Redistricting panel starts work with goal to ‘row together’

BOISE — Months of delays in receiving new Census data because of the coronavirus pandemic has left Idaho’s newly convened citizen redistricting commission with a cramped timeline, but commissioners wrapped up their first meeting Wednesday optimistic that they’ll meet the challenge.

“I think we need to be expeditious and get ‘er done,” said former state Sen. Dan Schmidt, D-Moscow, who was elected Wednesday as co-chairman of the commission, along with former state Sen. Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls.

“It’s Sept. 1 and it’s Day 1,” Davis said. “We have a lot of work to do.”

Schmidt and Davis said the commission will need to wrap up its work quickly enough to allow its proposed new congressional and legislative district plans to be reviewed by courts, and any needed modifications made, before lawmakers have to start changing timelines for the May primary election.

“We’ve got to hit that if at all possible,” Davis said.

That means they’ll try to come in well ahead of their 90-day limit on deliberations. But the commission still plans to travel the state and take public testimony. Members heard from two former commissioners Wednesday that that’s key to getting the plans right. They’re scheduled to decide on travel and public hearings during their meeting today; the commission is meeting all day, each day through Friday this week.

“As you’re going around, listen to the people,” advised Randy Hansen, a former GOP state representative from Twin Falls who served on the commission in 2011. “The people are amazing. They will tell you what the concerns are in their particular area.”

“You’re going to be under a lot of pressure, political pressure,” said Ron Beitelspacher, a former Democratic state senator who served on the panel with Hansen. His advice: “Be friends.”

Beitelspacher, who served seven terms as a Democratic state senator, recalled how that year’s commission chairwoman, the late former Rep. Dolores Crow, R-Nampa, “a lady with incredible integrity,” provided input to her fellow commissioners about her area of the state, but when they were about to draw some district lines in Canyon County, “She said, ‘I’m going to step out of the room, because I know who lives there.’ Well, not everybody would do that,” he said.

Idaho’s six-member citizens commission is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, and to agree on any plans, they must work together. That’s what happened with the panel Crow led a decade ago — the second commission appointed that year after the first failed to reach an agreement — and it’s what the latest commissioners said they’re committed to this time.

“We are really trying as a commission to row together,” said Davis, a former longtime Idaho Senate majority leader and former U.S. Attorney for Idaho.

By law, the commission can’t consider the effect on incumbents or partisan political gain in drawing the new lines. They must be based on constitutionally and legally defined criteria, with the one-person, one-vote principle at the top of the list, followed by keeping counties together, preserving communities of interest and more. Population shifts over the past 10 years reflected in the newly received Census data will determine how districts must change.

Ten years ago, the newly approved plan created a dozen potential matchups among incumbents in 10 legislative districts. Many of those lawmakers opted to retire, but two, then-Sens Tim Corder, R-Mountain Home, and Bert Brackett, R-Rogerson, faced off in the GOP primary. Brackett won.

Prior to 1994, Idaho legislators drew new district lines themselves. That meant lawmakers who stood to lose their own seats, and possibly stymie their own political careers, were in charge of what districts each should represent.

“Some people talk about, ‘Oh, the commission struggles, boy I wish we could go back to the good old days when the Legislature did this,’” Gary Moncrief, political scientist emeritus at Boise State University and a nationally known expert on redistricting, told the panel Wednesday its first meeting. “These people have selective memories. ... There was a fistfight between two members of the Senate in the stairwell — two members of the same party — in 1981. And what were they fighting over? Redistricting.”

Idaho is now one of some two dozen states with redistricting commissions, and one of just 14 that has an independent commission entirely in charge of drawing the new district lines.

“It’s not simple, as you know and as most of us will discover in the next few months,” Moncrief said.

Other business for the commission Wednesday included getting signed in on new computers and starting to learn the online mapping system, Maptitude, Idaho uses to draft new districts. That system also is now available to the public, and anyone who wants to can log in, try their hand at drawing legally acceptable districts, and if they want to, submit them for consideration. The program, and all Idaho redistricting information, is online at redistricting.idaho.gov.

Russell is the Boise bureau chief and state capitol reporter for the Idaho Press and Adams Publishing Group. Follow her on Twitter at @BetsyZRussell.