Do you care if vested interests are fighting over artificial boundaries to determine which neighborhoods vote for which politicians?
It doesn't seem that many of you do, outside of a few local neighborhoods and people who work in politics.
There seems to be a disconnect between Sacramento elected officials and the insiders connected to them – and everybody else.
Maybe it's because the fundamental problem of "redistricting" is not the maps or boundaries.
It's a lack of faith in the candidates who will emerge once the fighting over maps and boundaries stops.
Frankly, the current buildup to another election season is as dismal as any in recent memory. Shuffling district boundaries seems like shuffling cards in a deck full of jokers.
It's not that we shouldn't care about our politics, because we should.
It's that in a depressed economy, we're witnessing petty squabbles of limited scope.
It's a recession of political inspiration. There's a bottom we're still waiting to hit.
Who are the people to push the ideas to get us out of this mess? Where are they, because they sure don't seem to be right in front of us at the moment.
How uninspired is it?
Every news agency in Sacramento is spending considerable time and space today on a fight involving a small sliver of people in the city of Sacramento: the question over whether a neighborhood of 1,000 people should be in one council district or another.
Do you care if the neighborhood around the UC Davis Medical Center is shifted to a council district containing Elmhurst and Tahoe Park – and away from the council district connected to Oak Park?
Do you care if Sacramento Charter School is no longer in the Oak Park council district as it's always been?
Mayor Kevin Johnson cares. Councilman Kevin McCarty cares because he wants the medical center and Sac High in his district.
About 400 people who jammed City Hall cared. I care, as a political junkie would.
This dispute is the latest manifestation of a virtual assault on Johnson's interests by his council colleagues.
That's interesting to a point.
But what about double-digit unemployment? Whatever happened to talks to bring back the 42 cops laid off by the city when the police union wouldn't compromise on members' entitlements? What about the violence afflicting Sacramento city and county?
When the dust clears, the fights over political districts – and the back stabbing that motivates the process – do nothing to address those broader interests.
The big problems are right now. So we sweat the small stuff.
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Call The Bee's Marcos Breton, (916) 321-1096.
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