Over the last year, a committee of volunteers developed several proposals for changing Lane County’s charter.
In a vote Tuesday, county commissioners passed over several of their own committee’s revisions, and asked the group to review an outside proposal instead.
The committee’s proposal included new district names and an independent redistricting commission.
The outside proposal, from a local lawyer Stan Long, would heavily restrict who’s allowed to be on that commission. That proposal also calls for new maps next year to permanently enshrine some district boundaries in the charter — although it's unclear if commissioners will consider Long’s full proposal, or just portions of it.
The charter is similar to a constitution, and the county commissioners can only change it with voter approval.
During the meeting Tuesday, Commissioner Pat Farr said he preferred parts of Long’s proposal over the committee’s. He argued it reduced political influence in the map-drawing process.
“The Board of Commissioners should not be involved—or should be involved as minimally as possible—in the selection of the redistricting committee,” Farr said.
Commissioner David Loveall said the move was about asking voters whether they wanted to change redistricting—not “stealth gerrymandering” as critics have described it.
“I'm a little bristled by the comments that there's some nefarious thing going on,” he said. “My intention is to keep this momentum rolling and not kick this can down the road for four years.”
Commissioner Heather Buch opposed the change, saying neither the charter review committee nor the public will have enough time to weigh in.
She and commissioner Laurie Trieger, who also opposed it, said legally, the county can change how it redistricts anytime between now and the next census.
"It really just is puzzling, unless there is some other intent after the election,” Buch said. “And I would like to think the best of my colleagues, but right now, I'm not."
Some members of the charter review committee and the public have also raised concerns about Long’s proposal, saying the restrictions on who’s allowed to be involved in redistricting would exclude young people and people of color.
Long’s proposal requires committee members to have been registered to vote for three years, and to have voted in two recent elections. It also bans people whose family members are lobbyists, who have run for paid political office, or who have worked for a political campaign in the last four years.
The charter committee will review Long’s proposal and provide a review by Aug. 6, when commissioners will decide whether to send the proposed revisions to Lane County voters.
The commissioners did unanimously agree to place three charter repeals on the ballot. Those proposals from the charter review committee, which have seen far less discussion and controversy, would simply delete outdated language.
The repeals include rules about how to manage a park the county no longer owns and a tax that the county doesn’t collect.
