Final redistricting plan adopted

MAT-SU -- The Alaska Redistricting Board met last week to adopt a new redistricting plan after the both the Alaska Superior and Supreme courts agreed that portions of the board's previous plan were unconstitutional.

Although the board agreed unanimously Saturday on a final plan that would divide the state into 40 House districts unanimously, minor changes were still being made to that plan at press time, and Gordon Harrison, the board's executive director, said those changes were being made to the plan by board staff this week and the statewide plan, and possibly some areawide plans, should be available on the board's Web site today. The Web site can be accessed at www.alaskaredistricting.org.

"These are small, technical changes …," Harrison said. "The staff here is just adamant that nothing is going to be put on the Web site until all is final."

Harrison said the minor changes are coming as a result of the board staff's efforts to list district boundary descriptions, and he expected the board to approve the changes Thursday at its 9 a.m. meeting.

The new map, he said, is similar to one presently listed on the board's Web site as being submitted by board member Julian Mason. That map pairs a portion of the Lazy Mountain area, the Butte area and the Fairview Loop area with Eklutna, while the upper Lazy Mountain area (past Wolverine Creek) and the Sutton, Chickaloon and Matanuska Glacier area are combined with Delta Junction, Glennallen and Valdez. The Talkeetna area, which was formerly combined with the Sutton and Chickaloon area, now occupies a district fully inside the borough boundaries, at least on the map proposed by Mason.

Harrison cautioned against using that map as the final document, however, as there were significant changes made in the Mat-Su area.

Once the amended map is accepted by the board, it will be resubmitted to Alaska Superior Court. Harrison said he hopes the plan will be addressed by the court in May in order for it to be submitted a second time to the U.S. Department of Justice. That department will ensure the plan does not disenfranchise any voters, and accurately represents minorities. All of this must be done before the June 1 deadline for those wishing to file for state office.

But that does not mean either the work of the board or work on the plan itself is finished. The board, in its Thursday meeting, plans to address budgetary issues -- a matter that, while a $50,000 emergency appropriation is working its way through the House, has a long way to go before it is resolved.

"We are indebted to our lawyer by, like $200,000-something," Harrison said. "We will have to have an [additional] appropriation."

Harrison said while the details of how and when that appropriation will come are not yet clear, the Legislature ultimately must agree to pay that money, and more. The plan has not made its way through the court a second time, so additional court fees loom on the horizon. If the Legislature does not agree to cover the costs through an appropriation, Harrison said, it's possible for the board's lawyer to sue the state for the money.

"We are hopeful that it will be resolved," Harrison said.

A significant amount of work remains to be completed on the plan itself, as well. After a final plan is adopted and approved, the state's Division of Elections begins its process of dividing the state into election districts. That, said Mat-Su Borough Clerk Sandra Dillon, is where things could get sticky.

Borough staff and the assembly recently went through the process of dividing the borough into assembly districts -- a process borough voters ratified on Jan. 15. But since the election district and precinct lines are yet to be drawn, it could make things confusing for voters.

"Ultimately, we could have split precincts because the precincts don't align with assembly districts," Dillon said. "That's the complexity of it right now."

Dillon said the Division of Elections has, in the past, been very cooperative with local bodies of government, attempting to take into account the lines that Alaska boroughs, by statute, are required to have in place often before the statewide redistricting plan is approved. But it's not always easy to make those lines overlap -- and when it isn't possible, it could mean that two different voters at a particular precinct could be voting for different assembly candidates, and that could make the oversight by election officials more difficult.

Dillon advocated a change in state statute that could remedy the matter.

"We would like to see it changed to where the boroughs are mandated to do [their] redistricting after the final state plan is adopted," Dillon said.

But in the meantime, she and her staff will work with the division to make the necessary changes to the borough's precincts. It's likely, she said, that the borough will have at least 29 precincts this fall, four more than the previous 25. Until the division finishes the plan, however, Dillon and her staff won't be able to tell voters where they can vote in the fall election. Hopefully, she said, the division will complete its substantial task quickly.

"They don't have a lot of time," Dillon said. "Then we'll know where our precincts are."

And as for the proposed change to statute, Dillon said they'll have to make do with what they've got for now.

"We can work with it," Dillon said. "It's not pleasant, but we can work with it."