Redistricting Panel Forwards 3 New Map Designs to Champaign Co. Board

The Champaign County Board will have three more maps with re-drawn board districts to consider when it meets Thursday night.

On a 9-to-2 vote, the county's redistricting commission has forwarded two revised maps from Champaign County's Regional Planning Commission, and one of two submitted by the Champaign County NAACP. The two 'no' votes came from Royal area Republican County Board member Ron Bensyl and public commission member Diana Herriott.

But the independent, 11-member panel declined to rank the approved plans known as 1F, 3D and NAACP design B in order of preference. Champaign County Board Democrat and commission member Michael Richards said his party's caucus still needs to review two of them.

"I would assume that if the NAACP likes map B, then the caucus will like it too, but that doesn't mean they won't like 3D," he said "We presumably will want to have a game plan going into Thursday. Right now there's no game plan from the Democrats as to which map we would prefer."

Redistricting commission chair Rick Winkel, a former Republican State Senator, said he would support any of the three.

"It's compact, it looks much better than earlier maps we were working with," Winkel said. "It meets the eyeball test and doesn't look like a map with all kinds of jigsaw puzzle parts. We had some concern about that. There was some criticism of the previous map. But I think it meets the criteria that the county board recommended to us."

Richards and County Board Democrat Alan Kurtz say both of those maps are compact, and contain a majority-minority district. But other commission members say the NAACP design weakens the rural vote. And 1F got its share of criticism for splitting Urbana into five districts. Two other maps were removed from consideration - one proposed by the NAACP, and the other by prior Democratic County Board Candidate Eric Thorsland.

Commission Chair Winkel said he would have preferred to examine one map at a time, but likes the low population deviation of the three designs forwarded to the Champaign County Board. But in case the board doesn't agree on one of them, the panel has tentatively set its next meeting for Wednesday, May 25th.