State judge erred in rejecting claims Mat-Su was disadvantaged by state redistricting board

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough has filed an appeal of a state court ruling on the 2021 redistricting.

The borough had challenged several points of the Alaska Redistricting Board’s plan which sets state House and Senate District boundaries.

Among other arguments, the borough said that the board’s plan would dilute the power of Mat-Su voters by including more people in each district, improperly pairing Mat-Su with Valdez, and improperly carving out the Cantwell area from a house district. The redistricting map has seven of the 40 state house districts overpopulated by more than 2 percent, and five of those seven districts are in the Mat-Su Borough, the borough said in a statement.

When considering the Mat-Su Borough districts, the redistricting board had first “locked in” other areas of the state and also refused to make changes to house districts in Anchorage, Fairbanks, or western Alaska, the statement said.

In a 171-page order issued on Tuesday, state Judge Thomas Matthews rejected Mat-Su’s challenges while at the same time finding the board engaged in “secretive” meetings and violating the State’s Open Meetings act by going behind closed doors to discuss changes in Anchorage and Eagle River state senate district.

“This marks the second redistricting cycle in a row that the board was found to be in violation of the Open Meetings Act,” the Mat-Su Borough statement said “Judge Matthews did not make the board disclose communications within those closed-door meetings, did not make the board disclose hundreds of pages of communications among the board members, and let most of the plan stand,”: the statement said.

Mat-Su is challenging the rulings and will also be asking the state Supreme Court void the entire plan because of the board’s closed-door process.

Mat-Su’s challenge was required to be filed quickly because the Supreme Court must issue a ruling by April 1, 2022,” the borough’ statement said.