A redistricting committee led by Democratic county chairman Skip Alston, flanked by Democrat Kay Cashion (left) and Republican Linda Shaw first met last month.
A redistricting committee headed by Democratic Guilford County Commission Chairman Skip Alston is inviting the public to submit maps to redraw electoral lines reflecting a new structure with eight districts.
Kirk Perkins, a Democratic committee member who represents District 4 on the commission, suggested next Wednesday be set as a deadline for county staff to receive submitted maps from the public, but the matter was not fully resolved.
“I think the best way for us on the staff side to look at this any maps that we receive prior to or at the next meeting we’ll be able to say that we can fully vet those and fully evaluation,” County Attorney Mark Payne said. “Things that come in after that, we’ll give it what review we can and you give it what review you guys can. I think the thing to tell the public is that the earlier you participate the more appropriate the evaluation will be of those maps.”
To meet the Constitutional test of equal representation, any map must be drawn so that the eight districts are within 10 percent of equal, or ideal, population. And Guilford County falls under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, so any map approved by the county commission must be submitted to the US Justice Department for preclearance. To have a reasonable chance of passing muster with the federal government, the plan must avoid retrogression, which means essentially that it cannot make minority voters worse off.
Maps should be mailed to
Guilford County Legal Department
PO Box 3427
Greensboro, NC 27402
Or e-mailed to
mpayne@co.guilford.us
“Frankly,” Payne said, “I’m surprised we haven’t received any yet.”
One eight-district map (shown here) was created by the Guilford County Republican Party and submitted to the General Assembly. Ultimately, the Republican leadership of the General Assembly decided to allow the Democratic-controlled county commission to draw its own map, and the map drawn by the county party was set aside.
The redistricting committee will hold a public hearing to receive input on the proposed maps at the Old County Courthouse in Greensboro on July 28. The committee will hold a final meeting on Aug. 3, and then bring a recommendation to the full county commission on Aug. 4.
The NC General Assembly passed a law in June restructuring the Guilford County Commission from an 11-member board with nine districts and two at-large representatives to a nine-member board with eight districts and one at-large representative. The law requires that the board redraw its lines within 60 days of enactment.
Alston indicated he is interested in bypassing the state law by holding a referendum that would give voters the option of maintaining an 11-member board.
“The board of commissioners has the additional option of making a determination as to whether they want to make a change to that,” Payne said. “That has to happen by a vote of the board and by a public referendum. Now, what’s significant in that determination is if the board of commissioners wants to consider some board structure that is different from what is set out in the statute — again that has to be by resolution and referendum — in order to meet the deadlines that you have to meet, including getting DOJ approval and in practical terms, that’s a decision that has to be made by the middle of August.”
(To view a set of illustrative maps created by YES! Weekly, including a number of nine-district scenarios, click here.)
Considering the possibility of a referendum, the county commission redistricting process is currently on a dual track: one with eight districts and one with nine districts.
Members of the school board attended today’s redistricting meeting, but going forward the school board redistricting process will proceed separately. Members of both boards have said in the past that they would like to keep district lines for the county commission and school board uniform to make it easy for voters to keep up with their representation.
Unlike the county commission, the school board is not subject to the recent law passed by the General Assembly, and school board members agreed that they want to maintain nine districts. Members said they wanted to take additional time to gather public input.
The state law requires that the new eight-district plan include at least three districts with a black voting age population of greater than 50 percent, minimize the dividing of precincts, to the extent practicable “respect communities of interest,” and “not consider the place of residence of incumbents except as necessary to comply with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.”
Under any scenario, it will be difficult to draw a map that maintains a 50 percent or greater black voting age population in District 1 (map), which is currently represented by Bruce Davis on the county commission and J. Carlvena Foster on the school board. The district is one of three mandated majority minority districts in the county.
“That is the slowest growing population of all the districts and it is surrounded by districts that are growing a great deal,” Payne said. “And it’s happenstance — it’s just the nature of it — all the areas immediately surrounding that district, if you look at the demographics of those precincts, you’ve got a majority white. You’ve got to add population to that district, and we’ve got to maintain that majority black population. You’ve got to make sure you don’t have an excessive impact on the effectiveness of the African-American vote. That’s going to be a challenge — to bring up the population to the extent you need to, but still maintain those balances.”
The county commissioners learned today that the law passed last month by the General Assembly would result in a two-year period from 2012 to 2014 in which the board has no at-large representatives. The two at-large seats are currently held by Democrats Paul Gibson and John Parks.
The reduction from nine to eight districts results in a game of musical chairs except that the chair would not be pulled out from the ninth district until 2014. In the meantime, the county would do without a single at-large member. The board would keep nine district members through 2014 because of a provision of the new law stipulating that no change in the boundaries of a district affect the unexpired term of a member of the board.
Five members were elected last year and do not come up for reelection until 2014: Davis in District 1, Republican Bill Bencini in District 2, Republican Linda Shaw in District 3, Democrat Kay Cashion in District 6 and Democrat Carolyn Coleman in District 9.
Terms on the county commission are staggered, and the four remaining district seats are up for reelection next year. As a result, four new or reelected district representatives would join five who are filling unexpired terms. As a result, two members would serve from the same district, raising a thorny constitutional question about equal representation. The new at-large members would normally be up for reelection next year, but under the new law the election for one at-large seat would be held in 2014.
Neither of the two at-large representatives are happy with the 8-1 plan mandated by the NC General Assembly.
"It's only one [seat]," Parks said after the meeting. "You've got two of us. And then you have to wait two years."
By reducing the number of districts from nine to eight, the commission also faces the unwelcome task of drawing two incumbents into the same district and potentially forcing them to run against each other. That difficulty is somewhat eased by the fact that District 5 Commissioner Billy Yow and District 7 Commissioner Mike Winstead, whose seats are in play next year, have announced that they do not plan to seek reelection.
"It's going to be a fluid process," Payne said. "And I've looked around. There's not a perfect way to do this. It's, in my opinion, by definition an imperfect process. There'll be a lot of give and take, and that's the way it works."
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