Redistricting panel meets for first time

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The first eight members of California’s new Citizens Redistricting Commission convened their first meeting Tuesday amid pressure to make the panel more diverse as they appoint the final six members this month.

Created through an initiative approved by voters in 2008 that took the job of drawing legislative district lines away from legislators, the panel was selected through a random drawing from a pool of 36 finalists for the job. The finalists were selected from thousands of applications from Californians.

The first action of the panel Tuesday was to elect Claremont City Councilman Peter Yao, a Republican and retired engineer, as the panel’s temporary chairman. It elected as temporary vice chairwoman Cynthia Dai, a Democrat and chief executive of a San Francisco marketing firm.

‘We all share a profound sense of responsibility to do a thoughtful and meticulous and equitable job of redistricting,’ Dai said during the meeting in Sacramento.

The panel was advised by staff members that it needs to make its selections of the final members with an eye toward the diversity, impartiality and analytical skills of contenders.

The first members include four Asian Americans, two whites, one Latino and one African American. That membership means that Latinos are underrepresented on the panel, as are San Diego and Orange counties, complained the Greenlining Institute, which advocates for the participation of minority and low-income residents in the process.

“For people to have faith in this commission, it needs to look like California,” Tunua Thrash, a director of the Institute, said Tuesday.

The California NAACP has also raised issues. It praised the initial members in a statement.

‘However, there are some glaring disparities in the racial balance at this point for African Americans and Latinos,’ the group said. ‘Racial balance is absolutely critical to the success of the Commission and should receive top priority as the eight Commissioners deliberate on the selection of the remaining six.’

--Patrick McGreevy