Experts: Economic drivers won’t necessarily benefit Merced districts

In a little more than a week, Merced City Council will get its first public look at the maps it must choose to set local election districts, raising questions about whether it’s more important to fix boundaries around defined neighborhoods or to fairly distribute economic power.

Experts in the region say it’s not black and white which choice is best for constituents in the district, but there are some factors for the City Council to consider.

The Independent Districting Advisory Committee has endorsed four options, two dividing north Merced in different ways and two dividing south Merced. The City Council will have the option to choose either of the maps for each half of the city.

Three electoral districts proposed for the south could be drawn in ways to give each an economic driver – the Airport Industrial Park, downtown or Gateway Merced, a 70-acre retail center in the works. While the committee believes doing so would give the elected leaders more equal clout, some residents have argued it’s more important to keep together neighborhoods that share interests.

The move to districts was spurred last year when the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit, warned that the city could face litigation without the move to local districts. Though almost half of the city is Hispanic, according to the latest census numbers, the council has no Hispanic representatives.

Neither the mayor nor any of the six current council members live in predominantly Latino south Merced. As it is, at least half of the current members will end up residing in the same northern district after lines are drawn.

Gloria Sandoval, 66, a south Merced resident, said having an economic driver in a district is not as important as having a representative who walks and drives through the same neighborhoods as their constituents.

“I’m not necessarily so much in favor of there being Latino representation,” she said. “I think more important is that people live in particular neighborhoods.”

Jessica L. Trounstine, a political scientist at UC Merced, said having an economic driver in a district will almost surely give the representative more political power, but that does not necessarily translate into benefits for the people living there.

“You may argue that it’s better for the city overall, but that doesn’t mean that the residents that live there are advantaged politically,” she said.

There is the potential, Trounstine said, that the elected official would put that economic driver’s needs before the needs of voters. She pointed to the example of tax benefits, which clearly help businesses. But whether that trickles down to help residents is not so clear.

“It depends if the priority of the residents aligns with the priorities of the business,” she said.

Though the district representatives will be tasked to look out for the needs of their own district, Trounstine said, studies show that districts do not pit areas of town against one another. Councils in cities of any size tend to vote together.

Simply living near an economic driver is not enough to elevate the incomes of residents, said Antonio Avalos, associate professor of economics at California State University, Fresno.

What matters is if residents are employed, no matter where they are employed, he said. Those residents will bring income back to where they live to spend on goods and pay taxes.

There is no direct connection that an industry will benefit a specific district. “Some companies are not necessarily vested in the welfare of the district (where) they reside,” he said. “Many of these companies are perhaps shipping out profits.”

This story was originally published September 11, 2015 at 5:41 PM with the headline "Experts: Economic drivers won’t necessarily benefit Merced districts."