Move afoot to reduce size of Guilford County Commission

UPDATE: At-large Commissioner Paul Gibson confirms that he does favor changing the size and structure of the county commission to a 6-2-1 system, in which six members would be elected from districts, three would be elected at-large and the chair would be chosen from among the three at-large members. He said he may not introduce a motion to make the change at tonight's commission meeting.

Gibson also said whoever draws the maps, he wants them to be released well in advance of any vote taken by the county commission so that they can be publicly vetted.

ORIGINAL POST: Some members of the Guilford County Commission are discussing the possibility of reducing the size of the board, but Chairman Skip Alston says he doesn’t think there’s support on the board, with constituents or with the US Department of Justice to make the change.

The board is currently comprised of 11 members. Nine are elected from districts and two are elected at large. The chair is elected by the board. The board currently has three majority-minority districts — two in Greensboro and one in High Point — to meet the requirements of the Voting Rights Act.

“I know there’s going to be an effort to reduce the size of the board,” said Linda Shaw, a Republican who represents District 3 and who serves on the county commission’s redistricting committee.

Billy Yow, a Republican who represents District 5 said he favors reducing the board to nine seats, with six district seats and three at-large seats. Yow said he also favors allowing only an at-large member to serve as chair. Under this scenario, two seats would be majority-minority districts.

Shaw said that Paul Gibson, a Democrat who holds one of the board’s two at-large seats, plans to make a motion to reduce the size of the board. Such a change would require action by the NC General Assembly and approval from the US Justice Department. Gibson could not be reached for comment.

The idea of reducing the size of the board was [link] floated last week by News & Record columnist Doug Clark, who advocates a system with five districts and four at-large members. Similar to the Greensboro City Council, this arrangement would allow voters to elect five out of nine members — in other words, more than half.

Clark argued that the current arrangement breeds unaccountability:

Individual voters have very little influence over the board. As a voter, you can only elect three out of 11 commissioners — one from your district and two at large. The other eight don’t answer to you, don’t have to care what you think.

Making that worse, the districts are gerrymandered to favor one party or the other. In general elections, consequently, the incumbents usually run without opposition.

Another argument, which is my own, is that there are so many districts and the boundary lines are so irregular, that most voters don’t know who represents them on the board, creating a steep hurdle for voter education.

Guilford has the largest legislative board of any county in North Carolina. The state’s most populous county, Mecklenburg, has nine commissioners. Wake, Forsyth and Cumberland each have seven. Durham, Buncombe and New Hanover have five.

“I imagine all of the Republicans would support [reducing the size of the board],” Shaw said. “That’s something we’ve been advocating for for years.

“If it passes, it would have to go to the General Assembly,” she added. “With Republicans in control of the General Assembly, I don’t think that would be a problem.”

Republican currently hold four out of five district seats on the board, while Democrats hold both at-large seats. With at-large member Gibson reportedly in support of reducing the size of the board, another vote would likely need to be recruited to gain a majority. Likely candidates for lobbying would be at-large Commissioner John Parks, District 4 Commissioner John Parks or District 6 Commissioner Kay Cashion — the three remaining white Democrats.

“I don’t think there’s support on the board to do it, I don’t think there’s support in the community to do it and I don’t think there’s support at the Justice Department to do it,” Alston said.

“It would not allow you to have three majority-minority districts,” he explained. “You would have two instead of three…. A minority would have no chance of getting elected at large. Anything that’s less than what we have now is retrogressive. The Department of Justice would not go for anything that reduces the number of minority districts.”

DEMOGRAPHY EXTRA: The non-white population in Guilford County is 43.0 percent, up from 35.5 percent a decade ago. Historically and currently, the largest minority group in Guilford County is African Americans, who comprise 32.5 percent of the population — up from 29.3 percent in 2000. As a percentage of total population, whites have declined from 64.1 percent to 57.0 percent over the past decade.

More relevant to the federal concern over protecting minority voting rights might be voter registration.

Non-whites, including Asians and Native Americans, make up 37.4 percent of the county’s electorate. Among the overall minority population, blacks hold exact parity on the voter rolls to their population as a percentage of registered voters — 32.5 percent. White are overrepresented on the voter rolls (62.6 percent), while non-black minorities are underrepresented (4.9 percent).