Proposal For LA Independent Redistricting Commission Clears Key Hurdle

An L.A. City Council committee Thursday approved a proposal to create an independent redistricting commission, one of the reforms demanded by activists after the release of secretly recorded audio tapes a year ago that included council members discussing ways to preserve their own power.

The approval by the council’s Ad Hoc Committee On Governance Reform sends the proposal to the full city council, which will decide whether or not to place it before voters on the November 2024 ballot. The creation of an independent panel requires an amendment to the city charter and therefore voter approval. The proposal would create a separate commission to draw district boundaries for the L.A. Unified School District.

“I have committed to getting this on the 2024 ballot to destroy our current redistricting process and create truly independent redistricting,” said City Council President Paul Krekorian, who also chairs the ad hoc committee.

Much of the focus around the secret tapes was on racist and derogatory remarks by the council president at the time, Nury Martinez, who provided an exclusive interview to LAist that is featured on the podcast Imperfect Paradise: Nury & The Secret Tapes.

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But redistricting was at the heart of a conversation among her, two other council members and the powerful leader of the L.A. County Federation of Labor at the time. The four were discussing how to draw council district boundaries in a way that would maintain their own power.

The City Council Ad Hoc Committee on Governance Reform took public comment on a proposal to establish an independent redistricting commission at a hearing on Oct. 5, 2023.

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Details of the proposal

The proposal would take the power of redrawing districts out of the hands of the council.

Under the independent redistricting commission proposal, a 16-member panel selected through a process overseen by the city Ethics Commission would be responsible for redrawing district boundaries every 10 years. The process calls for selecting eight members who represent the geographic diversity of the city. Those eight would then select eight other members based on various factors including:

• Race and ethnicity
• Sex and gender 
• Sexual orientation 
• Age (youth and seniors) 
• Income and profession

City elected officials, commissioners, and lobbyists would be among those prohibited from serving.

The committee also approved language that said an independent commission would be allowed to consider lucrative assets like airports, colleges and major business areas in deciding how to draw boundaries. Divvying up valuable areas like downtown has been the source of divisive political battles during previous redistricting processes.

“Other additional criteria may be considered when drawing district boundaries, including consideration of the community and cultural association with economic and cultural landmarks and resources,” the proposal states.

The proposal also would mandate that any commission provide remote access to its meetings — a key demand of activists.

The committee is expected to take up the issue of expanding the council in the coming weeks.

One proposal would more than double the size of the 15-member council.

Redistricting: A politically thorny process

Redistricting is a complicated process.

Every 10 years, after the U.S. Census counts up all the people who live in your community, the process of redistricting begins. That’s when officials get together and redraw maps that make up our districts at the city, county, state and federal levels.

This is often a politically thorny process, since the demographics and assets of any given district — whether it’s made up of renters or homeowners, or it has an airport or a major stadium — determine how much power that district and its representative have relative to others, and how voting power is distributed across different groups.

In L.A., the city council has ultimate authority to approve the final redistricting maps for both the city council and the L.A. Unified School District. A redistricting commission advises them during the process, collecting input from community members and proposing draft maps, but the city council has to vote on the final decision.

An independent redistricting commission would change this dynamic. It would have sole authority to redraw and approve the maps, so that council members can’t exert the kind of influence they currently have over the process.

Independent redistricting commissions are already in place at the state level, for redrawing Congressional and state legislature districts, and in L.A. County for supervisorial districts. Cities like Long Beach also use independent redistricting commissions. Other places like Orange County and San Bernardino County require the board of supervisors to approve county redistricting maps.

A state legislator has also introduced a bill that would require all California cities with a population of over 2.5 million (that includes L.A.) to have an independent redistricting commission. If the L.A. City Council or voters don’t wind up passing an independent redistricting measure, and if the state bill ends up getting approved, L.A. could still get an independent redistricting commission — but under whatever the state law requires.