San Diego Council Redistricting Tussle Becomes a Battle of Depositions : Politics: Majority bloc, subpeonaed by Aguirre, counters with its own subpoenas. Meanwhile, two more compromise redistricting maps will be presented.

The continuing fight over how to redraw San Diego City Council districts in an attempt to increase Latino voting strength reached a new front Monday: dueling depositions.

On one side is the Chicano Federation and its attorney, Michael Aguirre, who two years ago filed a class-action lawsuit against the City Council seeking redistricting to improve the chances of a Latino being elected to council.

Last week, after attempted compromises collapsed, Aguirre began issuing subpoenas to the five-member City Council majority who approved a redistricting map the Chicano Federation has rejected. Staff members of the five also were subpoenaed to appear at public sworn interrogations, tentatively scheduled to begin Wednesday morning.

On Monday, a lawyer for three members of the majority bloc responded with subpoenas of his own. Those to be served beginning today include the four council members who form the minority faction--Mayor Maureen O’Connor, and council members Ron Roberts, Judy McCarty and Bruce Henderson--and their staffs.

Also on the list are various city staff members, including those from the city attorney’s office and members of a citizens’ redistricting advisory board.

David Lundin, the lawyer representing council members Bob Filner, Linda Bernhardt and John Hartley, said he hopes to begin his interrogations starting next Tuesday and continue taking depositions through the month of November.

Lundin said he would prefer to hold the sessions in private but acknowledged that he may be restrained from doing so under orders from U.S. District Judge John Rhoades, who has jurisdiction over the lawsuit and has directed all depositions to be public.

Meanwhile, the City Council is scheduled to receive today two compromise redistricting maps while in closed session. Both, however, were rejected last week by Aguirre and the Chicano Federation, both who maintain they do too little to increase Latino voting strength in the key 8th District, which stretches from downtown to San Ysidro.

On another front Monday, two self-described community activists, one black and one Latino, said they are fed up with the long political battle and want Aguirre replaced as the lawyer representing Latinos and blacks in the lawsuit.

The two accused Aguirre of, among other things, promoting the lawsuit for personal reasons and using it as a weapon in his bitter political feud with Filner. They held their news conference in the office of Filner’s attorney.

Al Ducheny, chairman of the Harborview Community Council, and Ernest McCray, said they are considering filing a motion in federal court to remove Aguirre. Ducheny said he has not retained an attorney and does not know if he and others he claims feel like he does can afford one.

McCray was a named plaintiff in the Chicano Federation lawsuit. He said he became so frustrated by the process that he asked Aguirre to drop him from the suit. Ducheny was never named plaintiff but, as a Puerto Rican, says he has standing as a Latino in the class-action suit.

Ducheny in particular criticized Aguirre for refusing to accept what he called compromise redistricting maps, including one approved by the five-member City Council majority and another that surfaced last week through Filner and Lundin.

“What’s going on here?” asked Ducheny, adding that the statistical difference between Filner’s and Aguirre’s redistricting proposals are not significant enough to continue with a costly trial. “Are we playing a game?”

Aguirre was not available for comment. Last Friday, Aguirre and his redistricting expert, Leo Estrada, a UCLA urban planning professor, said that, although the difference in the percentage of Latinos between the two maps maps is less than 1%, the boundary lines in two proposals are significantly different.

Ducheny accused Aguirre of being inconsistent and of changing his opposition to compromise maps to suit his personal views. “It was the (percentage) numbers” on the maps, Ducheny said, “now it’s something else.”

As for how Ducheny ended up in Filner’s lawyer’s office, he said he contacted Filner, who put him in touch with his attorney, whose office prepared a legal declaration outlining Ducheny’s reason for wanting Aguirre removed.