Yaroslavsky Says Latest Census Data Upholds Remapping Vote : Schools: The councilman contends that the so-called ‘Valley-friendly’ alternative redistricting plan would have invited a lawsuit had it been adopted.

Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky asserted Wednesday that new census data vindicates the council’s adoption of a controversial school board redistricting plan and demonstrates that an alternative supported by many San Fernando Valley leaders would have been illegal.

Had the council adopted the so-called “Valley-friendly” plan, the city could have been successfully sued by Latinos claiming that their civil rights were being abridged, Yaroslavsky said.

After a rancorous debate in July, the council redrew the districts from which Los Angeles Board of Education trustees are elected.

The plan was sharply criticized by the 31st District Parent Teacher Student Assn. and most Valley elected leaders who said it diluted the area’s clout. The plan left only one school board seat wholly in the Valley and divided the rest of the area among three seats, none based here. Previously, the Valley had two board seats of its own.

The council on Wednesday voted 11 to 2 to approve an ordinance finalizing that decision.

“It’s clear-cut we made the right call,” Yaroslavsky said after hearing testimony on new data from the 1990 U.S. census on the number of Latinos of voting age in the city. The data had not been previously available.

Yaroslavsky’s zeal to highlight the new data was widely viewed as a bid by the lawmaker to put a favorable spin on his vote against the Valley-oriented remap plan last July. That vote could come to haunt the councilman if he runs for mayor and tries to court the area’s voters.

“Zev’s trying to protect his you-know-what in the Valley if he runs for mayor,” said one school activist who asked not to be named.

Yaroslavsky mounted a brief campaign to run for mayor in 1989 but dropped out months before the election. He has not said he won’t run again in 1993 now that Tom Bradley has said he will not seek a sixth term.

David Ely, a private demographer hired to help the council draft a redistricting plan for the school board, told the council Wednesday that the Valley-friendly plan backed by Councilwoman Joy Picus did not create two Latino-dominated board seats capable of passing the so-called Thornburgh legal test.

That test, established in a voting rights lawsuit of the same name, defines a Latino-dominated district as one in which Latinos make up a majority of eligible voters, Ely told the lawmakers Wednesday.

Both districts in the council-approved plan passed this test, but only one district in the Picus plan would have passed, Ely said. At the same time, Ely acknowledged that while the Thornburgh test is a standard used in voting rights cases, its legal standing has not been fully tested and is not “absolutely clear.”

In July, the city’s legal advisers had characterized the council plan as being only better by degrees than the Picus plan, which kept alive the bitter contention of critics that political rather than legal considerations had guided the council’s action.

“There was so much heat, so much politics on this, that it was hard to get out the facts,” Yaroslavsky said Wednesday. “Now, the facts are here and they ought to be disseminated.” The adopted remap plan, Yaroslavsky said, “may not be pretty, but it’s legal and that’s what counts.”

Picus was not swayed.

“Until I see the numbers and they have been verified by my own experts, I won’t vote for this,” Picus said, contending that the city’s redistricting process has “not been objective” in the past.

As for Yaroslavsky, Picus said, “He’s rationalizing his vote, trying to make it look good.”

Councilman Joel Wachs, who also represents the Valley and opposed the council-approved redistricting plan, was similarly unmoved. “The Valley got shortchanged by the council and there were alternatives . . . that were satisfactory and legal,” Wachs said.

Meanwhile, Nick Brestoff, an attorney trying to put the school redistricting matter before the voters, said the attacks on the Picus plan “shows how much they’re afraid of our initiative.”

Brestoff’s group, the Coalition Against Unfair School Elections, wants voters to have the choice of enacting an alternative remap more in the Valley’s interests next June. He acknowledged, however, that the alternative the group is proposing has not been measured against the Thornburgh test.