However, Republican legislative leaders said Monday that GOP lawmakers still want Brewer to call another special session on redistricting in hopes of short-circuiting the current process, which they contend is flawed.
The state high court on Thursday provided Brewer with requested clarification of the court's previous order overturning her Nov. 1 removal of commission Chair Colleen Mathis with consent of Republican-led Senate.
Brewer's stated reasons for removing Mathis lacked a constitutional basis, the justices said in their clarification. She had said the commission under Mathis violated the open meeting law and failed to obey constitutional mapping processes and criteria.
Senate President-elect Steve Pierce, R-Prescott and House Speaker Andy Tobin, R-Paulden, said lawmakers want to have a special session this week to consider actions ranging from another attempt to remove Mathis to asking voters in a special election in early 2012 to change the redistricting process.
"We should be coming back," Tobin said, adding that the voter-approved law creating the commission "has been absconded by politicos and it's very clear."
Brewer was noncommittal Monday about calling a special session, telling reporters that there are options available and that lawmakers believe quick action was needed. However, she also said she had no talks scheduled with legislative leaders to chart a new course.
The commission plans to resume mapping work in the coming week after 30 public hearings in October on its draft maps and then a pause for most of November over Mathis, who has said she hopes final maps are approved by Christmas. Even then, the commission has to submit them to federal voting-rights enforcers for review. That could take months.
And whether maps eventually approved by the commission even get used in 2012 is in question, because lawsuits challenging their constitutionality could throw the map-drawing process temporarily into court.
Democrats and others filed lawsuits challenging the maps approved a decade ago. The commission-approved congressional map was used in 2002, but a three-judge federal panel ordered that an interim legislative map be used that year after Hispanics objected to the original.
The maps from last decade are now considered unconstitutional because of population changes. And the congressional map doesn't include the ninth U.S. House seat that Arizona was awarded after the 2010 Census.
Karen Osborn, Maricopa County elections director, told the newly appointed redistricting commissioners in February that counties needed to have the state's maps to avoid conflict with voting precincts. Those are basic building blocks in how elections are conducted.
Counties must submit their new precinct maps to voter-rights enforcers by Dec. 1. Osborn said her county is on track to do that, but some precincts might have to be redrawn in months ahead to fit whatever maps that state eventually approves.
On a practical level, redistricting can have a big impact on a politician's decision to run for a particular office. It's good if a district has a candidate's hometown. But what if potential rival's base of support dominates a new district?
Sinema said the unknowns about redistricting make it hard to assess fundraising opportunities and other calculations.
Depending on where U.S. House district lines are drawn through central Phoenix, she could be in a district with a Democratic incumbent, one with roughly even margins between the parties and maybe no incumbent, and one dominated by Republicans, possibly with an incumbent.
No comments:
Post a Comment