Council Nervously Returns to Touchy Redistricting Issue : Politics: It faces tough decisions on redrawing San Diego’s City Council districts. The last redistricting battle led to Linda Bernhardt’s recall.

In a high-stakes political drama that San Diego City Council aides half-jokingly refer to as “returning to the scene of the crime,” the council this week will reopen a divisive battle that could produce new council district lines for the second time within a year.

Its hand forced by census data showing large population disparities among the city’s eight council districts, the council reluctantly will return to a hypersensitive issue that already has scarred City Hall, generated protracted legal wrangling and helped to sweep one incumbent from office.

Most council members doubt that the newest round of redistricting will match last year’s months-long debate either in duration or level of acrimony. But redistricting’s inherent link to politicians’ self-interest runs counter to a painless, dispassionate decision.

Some council members are pressing for a quick resolution so that the new lines will be in place for this fall’s council races; others urge a post-election delay. Two hearings scheduled this week will indicate which of those two scenarios will emerge.

“No one wants to go through anything like what we did last year,” said Councilman Ron Roberts, who has proposed what he describes as a “minimal redrawing” of district lines that would shift most of downtown into his 2nd District--one of at least four plans to be debated.

“Everyone’s heard all the arguments before,” Roberts said. “We ought to get this over quickly so that voters know the person they elect isn’t going to end up maybe being moved to another district right after the election.”

“We’ve talked and talked and talked about this,” Mayor Maureen O’Connor added. “There’s no need to go back to square one.”

In order to meet administrative and legal deadlines relating to September’s council primaries, the council would need to agree on a new redistricting map no later than May 9, according to city attorneys. Under his interpretation of election laws, City Clerk Charles Abdelnour has advised the council that the deadline is even earlier--May 3.

“It’s ludicrous to even think of deciding something this important in just a few days,” argues Councilman Bob Filner, whose 8th District currently includes downtown. “We need a lot of time to do this right. It’s also ironic that those who seem so eager to make a quick decision now are the ones who complained loudest about that last year.”

Changed political and numerical realities underlie the redistricting redux, which comes only about five months after a federal court approved the existing council-adopted boundaries.

The current lines were based on population estimates, which, in several cases--notably, Roberts’ and Filner’s districts--varied dramatically from the official census figures received by the city this spring.

The estimates, for example, ranked Roberts’ district as the city’s largest with 141,679 people, while the actual census figure of 118,717 makes it the smallest. Conversely, Filner’s district, thought to have the smallest population--127,842--in fact has 150,404 residents, making it the largest council district.

With Roberts’ district being considerably smaller and Filner’s being more populous than expected, there is a nearly 23% variance between their constituencies--more than double the disparity permitted under federal standards designed to insure that legislative districts include roughly the same number of people. If the city’s 1.1-million population were divided equally among the eight districts, each would include about 139,000 residents.

Though the population statistics compel the district lines to be redrawn, the changed political dynamics at City Hall could provide the flash point in an already heated debate.

As a result of former 5th District Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt’s overwhelming loss in this month’s recall election, the council’s so-called Gang of Five majority--that, by a 5-4 vote, adopted the current map--has been dismantled. Her successor, Scripps Ranch lawyer Tom Behr, could become the swing vote on the volatile issue, and has reasons of his own for wanting to see the district lines changed: otherwise, he will have to move before 1993 to defend his seat.

Behr has been noncommittal about his own position, saying simply that he hopes to help fashion a map that is “fair, equitable and as undisruptive as possible.”

By its very nature, however, redistricting is an emotionally-charged process in which political ambitions and legislative priorities are tempered by immutable legal requirements--creating goals that are sometimes mutually exclusive. Consequently, when it comes to redistricting, there may be no such thing as a “minor change.”

Indeed, by stretching a boundary line here or trimming one there, the political cartographers can all but guarantee some office-holders’ reelection while endangering the survival of others. In so doing, redistricting also holds major implications for programs, budgets and minorities’ voting rights--thereby doing much to set San Diego’s political agenda for the next decade.

“We’re talking about a political system that’s going to take San Diego up to the 21st Century,” Filner said. “That alone suggests that this should not be a hasty decision.”

Timing is the first of several thorny issues that the council must confront at this week’s hearings, to be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Golden Hall, next to City Hall, and 2 p.m. Friday at City Hall.

Despite the population imbalances among the districts, there is no legal requirement that the problem be remedied immediately, according to Chief Deputy City Atty. Jack Katz.

Under a settlement reached in a federal lawsuit aimed at enhancing Latino voting rights that led to last year’s redistricting map, the city has up to nine months after receiving final census figures to make any adjustments necessary to conform to federal standards. That timetable would give the city until at least early next year to make changes that, among other things, would boost the population of Roberts’ district and shrink Filner’s district.

Rather than rushing to beat this fall’s election deadlines, San Diego should avail itself of the additional time to redraw the lines before the 1993 elections, Filner and others argue.

However, such a delay raises the politically unattractive prospect of council boundaries being redrawn shortly after this fall’s campaigns, meaning that voters who elect one council member could be shifted to another district only weeks after Election Day.

“That’s what somebody just got thrown out of office for,” Roberts said, noting that Bernhardt’s recall stemmed largely from her constituents’ anger over her willingness to jettison Scripps Ranch and Mira Mesa from her district shortly after those communities helped elect her. “We should have learned something from that.”

In addition, Councilman Bruce Henderson, who has designed another proposed map, argues that the failure to change the boundaries of his 6th District before this fall would effectively disenfranchise nearly 50,000 people in Clairemont, Pacific Beach and Bay Park.

By virtue of the changes made in last year’s map, voters in those neighborhoods, who last cast council ballots when Henderson was elected in 1987, would not be eligible to vote again until at least 1993, two years later than normal under the council’s four-year terms. In what Henderson aide Jim Sills describes as a very plausible “double whammy,” those voters conceivably could even face an eight-year wait until 1995, if they are returned to the 6th District too late to vote this year.

At the same time, some residents of Bernhardt’s “old” 5th District--who now live in the 6th District but, by a judge’s order, voted in the April 9 recall election--would vote in September for the second time in five months if the existing boundaries remain until then.

Some temporary inequities, however, are inevitable under any redistricting plan, given the council’s staggered terms in which odd- and even-numbered seats are contested at two-year intervals.

Plus, Filner argues that an immediate change to district lines would be “disruptive and unfair to the political process,” noting that incumbents and potential challengers alike have been plotting strategies based on the existing boundaries.

“Whatever problems might come from waiting--and they’re less serious than some would have you believe--would be no greater than the trouble caused by (redistricting) now,” said Filner, who, like Roberts, Henderson and Councilman Wes Pratt, faces reelection this year. “A lot of people have been making plans to run or not run based on the current lines. It’s not fair to change that a few days before the filing deadline.”

Beyond Roberts’ and Henderson’s respective maps, at least two other alternatives--the original proposal developed by a 17-member citizens advisory board and an offering by a South Bay resident--also will be considered by the council.

Regardless of which map becomes preeminent, however, the major battles likely will focus on downtown and the division between the 5th and 6th districts.

Both Roberts’ and Henderson’s maps would shift most of downtown from Filner’s 8th District to Roberts’ 2nd--a change they characterize as primarily an attempt to correct the two adjoining districts’ population disparity.

From Filner’s perspective, however, the proposed shift is a power grab engineered by two political opponents designed to minimize his--and his district’s--clout. Without downtown, which provides both visibility on high-profile issues and access to valuable fund-raising sources, the 8th District representative would become “less of a major player” inside and outside City Hall, Filner complains.

“This isn’t about population or numbers--it’s about taking downtown away from the 8th District,” Filner contends. “That’s the real intent, and it’s as much an attack on Hispanic representation as it is on me.”

Roberts, however, counters by arguing that the downtown shift appears to be the simplest--and perhaps the only --method of scaling down the size of Filner’s district without reducing its 58.9% Latino majority. Any change that curtails the Latino population in the 8th District, Roberts notes, almost certainly would throw the city’s redistricting plan back into U.S. District Court, where predictable legal delays could produce political chaos.

“The numbers are Bob’s real enemy, not a power grab by anyone,” said Roberts, whose plan would raise the Latino composition of the 8th District to 61.4%. “For Bob Filner, there’s no way to have a district that starts at the border, goes through downtown and still satisfies the federal courts and population standards. Anyone who thinks he can do that should get out his crayons and try.”

Filner apparently intends to do just that, predicting coyly that when the council takes up the issue this week, “I’m sure there will be some other suggestions.” As to downtown, Filner contends he “could show you five different ways” to reduce his district’s population “without touching downtown.”

Roberts’ and Henderson’s maps also would largely restore the 5th and 6th districts to the territory that they covered before last year’s redistricting, with some differences.

Both plans would unify Clairemont, now divided between the 5th and 6th districts, in Henderson’s district. But while Henderson’s plan also would restore Pacific Beach to his 6th District, Roberts proposes to split it between himself and Henderson--a division that he describes as a marked improvement over the community’s current four-district Balkanization.

Undoing the controversial shift that led to Bernhardt’s forced departure from City Hall, both maps also would return Scripps Ranch and Mira Mesa to Behr’s 5th District. Significantly, that change would permit Behr to seek reelection in 1993 without having to move. (One of the peculiarities resulting from the convergence of last year’s redistricting with this month’s recall is that Behr represents the 5th District even though his Scripps Ranch home places him in Henderson’s 6th District.)

A handful of other boundary disputes also will figure prominently in the council’s debate. Notably, while Roberts’ plan would leave the San Pasqual Valley in Abbe Wolfsheimer’s 1st District--a recognition of her extensive work to create a regional park there--Henderson would move it to the 5th District.

Henderson, meanwhile, would shift parts of Hillcrest that include high concentrations of homosexual, predominantly Democratic voters from John Hartley’s 3rd District to Roberts’ district--a change that Republican Roberts does not favor.

“The fewer changes we make, the better,” Roberts concluded.

However, as the council learned during last year’s contentious debate, even small-scale redistricting changes are problematical, because, as Wolfsheimer notes, a shift of any line “touches off a domino effect” altering the make-up of other districts.

“Once you start moving the lines, no one knows where it will lead,” said Pratt, whose 4th District would remain unchanged under both the Roberts and Henderson maps. “I just hope it doesn’t lead back to where we were last year.”