Redistricting Commission: The Blind Squirrel finds a Nut
Well, they say even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in a while. No one has been more critical of the new Citizens Redistricting Commission than I have been. But now their first plans are out in “visual” form, with draft maps to be released on June 10. At first glance, the squirrel got its nut.
These appear to be good plans for several reasons. First, it is clear the Commission and staff listened to the community input they received. What different areas said they wanted are reflected in many of the new maps.
Second, they said they would not use political data and they did not. The maps are balanced in partisan terms; both parties have reason to be pleased and displeased. There is no partisan advantage in these first maps. And the maps draw a remarkable number of politically marginal districts. Naysayers criticized me when I said the objective should be to create competitive districts; well, whether by design or by chance that is what the Commission has done. Now the important thing is to retain that political balance in the final maps, especially when the Commission comes under assault from bruised incumbents who don’t like their districts.
Chuck Reed’s Bold Stand
San
Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, declaring his city is facing a state of fiscal
emergency, seeks powers to act quickly to solve the problem by amending pension
and public sector benefit packages. Some, such as Fox and Hounds blogger Joe Mathews
on another site, called Reed’s position a "kamikaze
maneuver, certain only to hurt himself and the city."
Reed
indeed has taken a gamble. Given the obstacles the Mayor faces, Mathews could
well be right about the outcome. However, Reed’s is a bold move and, under the
circumstances, worthy of consideration. If it pays off not only would he
succeed in putting his city’s fiscal house in order, he may have etched a
formula for other communities to follow. As the New York Times
noted, Reed’s approach "may become a test-case with national implications."
I Finally Watched the King’s Speech and Have Something to Say About It
I rarely see movies in the theater these days. Between the
current pace of my life and an ever shortening grace period past opening
weekend that the cinemas provide us these days, I always feel like the moves I
want to see are already gone from the theater by the time I get around to
seeing them. This means that I’m almost always a bit out of those casual chats
among friends that inevitably feature talk of the latest film, the latest Big
Game or the latest whatever.
So, you’ll have to indulge me when I talk about the firm The
King’s Speech, which is probably, for most of you, ancient history. Anyway,
recently I watched the film on demand and found it to be full of lessons on
disruptive technologies and communications. A topic I love so much that I felt
compelled to write something about it.
Enough preamble, then.
If you’ve see the film then you may remember King George V’s
rant to his stuttering son, Prince Albert (later King George VI), about radio:
Proving the Redevelopment Rule
Cross-posted at City Journal.
Doug Tessitor is the mayor of Glendora, a city in Los Angeles County. He’s a self-described conservative and dead certain that preserving California’s redevelopment agencies (RDAs) is essential to his city’s fiscal health. In a pair of recent online columns, Tessitor mounted an impassioned defense of redevelopment in response to my City Journal article depicting the agencies as a “secret government” that runs up debt, abuses eminent domain, and doles out subsidies to favored developers. Tessitor’s response is worth rebutting, not because his arguments are exceptional but because they echo those of other California Republicans who defend redevelopment.
One of Democratic governor Jerry Brown’s few good ideas so far has been his proposal to shut down the RDAs as part of an effort to close a massive budget gap. Democrats in the state assembly tend to favor redevelopment, with its big-government, central-planning tools, but they backed Brown in order to shave about $1.7 billion from the budget. Republicans often complain about redevelopment’s abuses of property rights, but they blocked Brown’s plan, with only one Republican—longtime redevelopment foe Chris Norby of Fullerton—joining Democrats in April to support the measure, which fell one vote shy of passage. It might return for another vote. When I confronted several of the Republicans about their votes, I kept hearing the same rationale: they don’t like central planning, these Republicans say, but redevelopment works in their communities. (The abuses I described take place only in other cities, apparently.)