Garry South Teams Up With Republicans on Redistricting Plan

by juls [courtesy of Calitics: Soapblox California - Front Page]

Sounds like recipe for disaster to me.  South and Rob Stutzman along with GOP Attorney Tom Hitachk and Rick Claussen have teamed up to create a proposal in case Arnold and the legislature can't come to terms. Salladay:

Broadly, the new initiative would require the state's Fair Political Practices Commission to create a citizens commission that would draw legislative lines (one version excludes Congress, another includes federal districts.) The five-member commission would hire six other people to create an 11-member panel.

Those additional panelists would include one member from academia with experience in redistricting, one attorney with the same type of experience, and four city or county elections officials - two from high-density areas and two rural. The membership would have to be balanced between Republicans and Democrats.

As Salladay points out, the FPPC is woefully underfunded as it is and would have a hard time administrating this.

Perata may be concerned that there are no other relatively minor sweeteners along with the term limits, but its just South who is teaming up with the Republicans to push redistricting.

But it doesn't appear the FPPC option would make it to the February ballot - time is running out to collect signatures.