The community battle over San Luis Obispo County’s redistricting might finally be reaching a truce.
After more than a year in court, SLO County and two citizen groups announced a settlement agreement on March 24 that sets the stage for the county to repeal and replace its disputed Patten map, which made dramatic changes to the county’s supervisorial district boundaries.
According to the signed agreement, the Board of Supervisors must repeal the Patten map and adopt a new district map that’s “compliant” with state and federal laws by May 15. Both actions are agendized for an April 18 board meeting.
The settlement also sends $300,000 in county funds to the plaintiff groups for their attorney costs.
“This is a very solid path forward to right an egregious insult to the voting public of San Luis Obispo County,” 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson told New Times. “No remedy or solution is perfect, but the path that we are on is the best possible path we have.”
The resolution comes three months after a new Board of Supervisors majority agreed to enter into settlement talks with the SLO County Citizens for Good Government and League of Women Voters of SLO County, which sued to overturn the Patten map, alleging that it gerrymandered the districts to favor Republicans and disenfranchised voters.
The Patten map, according to its critics, served to “pack” the county’s Democratic voters into two districts, giving Republicans an edge in three districts, while it sent tens of thousands of voters into new districts and election cycles.
Linda Seifert, a board member with Citizens for Good Government, told New Times that she was “very pleased” with the outcome and added that Gibson’s 13-vote election victory last year marked the turning point in the case, as it solidified the board’s new majority.
“Once Bruce Gibson’s election was resolved, I know we all felt pretty optimistic that we might have a good chance of reaching a settlement with the county,” Seifert said. “The new majority did appear to be strongly in favor of having a new map in place.”
At the upcoming April 18 meeting, the Board of Supervisors will discuss three alternative maps to potentially replace the Patten map. All three were considered in 2021 as finalists during the redistricting deliberations, and all three made only minor changes to the county map from 2011.
“All of them meet the criteria we set out: to have fair districts that will give everyone a voice in their government,” Seifert said.
Two of the maps—Map A and Map B—were drawn by a county consultant, and the third map—the Chamber map—was drawn by the SLO Chamber of Commerce.
The board could theoretically consider another map, Gibson said, but doing so would likely prolong the process. The agreement, as it’s written, sets a May 15 deadline, which is meant to get a map in place before the 2024 election cycle, Seifert said.
“Certainly, working toward getting a new map in effect as soon as possible was among the goals we had in our settlement efforts,” she said. “Candidates [for 2024] will likely begin to emerge sometime this summer.”
If a new map is adopted, the overhaul would once again move thousands of county voters into new districts and election cycles. Because the county held the 2022 elections using the Patten map, some citizens whose votes were deferred for two years in 2022 would be deferred yet again in 2024 under a new map.
“That’s on the old board majority,” Gibson asserted. “There’s no easy and immediate remedy that solves all the problems that the adoption of the Patten map created.”
According to county officials, the $300,000 payment to the plaintiffs for their attorney fees is likely less than the amount the court would’ve ordered the county to pay if the case had moved to trial. County Counsel Rita Neal pegged the plaintiffs’ total legal costs to be “anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million, or more.”
Seifert told New Times that Citizens for Good Government paid a San Francisco-area law firm a discounted rate for its services, so the settlement will go toward making the firm whole. She thanked the Citizens’ nearly 3,000 donors who contributed to the redistricting fight over the past year and a half.
“I will be eternally and forever appreciative and grateful for the numerous people who agreed with the cause and were wiling to donate their hard-earned dollars to make sure we were able to proceed,” she said. “The cost of democracy is not cheap. It’s expensive and painstaking. And when you have runaway supervisors who don’t follow the law, it’s very expensive on both sides.” Δ
This article appears in Mar 30 – Apr 9, 2023.