by Doug Thompson, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

August 18, 2021

FORT SMITH — Mayor George McGill asked the state to try its best not to disrupt the Fort Smith legislative delegation, telling staff of the state Board of Apportionment the existing delegation is both diverse and effective.

The state Board of Apportionment will try to draw new legislative districts as close to equal in population as possible, staff said at a public hearing Tuesday at the Smith-Pendergraft Campus Center at the University of Arkansas, Fort Smith. Equal districts will mean 100 state House districts with about 30,000 residents each. The state’s 35 Senate districts will have about 85,000 each.

Protecting incumbents is a factor in redistricting decisions, board coordinator Betty Dickey told McGill. “The people elected them,” she said. The board will avoid drawing two sitting legislators into the same district and having them run against each other, she said, but no promises can be made this early in the process.

The apportionment board’s job is to redraw legislative districts every 10 years, using federal census data to ensure each district has roughly the same population. The board consists of the governor, the attorney general, and the secretary of state. Dickey is a former Arkansas Supreme Court chief justice appointed by the board. She presided over Tuesday’s meeting, one of a series of public hearings around the state to hear resident’s requests and to answer questions.

McGill also took the opportunity to ask that Fort Smith remains in the 3rd Congressional District, although the state Legislature will draw those boundaries. Fort Smith is part of the fast-growing Northwest Arkansas region, shares many of the same issues, and wants unified representation, he said.

Mireya Reith of Arkansas United, an immigrants rights group, asked the board to render more of its information in Spanish and other languages to accommodate the state’s non-English-speaking residents in the process. Shelby Johnson, board staff member, and state Geographic Information Officer said the latest census data shows a 70,000-person increase in the state’s Hispanic population since the last census. The staff is working on getting out information in Spanish but he could not give Reith an estimated date.

The census shows the number of people in Benton County’s legislative districts has grown even more lopsided than originally estimated by the staff, Johnson said. For instance, the ideal House district size is a little more than 30,000, but House District 90 has 43,865 residents and House District 93 has 43,653, and District 91 has 43,643. All three are in Benton County. Those are also the top three overstuffed House districts in the state, according to these latest figures.

Read the full article HERE.

The post Please Protect Fort Smith’s Legislative Delegation, Mayor Asks Apportionment Board appeared first on Arkansas Department of Transformation and Shared Services.