CHENEY – Washington’s redistricting commission has finally settled on its new congressional and legislative district maps putting Cheney and the West Plains in the fifth congressional district.
The West Plains will be in the sixth and ninth legislative districts. Cheney and most of south-eastern Washington will be in the ninth legislative district, while Medical Lake, Fairchild Air force Base, and Airway Heights reside in the sixth district.
Current senators like Mark Schoesler will continue representing the new boundaries of the ninth legislative district until the next election cycle in 2023, meaning he’ll represent Cheney until the next senate election. House representatives who are up for election this year will run for re-election in their new districts.
Schoesler knocked on many doors in Cheney during his early years as a house representative and earned an agribusiness degree from Spokane Community College.
“I’m no stranger to Cheney,” Schoesler said.
The new maps were officially adopted on Feb. 8, but not without controversy. According to Arthur West, a transparency activist for the Washington Coalition for Open Government (WCOG), a lawsuit filed by the WCOG accused the state’s redistricting commission of violating the Open Public Government Act.
“Commissioners held a pro forma, last-minute vote to fabricate the perception of a public consensus when the Commission was undecided as to the final boundaries, or it had reached such a consensus privately, equally still violative of the public’s interest,” the lawsuit states.
Essentially the redistricting commission failed to reach a new agreement for the map boundaries on their Nov. 15 deadline. An online public meeting was convened, but the four redistricting commissioners elected to make their decisions behind closed doors. When they appeared just before their midnight deadline, they held a rushed vote and didn’t even have the new congressional and legislative maps available for public consumption.
The next day the commission admitted they had disagreed on new redistricting boundaries before their official deadline, which drew the ire of government transparency watchdogs and voting rights activists alike.
A second lawsuit was filed by the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Washington in Seattle on behalf of several Yakima Valley residents and the Southcentral Coalition of People of Color for Redistricting, according to Crosscut.com.
“It was clear to anyone who watched the commission’s chaotic, disorganized meeting on Nov. 15 that it did not finish its work by the deadline,” Institute Executive Director Andrew Villeneuve said in the Cheney Free Press. “Commissioners took a vote on maps that no one had seen, not even themselves, and then promptly congratulated themselves on having done a great job before concluding the following morning that they hadn’t finished on time.”
Washington’s redistricting commission ended up being penalized by paying over $137,000 in fines and legal fees. There have also been massive changes in the redistricting laws to avoid another debacle during the state’s next redistricting phase after the 2020 census.
Part of the lawsuit’s settlement states that the commission pledges never talk about public matters in private and will never vote on final redistricting maps without the public having access to them first.
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