It’s the law: Redistricting mysteries still hazy

Surely all who read our weekly epistle have seen the stories about redistricting. The supervisors recently voted to adopt the plan that splits Scotts Valley along Highway 17 into two supervisorial districts. Those living east of Highway 17 within the city limits moved from the 5th District to the 1st District. There has been much speculation about why this plan was proposed. At present, the reasons remain shrouded in mystery.
The long arm of the law shoves its fingers into redistricting on several levels. First, the Elections Code requires that supervisorial districts be adjusted every 10 years to assure roughly equal populations in each district. The courts say that it needn’t be exact, and a case from Santa Clara County, which has five districts like Santa Cruz County, holds that as long as each district has between 17 percent and 23 percent of the population, the legal requirement of “equal population” is met. Federal law also requires that districts be formed so that sufficiently large minority populations not be split.
After equal population, state law imposes secondary considerations: (a) topography, (b) geography, (c) cohesiveness, contiguity, integrity and compactness of territory and (d) community of interests.
Finally, our supervisors imposed the following requirements:
**To the extent possible, the current district boundaries will be preserved.
**The public will have all the opportunities provided by law to participate in the redistricting process and provide input to the board.
**Communities of interest will be preserved to the extent possible.
**Each supervisor will have the opportunity to suggest changes to his or her district’s boundaries, to the extent such changes are necessary, before the public hearings to be held on the redistricting plan.
Although I live outside Scotts Valley city limits and don’t have a dog in this fight, the brouhaha intrigued me. With the legal guidelines in mind, I set out to find the reasoning for the split. Surely our stalwart leaders would adhere to the law. Was it based on population? Perhaps maintaining COIs? Topography?
I first assumed the move was to accommodate the primary requisite of equal representation. But upon review, this does not withstand scrutiny.
If the task force had left the city of Scotts Valley whole, 2,028 people living within Scotts Valley city limits on the east side of Highway 17 would have remained in District 5, and the resulting populations would have been close to identical: 51,116 for District 1, John Leopold’s district, and 51,258 for District 5, Mark Stone’s district. Although the adopted plan meets court-mandated guidelines, it results in a greater population disparity than if Scotts Valley were left whole, with 49,230 people in District 5 and 53,144 in District 1. So, apparently, equalizing population wasn’t the reason for splitting Scotts Valley. (The target population of each district is 52,476.)
I then searched for the next most logical possibility: maintaining COIs. A COI is “a contiguous population which shares common social and economic interest that should be included within a single district for purposes of its effective and fair representation.”
I could not, however, find in any of the staff reports any COI that the split sought to preserve. And unless one considers Highway 17 a part of geography, there was no mention of any of the other criteria. The reports merely state that county counsel believed that the “proposed boundaries respect the representation of communities of interest,” with no basis cited to support this opinion.
Curiously, the only reason I could find in the staff reports for splitting Scotts Valley was the task force’s opinion that the city is better represented by two supervisors. Unfortunately, such reasoning is in direct conflict with the legal criterion that COIs be represented in a single district wherever possible.
People should have factual bases for their decisions, especially if those decisions go against the criteria mandated by law. Without any further explanation, it appears that the supervisors approved the Scotts Valley split in violation of at least two of the very criteria they adopted — preserving present boundaries and COIs.
As with most decisions, if a reason isn’t apparent, people become suspicious. It shouldn’t surprise our supervisors that rumors of a political decision have surfaced.
Sometime back, I wrote about the Public Records Act. It is one of the tools we, the public, have to assure our elected officials act in our best interests. I am informed that a public records request has been submitted for all information regarding the redistricting decision, so we may yet discover the reason for this split.
As of this date, the public reports to the supervisors reveal no substantive reason how the Scotts Valley split comports with the criteria established by law.
Editor’s note: Gary Redenbacher is not involved legally in the redistricting matter in any way, nor will he become involved legally.
**Gary Redenbacher of Scotts Valley is an attorney in private practice. E-mail him at ga**@re*********.com