Senate OKs Redistricting Reform Bill

A day after lawmakers said they had abandoned the issue for this year, the state Senate moved -- perhaps symbolically -- to ask voters to take away the Legislature’s authority to draw voting districts.

Wednesday’s vote to surrender redistricting authority was unprecedented in the California Legislature, but voters won’t decide the issue until at least 2008 and the odds are long for such a measure even on that year’s ballot.

“I don’t think our whole idea was so much to get it on this year’s ballot as much as it was to show people that there was a determination to have an alternative method to draw the lines,” said Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland).

Friday is the deadline for lawmakers to put propositions on this year’s ballot. On Tuesday, legislators conceded that they were unable to agree on a measure in time, and were giving up on simultaneous efforts to relax term limits.

The constitutional amendment the Senate passed Wednesday would shift redistricting rights to a panel of 11 citizens chosen by legislators and the Fair Political Practices Commission from a pool screened by retired judges.

The vote was 27 to 11, with 11 Republicans in favor and four Republicans opposed.

Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), who carried the measure, SCA 3, praised legislators for choosing California’s wellbeing over their own selfish interests, and said he wants the Legislature to put the measure on the 2008 ballot.

“We have the momentum,” Lowenthal said. “Never again might a Legislature vote to voluntarily give up power.”

His bill now moves to the Assembly, where Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) has promised his support.

But only two weeks remain in the legislative session, and the hurdles are high. The bill requires a two-thirds majority vote -- tough for any bill, especially one that asks lawmakers to give up the ability to include or excise neighborhoods to practically guarantee their own reelection.

Perata and Nunez had promised to draft a measure to take the job of drawing voter districts from the self-interested hands of legislators last year after working to defeat a similar measure in the special election.

That measure, which would have given redistricting authority to a panel of retired judges, was part of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s unsuccessful package of changes in state government.

Government watchdog groups back the Lowenthal bill, saying mapmakers without a personal stake are more likely to draw legislative, congressional and Board of Equalization districts that are more evenly divided among Democratic and Republican voters.

After the 2000 census, Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature agreed to draw maps to protect the status quo. In the 2004 general election, not one of 153 congressional or legislative seats changed parties.

Many senators who voted for Lowenthal’s bill said they hoped it would help restore voters’ faith in the Legislature.

Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) said she had watched the process of voting districts getting redrawn based on new census data three times and “all it was about was cutting deals for individual members that wanted to make sure they would have a comfortable seat to run in the future.”

“The reason why the people don’t like it is pretty obvious,” she said. “We’re taking care of ourselves. And they would like to see us run in districts where in fact we are not the architects” of the districts.

But opponents said redistricting should be a political exercise.

“People self-select where they live,” said Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City).

“That is what drives redistricting more than anything else.... The fact is, in the center of Los Angeles you’re unlikely to round up enough Republicans to even have a meeting, much less a district,” Murray said.