Proposition limiting Spokane City Council’s power to redistrict headed to February ballot

Spokane voters will decide early next year whether the City Council should have less power in drawing council districts in the future.

Council members unanimously approved putting the question to voters and agreed to push the ballot measure to Feb. 13, rather than add it as originally planned to the Nov. 7 ballot, where it might be crowded out by elections for the city’s mayor, city council president and several other local races.

While the city’s mayor and city council president are elected citywide, other council members are elected by voters in one of three districts. Every decade after the U.S. Census is published, Spokane redraws the boundaries of those districts to ensure each has roughly the same number of residents.

Proposition 1, put forward by Spokane City Councilman Michael Cathcart, would limit the council’s ability to override decisions by a volunteer redistricting advisory body and would also limit the council’s authority over who served on that commission.

The ballot measure will have three key provisions.

First, it would expand the redistricting commission from three members to seven and the Community Assembly would verify whether applicants are qualified. The mayor would appoint three members, one from each existing district, and the City Council would appoint three. Those six members would vote to appoint a nonvoting seventh member who would act as chairperson; if no agreement can be reached, the Community Assembly, which neither the mayor nor council has authority over, would choose the seventh member.

Though Councilwoman Betsy Wilkerson voted to put the proposition on the February ballot, she did raise concerns with having the Community Assembly’s involvement in future redistricting.

“They are not appointed; their structure does not have accountability to anyone in the system,” she said, adding that she looks forward to additional public engagement.

The second key provision would bar the City Council from replacing the redistricting commission’s recommended map with one drafted by the council, as occurred last year. If a council majority votes against the recommendation, it would be sent back to the commission, which would have to draft a new map. If no map was approved, the pre-existing maps would be adopted automatically, so long as they don’t violate state law.

Finally, Cathcart’s charter amendment would create a process for local residents to request a redistricting process in the middle of the decennial.

Redistricting typically occurs every 10 years after the census is published. However, the city council can redistrict in the fifth year of this 10-year cycle but has not exercised that power in the two decades since the city charter was adopted.