Redistricting vote today may give Valley third senator

PALMER — A state redistricting plan set for approval today seems poised to give the Valley another state senator.

Although the Mat-Su Borough Assembly issued no official support for this new round of planning, individually, Mayor Larry DeVilbiss submitted a cover letter and appended map to the redistricting board.

DeVilbiss’ letter endorsed the board’s plan, with a few amendments to where the lines fell in the Valley. The mayor said that sharing districts with neighbors to the north and south was in the borough’s interest.

“We make great strides to be good neighbors to our statewide county friends and have examples of many economic and industrial projects that tie us together, such as our port and rail extension that will benefit our friends deep in to the interior of Alaska,” his letter reads. “However, we are most closely tied to our neighbors to the south, the Municipality of Anchorage where we share public utilities, major transportation corridors and residents from the military bases that live in the Mat-Su as well as a great deal of our working population still commuting to Anchorage for work.”

In an interview, the mayor said the assembly hadn’t as a body weighed in on this latest round of redistricting, but had in earlier rounds.

“This time around I asked the assembly if we wanted to take a position, if we wanted to lobby for any changes. I made two calls and there was silence, so I took that to mean that we’re pretty satisfied with things the way they are, and as long as we don’t lose any of our delegation, we are supportive,” DeVilbiss said. “That’s what I testified.”

Assemblyman Steve Colligan said he made the map that wound up labeled “Mat-Su Map” on the board’s website. He said he adjusted the lines to go through major roads, rather than through parcels.

Colligan has actually been pretty intimately involved with the redistricting process. His company, eTerra, has contracts to make maps for both Calista Corp. and a group formed by erstwhile Republican Party chairman Randy Ruedrich, called Alaskans for Fair and Equitable Redistricting.

Colligan said the version of the plan the board is considering today is pretty close to the one that Ruedrich’s group generated and incorporates the Mat-Su boundary changes.

“Everybody wants five districts in the Valley,” he said. “(But) you’ve got a half a district of over population coming at you from Fairbanks and half a district over population in Anchorage. … It’s hard to not split the borough.”

The map that seems likely to be approved gives the borough the same number of House districts it had in the last election. Two House districts form one Senate district; but the pairings of districts in the Valley changed.

The Butte/Chugiak seat is paired with the Palmer seat, instead of with an Anchorage district. Essentially, then, there are three Senate districts that are mostly based in the Valley instead of two and a couple of half-seats.

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