Charter Review Committee asked to weigh alternate redistricting proposal

Lane County’s Charter Review Committee is asked to consider Stan Long’s redistricting proposal, as one commissioner corrects the Eugene Weekly. On July 16:

Commissioner David Loveall: I’ve got a little bit here that I want to set clear. A couple weeks ago the Eugene Weekly put an article out in the paper of what was considered and put on the table, another proposal that was written by the Harrang Long firm, that came to us that was, quote, ‘snuck in the back door.’

[00:00:27] And I just want to set the record straight that I’ve got two emails in my possession, one dated April 20, 2020 and one dated April 21, 2020 that had nearly the identical proposals that Harrang and Long firm recommended and was suggesting, as they did a few weeks ago, when we made this first notice at this board.

[00:00:46] And I want to note that because I’m curious, obviously I wasn’t on the board at that time, but that email went to two current board members on this board, Commissioner Farr and Commissioner Buch. And I think in line with what League of Women Voters are saying is that politicians picking their people, this is a very obvious discovery of that, is that: This information that we were battling around and arguing about and lots of people had public testimony about, was laying on somebody’s staff desk for four years. And I’m curious as to why it never surfaced in the process of forming the redistricting committee in the first place.

[00:01:30] And so having said that’s ‘snuck in the back door’ and ‘this is out of process’ I think is maybe a little more inflammatory than it needs to be. Because this information, as I see it, was readily available, like I said, four years ago. So I want to set that straight.

[00:01:46] And I also want to look at some of the things that the Charter Review Committee had suggested for. Now, moving this from the code to the charter in itself is a big deal. I mean the code means is that the Board of County Commissioners at will can change this on a 3-2 vote, 4-1 vote, 5-0 vote. They don’t need the the citizens to vote on this. But I think in the light of what we’ve been hearing in public testimony, that democracy is about the people, you know: it’s of the people, by the people, and for the people, and I think to put some of these recommendations as putting distance between the Board of County Commissioners and their voters is a good idea.

[00:02:25] I just have a few comparisons to what was considered the ‘backdoor proposal’ (which like I said before was been here for four years) compared to the new Charter Review Committee, is that, the real differences for me and the deal killer for me is this is that the Charter Review Committee wants to propose that they, in the final redistricting procedures, put forth toward the board, one final map for mandatory board adoption.

[00:02:50] And I’m here to tell you, I represent 75,000 people in the Springfield District 2 of Lane County. And the recommendations of a committee is not going to force me to vote how I think my constituents wants me to vote. So to me, that’s one of those deal-killer items that, I won’t support this.

[00:03:09] And the second thing is that in the other proposal that was given so much criticism, they have a two-tier check system in there that I really think we should look at as a county. They have between two and four maps being discussed and presented before the board for discussion and explanation.

[00:03:28] And then further, they recommend that a Citizen’s Advisory Committee is also recommended to vet the maps that they put forward. So you have not only a transparent process, but you have a board and citizenry process in place. What we naturally call the political system, but a double-check system, I mean, ‘checks and balances,’ people call that. And I think that’s worthy of looking at.

[00:03:49] So there’s a number of other things in this Long proposal that I like, that I think is fair, that I think is equitable, that I think is, obviously there’s maybe some tweaks to it. But I think if we’re going to make the effort of moving this particular item from the code into the charter we need to get it right and I feel like the last board who was weighted, if you will, to a more left-leaning board, put this redistricting committee on a lane to produce maps that makes all five county commissioners come from Eugene.

[00:04:23] Now let me reiterate this again. I got an email, another set of emails, from a guy who said that we should look at our redistricting committee based on population. And the population, when you divvy it up, means that Eugene metropolitan population gets 2.3 votes out of five. They don’t get four or five votes out of five, they get 2.3 and then some other district would have to absorb the 0.3 votes to make their vote whole. Springfield by population is awarded 0.8 votes. So logically it would be that Springfield would loop in a portion of Eugene.

[00:04:58] That means that Eugene would then only have three votes out of the five, not five votes out of the five. And I think that’s something very important that the public needs to understand what happened here.

[00:05:10] Before, the board before picked people that would loop in maps that would make five out of five possible county commissioners come from the metro area of Eugene. And that’s misrepresentation.

[00:05:21] The rural counties need to have their own representation and their own weighted vote so that they have an impact, an equal impact as all the other districts. So if that is another reason to adopt and like this proposal that ‘snuck in the back door’ that had been here for four years, I think I would like to lean a discussion toward that and I don’t support the Charter Review Committee’s recommendation for this item.

[00:05:50] Commissioner Ryan Ceniga: Yeah, this is a question for Chief of Staff, Ms. Williams if I’m understanding you, Vice Chair Loveall, you’re saying the, was it from Harrang Long that was that’s been here with the county for four years?

[00:06:06] Commissioner David Loveall: Actually, it was from then-County Council Steve Dingle sent that letter out and it was at the behest of Bill Gary who asked him to share that with the board. Which means it already been vetted and looked at legally before he shared it.

[00:06:20] Commissioner Ryan Ceniga: So that letter, the Charter Review Committee, it’s sounding like they didn’t know about that letter.

[00:06:28] Judy Williams (Lane County chief of staff): Chair, Commissioner: I don’t believe that we discussed that or looked at that from the charter review perspective, no.

[00:06:36] Commissioner Ryan Ceniga: Okay. I was just thinking if they did see that letter that would have, you know, I could have seen them going down this path and not having two different possible redistricting ideas.

[00:06:49] Commissioner Pat Farr: You know, the thing that I’m most interested in is getting politics out of districting. It’s really hard to do. You know, every place you watch, every redistricting effort that you see, politics does enter into it.

[00:07:01] And I often talk about House District 11, which included Shedd and the University of Oregon in the same district. That completely disenfranchised the people of Shedd because the University of Oregon, the voting mass, would always, always elect somebody who represented them more than represented the town of Shedd.

That’s not the only one. That was the (the late former Secretary of State Bill) Bradbury redistricting that took place that did the pie shape in Eugene. But wherever I mean look at jurisdictions across the nation, whenever redistricting happens, somebody is going to say, and I hate the word, ‘gerrymander.’ I promise that I’d only ever spit that word out because it’s kind of overused, it’s hackneyed, but really in fact if you look at redistricting, whenever it happens, people think something is foul.

[00:07:52] When the redistricting occurred 12 years ago, something was foul, according to a group of people. When the redistricting occurred four years ago or so, brought the current districts that we have, there are people that said it was foul. So people are going to say it’s foul whichever direction we go and whatever we come up with.

Right now, what the the North Eugene District 4, the district that I represent, now includes Whiteaker. I’ve been elected 19 times. I won 19 elections. Never has Whiteaker been in my district before this election. So it wasn’t my district this time. It was into my district for the first time ever and and it didn’t affect the outcome of the election.

[00:08:35] But that being said, anytime the elected body gets involved in the election, there is a greater chance of people having a legitimate cry of ‘Foul!’ And I want to avoid that. I want to stay away from it. I want to get as far away from foul as we possibly can, and the only way to do that is to not have the first five of appointees made by the Board of Commissioners.

[00:09:00] I don’t, I can’t agree with that because I don’t think that that lends itself to the ultimate outcome of fewer people saying foul. No matter what we do, I fear that people are going to say foul.

[00:09:13] Why would they stop today? Because it happens every single time. So that’s what’s going through my mind right now is how do we get to a point where our redistricting committee, if the five board of commissioners and there’s only five of us, it’s not 60 like the state, plus 30 like the state, plus one like the state, it’s only five, so it’s very important that it’s done in a fashion that doesn’t lend the air, the smell, of foul.

[00:09:39] So that’s where my mind is on this: How do we get at that point? The fact that the last redistricting committee we had was the first five were picked by the Board of County Commissioners, kind of similar to the recommendation of the Charter Review Committee, first five picked by the board of county commissioners.

[00:09:56] It ended up, we ended up with three maps. I remember the maps very, very well. The first map was kind of minor adjustments to the existant commission districts. The second map had, I think it had Creswell lumped into Eugene at some, I mean it was, and that was rejected, 5-0. I mean, I think it was (former Springfield Commissioner) Joe Berney that said, “That one clearly isn’t going to work.”

[00:10:18] Which left us with two maps to look at. One, which was kind of the same map that we’d had. And the second was the map that adjusted it to put a large portion of Ferry Street Bridge into District 3 and the portion of Whiteaker into District 2. And it also put the River Road area into District 2, West Eugene. So a lot of people had reason to call foul. People in River Road, wondering why I was no longer their commissioner.

[00:10:45] People who live on Bodenhamer Road who had a fire yesterday were wondering who is their commissioner. They voted for two commissioners in the last two elections. The first time they elected Commissioner Ceniga, the second time they elected me. They’re confused by it. So really getting to a point where we’re reducing the confusion as much as we possibly can, understanding we’ll never eliminate it, and reducing the fear and the smell of foul as much as we can is where we have to go.

[00:11:13] I strongly, I firmly believe that, and I will adhere to the fact that the Board of Commissioners should not be involved, or should be involved as minimally as possible in the selection of the redistricting committee.

[00:11:23] John Q: The motion from Commissioner David Loveall:

[00:11:26] Commissioner David Loveall: I move the staff to come back with a board order by the meeting of August 6, 2024, including the Charter Review Committee’s review with items and statutes included in the Harrang Long proposal, along with board suggestions for the formation of the redistricting committee standards which could be put before the public for a vote in time for the Nov. 5, 2024 general election.

[00:11:50] Commissioner Pat Farr: So here’s my discussion to the motion. What this allows for is to continue to move forward, whether or not ultimately we do play something on the November ballot. It doesn’t place a full stop on the discussion at this point in time. It allows the Charter Review Committee based on the motion to take a look at it, which is the, what do we call that proposal? The Stan Long proposal, is that what people are calling it? And I’ve looked at that and there are parts of it that do fulfill the things that I’ve stated regarding the Board of Commissioners being out of the loop, more out of the loop on the recommendations. So I’d be in favor of the Charter Review Committee taking a look at that, absolutely. So I’m in favor of the motion.

[00:12:30] John Q: On July 9, Commissioner Laurie Trieger suggested sending the Stan Long proposal to the Charter Review Committee as a way to publicly share a legal review. On July 16, she presided over a vote on her own idea, and voted against it:

[00:12:45] Commissioner Laurie Trieger: Then I will call for the vote. All those in favor signify with an aye. (Aye. Aye. Aye.) Opposed? (Nay.) Motion carries 3 -2 with Commissioners Trieger and Buch dissenting.

[00:12:59] John Q: Pat Farr keeps the Stan Long redistricting proposal on track to go before as many voters as possible—on the presidential election ballot in November.