A lawsuit filed by Clark County Redistricting Committee member Janet Landesberg won’t be the key to resolving the county’s struggles to create a new legislative district map. Superior Court Judge Suzan Clark ruled against Landesberg on Friday.
Clark did not provide any information or explanation behind her ruling.
Landesberg filed suit after the redistricting committee failed to reach a majority vote on a map to send to the county council. The committee is comprised of two members from the Democratic Party, Landesberg and Morgan Holmgren; two members from the Republican Party, Cemal Richards and Juan Gamboa; and Auditor Greg Kimsey, who is the chair.
The dispute between Landesberg and the county centered on how a single sentence in the charter should be interpreted. Section 6.6 of the charter reads, “The redistricting plan shall be adopted as submitted or as amended by two-thirds majority vote of the redistricting committee.”
Landesberg, who retired from the federal judiciary, said her interpretation is that the redistricting committee either adopts the map as presented or votes to amend it, but it does not need to vote if the map is unchanged.
“As written, (the freeholders) expected the redistricting master, who has skills in mapping, to draw the map and for the parties to have two representatives available during the process. And if there was a problem with the map, they could amend the map based on a two-thirds vote of the redistricting committee,” Landesberg said during the hearing. “There’s nothing in (the charter) that says we need to approve the map that the redistricting master did by a two-thirds vote.”
Landesberg said the county, rather than the charter, is adding in an extra requirement for the committee to vote on the map created by the redistricting master. (The redistricting master is a county staffer from the Geographic Information Services department.)
During a Feb. 16 redistricting committee meeting, Christine Cook from the county prosecuting attorney’s office said her office interpreted the sentence as the committee was required to vote to approve the map, as well as vote to amend it.
“Any action the committee takes requires some vote,” Cook said. “According to the charter, it requires a two-thirds majority vote, and that is four votes.”
Attorney Kai Smith, of Pacifica Law Group in Seattle, represented the county at the hearing. Smith said the charter language and the broader interpretation of the charter as a whole supports the county’s argument.
“Given that two-thirds is the only vote that’s present, the most straightforward reading of that provision is that the two-thirds requirement applies to both adoption and to amendment,” Smith said.
Smith also said other sections of the charter use similar language and interpretation.
Interpreting the charter language has become crucial to the redistricting committee’s efforts now that it has twice deadlocked in voting to approve a new district boundary map.
The redistricting committee began working on the new map in October. After two months of discussions and negotiations, the vote for a new map to send to the county council ended in a 3-2 vote. A majority of four votes was needed for approval.
During Friday’s hearing, Landesberg also argued that under the county’s interpretation the committee makeup would make it nearly impossible to ever reach consensus.
While creating a new district map will now be left to the county council to wrestle with, Landesberg may not be giving up the fight.
“I have 30 days to appeal. I intend to wait to see what, if anything, county council tries to do before I make my decision,” she said Friday.
Landesberg also questioned the council’s ability to take further action.
“The 30 days for the council to act has elapsed so it’s unclear under what authority they would choose to act. Any action by the county council on redistricting could be challenged by any voter after its enactment,” she said.
Landesberg noted there is a further complication in that Kimsey has already sent out new voting cards to residents based on the charter review map.
“Before it is time to redistrict again in 10 years, the charter (review) commission will have met and had an opportunity to do any necessary cleanup amendments. So there are many possibilities to address this,” Landesberg added.
