In a minority report submitted to the Los Angeles City Council, four members of the Redistricting Commission alleged that their fellow commissioners ignored public input, engaged in procedural irregularities and illegally relied on race to draw new district boundaries.

The report was authored by Robert Ahn, Bobbie Jean Anderson, Helen Kim and David Roberts, who were appointed by Councilman Eric Garcetti, Councilman Bernard Parks, Controller Wendy Greuel and Councilwoman Jan Perry, respectively.

“While this minority report does not purport to include an exhaustive list, we believe that these material failures have exposed the city to a significant risk of litigation or other efforts to remedy the deficiencies of the commission’s final map,” the commissioners wrote.

The three contentions of the report are:

1. The commission failed to consider public input and keep communities intact
2. Race was the predominant factor in drawing the boundaries of certain districts
3. Procedural irregularities marred the process

That second point relates to the boundary lines of the Eighth and Tenth districts, where commissioners argued over the fate of Baldwin Hills and Leimert Park. Both communities ended up entirely in CD 10, represented by Council President Herb Wesson.

According to the report:

The heavy emphasis on race in drawing the boundaries of CD10 is particularly problematic, because it appears to place a priority on bolstering the African-American population in CD10, a historically African-American influence district that has always relied on cross-racial alliances with other similarly-sized groups, with little apparent regard to the impact on CD 8, the city’s only council district with a majority African-American (citizen voting age population).

Under the proposal approved by the commission, African-Americans will now account for 50.6 percent of registered voters in the Tenth District, up from 43.2 percent. In the Eighth District, that number will drop from 66.8 percent of registered voters to 63 percent.