Board Changes District Lines to Reflect Census : Supervisors: Revisions are minor but some areas will get third representative in year. Final approval of the plan is expected next week.

A redistricting plan that would give about 500,000 residents their second or third different Los Angeles County supervisor within a year won tentative approval from the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

The map makes only minor adjustments in last year’s court-drawn districts to reflect population changes recorded in the 1990 Census. It is expected to receive final approval from the supervisors next week.

But more radical changes may be on the way. Supervisors now turn to drafting a seven-district map that would be used if voters approve a proposal to expand the board from five to seven members.

The five-district plan must be ratified by the U.S. Justice Department, a plaintiff in the voting rights lawsuit that led to the redrawing of supervisorial district boundaries and the election earlier this year of the first Latino supervisor this century, Gloria Molina.

A Justice Department spokesman in Washington declined comment, but attorney Vibiana Andrade of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a plaintiff in last year’s lawsuit, said, “We’re satisfied with the map.”

Justice Department approval is expected since the map leaves largely unchanged the court-drawn, heavily Latino 1st District stretching from Los Angeles’ Eastside through the San Gabriel Valley.

Under the plan, Azusa and Pomona will receive their third new supervisor in a year--Molina.

At the beginning of last year, the two cities were represented by 1st District Supervisor Pete Schabarum, who retired. Then they became part of Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s 5th District under court-ordered remapping.

The cities were shifted to equalize the population of the districts, as required by law.

In other changes, Supervisor Ed Edelman’s 3rd District, which currently includes part of Venice, would pick up the rest of that community from Supervisor Deane Dana’s 4th District.

Koreatown, now split among three districts, would be placed entirely in Supervisor Kenneth Hahn’s 2nd District.

Antonovich also won back Olive View Medical Center, as the supervisors drew a dip in an otherwise straight boundary line between Antonovich’s district and Edelman’s in the northeast San Fernando Valley.

Antonovich lost the county hospital to Edelman during the court-ordered reapportionment. Antonovich said he wanted the hospital back because he led the fight to build it.

Tuesday’s action was far less contentious than last year’s redistricting war. There was only one short sharp exchange, between Antonovich and Molina.

Antonovich cast the lone dissenting vote against the plan, calling it “nothing more than an incumbent protection plan needlessly tearing apart existing communities and moving people around as if they were pawns on a chessboard.”

He said he was angry that his colleagues did not restore to his district more of the San Fernando Valley neighborhoods he lost during the court-ordered redistricting.

“Mr. Antonovich, I can assure you that this map is not going to the U.S. Supreme Court by comparison to the map you were responsible for drawing in 1981,” Molina shot back.

She was alluding to the county’s appeal of a federal court decision that declared the county’s 1981 redistricting plan illegal because it discriminated against Latinos.

Molina said the new plan reflects the “changing demographics” of the county by maintaining a Latino majority in her district and a 35% black voting-age population in Hahn’s 2nd district. Hahn has said that he is considering not seeking reelection next June.

With a new five-district plan behind them, the supervisors now plan to begin work on a seven-district map that would be presented to voters in June with a proposal to expand the board.

However, still more changes in the five-district map may be necessary depending on the outcome of court cases seeking to apply adjusted census figures to redistrictings.

Redrawing the Supervisorial Districts

In tentatively approving a redistricting plan on Tuesday to reflect 1990 census data, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors made some minor adjustments in last year’s court-drawn districts:

* Koreatown, now split between the 1st, 2nd and 3rd District, is placed entirely in the 2nd District.

* Chinatown and some other sections of downtown Los Angeles, now part of the 2nd District, are put in the 1st District.

* Venice, now split between the 3rd and 4th, is placed entirely in the 3rd District.

* Hacienda Heights, split between the 1st and 4th, is put entirely in the 4th District.

* Olive View Medical Center (Sylmar) now in the 3rd is put in the 5th District.

* Azusa and Pomona, now in the 5th, are put in the 1st District.