Belfast redistricting receives legal nod

BELFAST – Three legal authorities have determined that the city charter provisions on redistricting must be enforced.

City Clerk Roberta Fogg informed the City Council last week that the state Attorney General’s Office, the Maine Municipal Association and City Attorney William Kelly each have found that the city charter makes it clear that the council must reapportion the city’s five voting wards to balance their populations equally.

A redistricting proposal is before the council and is listed among the items of business the council will discuss when it meets Tuesday night.

Fogg requested the advice at the behest of the council. Under the plan, Ward 4 Councilor Mike Rauch and Ward 5 Councilor Anita Robertson no longer will reside in the wards they were elected to represent.

The new boundaries placed Rauch in Ward 3 and Robertson in Ward 4. Rauch’s term expires in 2005 and Robertson’s this fall.

After a conversation with Assistant Attorney General William Laubenstein, chief of the general government division, Fogg reported that she was told that because the charter specifically states that the council “shall” be responsible for redrawing the ward boundaries, the provisions of the charter must be adhered to.

“Since the city charter requires the reapportionment and since the charter is the prevailing law the City Council must follow, we are subject to reapportionment,” Fogg informed the council.

MMA legal services attorney Richard P. Flewelling, responding to the same question, informed Fogg that the city must reapportion its five wards to balance their population numbers.

“The current answer is ‘yes’ because the city charter itself presently requires it,” Flewelling informed Fogg by letter.

Kelly also advised that redistricting was needed. He said to ignore the provisions of the charter would jeopardize coming council decisions because the legality of its makeup could be open to challenge.

“Failure of the council to follow the mandated procedures would leave the council open to attack as not having been elected under the proper procedures,” wrote Kelly.

The council wanted to know whether the city’s “hybrid” ward system, in which council members are elected by ward but also at-large, required reapportionment under state law.

“Belfast’s ward system, though a ‘hybrid’ in the sense that all of the voters participate in the election of each ward councilor, nonetheless fits the description given in the statute,” the MMA’s Flewelling wrote.

Under the city charter, voting wards must be redistricted within 18 months of the official publication of the results of the decennial census. The census was last taken in 2000 and the official publication of the results was released to the state a year ago.

While the former charter called for “periodic” reapportionment, the current charter, which was revised and adopted by the voters in 2002, tied reapportionment to the census. It also specifically states that redistricting must conform to state law.

Under the city’s system, candidates run at-large to represent the ward in which they reside. In order to ensure fair representation, each ward is expected to be comparable in size. The 2000 census set the city’s population at 6,831. When divided by the city’s five voting wards, the ideal population for each should be 1,276. Ward 5 now has 1,720 residents and Ward 4 has 1,318. The redistricting plan on the table reconfigured the five wards to equal population.