Looks like ‘for sure’ no redistricting measure for November’s ballot. The Assembly did not take up SCA 3 which was passed out of the Senate yesterday. However, a gut-and-amend measure was attempted during today’s session to cause the enabling language to be ready to place the still unfinished SCA 3 on the November 2006 ballot. This, as most Republican members saw it, was putting the "caboose in front of the engine" in that SCA 3 hadn’t really been examined by our members, let alone voted out. How can you vote out the enabling language to place landmark constitutional change on the ballot when the ink isn’t even dry on the Amendment itself, let alone having not read it? Kinda reminds me of how the bonds were handled. [oops, did I say that?]
The net effect is it won’t be on November 2006, but we can still hear the bill during the last 2 weeks of this session and ready a measure that can be taken up on ’08’s ballot…still plenty of time before 2010 census. We could’ve been working on this all this year to achieve reform, as promised by those that helped defeat Prop 77, but here we are at the end of session trying to cram it together. Better to have a quality measure than one that merely looks like we are doing something.
The good in this measure, and the biggest plus, is that legislators don’t sit on the committee to draw thier own districts anymore. There are a few things to be concerned about in it…no supermajority of commissioners, like say 2/3, to pass a plan. Congressional seats have different criteria than state ones for how districts are drawn. That leaves loopholes for mischief on state legislative district maps, that say, a 1% limit in population deviation between districts would largely fix. Districts should be equal, not rigged to maximize an up to 10% deviation to skew districts in favor of any type of ‘community of interest’
I’m glad this issue isn’t over. And also that we aren’t trying to hurry it through without committee hearings on the Assembly side. My understanding is Senators Ashburn and Lowenthal are fine with continuing work with this bill in committee, which is proper and commendable, to get a quality product that we could hopefully vote out this year or, if we run out of time, use as the template when the legislature reconvenes in January. So, the redistricting reform discussion, in the form of SCA 3 is alive to fight another day. With proper amendments, it still could be a good thing.