O’Connor’s Suggestion on Districts Rejected : Politics: Tussle continues as council foes shoot down plan for an outside expert to redraw district lines.

Reinforcing its members’ bitter divisions over redistricting, the San Diego City Council on Tuesday rejected Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s suggestion that a UCLA professor who redrew Los Angeles County’s political boundaries to give Latinos more clout be asked to do the same here.

With four members’ absences essentially paralyzing the council, O’Connor’s proposal that the city seek the advice of urban planning professor Leobardo Estrada failed when it attracted only three votes, two short of a majority.

Although the measure’s defeat was virtually preordained by the predictable opposition of two members who differ with O’Connor over redistricting, the council nonetheless discussed it at length in an often acerbic debate that underlined the growing animosity over the volatile redistricting question.

While O’Connor billed her proposal as an effort to “take the high road . . . with a new driver” aimed at avoiding a potentially lengthy court battle, her council critics accused her of grandstanding and of trying to circumvent the council majority’s will.

The verbal exchanges between O’Connor and Councilman John Hartley, who offered the redistricting plan tentatively approved by the council last month, were particularly caustic, with both sharply questioning the others’ motives and actions in the protracted political-legal dispute.

Accusing O’Connor of “dropping a bombshell” when she unveiled her plan to retain Estrada in a surprise appearance before a citizens’ advisory board Monday night, Hartley criticized the mayor for positioning herself as a compromiser when, he contended, her actions were driven by her frustrations as a member of the council’s minority.

“You’re obviously on one side of the issue, and by not really stating where you are honestly, you certainly didn’t earn my respect,” Hartley said. “I don’t like this sort of sanctimonious kind of attitude like you’re really . . . trying to lead when you’re really trying to have your point of view.”

Frostily responding that she is “not worried about . . . my credibility in the community,” O’Connor noted that Hartley had dropped a bombshell of his own when he publicized his redistricting plan only hours before it was approved in concept by a 5-4 council vote July 9.

“If the Hartley map prevails, it possibly and probably will be in the courts--very time-consuming, very costly,” O’Connor said. “Bringing in a neutral party . . . is the only way we’re going to get out of this dilemma right now. I’m just so sorry that again, for whatever reason, you don’t respect me, but that’s your right.”

Joining Hartley in opposing O’Connor’s proposal, Councilman Bob Filner argued that “no professor (can) wave a magic wand” to solve the redistricting issue, adding that the “only way out of this dilemma is through the political process.”

“I don’t think there’s any mayor in America that would come out for outside intervention into a legislative process . . . just because they’re in a minority,” Filner said. Council members Ron Roberts and Judy McCarty supported O’Connor’s proposal.

Apparently deciding to defer further debate until a showdown at a special night meeting next week, the council remained largely silent on other actions taken by the redistricting advisory board Monday night.

During a 4 1/2-hour meeting dominated by sharp verbal sparring, the council-appointed panel reaffirmed its original plan to redraw council district lines, with several minor modifications. Notably, the panel recommended a minor change in the 8th District’s proposed boundary to encompass the new Burlingame home of Filner, whose home had been left outside his district under the board’s original map.

Previewing their Tuesday debate, O’Connor and Filner began the advisory board meeting by detailing their diametrically opposed viewpoints of the mayor’s plan to solicit Estrada’s advice in an attempt to find a solution to the redistricting morass.

Last Friday, Estrada’s reconfiguration of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors’ five districts was chosen by a federal judge to replace existing boundaries found to unconstitutionally dilute minority voting strength.

“The current stalemate will continue indefinitely in the City Council chambers and in the courts,” O’Connor told the panel. “It is time to take it out of the politicians’ hands and give it to the professor. We, the politicians, have failed.”

Filner, however, insisted that the council is not deadlocked, adding that he expects an Oct. 1 deadline for having a redistricting plan in place to be met.

Though he offered some conciliatory words to the panel, Filner also pointedly reminded its members that it is, as its name connotes, simply an advisory board on redistricting, not the final arbiter of the controversial issue.

“We’ve listened to your advice,” Filner said. “But we have the authority to act.”

In urging the council to seek Estrada’s assistance, the advisory board suggested that the UCLA professor’s major task should be to search for ways to enhance minority political clout in the heavily black 4th District and a proposed Latino-majority 8th District.

Of the more than 30 public speakers who addressed the advisory board Monday night, most favored Hartley’s map over the board’s version.

After listening to that often repetitious testimony, the panel’s members learned anew how many of the wishes of neighborhoods, interest groups or the council itself are mutually exclusive.

That thorny challenge was perhaps best illustrated by the panel’s reluctant recommendation to stretch the 8th District’s boundary to accommodate Filner’s new home--a change described by several members as a political necessity for the advisory board map to have any realistic chance of approval. If the board’s original map had not placed Filner’s house in Hartley’s 3rd District, board member Fred Schnaubelt and others suggested, much of the controversy of the past month might have even been averted.

However, that relatively minor change also would reduce the Latino composition of the 8th District from the board’s original 52.2% to 51.9%, according to city administrators. Given that the overriding goal of the redistricting--and the purpose behind the creation of the advisory board--is to enhance minority voting clout, the panel thus undermined its own raison d’etre .

The change to accommodate Filner could also weaken one of the Chicano Federation’s major objections to Hartley’s plan--notably, that it reduced Latino population in 8th District from the 52.2% figure to 51%. With some proposed amendments to Hartley’s map raising Latino population in the district to as much as 51.8%, the panel’s own action leaves only a negligible difference--.05%, according to Filner--between the two competing proposals.

“I’m not sure that the city should go to war over five-hundredths of a percent,” Filner concluded.