Opinion: Proposal needed fine-tuning, not rejection

Work on the results of the decennial census in New Mexico has gotten off to a rocky start, and the members of the newly appointed Citizen Redistricting Committee missed a golden opportunity to boost its legitimacy by demonstrating they are not afraid to be open about how they intend to represent all corners of the state.

After committee members were named, criticism came quickly from people with various points of view as well as those who live in the far-flung reaches of the state. It was apparent this group was not going to represent gender, geography, culture or occupation in New Mexico.

Among its seven members, just one is a woman; six are Albuquerque residents and the other one lives just down the river in Belen; and though four are Hispanic, not one is Native American, Black or Asian.

In fairness, some level of expertise and education is needed by the committee, and those choosing its members — especially those making the two Democratic and two Republican party appointments — almost certainly did not know who the others were considering. But still.

It’s too bad none of the appointees offered to step aside so the group could have been more representative of the state.

Moving on, as the committee worked on setting up its method of operation, its chairman, retired Supreme Court Justice Edward Chavez, proposed a rule in which its members would have to disclose information regarding private conversations about proposed district maps.

Criticism came quickly for this move toward transparency.

Committee members raised concern about discouraging participation by people who could not make it to public meetings to testify. And in a state this big it is a reasonable concern, though one wonders why these people would be willing to express their opinions publicly in a hearing but not want it known that they were trying to influence a committee member privately.

This is where the committee in simply rejecting the proposal missed an opportunity to build trust with the public. Though four of the seven appointments are made by political parties, the intent of redistricting is to create political boundaries that reflect the people who live within them as fairly as possible.

So the public deserves to know who is on the sidelines attempting to influence how the maps will be drawn.

Committee member Lisa Curtis, a Democrat and a former state senator, said the proposal went beyond what the law requires and treated the group’s work as a judicial proceeding.

She was correct in that the proposal did go pretty far. It would have barred “any private communication with any individual other than committee members, committee staff, or committee contractors, concerning any district plan or part of a district plan” and would have required “a detailed and accurate description of the communication, including the names of all parties to the communication and the district plan or the part of the district plan that is the subject of the communication.”

But rather than rejecting the proposal outright, the committee should have fine-tuned it, still leaving intact the required disclosure of who was involved in these discussions and a summary of the communication.

Instead, the committee gave New Mexicans one more reason to be suspicious of this process.

— Albuquerque Journal