September 19: County Redistricting Commission
The Lane County Board of Commissioners has referred to the November 5 ballot a proposal to create, in the Lane County Charter, an Independent Redistricting Commission. This commission would replace the Independent Redistricting Committee created and existing in Chapter 21 of the Lane Code. The full text of the ballot proposal is available at this link: Measure 20-362.
The current committee, which was active following the 2020 decennial federal census, consists of five members appointed by the commissioners and 10 members appointed by those five members.
The new commission, if created, would consist of 15 members selected at random by the County Clerk from a list of applicants who apply for the Commission. The proposed amendment does not contain any specific provisions which would assure that the pool of applicants was geographically diverse, even though the selection criteria to be used by the County Clerk does require geographical diversity. Among other things, the proposal would require that individuals must be registered voters in Lane County and could not:
- be candidates for or holders of federal, state, county or certain local offices;
- be a registered lobbyist;
- be paid congressional, legislative, or county employee.
The County Clerk, in making those selections, would be required to select three members (and one alternate) who currently reside in each existing commissioner district. The County Commissioners would not have a role in the selection of those individuals unless less than four individuals from a district apply. In such an event the Commissioners would select individuals to bring the total for each district to three members and one alternate.
The newly created commission would have not only the task of creating districts following the 2030 decennial census, but also would be required to create districts in adequate time so that new districts would be in place for the 2026 election. In performing this latter task, the Commission would rely on the data used to create the current districts, since no new data will be available until the census results are released sometime in 2031.
The decisions of the Commission with respect to districts, both for 2026 and for 2031 and thereafter would not be subject to review by the County Commissioners.
On September 19 Ryan Ceniga, Lane County Commissioner for the West Lane District, and Terry Parker, President of the Lane County League of Women Voters came to City Club to discuss the proposed charter amendment. Comm. Ceniga spoke in favor of the amendment and Ms. Parker spoke in opposition.
There were two major points at issue in the conversation: the nature of the independent commission and the need or desirability of conducting a redistricting out of cycle in 2026.
Comm. Ceniga said that the results of the 2021 redistricting were flawed in a number of ways, including the possibility that some rural residents might be effectively disenfranchised by a process which would allow for the City of Eugene to dominate the Board of Commissioners because of how the districts had been drawn. Ms. Parker said that because of the need to have districts with equal populations, and the fact that the population of the City of Eugene was so much larger than other areas, it had been necessary to include some portion of Eugene in each district to keep the size of each district within one percent of the mathematical amount of one-fifth of the total county population. Comm. Ceniga responded that it was not essential to stay within a one percent variance and that by allowing a variance of as much as five or ten percent, it would be possible to have some districts that had no portion of Eugene within them.
He also pointed to confusion which existed earlier this summer when a large grass fire occurred just west of Greenhill Road. He and his staff, and Lane County employees, responded to supporting efforts to control that fire but later discovered that the area was within the commission district which represented North Eugene.
Ms. Parker responded that the districts created in 2021 were not challenged at the time and have been in effect without objection. She said that while she was completely supportive of an independent commission to remove redistricting from politics as much as possible, since no new data existed to justify any changes in those districts, an out of cycle redistricting for the 2026 election was unnecessary, costly, and created a risk for political manipulation of the districts. Ms. Parker said that both the County Charter Review Committee and the Lane County elections office opposed this amendment.
Comm. Ceniga responded that this proposal incorporated all of the changes recommend by the Charter Review Committee except for the redistricting for the 2026 election and that redistricting in 2026 would not be particularly expensive since all the data already existed and only a minimal amount of staff time would be involved.
Ryan Ceniga is a lifelong Oregon resident. He describes himself as “a blue-collar dad with deep roots in West Lane County”. Ryan lives in the Junction City area with two kids in the public school system, where he serves on the Junction City School Board.
He has always given back to his community with his involvement in service groups, including the Junction City Lions Club, the Junction City Athletics Board and as a coach for his kids’ sports through the years.
Terry Parker is the president of the League of Women Voters of Lane County, a nonpartisan grassroots organization doing hands-on work to safeguard democracy through voter registration, education and advocacy.
When not navigating for the League, Terry sails the waters of British Columbia and is an avid knitter. She retired as Lane Transit District’s Accessible Services Manager in 2013.