficult, Schabarum says. Court-imposed deadline is less than a week away.

With a court-imposed deadline just six days away, Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum said Thursday that he and his fellow supervisors are having difficulty complying with a federal judge’s order to redraw district boundaries to remedy discrimination against Latinos.

“The supervisorial preference for survival” is among the factors making the task of carving a Latino district difficult, Schabarum said.

However, two plaintiffs in the voting rights lawsuit against the county--the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund--plan to submit a number of redistricting proposals to the board by today. One map would create a Latino seat by expanding the board from five to seven members.

All five supervisors met behind closed doors again Thursday. But after an hour, they recessed their meeting until Monday afternoon.

“Nothing happened,” Supervisor Deane Dana said. Dana and the other supervisors rushed past reporters and refused to discuss their private conversations.

Schabarum declined to reveal any of the redistricting plans under consideration. But he acknowledged that the political maps are similar to ones drawn last year that would have created a Latino district from Supervisor Ed Edelman’s or Schabarum’s district. Schabarum is retiring, but he said he objects to breaking up the San Gabriel Valley to create a Latino district.

ACLU attorney Mark Rosenbaum, asked about Schabarum’s comments, said: “These guys are borrowing their scripts from Southern officials from the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s like Bull Connor is holding up the cue cards.” Connor was the commissioner of public safety in Birmingham, Ala., who used fire hoses and police dogs to break up civil rights demonstrations in the early 1960s.

U.S. District Court Judge David V. Kenyon has given the supervisors until next Wednesday to redraw their district boundaries, or he will draft a new plan himself. The county is appealing the judge’s decision. The next court hearing is July 2, at which the plaintiffs can respond to the county’s redistricting efforts.

During a news conference, Schabarum complained that supervisors are having difficulty complying with the judge’s order without breaking up geographical areas with common interests and violating the constitutional requirement for equal population among districts.

“You haven’t heard me say it is not possible” to create a Latino district, Schabarum said, “I have told you it is very difficult.”

Schabarum said the board also is having trouble determining “what’s a Hispanic.”