Ballot Proposal Would End City Council Redistricting Battles

An independent redistricting commission would redraw San Diego City Council district boundaries under a ballot initiative proposed by California Common Cause and City Councilman Ron Roberts.

Roberts, saying he hopes to spare San Diegans “the excruciating debate” that marred the city’s recently completed redistricting, announced he will ask the council to place the measure on the June 1992 ballot. He believes a council majority will approve his request.

“You’re seeing the council recognizing that we have to make some changes,” Roberts said Tuesday. “Sometimes, the timing is right.”

If placed on the ballot, the measure would join a second electoral reform--proposed two-term limits for council members--that the council agreed in April to put before voters.

The council completed a prolonged, sometimes vicious battle over reapportionment May 3 when it approved a plan drawn up by Roberts that added Latino voters to Councilman Bob Filmer’s 8th District, moved most of downtown into Roberts’ 2nd District and restored the Scripps Ranch and Mira Mesa neighborhoods to Councilman Tom Behr’s 5th District.

Along the way, two deeply divided council factions slugged it out in court, and residents angered by last year’s redistricting plan recalled Councilman Linda Bernhardt from office.

Tuesday’s proposal would establish a seven-member Redistricting Commission selected by the presiding judge of the San Diego Superior Court to redraw council boundaries at least once every 10 years to reflect population shifts. The commission’s decision would be final.

The judge would appoint seven men and women who reflect the “geographic, social and ethnic” diversity of the city. Each would file a written declaration not to seek local office for five years.

Taking reapportionment decisions out of the council’s hands would de-politicize the process and foster competition for council seats by preventing incumbents from drawing themselves into districts where they are invulnerable to challenge, said Robert Fellmeth, a member of Common Cause’s board of directors.

The change also would help minorities gain seats on the council, he said.

Few governmental agencies have been willing to give up the power to reapportion political boundaries, but there are precedents in some states, Fellmeth said.

The measure is nearly identical to one circulated in 1989 by the Citizens for Independent Redistricting. That proposal failed to gain enough signatures on petitions to qualify for the ballot.