Redistricting board gets an earful in Palmer

PALMER — Redistricting plans riling up public opinion in the state came to the Valley Monday and attendees almost all seemed to have one thing in common — they don’t like either of the redistricting board’s proposals.

“We don’t feel either option one or option two serve our borough,” said Mat-Su Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss, expressing an opinion arrived at around the assembly table.

Both options call for drastic revisions to the lines carving up the borough, and both would add a fourth state House district. But most agreed that number should be five, and that the two districts representing pieces of the borough — an Anchorage seat also represents the Butte and the Valdez seat includes Chickaloon and Sutton — should be used somehow to make that district.

Steve Colligan, Wasilla resident and vice chairman of the Alaska Republican Party, said both plans don’t serve “any other consideration other than gerrymandering.” He asked that the board look at borough assembly district boundaries.

Board chair John Torgerson noted that the same U.S. Census that prompted the state to redraw its lines will prompt the borough to redraw assembly districts.

“To use those now wouldn’t be worth much,” he told Colligan.

Two people, including acting borough manager Elizabeth Gray, handed the board a map the borough had provisionally approved last week.

Colligan, like a number who testified, spoke in favor of the plan offered by Alaskans for Fair and Equitable Redistricting. He conceded, under questioning from Torgerson, that the AFFER plan would make Valley districts with pieces of Fairbanks and another with pieces of Anchorage.

John Wood, a resident of Willow and former Anchorage assemblyman, pointed out that drawing the lines that way might actually do better for the Valley.

“Mat-Su is going to dominate those House districts,” he said, which means the Valley would essentially have six seats instead of the five it would have if the seats were all contained within the borough boundaries.

Former borough mayor Darcie Salmon also liked that idea and noted that the lines are going to be drawn again in 10 years, at which point the borough will probably have hit 120,000 residents rather than it’s current 89,995.

“This isn’t forever, this is for now,” Salmon said.

Lazy Mountain resident Jim Sykes expressed an opinion that a lot of people agreed with when he urged the board to keep the cities of Palmer, Houston and Wasilla intact. Both board plans call for splitting Wasilla at the Parks Highway.

Though there are numerous maps on the table, the process has only entered its initial stages. There will be a statewide teleconference on May 6. Eventually the board will come out with a final plan.

But that’s not the end of it — or at least it hasn’t been in the state’s history. The plan always winds up before the state Supreme Court.

“A lawsuit will happen under the Voting Rights Act,” Wood predicted. “Let’s try and see if we can’t eliminate the most vulnerable parts of the redistricting plan.”

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