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Idaho's redistricting commission has convened again this afternoon after a lunch break, and plans to meet in open session all afternoon and work on its legislative district plan. “You will know exactly what we do,” said Co-Chair Dolores Crow. The bipartisan commission has a working copy of its plan that's basically the previous plan, L-87, with revisions to it to try to limit it to no more than seven county splits, including splitting Ada and Kootenai counties internally only. It's possible they could reach agreement on a new plan today.
In North Idaho, the major change is that a chunk of southeastern Bonner County would be paired with Shoshone County and points south in a legislative district, rather than with northern Kootenai County, to avoid splitting any part of Kootenai County off into another district with other counties. “The Supreme Court has said we've got to keep Kootenai whole,” said Co-Chairman Ron Beitelspacher. “So we've got to figure out exactly where in the devil we're going to take it from.” Pointing to the map, Beitelspacher said, “There are no roads from Shoshone County into Bonner County here,” though a state statute requires road connections. “If we move with this, we're going to have to pass a motion to suspend that with at least five votes.”
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Arpie on January 27 at 1:02 p.m.
Is anyone talking about a constitutional amendment to change this county stricture? Now that the Supreme Court has ruled on this, I’d hope we can get this changed in the next ten years. County splits like connecting Bonner to Shoshone make no sense in the real world.
ShoshoneConservative on January 27 at 1:14 p.m.
I agree 100%. A constitutional amendment to increase the number of legislative districts would also help.Codywiench on January 27 at 1:19 p.m.
They could prevent splitting Bonner county by reducing the number of legislative districts. They are allowed to create between 30-35, I believe.