The Kitsap County Board of Commissioners held a public hearing last week on redistricting for county commission districts.
Kitsap County is required by state law to update its commissioner voting districts to reflect the result of each decennial Census, according to county Policy Manager Eric Baker. This was last completed in 2011 and, before that, 2002.
The county’s three districts are required to be as close as possible in terms of population, Baker said.
The COVID-19 pandemic and other federal issues delayed access to the Census data by more than six months and Baker said he received the data around the end of August and beginning of September of this year.
The county must complete the redistricting by December of this year to meet the needs of the 2022 elections, and in line with state law, he said.
Baker outlined the criteria requirements for the redistricting boundaries:
Each district shall consider natural boundaries and preserve existing communities, as feasible.
Each district shall be nearly equal in population as possible.
Each district shall be as compact as possible (avoid unusual irregular boundaries).
Each district shall consist of geographically-contiguous area (no islands).
Each district shall not be configured in a way as to disfavor any racial group, ethnic group, or political party.
The first alternative presented was to keep the existing boundaries.
The second alternative aims to improve population differences between the districts by making changes to the District 2 and 3 boundary while leaving the District 1 and 3 boundary unchanged.
The third alternative improves the population differences even better than the second alternative. Like the second alternative, it proposes changes to the District 2 and 3 boundary while leaving the District 1 and 3 boundary unchanged.
County staff recommended the third alternative since it best equalizes the population between the three districts.
Baker said he had met with Kitsap County Auditor Paul Andrews as well as representatives from the Democratic and Republican parties. The county held an open house and answered questions about the redistricting alternatives, he added.
Commissioner Ed Wolfe emphasized that the county redistricting is distinct from the state legislative and congressional redistricting. But there is a connection between the two redistricting processes, Baker said.
“The only involvement we have with the legislative process is after they put out the legislative recommendation, we’re supposed to take into consideration,” he said.
That didn’t happen, however, because the Washington State Redistricting Commission failed to come up with redistricting boundaries before its deadline. That left the responsibility for doing so up to the state Supreme Court.
That “basically means that we have no recommendation to go on right now, but we still have a December timeline so we’re moving forward using our best assumption,” Baker said.
There was no public comment during the public hearing, and consideration of the ordinance was continued to the board's Dec. 13 meeting.
