La Plata County Clerk and Recorder Tiffany Lee is right in recommending that county commissioners approve holding off redrawing commissioner district lines until 2013. She is also dealing with a complex situation that may warrant the attention of the state Legislature.
The immediate cause of her decision was the fact that redistricting this year would leave Commissioner Wally White out of a job. That would not only be unfair to him but would leave District 3 without a commissioner and to some degree disenfranchise those who voted for him.
Waiting until 2013 to redistrict might solve that. White is term limited and cannot run for re-election, so District 3 will get a new commissioner in any case.
There are some interesting twists nonetheless. La Plata County commissioners are elected at-large but represent districts. (Bigger counties or those that have adopted home rule can do things differently.) If a commissioner dies, moves out of the district – or the district itself is redrawn to no longer include the commissioner’s home – the commissioner is out. When that happens, the departing commissioner’s political party appoints a vacancy committee that then has 10 days to fill the spot. If it fails to do so, the governor picks someone.
Why go to all that trouble? Is the need to redistrict so compelling?
The last decade’s worth of growth has created a population imbalance between the county’s three districts. With much of the increase coming east of Durango, some of District 3 needs to be shifted to districts 1 and 2 to even things out. While not required to by state law, the county strives to keep the districts within the same 5 percent deviation the state uses for legislative districts. It also tries to follow precinct lines, although, again, not required to by law.
The difference between the most populous district and the least is now about 11 percent. That is still fewer than 2,000 people.
Population is also not the only criteria. Lee must also take into account natural and humanmade boundaries and avoid overly contorted district lines. The most sensible fix seems to be to divide Precinct 18, which includes the Grandview area. The numbers work, it would not yield a freakish shape and it could be done so as to boost the population in both other districts.
It could still get strange, though. By law, the county can only redistrict in odd-numbered years. That means the 2012 commissioner election – with two seats up for grabs – will be conducted using the current district boundaries. And with that, the county could be right back in the same spot. Someone near a district line could be elected commissioner only to be redistricted out of office the next year.
Fixing that would require changing state law. It might be as simple as allowing a sitting commissioner affected by redistricting changes to serve out the term.
Absent a change like that, Lee’s approach makes sense. The disparity between districts is not enough to unseat an elected official.
