Controversial state redistricting plans subject of Monday meeting

MAT-SU — No matter how you slice it, the Valley will likely gain a seat in the state House of Representatives once redistricting is complete.

Four districts and two half-districts are better than three districts and two half-districts. So even though the state’s redistricting board is headed here Monday to discuss the plans — from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Mat-Su Borough Assembly chambers — local activists can skip that meeting, right?

Nope.

There’s still a lot to hash out here. Assemblyman Jim Colver said he’s been watching the process with interest and the consensus he’s heard around the assembly table is that the Valley should actually get five full seats and do away with those half-seats. The state should stop carving off pieces of the borough to pair with nearby areas, he said.

Those half-districts are in the south and east. The Chickaloon/Sutton area is paired with Valdez and parts of North Pole in the House. And the Butte is lumped in with the northernmost reaches of the Municipality of Anchorage.

Also, Colver said, the Senate seats — in Alaska two House districts combine to make one Senate district — should be made up of Valley district pairings where possible. He said he’s most worried about the Point MacKenzie/Big Lake/Willow/Talkeetna House district.

“It has all of our major economic development projects in it,” Colver said of that Willow/Talkeetna House district. “The port, the rail extension to the port and Hatcher Pass and it’s only a portion of a House district.”

Which wouldn’t be so bad. That’s how it is now after all. But one of two redistricting board plans calls for pairing that district with a Fairbanks district to make a Senate seat. If that plan is adopted, Colver said, all of the borough’s major projects would be contained in less than a third of a Senate district.

“Fairbanks has a lot of needs of their own. They’ve got projects going. So what’s the chance of our rail remaining the priority?” Colver asked.

“The consensus among the assembly was that the population that the Mat-Su Borough has represents five House seats and we’d like to have our five House seats within our boundaries,” Colver said. “You don’t see that many Anchorage districts that are flung all over the place. They tend to get most of theirs within their boundaries.

Self-described “reluctant activist” Sid McCausland, an active local Democrat not always on the same side as Colver, agrees with him on this one. McCausland has actually been promoting an alternate redistricting plan, that of the Alaska RIGHTS Coalition that has been submitted to the redistricting board.

In the broadest terms, he said, the Valley deserves its five House seats and its two and a half Senate seats. He said the Alaska Supreme Court has ruled that local government boundaries should be given quite a bit of weight in the process.

“The (Alaska) Supreme Court has said in the past that borough boundaries make a lot of sense when you’re drawing House districts,” McCausland said.

He said that until recently, the representative holding that Sutton/Chickaloon seat hailed from Valdez.

“We have 89,000 people here and a quarter of our representation was housed in Valdez,” McCausland said. “Why shouldn’t we have people who live here who are accountable to us represent us?”

Monday’s meeting will be one of many around the state, and the process is far from over. Longtime Alaskans know that the process has never been completed without a trip to the state Supreme Court.

Still, McCausland said, people should be paying attention.

“My whole point is that I’m encouraging people in the Valley to come to the redistricting meeting on Monday and say we have the population to support five (seats),” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.