Redistricting Panel Proposal to Go to Voters

Eager to relieve itself of a politically sensitive task, the San Diego City Council voted unanimously Monday to give voters a chance to create an independent redistricting committee to redraw council district boundaries in the future.

By a 9-0 vote, the council agreed to place on the June ballot a proposed charter amendment that would establish a seven-member panel to alter council district lines to reflect decennial population shifts.

Currently, the council itself redraws the lines, a task that even many members concede poses severe conflicts of interest, given that the boundaries--and the “safe” seats or competitive districts they create--can make or break political careers.

If approved by a majority of voters, the independent panel, to be appointed by the presiding judge of the San Diego County Superior Court, would oversee the city’s next scheduled redistricting in 2000.

Monday’s unanimous vote reflects the council members’ lingering chagrin over last year’s protracted redistricting battle, which produced months of discord at City Hall, intervention by a federal judge acting in a voting-rights lawsuit brought by minority activists, and a public backlash culminating in the recall of Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt.

“By putting this on the ballot, you can save yourselves a whole lot of pain, agony and lawsuits,” political activist Mark Zerbe said of the proposal offered by the citizens political watchdog group Common Cause.

Stanley Zubel, a local Common Cause official, encouraged the council not to postpone the proposal simply because the next redistricting process is more than eight years away.

Immediate action, he said, could help ensure that the decision on the politically volatile issue is made in a dispassionate, rather than emotionally charged, atmosphere.

“The time to build a drainage system is not when you are knee-deep in water,” Zubel said. “Do this . . . before this becomes a political hot potato in eight years.”

Concurring with Zerbe’s and Zubel’s rationale, Councilwoman Judy McCarty said that last year’s redistricting contretemps “quickly dashed (my) faith that this City Council” could handle the task fairly, without acrimony.