Lane County will explore citizen redistricting proposal

After discussing an advisory committee's six proposed changes to Lane County's Charter, the Board of Commissioners rejected the committee's pair of proposed amendments to reform the county's redistricting process, instead choosing to further explore an alternate citizen proposal. The board also accepted the three least controversial recommendations.

In 1976, Lane County expanded the Board of Commissioners to five members. As of the latest Census at the time , Eugene made up 35.8% of Lane County's population, and so the charter outlined that going forward, commissioners would draw lines for two commissioner districts for Eugene, one for Springfield, and two for rural Lane County.

In the decades since, Eugene has grown faster than the rest of Lane County, and as of the 2020 census made up 46.1% of it. This has coincided with the nationwide push to move redistricting away from elected officials and toward independent committees.

In 2021, county commissioners created an Independent Redistricting Committee made of 15 people (five appointed by the commissioners and 10 by those committee members), which produced three maps for commissioners to select between.

Some members of the public praised the committee for bringing a new level of independence to the process, while others criticized it and viewed the committee members as too close to the county commissioners and for addressing Eugene's population growth by putting parts of the city in all five districts, rather contain Eugene within three of the districts.

After hearing a pair of dueling proposals both claiming to bring independence to the redistricting process going forward, commissioners opted 3-2 to reject the proposal from its Charter Review Committee, and further explore a proposal from a local law firm.

A majority of the advisory committee recommended replacing district names with numbers and general descriptions and elevating an Independent Redistricting Committee modeled after the 2021 one to the charter.

On district names, enough county commissioners said those names reflected communities who wanted the identifiers that the board opted against the recommendation.

"I'm willing to stick with our current charter on this," Commissioner Ryan Ceniga said. "West Lane has spoken out and they want to be labeled as West Lane still."

On the Independent Redistricting Committee , commissioners disagreed over how fair the 2021 redistricting was. Those critical of it objected to the commissioners directly appointing the first members and the final map that included parts of Eugene in all five districts, saying they did not want to elevate that process to the charter.

"The recommendation by the Charter Review Committee has the Board of Commissioners choosing the first five members from a pool. I'm opposed to that," Commissioner Pat Farr said. "I believe that the further we can get from the board of commissioners being directly involved with the selection of the redistricting committee; the better we are."

The liberal commissioners expressed support for ideas in the recommendation but also said they didn't want to move forward with a divisive proposal.

"The good news is we have lots of time to work on improving our process for seating a redistricting committee because there's plenty of years before new Census data comes out," Commissioner Laurie Trieger said. "We did make some really good process attempts in how we seated the (2021) committee. … If this stays in the code it makes it more nimble and gives us that opportunity to do some improvements and make some adjustments when the time comes."

Following a heated discussion, commissioners voted 3-2 to forward an alternative citizen proposal to the Charter Review Committee for consideration, in time to put a version of the measure on this November's ballot.

This proposal was formally suggested by the Harrang Long law firm in May, but Commissioner David Loveall said a "nearly identical" proposal had been suggested for the 2021 cycle. William Gary, lawyer for the firm, described it as an adaptation of the initiative petition aiming to establish independent redistricting for the state legislature . Morgan Munro, Chair of the Charter Review Committee, said changes in the local proposal had "corrupt" the intent of the state proposal.

Some points in the proposed amendments include:

• More specific descriptions of the commissioner districts, including labeling the Willamette River and Roosevelt Boulevard as lines between the north and south Eugene districts.
• A 2025 redistricting, with several deadlines for the stages of that and future redistricting cycles.
• Several factors that would disqualify people from serving on the redistricting committee. Proponents said these would remove conflicts of interest but critics said they would limit diverse perspectives.
• The county commissioners would narrow the applicant pool to 50 people, and the County Clerk would randomly select 15 people from that group to serve on the committee.
• The redistricting committee would approve a final map that receives support from at least 8 of those members, with at least one vote in favor from each district, and an explanation of support from the committee.

The conservative and centrist county commissioners described this proposal as an improvement that would bring independence to the redistricting process and deserved further consideration. They said sending it to the Charter Review Committee would allow a public legal review and would involve the committee, two concerns that critics of the proposal raised.

"They have a two-tier check system in there that I really think we should look at as a county," Commissioner David Loveall said. "There's a number of other things in this Long proposal that I like. That I think is fair."

The liberal commissioners expressed openness to having the Charter Review Committee study the proposals but objected to prescribing the November 2024 election as the deadline, which would require the committee to come back to the Board of Commissioners by its August 6 meeting.

"I am really at a loss to understand the push to put this on this November's ballot, for something related to redistricting which is not due for many more years," Trieger said. "I understand the interest in a general election and high turnout but there is another one of those between now and the next redistricting."

Loveall said putting the measure on this November's ballot would maintain "momentum."

"My intention is to keep this momentum rolling and not kick this can down the road for four years," he said. "I think it's up to us to make it happen at the soonest possible event. Which is the November 5th election."

Any changes to Lane County's charter must be approved in a county-wide election. Commissioners unanimously agreed to also send voters three changes this November that they described as removing non-binding parts of the charter, including:

• Repealing the Spending Limitation section, which is no longer binding because the state requires stricter spending limitations from local governments.
• Repealing the East Alton Baker Park section, which is no longer binding because the county gave the park to the City of Eugene.
• Repealing the Income Tax Cap section. In 2007, Lane County commissioners asked voters to approve a pair of amendments to create a county income tax and cap and restrict its use. Voters approved the cap but not the tax, and the Charter Review Committee recommended removing the cap for the non-existent tax.

https://cdnsm5-hosted.civiclive.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_3585797/File/Government/BCC/2024/2024_AGENDAS/062524agenda/W.1.A.1.pdf

Alan Torres covers local government for the Register-Guard. He can be reached over email at atorres@registerguard.com or on X @alanfryetorres .

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Lane County will explore citizen redistricting proposal