Letter: Redistricting for the people?

Published 5:00 pm Tuesday, June 22, 2010

To the Editor:

Along with the decennial census, there is another major project of government that comes along every 10 years. That is the redrawing of our legislative and congressional district boundaries. Redistricting is the single most partisan political project in which the Oregon Legislature engages, and that shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, legislators are politicians, and they are partisan. Fortunately, it only has to be done once in a decade.

We now have legislative district boundaries in Oregon drawn in a very partisan way by Oregon’s Former Secretary of State Bill Bradbury. Then Gov. John Kitzhaber made sure of that with his veto.

The Legislature had done its duty and passed plans for both legislative and congressional redistricting. Legislators and staff worked for months putting together plans that accurately reflected the demographics and population growth of the state. The plans were responsive to public testimony and met the requirements of the Oregon Constitution and Oregon State Law.

It became apparent early in the session that the Democrats’ strategy was to take full advantage of the Constitutional provisions that allowed them to force the redistricting project into their Democrat Secretary of State’s office as opposed to negotiating a legislative compromise. Because the Democrats knew they could count on their Governor’s veto over any plan with which they disagreed, they had no reason to work objectively with the Republicans in the Legislature – and they didn’t. The Democrats stuck to their strategy and were successful in achieving their partisan objectives.

To be fair to the Democrats, Republicans might well have taken the same action had the roles been reversed. And that’s the problem with the current system. Bipartisanship and redistricting appear to be incompatible.

In 2005-2006, it was my honor to serve as Co-Chair of the Public Commission on the Oregon Legislature. The Commission recognized the extreme partisanship of our current redistricting system and recommended establishment of a redistricting commission to carry out the task. A bipartisan group of legislators agreed and sponsored a bill containing this concept during the last legislative session, but those in control would not allow it to pass out of committee. Now, there is an initiative petition being circulated to accomplish it.

In order to prevent such blatant, irresponsible partisanship by either major party from occurring in the future, it makes good sense for Oregonians to place the “Independent Redistricting Commission Amendment” on November’s General Election ballot and pass it. If you have an opportunity to sign one of the petitions, please consider it. Individual petitions are available online.

Gary Wilhelms

Portland