PORT ANGELES — The Clallam County Districting Commission has extended to Monday a deadline on a request for proposals for a districting master.
The districting master will propose new boundaries for the three county commissioner districts based on the results of the 2020 U.S. Census.
No applications were received by the March 4 deadline. The Districting Commission held a special meeting Wednesday and extended the deadline to noon this coming Monday.
The request for proposals and job description are available on the county website, www.clallam.net.
Clallam County Charter requires the Districting Commission to hire a districting master by March 15.
“Unfortunately, as you’re all aware, the charter gives no wiggle room on that,” Civil Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Elizabeth Stanley said in the special meeting Wednesday.
“It states that the districting master has to be hired by March 15. I think it’s clear that up to this point, all efforts have been made to do that.
“It’s way outside of the county’s control that no one responded to the RFP,” Stanley added, “but it’s been well documented that there was a formal attempt to comply with that deadline.”
The five-member Districting Commission will review any applications received by the new deadline and possibly make a selection at its next meeting at 2:30 p.m. Monday.
Members of the commission brainstormed possible candidates for districting master. The 2011 districting masters were Gene Unger and Don Corson, both of whom will be approached for the vacancy.
“The solicitation of bids from this list of people to attempt to round someone up in the next week shows further attempt to comply with that March 15 deadline,” Stanley said.
“There’s nothing that says is if the districting master isn’t hired by March 15, the work of the Districting Commission would be void on its face or anything like that,” she added.
“If, down the road, someone was unhappy with how the new district lines are drawn, they could have the potential remedy of suing.”
Stanley said the issue of a charter county failing to hire a districting master by its deadline had never been litigated. Clallam County will have a well-documented history of its attempts to comply with the charter, she said.
“I think part the explanation does also relate to the pandemic,” Stanley said, referring to COVID-19.
The districting master must have technical expertise to develop at least three options for district boundaries that will divide the county into three areas of similar population.
The population of the largest district cannot exceed the population of the smallest district by more than 5 percent, and voting precincts must remain within the same district to the maximum extent possible, according to the charter.
Commissioner districts are divided by north-south borders in Clallam County.
County officials have said the boundaries would likely shift to the east this year, as they did in 1991, 2001 and 2011, because of population growth in the Sequim area.
The redistricting process is expected to be delayed this year because of a lag in the dissemination of federal census data caused by COVID-19.
“The census data will not even be available for approximately six months, so it really seems like there will be no practical implications of this,” Stanley said.
“So while it would be best to comply with the charter, I think in the long run it seems like the Districting Commission is doing a very thorough job of attempting to comply with that, and if we are unable to, I don’t think there will be any negative implications in the long run.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at rollikainen@peninsula dailynews.com.
