WEST OLIVE, MI (WHTC-AM/FM) – While the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission is getting some heat for not being transparent, a local panel handling the same chores locally hopes not to make that same mistake.
The Ottawa County Apportionment Commission has a 5 PM meeting slated for today (Oct. 28, 2021) in the board room of the Fillmore Street Administration Building, as county clerk Justin Roebuck and four others have to decide, based on the 2020 US Census, how to evenly split the county for board representation.
“The law says that we have the option to select from five (county) commissioners to 21 commissioners,” Roebuck said during a recent appearance on “WHTC Talk of the Town.” “The commission is completely independent from the county board, so the commission can determine how many commissioners can be on the board, and to decide the district boundary lines.”
Roebuck, along with county treasurer Amanda Price, county prosecutor Lee Fisher, and party chairs Rett DeBoer (Republican) and Tim Smith (Democrat) meet one more time on November 8 before a November 15 deadline to submit the planned county board district lines with the Michigan Secretary of State’s office.
The public can watch the meeting live through this link.
The ICRC received criticism from many quarters for the panel’s decision to go into a closed-door session on Wednesday, citing the state’s Open Meetings Act that allow public entities to take such action to discuss legal opinions, property purchases/sales or collective bargaining updates. The commission had been created by voter approval of a petition initiative on the November, 2018 ballot with the intent by the initiative-creation group Voters Not Politicans of complete transparency.
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