The Lane County Board of Commissioners, in a 3-2 vote earlier this week, decided to go with a last-minute proposal put forth by a private law firm to change the county charter, rejecting the work of its own committee.  

On July 16, conservative commissioners Pat Farr, David Loveall and Ryan Ceniga voted in favor of suggestions from private law firm Harrang Long to redraw a district map and establish a new redistricting committee. Commission Chair Laurie Trieger and Commissioner Heather Buch voted against.

No dedicated public hearing will be held regarding the Harrang Long charter amendments. The board will discuss the potential changes on August 6 during a regularly scheduled commission meeting.

The move upset members of the county’s own publicly appointed Charter Review Committee, which has been working on the issue since November 2022. “I don’t like having my time wasted and hard work in good faith tossed out,” says Stefan Ostrach, CRC vice chair. 

“But the commissioners have the power to do that.” 

The county Home Rule Charter governs how Lane County can and can’t operate. Changing, adding or removing anything in the charter statutorily requires a public vote.

Two motions — submitted on May 24 by William F. Gary, an attorney from Harrang Long representing his firm’s former partner, Stan Long — were approved by Farr, Loveall and Ceniga. 

According to Trieger, the suggested motions submitted by Long have yet to be vetted by the CRC or county counsel. 

“Clearly the current board majority wants Stan Long’s proposal to go in front of the voters, regardless of the charter review committee’s recommendations,” Trieger says. “There is no legitimate reason, but a very clear purpose, on part of the current board majority.”

She adds,“This is unnecessary and wholly politically motivated.”

During the meeting, Buch requested  Loveall amend his motion to include a public hearing since the new changes would be completely different from the CRC recommendations — which already had two public hearings on June 26 and July 9.

“The only right thing to do would be to add a public hearing,” she said.

Loveall said his intentions were to “keep this momentum rolling” during the meeting, “I just want to get it done. I don’t want to kick it down the road.”

Earlier in the meeting Loveall said, “I think in the light of what we’ve been hearing in public testimony, that democracy is about the people. It’s by the people, it’s of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Buch says that the move is entirely motivated by politics. “They’re skipping over transparency to the public and deliberations and vetting of something that will make significant changes to our charter and perpetuate redistricting for political reasons,” Buch says tells EW.

Critics have pointed out Harrang Long’s proposed redistricting would make it harder for a progressive commissioner to be elected in North Eugene — Farr’s district, which was held by progressive commissioner Rob Handy until Farr defeated him in 2012.

One of the Harrang Long suggestions is to rebuild the Independent Redistricting Committee as the Citizens Redistricting Committee, making selection random from a vetted pool of 50 applicants. As it currently stands, county commissioners select the first five, who then select the next 10. 

According to Harrang Long’s proposal, anyone who currently holds or is a candidate for a position in government is ineligible to be on the committee. — family members, relatives and roommates too. It also stipulates that the committee member had been registered to vote in Lane County for at least three years and had voted in the last two of three general elections — effectively excluding young people and those new to being politically active. 

The second motion — which Gary referred to as “housekeeping” in his letter to the board dated May 24 — would redraw the current county districts, five years before new census data.

Redistricting is the process of drawing electoral boundary maps. According to Harrang Long’s proposal, if you live in the Whiteaker neighborhood you will now be considered a part of the South Eugene county district — rather than North Eugene — because Roosevelt Boulevard is the proposed boundary between the two.

“The proposal comes across as good government, but that Roosevelt Boulevard piece puts the lie to that,” Ostrach says. 

Typically, counties only redistrict when necessary — usually coinciding with the decennial census collection nationwide.

As previously reported in Eugene Weekly, critics of Gary’s proposals don’t call them “housekeeping” but instead call them “gerrymandering.”

Ostrach says putting the line at Roosevelt Boulevard will cut across city wards, school districts and neighborhoods. “It’s clearly gerrymandering. Why Roosevelt Boulevard? I mean, it’s completely arbitrary,” Ostrach says. He says this new map will make it harder for a progressive commissioner to be elected in the North Eugene district.

According to Trieger, the CRC recommended not redistricting until the next round of census data. “The effective impact of the Stan Long proposal does redistrict because it names specific geographic descriptions that effectively change the districts,” she says. “It is a very underhanded way of redistricting outside of a good process and not in the normal decennial calendar.”

Alongside the private law firm’s suggestions, the board unanimously voted for three repeals suggested by the CRC to move to a second reading and public hearing on August 6.

One will repeal a redundant spending limitation on the county, another will remove a section regarding East Alton Baker park, which the county no longer owns, and the final will get rid of an income tax cap — which the county doesn’t collect.

After voting to refer the private law firm’s recommendations to the ballot, county commissioners voted down the suggested amendments from the CRC — with a two to three vote, commissioners Farr, Ceniga and Loveall dissenting.

One of the CRC’s amendments would have changed county districts names to only be numbers. For example, District 3 North Eugene would have just become District 3. Another would have extended the time frame the CRC can do its work to two years. 

Its final recommended amendment would have codified the Independent Redistricting Committee within the county charter — which now staying in county code can be modified whenever the commissioners want without requiring a public vote.

“I mean three commissioners are going to vote against putting them on the ballot,” Ostrach says. “I guess they’re dead in the water.”

Lane County Board of County Commissioners will meet August 6 ]to decude what the board will refer to the Nov. 5 ballot. To watch online or register for public comment go to LaneCounty.org.

This story has been updated. An earlier version of this story said the board would hear from the public. However, the  meeting will be a discussion and vote without a dedicated public hearing.