Committee passes new district map

In a 30-minute meeting with no public comment, the Monroe County Redistricting Committee recommended Wednesday on a party line vote that a new Republican-made district map for the Common Council replace one approved in 2001 by the then-Democrat-controlled County Commission.\nDemocrat Pat Williams voted against the recommendation with Republicans Steve Hogan and Margaret Cook voting for it.\n"I just believe (the Republican map) is the one that closest fits the criteria," Cook said.\nThe Republican-controlled County Commission can still amend the district map or create its own. \nScott Wells, a former Democratic county council member, said he expects the county commissioners to pass the new district map unchanged.\nThe redistricting committee was instructed to also make a recommendation on the new county commissioner maps but voted to make no recommendation.\nThe old map split Bloomington into two separate districts surrounded by one district representing the rural areas, and required that there be at least one rural commissioner. \nBut the new map the Republicans proposed would allow the possibility of three commissioners coming from the city, said Hogan, chairman of the redistricting committee.\n"It doesn't say city commissioner -- it says county commissioner," Wells said.\nCounty commission districts are different than county council districts because a county commissioner must live in the district, yet everyone in the county votes for all three commissioners.\nDemocrats said they are still unhappy about the existence of the redistricting committee.\n"The question still remains of what is the justification for this process," Williams said. "We're really using a loophole in state law that allows this to occur."\nThis could "disenfranchise" voters, Wells said. \n"It's hard enough to get people out to vote," he sad. "This is just another slap in the face."\nWells attributed the redistricting to results from the 2004 election, when only one Republican won.\nIn 2002, Republicans won three out of four county council seats.\n"If (the maps) were gerrymandered, then why didn't they take legal action then?" Wells said. "There was no public outcry until the results of the 2004 election was a landslide victory."\nThe Libertarian party also introduced a county council district map but the committee did not consider it because it put two incumbent county council members in the same district.\nMargaret Fette, Monroe County Libertarian Party chairwoman, said district maps should be "broken up into sensible boundaries," and that her party's plan of splitting up the county by ZIP code was the best way to do that.\n"When they have (an) R and a D in front of their names, that is the case," Fette said.\nPaul Ehrstein, a Libertarian Party supporter, said the law does not require new district maps to have incumbent council members in separate districts. He said he would like to see this changed into a non-partisan process.\nThe real reason behind redistricting is "clearly partisan politics," and the results from the 2004 election where only one Republican won, he said.