California’s $6 million redistricting experiment was sold to voters as a system that would be free of politics, protect minority rights and provide accountability and transparency to a process in desperate need of reform. But judging by the first phase of the process, this costly scheme is turning out to be yet another example of budget-busting, ballot-box policymaking gone bad.
Although 30,720 applications were received from citizens to be on the redistricting panel (a number aided by an expensive, last-minute taxpayer-financed media blitz and an extended deadline), nearly 66 percent were from males. More than 71 percent were from white applicants. Meanwhile, just 10 percent were from Latinos (who represent 36 percent of the state’s population) and a mere 4.7 percent from Asians (who represent 12 percent of the state’s population).
These lackluster numbers come despite a taxpayer-funded $1.3 million consulting contract for an outreach campaign that included “barbershop and beauty salon outreach” to African Americans. Yet the final applicant pool hardly reflects the diversity of our citizenry. As California Democratic Party Vice Chairman Eric Bauman notes: “The final makeup of the Prop. 11 Redistricting Commission applicant pool looks like California in the 1950s.”
There also was heavily partisan and political involvement in beating the bushes for applications. Both the California Democratic Party and California Republican Party (as well as the Tea Party) urged partisans to apply. Local chapters of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association – via Craigslist – pleaded for applicants sympathetic to its conservative causes to throw their names into the hat. Legislators themselves made pitches on their Web sites.
Partisan politics played a major role in the recruitment process, which explains why the fastest-growing group of voters in the state is grossly unrepresented in the applicant pool. Decline-to-state applicants make up 12.9 percent of the applications, a far cry from the 20.2 percent of Californians who put themselves in that category.
Meanwhile, despite being outnumbered by Democrats by about 14 points in voter registration, Republicans had nearly the same number of applicants. (Democrats are already disadvantaged in the process, getting the same number of seats on the commission despite a huge registration advantage.)
Meanwhile, while the first phase of the screening process rejected 10 percent of the applicants, a number of politically connected big fish made it through the net. A quick review of some of the Sacramento area applicants includes: the CEO of the Sacramento Chamber of Commerce (who endorses candidates and has a PAC); the wife of a prominent Democratic political consultant; the executive director of the California Farm Bureau (which endorses candidates for the Legislature); and former GOP Assemblyman Larry Bowler.
So much for taking the politics out of the redistricting process.
Now what? Three auditors in a back room – unaccountable to voters or the Legislature – now will sift through the applications to get to a list of semifinalists.
The three – one Republican, one Democrat, and one decline-to-state voter – will whittle the applications down to 60 by Oct. 1. And in true “American Idol” fashion, applicants will get a final audition before the final commission is named. It will be interesting to see how many applicants will still be interested after learning that for a not-too-shabby $300 per day, they’ll have to reveal their assets, properties and gifts on the required FPPC forms.
Which brings us to the staggering costs of this experiment.
Despite voters being told in their ballot pamphlets that the cost would be $3 million, the state auditor recently went before the Legislature asking to double the appropriation to $6 million. She told legislators: “I think $3 million was certainly underestimating the amount of expenditures that were going to be necessary to carry this measure out.” Translation: Voters were misled.
At a time when children’s health care, education and mammograms for low-income women are being cut, Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Denise Ducheny was right to question the out-of-control costs of this untested process. Now it’s the voters’ turn.
There will be a measure on the November ballot to scrap this costly system that is paved with good intentions but fraught with problems and start again. Voters would be smart to take advantage of that opportunity to bring cost savings and accountability to the way legislative districts are carved.