Redistricting plan to become effective in 60 days

The St. Mary’s County Redistricting Board has presented to the county commissioners its plan to redraw the county’s four commissioner districts. The plan presentation to the county commissioners is a formality of the process as the county commissioners do not have approval authority. According to County Attorney George Sparling the new districts become effective in 60 days, or February 10^th. February 24 is the deadline to file to be a candidate in the primary.

The proposal moves two voting precincts, 03-006 and 06-003, into the 4^th Commissioner District from the 2^nd Commissioner District. The former precinct is in the Leonardtown Election District and the latter in the Hollywood Election District.

The four commissioner districts only determine commissioner residency as all of the commissioners are voted on by the whole county. The change is not expected to impact the 2014 commissioner race as incumbent Todd Morgan (R: 4^th) retains his current district and Daniel Morris (R: 2^nd) is not seeking reelection.

But the change could affect upcoming school board races. The school board members run from commissioner districts in the same manner as county commissioners. The new boundaries would put two current school board members, Mary Washington and Cathy Allen, in the same district.

All five redistricting board members signed the plan that was transmitted to the county commissioners. Calvin Brien voted against it in an initial vote on November 4.

The plan did have some criticism in the community because it used as its reasoning the election numbers instead of census numbers to bring the five districts more in equilibrium. The transmittal to the commissioners in a document entitled “2013 Redistricting Board Proposal Rationale” said, “The reason this methodology was chosen was the simplicity with which the data was presented to the Redistricting Board by the Board of Elections. In sum, the data was presented as broken out by voting precinct and the registered voting numbers were easy to manipulate.”

But at one of the public hearings on the plan, two planning commission members, Chairman Howard Thompson and Vice Chair Shelby Guazzo criticized that method.

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