Redrawing Districts in Public

Ask politicians why they conduct so much business in private and they react as if it’s a dumb question.

Some matters, they reply, are just too important to be left to the public. Take employee discipline. You don’t want the public to know the details of the fire chief’s foul-ups, they say. And what about lawsuits? You can’t have some irate citizen messing up your legal strategy with uninformed debate.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has turned frequently to the lawsuit excuse, employing it to exclude the public and convene in private as they charted new boundaries for the five supervisorial districts. You may have read how my colleague, Richard Simon, was handcuffed by a sheriff’s deputy when he had the nerve to venture into a public hallway, which had been declared off-limits to the press, and ask a supervisor a question.

I know this will surprise the supervisors, but you don’t have to act as if you were conspiring to commit a crime when you are passing laws. The process works when it’s done in public.

I rediscovered this rather fundamental concept Wednesday night in Pomona, which sits at the far eastern end of Los Angeles County. There, City Council members, like the county supervisors, are drawing new political boundaries. But these lawmakers are inviting the public to take part, soliciting their views in hearings held around the city this week.

At the hearings, residents are shown two redistricting plans prepared for the city by a consultant, Alan Heslop of Claremont-McKenna College’s Rose Institute. Members of the audience praise and criticize the plans and offer changes. After the hearings, the council, in open session, will vote on a final proposal.

I’m sure the county supervisors’ method is more efficient. There are drawbacks to popular participation. For one thing, people shout at each other. The pace drags. In Pomona, it really bogs down because an interpreter is required for audiences divided between English and Spanish-speaking residents.

Wednesday night, at a hearing at the Washington Park recreation center, an angry speaker stuck his finger in the face of the interpreter. “Get your finger out of my face,” the interpreter said. His friends in the audience, a substantial number of people, stood up as a sign of support--and warning. A security man had to ask for order. Toward the end, a city official joked to me, “Don’t you think we ought to do this behind closed doors, like the supervisors?”

But the two plans were explained in detail, and a few people voiced their opinions. Finally, at about 9:15 p.m., more than two hours after the meeting started, the audience, having had their fill, left without waiting for formal adjournment. These are people with minds of their own.

Pomona resident Maureen Brians, pausing to chat in the parking lot before driving home, said she thought the experience, however inefficient, had been worthwhile.

I’d picked a good person to interview. “I’ve lived in Pomona for 50 years,” she said. A half-century--it just about spans the slow decline in Pomona’s fortunes that the city now is attempting to stop.

Today, Pomona suffers from the ailments of poverty--crime, gangs, and large number of teen-age mothers, and households headed only by mothers.

It also faces some political tension. Though Pomona has the highest minority population in the region, until recently there were no minority members on its City Council. Now there are two Latinos. The purpose of the redistricting exercise is to draw voter districts that will ensure that the growing Latino and substantial black population will be represented.

Brians came to the meeting to participate in this political and social change. “We want to do what’s right,” she said.

For Oneal McDaniels, an RTD supervisor who has lived in Pomona for 17 years, the right thing is to elect a black to the City Council. “We’ve been trying,” he said, “to get a black on the City Council for eight or nine years.”

I’m not naive enough to think that this people-power redistricting is going to change the face of Pomona. The city’s got too many problems for that. And I don’t need to be reminded that the county is much bigger, more complex and more populous than Pomona. But the city officials’ willingness to listen, even subject themselves to abuse, shows that they know the importance of making citizens part of the problem-solving process.

Maureen Brians, with her sense of the city’s history, has something important to contribute. So does Oneal McDaniels, raising his family and watching his cheerleader daughter, Latasha, 17, prepare for UC Riverside.

Citizen participation is not a new idea. We call it democracy. Perhaps the supervisors should discuss it the next time they meet behind closed doors.