L.A. can’t be trusted to draw districts
Barring outright graft — never far away when it's the Los Angeles City Council we're talking about — there is perhaps nothing more disgusting for citizens to witness in the political machinations within L.A. City Hall than hearing councilmembers pontificate about how their own council district maps should be drawn.
We all got to hear way too much of that talk late last year in the secretly recorded conversation of three council members and a labor leader horse trading over boundaries and making racist comments about the people who live in the city's neighborhoods that they nominally represent.
That's because Los Angeles electeds, scandalously, have gamed the system to allow the 15 elected council members themselves to decide how the sprawling city is divided up into political divisions.
Because they also appoint a citizen redistricting commission that takes a first pass at drawing the city political map, council members can pretend that they leave the work, properly, up to others. But since they have complete veto power over the draft map with which they are presented, the commission is a sham.
Because the situation is so blatantly corrupt, politicians in the state Capitol have put forward corrective legislation, Senate Bill 52, which would allow the Legislature to establish an independent redistricting commission for the city.
It's not an ideal solution. Arguments can be made about “not allowing Sacramento to dictate to our fair city,” about the primacy of “local control.” But, given the outrageous behavior of council members in their efforts to hold on to plum neighborhoods or businesses and resist redistricting reform internally, the state effort certainly beats the status quo.
Nevertheless, as staff writer Linh Tat reported, the council last week voted 11-2 to support a resolution by council President Paul Krekorian and seconded by Councilmember Nithya Raman to oppose Senate Bill 52.
We, too, would prefer local control over local elections, in theory. A state bill that simply says cities with populations over 2.5 million must have independent redistricting commissions is perhaps painting with a broad brush. But since the City Council has shown no real intent of giving up the power to draw its own districts itself, we'll take the by-anymeans-necessary solution here.