In furtherance of its progressive reputation, Pasadena's City Council looked ready Monday night to approve a resolution in support of an initiative that would take away state legislators' powers to remap their own districts and instead place the power of redistricting in the hands of an independent, citizens' commission. Here is a sneak preview of the story we are running tomorrow:

PASADENA - The City Council is aiming to be the first in the state to endorse a plan to change the way state assembly and senate districts are drawn up.

The council,at the prompting of Councilman Chris Holden, voted unanimously Monday to draft a resolution in support of the California Voters' First initiative. The initiative, sponsored by the government watchdog group California Common Cause, would take redistricting power away from the legislature and put it into the hands of an independent, 14-member citizens' commission.

Kathay Feng, California Common Cause's executive director, said the initiative would prevent incumbent legislators from meeting behind closed doors to draw up district lines that would be favorable to them come election time.

"The only way to make sense of (the current districts) is to explain them as incumbent protection plans," said Feng, adding that the group is currently collecting signatures in an attempt to place the initiative on the November ballot.

If Pasadena endorses the proposal, it would become the first city to join a movement that already has drawn support from the League of Women Voters, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Democratic State Controller Steve Westly. Feng said Speaker-elect Karen Bass has also expressed support for redistricting reform proposals.

Similar proposals have failed at the ballot box in years past, and a legislative attempt to couple redistricting reform with the recently defeated Prop. 93 term limit measure was also unsuccessful.

Councilman Steve Haderlein also told Feng that he "looked forward to supporting (the resolution) when it came back to the council at Monday's meeting. Councilwoman Margaret McAustin also said she would support such a resolution.

What's the importance of Pasadena's endorsement in this case? After all, folks have been fighting -- unsuccessfully -- for redistricting reform for decades (a good history of redistricting reform efforts in recent decades can be found here. A good roundup starts on page 16).

According to Douglas Johnson of the Rose Institute for State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College, the fact that a local, progressive and diverse city government supports such an effort takes the wind out of the sails of opponents of redistricting reform, who say such initiatives are merely an effort by Republicans to improve their election chances and climb out of the minority in the Legislature.

"It's hard to cast Chris Holden as an advocate of the Republican Party," Johnson said.

Councilman Sid Tyler, also expressed support for the initiative. But he had his doubts about whether an independent citizens' commission could be guaranteed to be truly impartial in the redistricting process, despite the many restrictions imposed by the initiative (forbidding current, former and future - to a certain extent - elected officials from joining the commission, as well as their staffers, family members, consultants and major campaign donors).

Feng's explained that merely moving the redistricting process from the back room to a public forum, and having commissioners and their staff present their ideas in front of the community, would prevent them from even suggesting the types of blatantly gerrymandered districts that have been created in the past. But that wasn't enough for Tyler.

"The concern is that the people that have done the work, know the issues... are likely to be on the scene, either as commissioners or consultants or attorneys," Tyler told me. "I am not so sure that simply appearing before the (commission in public) is necessarily enough to prevent somebody from having a significant impact on the way districts are structured."

But he admitted that the current way of doing things is flawed and that he supported the initiative in concept.

Are the legislators taking advantage of their power to redraw their own district maps? You be the judge. Here are a few examples from the last redistricting process in 2001:

-- State Senate District 24, coveted by then Assemblywoman Gloria Romero, was redrawn to exclude the home of then-Assemblywoman Judy Chu, who was also considered a contender for the senate seat. Romero went on to win the district (and the Senate Majority seat). Chu is now chairwoman of the state Board of Equalization.

-- Then state-Senator Richard Alarcon of Los Angeles, now a Los Angeles City Councilman, was planning on moving to a new home in Toluca Lake at the time the reapportionment was being devised. But his prospective home was not part of his 20th Senate District. When the districts were finalized, a thin sliver of land protruded from the 20th District to include -- surprise! -- the neighborhood Alarcon was planning on moving into.

-- According to Johnson, a similar "finger" of land was extended from the Long Beach district that would eventually be occupied by then-Assemblywoman, now Senator Jenny Oropeza. Oropeza's home was located at the very end of that finger.

As Feng notes, one only has to look at the odd, contorted shapes of the current districts to know that there is something fishy going on.