Plan Adds Latinos to Flynn’s District and May Deter Suit

A new redistricting plan released Thursday would add thousands more voting-age Latinos to Supervisor John K. Flynn’s Oxnard-area district and apparently avoid a lawsuit by a voting-rights coalition.

The new plan, to be considered Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors, incorporates the core recommendations of the Latino coalition. And it leaves Channel Islands Harbor, Oxnard Airport, Bailard Landfill and Oxnard College in Flynn’s 5th District, as the supervisor requested.

Four supervisors asked Tuesday that the new plan be drafted as a compromise that responds better to the demands of the coalition. The plan, or something similar, seems likely to be approved next week.

“This is of historic importance to Ventura County,” said Marco Antonio Abarca, spokesman for the Ventura County Coalition for Redistricting and Reapportionment. “This is the ending of the fragmentation of the Latino community that has been here for decades.”

But Flynn said Thursday that the plan “is a total butcher job” crafted by county lawyers and administrators who have persuaded the other four supervisors that they have no choice but to go along.

County Counsel James McBride “has so installed fear into the supervisors that they’re forced to sign it,” Flynn said. “We’ll have a staff plan, and it will be based on intimidation and fear.”

McBride could not be reached for comment. But three other supervisors said Flynn is frustrated because the board on Tuesday backed away from the plan that he supports after approving the proposal a week earlier.

They said McBride, although telling the board that the Flynn-backed option satisfied the federal Voting Rights Act, had second thoughts last week about whether the option might not be overturned during a costly court battle.

“I feel very badly for John,” Supervisor Maria VanderKolk said. “I don’t like the fact that my district has been carved up either. But if we have a legal problem, I want to know about it. . . . I’m told just the (minimum) court costs would be a half-million dollars.”

The principal legal issue facing supervisors is whether the plan they approve will satisfy the federal Voting Rights Act, which prohibits fragmentation of minority communities when new political boundaries are drawn.

The new option released Thursday would increase voting-age Latinos in Flynn’s district from the current 48% to 53.6%. The Latino coalition favors a plan where Flynn’s 5th District would have 54.5% adult Latinos. The Flynn-backed plan calls for 50.1%

There are about 2,700 more voting-age Latinos in the new option than in the Flynn-backed plan.

The increase would be accomplished by including heavily Latino El Rio and Nyeland Acres, just north of Oxnard, in Flynn’s district. The communities have about 12,700 residents.

Predominantly white precincts in coastal and northern Oxnard--including River Ridge, Mandalay Bay Colony and Oxnard Shores--would be moved to Susan Lacey’s 1st District, which is mostly in Ventura. The communities, which Flynn had lobbied to retain, have about 10,400 residents.

Flynn’s district would keep the beach communities that surround Channel Islands Harbor. But portions of Oxnard immediately north of Port Hueneme would be moved to VanderKolk’s 2nd District, which is based in Thousand Oaks.

While other supervisors say they are not sure how much they might change the new option at their meeting Tuesday, Flynn said he thinks something close to it will pass. And he faults his staff advisers.

“I think this is another case of the staff people running the show,” Flynn said. “We’ve got staff playing elected officials’ roles.”

Flynn said McBride, Chief Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg and Robert Braitman, another county administrator, had lobbied strongly against the plan he favors.

“I think that has become even more of an issue than redistricting,” he said.

But board Chairwoman Maggie Erickson Kildee said Flynn’s comments are insulting and perhaps sexist, since his four board colleagues are women.

“It’s absurd and it’s demeaning and it’s degrading to say that the women on the board are afraid to stand up to the men on the staff, if that’s what he’s implying,” Erickson Kildee said. “If it’s not, then it’s still patently ridiculous.

“This is just a matter of John being very upset because John didn’t get his own way,” she said. “And John likes to get his way.”