County Commissioner Redistricting

      Under current law, certain boards of county commissioners must appoint county commissioner redistricting commissions to adopt plans to divide the relevant counties into as many county commissioner districts as there are county commissioners elected by voters of their district (plan). The act requires these boards of county commissioners to appoint independent county commissioner redistricting commissions (commissions), modifies the criteria for who may serve on these commissions, allows these boards of county commissioners to remove members from the commission for cause, allows these boards of county commissioners to direct a commission to modify a proposed plan under certain conditions, and requires these boards of county commissioners to adopt a final plan that was one of the final plans approved by a commission.

     The act also removes the role of advisory committees in the process of adopting a plan and divides that role among staff and the commissions. The act expands the definition of staff to include contractors and explicitly excludes the county clerk and recorder or their employees from acting as staff unless expressly agreed to in writing. The act explicitly allows any qualified elector of a county to challenge the adoption of a plan by an action in the district court.

     Further, the act requires a commission to adopt a composite formula to generate a competitiveness measure expressed as a percentage of county commissioner district competitiveness and to use that measure, and any other measure of competitiveness adopted by the commission, in determining highly competitive and moderately competitive county commissioner districts.

     The act applies to the adoption of a county commissioner district redistricting plan that occurs after the effective date of the act.


(Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)