The form and function of county government was the issue du jour during the general election, with the topic of whether voters should approve a home-rule charter reaching harried political heights.
Even those close to the charter issue, such as charter proponent and county Auditor Greg Kimsey, expressed surprise at how heated the debate over the charter became.
Now, with less than two months before the charter goes into effect, there are still questions about exactly how it will work. Will current county Administrator Mark McCauley be named the interim county manager? Will the current crop of county commissioners, including Commissioner-elect Jeanne Stewart, work to undermine it in some way? After all, the three of them opposed it.
What is known is how the charter will impact voters. They’ll vote to fill one new position — possibly two, depending on where they live.
Nan Henriksen, former chairwoman of the board of freeholders, which wrote the charter, said great lengths were taken to make the addition of two new board members as painless as possible. That process included redrawing voting district lines.
“The most important thing to us was that (the district lines) would be delineated fairly and nonpolitically,” Henriksen said. “That is why we had (geographic information system) folks at the county … include how districts should be formed.”
By state law, districts must have equal populations and cannot split up precincts. Each of the four new districts will have roughly 109,000 people.
The freeholders were accused by charter opponents of gerrymandering the districts, but Henriksen said that wasn’t the case. Some freeholders briefly discussed moving the boundaries after they came back from the county, Henriksen said, but that never happened to prevent the appearance of slicing and dicing districts for political gain.
“If we let politics get involved, we would have moved those lines,” Henriksen said. “We didn’t get involved.”
In the end, whether the freeholders had cut up the districts differently may not have mattered.
How the charter vote broke down by district provides some insight into how their voters viewed the document and the commissioners.
With the exception of those within Commissioner Tom Mielke’s district, the majority of voters in the other newly formed districts approved of the charter’s passage. In the new District 1, which primarily consists of Vancouver, voters approved the charter with 60 percent of the vote.
Those numbers could be a sign of a shifting political focus in Clark County. The charter was widely seen as a referendum on the actions of Mielke and Commissioner David Madore.
Ultimately, what the new district lines mean for voters is that they will have a more direct say in whom they elect to represent their districts. Four positions will be elected districtwide, while the chairperson will be elected countywide.
Commissioner Ed Barnes, a charter supporter, said he expects that transition to bring more diversity to the board.
Henriksen echoed that belief, saying that from day one the freeholders supported adding two board members to broaden the viewpoints expressed by its members.
“There will be a wider perspective on issues to be discussed,” Henriksen said. “That’s seen as a good thing.”
