I suppose it’s too much to ask that the state’s brand-new redistricting commission be given a chance to do its job.
The 14-member commission, established by 2008’s Prop. 11, didn’t finish appointing all its members until the middle of December and has only held a handful of meetings. But the boo-birds already are out in force, accusing the commission of a partisan bias, a tilt against rural California, sneaky, single-source contracts and, just for the hell of it, general incompetence.
Yesterday, for example, in this very Fox and Hounds Daily blog Doug Jeffe provided a critique of the commission. You really don’t have to read past the headline: “Redistricting commission looks to be fiasco in the making.”
How upset do you think everyone would be if the commission had actually done something by now?
The commission will meet today and the rest of this week in Sacramento, where they will be starting the serious – and likely controversial — process of hiring its technical staff. These are the number crunchers who will mine Census data for the block-by-block statistical information the commissioners will use to draw the lines of the political districts voters will use for the next 10 years.
With the chorus of complaints starting to grow, there are a few things Californians should remember.
First, when it comes to grumbling, consider the source. About the only thing the state Democratic and Republican parties have been able to agree on in recent years is that they both hate the idea of having an independent commission draw the new district lines, instead of leaving it to the Legislature.
Both parties opposed Proposition 11 in 2008 and Democrats were against last November’s Proposition 20, which let the commission draw the congressional lines. Democrats also backed November’s Proposition 27, which would have dumped the commission before it was even appointed.
But Californians made it clear that they were tired, in former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s words, of having the politicians “pick the voters rather than the voters pick the politicians.”
There also will be plenty of whining about how long the process is taking and how it’s ridiculous to expect a bunch of amateurs to do such important work on a tight deadline.
It’s certainly quicker to leave the political details to partisan consultants hired by the legislative majority who can do their work in secret and put together the plan that works best for the politicians who hired them.
Democracy, on the other hand, is both messy and slow. By law, all the commission’s business has to be conducted in public, at meetings announced two weeks in advance. They also have to hold at least two rounds of public hearings, one before the maps are drawn and one after.
It won’t be easy to meet the Aug. 15 deadline for the maps, but it’s a price voters said they are willing to pay.
Remember, too, that when Republicans and/or Democrats complain about the partisan tilt of the staff and consultants, it’s usually because they’re unhappy it’s not tilted in their direction.
There’s no such thing as a non-partisan redistricting consultant, because there’s no such thing as non-partisan redistricting. Drawing legislative lines, even for purportedly non-partisan city and county offices, is the ultimate political act, since it decides who will – and who won’t – get elected.
But the same initiative that set up the commission also set the rules for the new districts, requiring them to be geographically compact and respect neighborhood, city and county boundaries, as well as communities of interest. They also can’t consider the political makeup of the new district.
Any consultant hired has to use the population numbers to put together districts that fit those criteria. And while the commission might not have the technical expertise to do the actual design work for the new maps, their job is to ask “Why?” when they see a design that doesn’t make sense and then make the final decisions.
Finally, remember that it’s a guarantee no one is going to be completely happy with the commission’s final result, whatever it may be.
Republicans and Democrats are going to be angry when their legislators and members of Congress find themselves dumped into the same new seat. Some communities inevitably will be split, leading to furious complaints. And there’s no way to satisfy all the demands of the state’s various ethnic groups and other special interests who each have their own ideas about how the new lines should be drawn.
But a decade ago, the only people who had a real say in how California’s current districts were drawn were the politicians and their consultants, sitting behind closed doors in Sacramento.
No one can say whether the new commission will do a better job then the one a decade ago, although the Legislature back then didn’t set too high a bar. But the 2011 redistricting will be a far more public effort, which is a move in the right direction.
John Wildermuth is a long-time writer on California politics.