Free Republic

SACRAMENTO - The state Senate on Wednesday approved a bill that would force lawmakers to relinquish the power to draw their own districts, a day after legislative leaders abandoned efforts to link redistricting and term-limit reform for the November ballot. Despite the bill's passage in one house, its fate in the Assembly was uncertain. Even if eventually passed by both chambers, the proposed constitutional amendment is a longshot for the fall election. Friday is the deadline for the Legislature to place measures on the ballot. "It's not going to be on this year's ballot," said Senate President Pro Tem Don...

If elected officials were half as imaginative at solving real problems as they are at perpetuating themselves in office, we'd see real confidence in government restored. Alas, the big issue on many pols' minds right now is getting rid of the term-limit laws that threaten to knock down their impregnable incumbent fortresses. Although the U.S. Supreme Court in 1995 threw out 21 states' voter-approved term limits on members of Congress, that 5-4 ruling didn't affect limits on state and local legislators and other officials. This year, such officials are mounting full-scale efforts to overturn the will of the people. Voters...

The much discussed idea of removing the Legislature from the process of political map drawing is again the subject of some intense discussions at the Capitol. On Thursday, Governor Schwarzenegger met privately with a group of strong supporters of redistricting, including former Senate GOP Leader Jim Brulte, former Democratic Assemblymember Fred Keeley, and Proposition 77 author/recall proponent Ted Costa. A senior advisor to the governor said in the meeting, Schwarzenegger pledged to spend much of next week trying to win passage of the current redistricting proposal, SCA 3 by Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach). State elections officials have suggested that...

EVERY few years, California lawmakers take aim at term limits, which have swept out the Sacramento fossils who held office for decades, ushering in fresh faces and more minorities. Legislators hate term limits. They want to cling to six-figure jobs, full staffs, fat per diem expense accounts and personal prestige that few lawmakers could ever earn in private life. Journalists who cover politics hate term limits. They must cozy up to a new bunch of lawmakers every time the old bunch is forced out. They have to develop new sources and — horrors! — update their Rolodexes. Both the pols...

SACRAMENTO -- Senate Democrats plan to announce today their own reform plan for redistricting, which would retain their political control of the process of drawing legislative and congressional district boundaries. According to a copy of the proposal obtained by the Daily News, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to transfer the Legislature's redistricting power to a nonpartisan panel of retired judges would be scrapped. That authority would instead be given to a commission of seven political appointees, four of whom would be chosen by legislative leaders. Republican leaders said the administration was unlikely to accept the plan but acknowledged it could be...