Thanks anyhow, population leaving San Francisco Bay Area per Rose Institute study

.

12/21/10, "California to keep its 53 congressional seats," Contra Costa Times. Inside Bay Area, L. Vonderbrueggen

"The Census Bureau will not release until probably late March the detailed numbers down to the block level the redistricting commissioners need to do their work. The bureau will start rolling out state-by-state tables in February, but California is usually last.

Nonetheless, there has been ample speculation about how California's population shifts will drive the political landscape of the next decade.

Scholars at the conservative-leaning Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont College, in a study based on population estimates, found that California's population center continues to shift from its traditional coastal metropolitan regions toward inland communities.

The Census Bureau's numbers reflect actual counts rather than estimates, and the outcome could be much different.

But if the census figures uphold the Rose Institute's findings, the trend could have significant consequences for Bay Area lawmakers.

Six of the 10 congressional districts in the nine-county Bay Area have lost population in the past decade.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of San Francisco, represents the smallest congressional district in California

and its boundaries must expand in the 2011 redistricting plan in order to preserve equal representation. Also underpopulated are the districts of Reps. Barbara Lee, of Oakland; George Miller, of Martinez; Lynn Woolsey, of Santa Rosa; Jackie Speier, of San Mateo; and Anna Eshoo, of Palo Alto.

In the California Senate, the state's four most underpopulated districts are in the Bay Area, according to the Rose Institute's analysis, including seats held by Leland Yee and Mark Leno, both of San Francisco; Joe Simitian, of Palo Alto; and Loni Hancock, of Berkeley.

Nine of the 18 Assembly districts in the Rose study show under-population, including in the East Bay seat held by Sandre Swanson, of Alameda.

In 2001 and most prior decades, legislators adopted redistricting plans that kept sitting lawmakers in their home districts and preserved or improved the incumbents' party registration advantage. The self-serving nature of the 2001 maps, in particular, fueled critics, who were ultimately successful in their repeated ballot-box efforts to end the practice.

"With California's new Citizens Redistricting Commission now in charge of the state's redistricting process, incumbent legislators will no longer be able to control the effects of regional changes in California's population," the Rose Institute scholars wrote."

via Mark Levin show substitute host, Inga