County Redistricting Likely to Keep Altadena in Current District

A county redistricting process for the five-seat County Board of Supervisors that included plans that could have split Altadena into two districts or moved into another electoral district now appears likely to result in Altadena staying in its current district.

The county's Boundary Review Committee voted during a Monday meeting to evaluate three plans at its final meeting on Wednesday, and in all three Altadena stays in the 5th district, which is currently represented by Michael Antonovich.

That does not mean the decision is certain - the committee could revise one of the plans, and ultimately whatever it recommends must be passed by the County Board of Supervisors.

For more on the redistricting process and .

The debate on Monday centered on the difference between two plans that do not greatly affect Altadena.

Instead much of the focus is on whether the committee will endorse a plan that will result in districts that take L.A. County's Latino population and spread them into several districts where they would be a majority, or whether the new plan will be similar to the current districts, where one district contains a disproportionately large percentage of Latinos.

The current First District, centered around East Los Angeles, south Los Angeles, and the southern San Gabriel Valley, is more than 70 percent Latino, while no other single district is even 40 percent Latino.  The county is almost 48 percent Latino, according to 2010 census data.

At Monday's meeting, several committee members and members of the public raised concerns about "packing" a redistricting concept where a particular demographic is packed into one district and not proportionally represented in other electoral districts.

The two major plans that were discussed by the committee on Monday were:

• The "Benchmark" Plan - This plan would be the closest to the existing boundaries and would keep the First District more than 60 percent Latino while keeping all other districts 34 percent Latino or less.  Several committee members criticized this plan, as did a redistricting consultant speaking as a member of the public.  In this plan, roughly 375,000 of L.A. County's 9.8 million residents would be moved to a new supervisor district.
• The "S1" or "African-American" Plan - This plan was developed by a coalition of Los Angeles organizations and results in two districts that would be more than 50 percent Latino.  It would greatly change the 1st, 3rd, and 4th districts.  Many city officials from South Bay cities, which would be moved to a new district that might not be represented by current representative Don Knabe, showed up to Monday's meeting to oppose the plan. Overall, about 3.3 million people would be moved to a new district under this plan- a full list of which cities would be moved can be viewed in the pdf attached to this article.

In addition to those two plans, which can be viewed in pdf form on right, the committee asked for a third plan to be drawn up that would be a variation of the Benchmark plan with a few different cities moved around.  The details of that plan will likely be released some time Tuesday or early Wednesday.

Alan Clayton,of the Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Association, and a close follower of redistricting in L.A. County told the committee on Monday that the Benchmark plan was problematic because of the "packing" of Latino populations.  He noted that the county has had legal troubles from redistricting in the past and recommended the S1 plan.

However, a county lawyer evaluating the plans told the committee that the Benchmark plan would legally comply with state and federal voter protection laws.  She said that looking at a decade of voting patterns shows that each of the county's five electoral districts don't show any kind of serious polarization in how residents vote on state propositions, which would be a sign that the districts were not fairly proportioned.

The final meeting of the committee is at 2 p.m. on Wednesday at the Board of Supervisors hearing room at 500 West Temple Street in downtown Los Angeles.  The meeting can also be viewed online here starting at 2 p.m. on Wednesday.