Vetoes mark a failure for fair redistricting

When it comes to big-spending California governments, at both the state and the local levels, whenever an elected executive nixes some measure with the excuse that it costs too much, it pays to ask whether it passes the sight test — the smell test, even.

Such is certainly the case with Gov. Gavin Newsom's veto this month of what nonprofit news site CalMatters called “the most sweeping bill to require cities and counties to create independent redistricting commissions.” CalMatters notes: “He cited budget concerns, but the bill's supporters aren't convinced.”

Newsom declined to sign Assembly Bill 1248, which would have created independent redistricting commissions in every city and county in California that has more than 300,000 residents, and every school or community college district that has more than 500,000 people.

He also gave the thumbs down to Senate Bill 52, which had called for creating independent local commissions for redistricting in all the state's largest cities, such as Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego and San Francisco.

Such vetoes simply can't be allowed to go forward without noting that they come in a political climate in which the Los Angeles City Council was last year roiled by the scandal in which prominent council members and a labor leader were caught on tape discussing how to create safe election districts for themselves and their allies. The city does have a redistricting commission, but it's hardly independent — many of its members are appointed by the council members themselves.

“In Los Angeles we need an independent and unbiased commission to help mend the lack of trust between the community and its government,” Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, D-Culver City, the author of AB 1248, and Sen. María Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles, author of SB 52, said in a joint statement.

Yes, we do.

Newsom in his veto statement said AB 1248 would create a “state-reimbursable mandate in the tens of millions and should therefore be considered in the annual budget process.”

And there's your smell-test issue: “tens of millions” of dollars in the context of California's $296.9 billion annual budget for 2023-24 is chump change, amounting to nothing more than a rounding error in the spending of every single department allocated tax monies in Sacramento.

And, as Common Cause, the good government group that was one of the sponsors of AB 1248, said in a press release, the bill's cost wouldn't be a factor in the state budget until we get much closer to 2030, when jurisdictions prepare for redistricting after the next United States Census give new population numbers.

“We're deeply confused and frustrated, why the governor would choose to veto a proven democracy reform that provided California an opportunity to not just eliminate gerrymandering in the state but also lead the nation in pro-democracy reform,” Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director of California Common Cause, told CalMatters. “It's an enormous missed opportunity.”

Newsom did sign two other redistricting-reform bills, AB 764, which bans consideration of incumbency and increases public engagement in the process, and SB 314, which establishes a citizens redistricting commission for the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, and AB 34, by Anaheim Democratic Assemblymember Avelino Valencia, which creates a similar commission in Orange County.

So, some progress on making political district boundaries in California fairer by taking the drawing of their lines away from the local incumbents themselves is better than no progress at all.

But a statewide independent commission has drawn Assembly and state Senate districts since 2010, taking the power away from legislators themselves after decades of gerrymandering in their own interests. The same reforms need to be brought to the local level.