Greuel’s Push Helped Forge Districting Plan

A week before she takes office, Los Angeles Councilwoman-elect Wendy Greuel has already won a legislative victory, successfully lobbying members of the city’s Redistricting Commission to revise her 2nd Council District boundaries.

As the City Council begins its hearings on the proposed redistricting plan today at City Hall, winners and losers in the commission process were preparing for the next battle.

The plan recommended Tuesday by the commission would increase from four to five the number of council seats wholly in the San Fernando Valley and provide the same increase to the number of districts where Latino voters have a plurality.

The recommendation also addressed concerns by Greuel that the 2nd District, as initially proposed, would have become a long, narrow, odd-shaped district that included the disparate communities of Sunland-Tujunga in the East Valley and Encino in the West Valley.

After lobbying from Greuel, who won election March 5, the commission recommended a revised plan Tuesday that would provide a more compact 2nd District. That plan swaps Studio City for Encino and keeps the district east of the San Diego Freeway.

“It keeps communities of interest together,” Greuel said.

Through his appointee to the commission, Councilman Jack Weiss opposed the change to Greuel’s district, in part because it would create uneven boundaries for his adjacent 5th District and would split communities of interest, including Sherman Oaks and Valley Village.

On Wednesday, council President Alex Padilla appointed Weiss to head the council committee that will deliberate on the recommended plan. Padilla also appointed council members Nick Pacheco, Eric Garcetti, Jan Perry and Dennis Zine to the committee.

Weiss declined Wednesday to comment on the 2nd District plan and promised an open and fair process to consider all proposals recommended by the commission.

“Because of my new position as chairman of the council committee, I do not think it is appropriate to speak to any boundary disputes,” Weiss said. “I’m going to bend over backward to be fair to each and every member of the City Council.”

Greuel said she is prepared to pursue her goals as the council considers the redistricting plan, which begins at 11 a.m. when the council’s five-member Redistricting Committee hears a briefing on the commission proposal at City Hall.

The Redistricting Commission also recommended that Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski represent a new coastal 11th District, which would include Venice and Westchester, that had also been sought by Councilwoman Ruth Galanter.

Under the plan, Galanter would represent the 6th District, the new Valley district.

Several coastal leaders opposed Miscikowski, in part because they said she may face a conflict of interest stemming from the leaseholds of her husband, developer Doug Ring, in Marina del Rey just outside the city.

“She has already had to recuse herself from acting on the Playa Vista project,” said Venice community activist Kelley Willis, an organizer of the area’s neighborhood council.

Willis said he and others fear Miscikowski would be unable to aggressively advocate for issues involving Playa Vista and projects adjacent to Marina del Rey, and may not be able to act on issues involving expansion of Los Angeles International Airport because the planes fly over her husband’s buildings.

Miscikowski said Wednesday she has abstained from voting on Playa Vista issues out of an “abundance of caution,” but said she has since received a city attorney’s legal opinion stating that she does not have a conflict voting on issues such as Playa Vista because they are more than 500 feet from properties in which her husband has an interest.