2 weeks Ago By San Luis Obispo Tribune
From now on, the citizens of San Luis Obispo County will draw the their own supervisorial district boundaries instead of elected officials. The California Legislature passed on Tuesday, establishing an independent redistricting commission for SLO County. The final step is for Gov.
Gavin Newsom to sign off on the legislation. Unless he vetoes SB 977, the bill will become state law. Every 10 years, the county updates the boundaries of its five supervisorial districts according to population changes reflected by the most recent .
Historically, those lines have been decided on by the Board of Supervisors, but now, an 11-member group of appointed citizens will be responsible for redistricting the county. “This bill ensures that future redistricting processes in San Luis Obispo are conducted through a neutral, nonpartisan process,” Assemblymember Dawn Addis, D-Morro Bay, said at the State Assembly on Monday. It was passed off the Senate floor on a 31-8 and the Assembly by a 60-15 vote with 4 representatives abstaining.
Community members first asked for an independent redistricting commission in 2021 after the previous board approved a radically redrawn district map that favored Republicans, according to . In response, the San Luis Obispo County Citizens for Good Government formed and sued the county, arguing that the map was gerrymandered. The later .
On March 21, 2023, the board settled the lawsuit, tossed out the redrawn map and a month later. The county could have established the redistricting commission through a board vote or via ballot measure, but these options could as it would be required to fund the independent commission, according to county administrator Sarah Hayter. By creating the commission through state law, the state Legislature takes on responsibility for funding and approving any future changes to the commission.
In January of this year, the SLO County Board of Supervisors . Laird, D-Santa Cruz, co-wrote the bill with Addis. It passed through through the state Senate and Assembly floors this week, marking the final votes needed before the bill is sent to the governor for his signature.
Who will serve on the commission? The independent commission will consist of 11 members, the same size as Santa Barbara County’s commission, which was established in 2019 through a ballot measure passed by voters. Seven other counties, including Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Fresno and Kern, have independent redistricting commissions created by state legislation. They have 14 members because they exist in larger counties.
SB 977 reduces membership to 11 commissioners “to address concerns related to the San Luis Obispo County’s drastically smaller population,” Addis said. The political party preferences of commissioners will be more or less proportional to the party leanings of registered voters from the county’s most recent election. At least one commissioner will come from each of the five existing supervisor districts.
According to the bill, a new Citizens Redistricting Commission will be created before the redistricting process every decade. The first commission will be formed by Dec. 31, 2030.
Appointed commissioners will be required to meet a number of qualifications, including having been continuously registered with the same political party, or no party preference, for at least five years prior and having voted in at least one of three statewide elections preceding their application to the commission. In accordance with the , county supervisors won’t be able to appoint commissioners. State code also disqualifies applicants who previously served as a county supervisor, worked for a supervisor or their campaign, worked for a political party central committee, contributed more than $500 to a supervisorial candidate, or had been registered to lobby the board during the past eight years.
SB 977 adds its own disqualifying criteria, too. The Senate bill prohibits any commissioner from endorsing, working for, volunteering for or making a campaign contribution to any candidate for any county office. It also prohibits commissioners from running in any county election that used the district boundaries they drew or that takes place within five years after their term.
They also cannot be employed by, consult or register as a lobbyist for the county for four years following their appointment to the commission. If any applicant or commissioner violates these rules, they could be removed for neglecting their duties. Those interested in being a commissioner will be able to apply through the county elections official, who will review the applications and eliminate applicants who do not meet the specified qualifications.
From this pool of qualified applicants, the county elections official will select up to 60 people. Their names will be made public for at least 30 days. The language of the bill also specifies that the county elections official is not allowed to communicate with the Board of Supervisors about any matter related to the nomination process or applicants before the publication of the final applicant list.
“The selection process is designed to produce a commission that is independent from the influence of the board and reasonably representative of the county’s diversity,” SB 977 reads. After the list has been made public, the county elections official will create a subpool of applicants from each district. At the next board meeting, the clerk of the board will randomly draw one commissioner from each of the five subpools.
Those five randomly selected commissioners will then appoint the other six members from the remaining pool of applicants. They are required by the law to interview their chosen finalists and allow for public comment on their selections before they make their final appointments. In order to be appointed, an applicant must receive the vote of at least three of the five selected commissioners.
The law requires that commissioners be chosen based on relevant experience, analytical skills and ability to be impartial. The elected commissioners are also instructed to consider applicants’ political party preference, but the six additional commissioners do not need to be selected from the district specific subpools. “The commission member selection process features requirements that intend to weed out partisan extremes and allow for the commission to craft new boundary lines that fairly and accurately represent the citizens of San Luis Obispo County,” Addis said on the Assembly floor on Monday.
How will the commission draw new district maps? According to state elections code, the commission must follow the state — which prohibits gerrymandering and sets forth fair, standardized redistricting criteria — in the process of drafting the county map. The bill instructs the commission to draw maps based on population changes within the county reflected in the most recent federal census. The commission will hold five public meetings before it draws the map, one in each district, and another three after it has drafted a map.
The bill requires these hearings to be scheduled at various times and days of the week to accommodate for different work schedules and to reach as large an audience as possible, and for the calendar and agendas of these meetings to be made public. Finally, the commission will file its final redistricted map with the county elections official along with a report that explains the basis on which the commission made its decisions. The bill also details a number of confidentiality precautions, including prohibiting commissioners from communicating with anyone regarding redistricting matters outside of a public meetings and requires.
The Board of Supervisors split in their support for SB 977 The decision to establish an independent redistricting commission aims to remove political influence from the redistricting process, but it has not been without debate among SLO County’s elected officials. The Board of Supervisors was split 3-2 in its vote in January to work with Laird’s office to write SB 977. At least one of the dissenting supervisors felt that the board was better equipped to manage district maps than the state Legislature or the citizens of the county.
“I don’t think the Legislature always represents the people of San Luis Obispo County,” Supervisor Debbie Arnold said at the . At the same meeting, Supervisor John Peschong, who also voted against the motion, raised financial concerns over the cost of the initiative, which Supervisor Bruce Gibson put at “a million dollars over 10 years.” Supervisors Jimmy Paulding, Dawn Ortiz-Legg and Gibson, who all voted in support of the bill’s creation in January, still stand by their decision today.
“I think its important to remove the politicians from the process of choosing their voters by manipulating district boundaries,“ Paulding told The Tribune on Thursday. “The gerrymandering that happened before ..
. really proved that and it eroded the public’s trust in the county. I think this is a step toward rebuilding that public trust.
” Gibson said that setting up the commission through state law establishes “consistency” with other counties who already have citizens redistricting groups. “I see both sides,” Ortiz-Legg said. She said one of the benefits of having county staff draft map options instead of an independent commission is the efficiency, but that it is likely a price worth paying.
“I think it’ll be a lot heavier lift than we realize, but it probably needs to be happening,” Ortiz-Legg said..
