The Los Angeles City Council pressed the start button Tuesday, Aug. 11, on an often-contentious process to re-draw the political boundaries for the city and L.A. Unified School District every 10 years, according to the latest U.S. Census data.
Depending on how lines are drawn, the political representation of various city neighborhoods, as well as the fortunes of elected officials, can shift significantly — and occasionally lead to heated power struggles.
As soon as next month, city leaders are expected to begin appointing members to advisory panels tasked with overseeing the creation of the new maps. But on Tuesday, the council first signed off on a few initial ground rules for the process, which include:
- Requesting that resume and background information about the appointees be made publicly available;
- Requiring each commissioner to complete ethics training before assuming office;
- Instructing the City Attorney to draft an ordinance that would require commissioners to disclose “ex parte communications” — or private correspondences with decision-makers — to the public; and
- Requesting that the commissions avoid hiring current or recent city staffers.
These and other provisions were added by Council President Nury Martinez to the original motion, amid calls by a coalition of activists, known as Unrig LA, to make the process to be made more independent and transparent to the public.
In a letter submitted to the council, the coalition wrote that a strong redistricting process could generate more public trust and encourage civic engagement. But they warned that “if done poorly or with manipulation behind the scenes by those in power, the city of Los Angeles’s redistricting process will deepen cynicism and distrust.”
Under the city charter, two commission will be formed, one to oversee the shape of City Council districts, and another to carve out the areas represented by members of the Los Angeles Unified School District board.
But while the process is overseen by these advisory panels, it is L.A.’s elected officials who have the widest authority over how their political lines are drawn. Final sign-off on the district maps lay in the hands of these leaders. And these leaders in turn are picking who sits on these redistricting commissions:
- For the 21-member City Council redistricting commission, the council president appoints two members and each of the 14 other council members appoints one. The City Attorney and Controller also appoint one member each, while the mayor appoints three.
- To form the 15-member LAUSD redistricting commission, each of the seven school board members picks one person for the panel, while the council president and the mayor each picks four members.
The redistricting process is beginning during a politically sensitive time at City Hall, with the FBI looking into and accusing city officials of engaging in “pay-to-play” schemes involving downtown L.A. developers. It has not helped that the federal probe focuses on real estate development projects in a council district that had been at the center of a bitter fight during the last redistricting.
In 2012, a pair of South Los Angeles districts lost several neighborhoods in downtown L.A., an area viewed as an “economic engine,” to the 14th council district, where several of the projects that are now the subject of the federal corruption cases are located.
The council members for the two districts, Jan Perry and Bernard Parks, had a rocky relationship with their powerful colleague Herb Wesson, and had not supported his successful bid to be council president.
Meanwhile, the seat for the 14th district is now vacant. Jose Huizar, who represented the area, was suspended from office after he was arrested and charged with playing a leading role in the alleged developer bribery schemes.
