Critics Draw the Line Over Redistricting Plan Secrecy : Ordinance: After a quiet introduction last week, the proposal is scheduled for a second reading and council vote Sept. 13.

A proposed ordinance that would change Alhambra’s City Council districts to keep up with population shifts is unlikely to affect elections, but has angered residents who say the redistricting process should have been made public.

The ordinance was presented for a first reading at a council meeting last Monday and appeared on the agenda the preceding Friday. Residents who found out about the plan from a city employee weeks before and called City Hall to inquire say they were told no action would be taken anytime soon.

Realtor Gloria Georgino, a 40-year Alhambra resident and liaison to the City Council for the West San Gabriel Valley Assn. of Realtors, said someone on the board learned of the redistricting effort about two weeks ago and asked her to find out what was going on.

“I called the city clerk’s office and they didn’t have the information. I called the Alhambra Redevelopment Agency and they said they didn’t know anything about it,” Georgino said. “And I called the assistant to (City Manager Julio J.) Fuentes and was told, ‘Way down the road somewhere we’re going to be doing that.’ And those were the exact words.”

Other residents said they also called City Hall and received similar responses.

The council is expected to vote on the ordinance after a second reading Sept. 13, City Clerk Frances A. Moore said.

“The only information being given out (to callers) was that it was still being looked at, and that we would notify them when something happened if they asked me to. But nobody asked,” Moore said. “We’re not hiding anything. I think this is being blown way out of proportion.”

The process was set in motion more than a year ago by Moore and City Atty. Leland C. Dolley, they said. According to Moore, the City Charter requires her to adjust council district boundaries every 10 years when population figures are released by the federal census. All five districts must contain about the same number of people.

Redistricting has never been public in Alhambra, both officials said. Dolley said he received the final district boundaries from demographer Peter A. Morrison, of the Santa Monica-based RAND Corp., four to six weeks ago.

Although Alhambra has districts, the city holds at-large council elections. The system was designed to offer geographic representation while ensuring that all council members are accountable to all voters, city officials said.

Because of that, the changes in district boundaries made by Morrison are not expected to significantly affect election outcomes, although they govern who can run in which district.

According to the 1990 U.S. Census, Alhambra is 37% Asian, 36% Latino, 24% Anglo and about 2% African-American. Alhambra’s mayor is Latino and the other four council members are Anglo.

Efforts to dilute or strengthen the voting power of specific ethnic groups through redistricting have sparked litigation nationwide.

The city’s redistricting out of the public eye alarmed some Asian community residents, who said it is the latest example of how they are excluded from the political process in Alhambra.

The city is still embroiled in a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1990 alleging discrimination against Asians, Latinos and African-Americans in the city’s hiring and promotion policies. The city denies it ever discriminated.

Mayor Michael A. Blanco said the City Council was eager to avoid the type of litigation that redistricting has prompted from minority groups throughout the country. The city already had been sued by the Department of Justice over alleged discrimination, he said, and wanted to proceed cautiously with redistricting.

“We basically relied on the city attorney to come up with a plan that would hopefully meet any challenge if anyone felt there was a problem,” Blanco said. “We were told (by the city attorney) that we had to be careful not to create any ethnic problems with the whole thing, and that he would come up with something that would be satisfactory.”

Two before-and-after charts that Morrison submitted to Dolley indicate that Alhambra’s various ethnic groups are dispersed fairly evenly throughout the districts, so residents need not be concerned, Dolley and other council members said at the council meeting.

Despite these assurances, residents said they would like to know how their taxpayer dollars are spent, and by whom, and added that they could not interpret the charts contained in the staff report because they give no indication of how the census data is analyzed.

“There were no reports with this. There were no files to see. It was just, ‘Take it or leave it.’ That’s the way everything happens in Alhambra: ‘Take it or leave it, or just move,’ ” resident Elizabeth Mack said.

“The public wasn’t informed that a demographer was doing this. What did this information cost the taxpayers?” Mack asked.

Resident Louis Kuan said the contract should have gone out for bid.

Dolley said he hired Morrison, who was paid $13,080. Alhambra’s Municipal Code allows for expenditures of up to $15,000 without council approval.

Although it is not unusual for government bodies to draw up district lines without public input, voters are increasingly demanding a role in the process.

“This is one of the most important of all democratic processes,” said Alan Heslop, director of The Rose Institute, a research center at Claremont McKenna College that specializes in demographics and has worked extensively on redistricting.

“In the design of districts, you are essentially determining the electoral arrangements by which the people either have a fair chance to change their representatives or lack a fair chance to change their representatives.”

The institute several years ago designed elaborate kits for Pomona residents to involve them in the redistricting process. Even in a modified at-large electoral system such as Alhambra’s, Heslop said, seeking community input is essential to public confidence in elected officials.

“If it isn’t done that way, there will be suspicions. Doubt will be cast on the legitimacy of the fundamental electoral arrangements. Doubt, of course, will then be cast on the legitimacy of those who are elected,” Heslop said. “It’s a slippery path, and I think it’s very ill advised for a city to do this process in the dark.”

While Dolley and Councilman Boyd G. Condie assured residents at Monday’s meeting that Morrison simply “crunched” the census figures, Heslop and others say the process is far from unbiased.

“It’s child’s play with today’s databases to come up with the results that you want. There are an infinite number of ways to draw district lines,” Heslop said.

Kathryn K. Imahara, a staff attorney with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, who quietly sat in on Monday’s meeting at the urging of Alhambra Asian community members, agreed.

“The census data comes out in raw form. It goes into a computer and comes out a different way. That’s why we have such huge lawsuits about redistricting,” she said.

The center takes up cases only when the voting power of a minority group appears to be diluted by the redistricting process, and Alhambra’s new districts will have no such impact, Imahara said. But she said the apparent secrecy concerns her.

“I think it would have eased the minds of a lot of citizens if they had just come forward and said what they were doing,” she said of city officials. “It might be worth (residents) hiring their own demographer.”

Blanco said he does not consider the process secretive because now residents have an opportunity to take a look at the new lines and dispute them.

“There’s going to be a second reading in September, so we have an opportunity to hear some additional public comment,” Blanco said. “If there’s a massive outcry that this is a terrible thing and we ought to do it a different way, then we can spend more time on it. But at this point, I don’t know of any reason to do it some other way.”