Council to Draw New District Lines to Head Off Suit

In a first move to head off a federal trial over district boundaries, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously agreed Wednesday to begin drawing up a redistricting plan designed to put to rest charges that the city violated the rights of Latino voters.

Acting after two days of executive sessions, the council also ordered City Atty. James K. Hahn to ask federal attorneys and U.S. District Judge James Ideman to postpone further court proceedings until July 31, by which time the council hopes to have adopted the new plan.

Hahn later said that federal attorneys had agreed to the delay. Officials of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which intervened in the suit against the city, said they were unsure whether to accept the stay. The parties were scheduled to report to Ideman today.

City officials said they decided to draw new district lines--which, if approved by the Justice Department and Ideman, would essentially settle the suit--to prevent a divisive, lengthy battle over the council’s past actions. And they insisted that the city had not, as the Justice Department charged, disenfranchised Latino voters during the last redistricting in 1982.

But they clearly sought to ensure that if the lines were to be redrawn, the city would do the drawing.

“The City Council feels they didn’t do anything wrong but that we have a responsibility and we want to exercise that responsibility to redistrict ourselves,” said Councilman Richard Alatorre, who heads the council panel to review the redistricting issue.

Federal and MALDEF officials responded positively, if cautiously, to the council action.

“This is certainly encouraging,” said John Wilson, assistant director for public affairs for the Justice Department’s Washington headquarters.

“Our goal in the lawsuit, of course, is a new plan that will not disadvantage Hispanics. It’s a step in the right direction.”

Richard Fajardo, the Latino legal defense fund’s chief counsel in the federal suit, was similarly buoyed by the council decision.

“We are very pleased that they’re going to try to come up with the drawing of the lines,” Fajardo said.

But none of the parties would publicly suggest that the council’s move meant that the matter would not go to trial.

“I don’t think we’ve given up any option,” Alatorre said.

The Justice Department filed suit against the city last November, alleging that it had fractured the growing political influence of Latino voters through a “history of official discrimination.”

The redistricting plan adopted by the council in September, 1982, the Justice Department said, diluted the strength of Latino voters by dividing a downtown core of Latinos into seven of the 15 City Council districts. The federal suit asked the court to throw out the current redistricting plan and order the city to draw up another. It also asked that all redistricting plans drawn by the city in the next 10 years be submitted for approval to the Justice Department and the court.

Council President Pat Russell, without going into specifics, said the council decided to draw up another plan because of changes in the city’s population since the 1982 plan was approved.

Alatorre also suggested that city officials feared an all-out war between citizen groups if the lines were drawn up under guidelines set by the federal government.

He noted that Ideman had already raised questions about whether Latino voting strength would be measured by registered voters or by population, which includes many non-citizens. To raise that question publicly would amount to a “bombshell,” Alatorre said, and would not be in the “best interests of, certainly, Hispanics.”

Alatorre said city officials will conduct public hearings before drawing the new council district lines and will seek the advice of organizations representing Latinos, blacks and other citizen groups.

MALDEF, the intervenor in the federal suit, submitted a proposed remapping plan to the council last week that stripped away large parts of the districts now represented by Councilmen John Ferraro and Joel Wachs.

But Alatorre said Wednesday that he doubted whether the new lines would be as “drastic” as MALDEF’s suggestions. The new lines, if adopted by July 31, would be in effect for the 1987 city elections, Russell said.