Divvying up the Council pie: The good news is that there's a year to get redistricting right

LAST WEEK, the

Daily News

previewed the battle over City Council redistricting. The issue may be a year away, but it's not too early to start thinking about how to make the process better.

The city Home Rule Charter requires Council to redraw its political boundaries every 10 years based on the new census. Traditionally, the process has been a mess, with members fighting over a shrinking electorate, waging epic battles over desired constituencies.

Last time, Council failed to approve a plan by the six-month deadline in the charter. Lawmakers were stripped of their pay until the plan passed. (Councilman Rick Mariano was convicted of taking bribes to help pay his credit-card bills during the impasse. His new district is the Fort Dix federal prison in New Jersey.)

In many ways, the politics of redistricting is a clear example of what's wrong with our local political process. City Council divides the electorate based on race, party affiliation, income and dozens of other factors that have little to do with effective representation. The politicians choose their votes, instead of the other way around.

What's different this time around - and what makes the stakes higher - are the expectations for this year's city census, as the city might finally be reversing decades of population loss. Mayor Nutter successfully challenged the last count, saying the city's population had grown by 1.5 percent since 2000. That's something to celebrate, since billions in federal aid are tied to the count. And it should lead to a broader discussion about how Philadelphians can be effectively represented.

What would a good process look like? We need to have an honest debate about how citizens should best be represented. Does it still make sense to have two at-large seats for the minority party? Should we have fewer at-large members and more district seats? How to make sure the growing Latino population is well-represented? These issues and more should be publicly debated. Fortunately, the Committee of Seventy has started a Web site to jump-start the discussion. You can also learn why Philadelphia has some of the most gerrymandered districts in the country at www.redistrictingthenation.com/philadelphia.

Sadly, an open discussion is not how things have worked in the past. Council's technical staff draws up maps based on instructions from the president. Other factions develop their own proposals, leading to a battle over boundaries. The result is usually a smorgasbord of the worst ideas.

Instead of secretive plans drawn behind closed doors, Council could have an early discussion of redistricting and debate the plan publicly, if everyone agreed to a common set of principals - like figuring out the best way to represent the city in all its diversity - at the beginning. This approach would also require that Council work closely with the mayor, who has veto power over any plan.

However, the process might be so broken that tinkering around the edges won't work. A more radical approach would take redistricting out of Council's hands almost completely. An independent citizen-led commission could be charged with drawing up a plan that would have to be approved by Council. This is how some forward-thinking states, like Arizona, have dealt with the problem. It has also been proposed by Gov. Rendell as a way to fix state reapportionment.

In many ways, a commission would be the best way to handle redistricting. It's also the most unlikely, since it would require Council members to hand over their political futures to someone else.

In fact, Nutter said he supported this approach during the campaign. He should follow through on this promise and convince Council to take the right approach.