TORRINGTON – With less than a month before the state budget session, the Joint Corporations Committee met on Tuesday to work on more changes to the redistricting plan.
During the last meeting on Dec. 14, the committee approved a draft of the state house district map, but a few areas still needed to be tweaked.
House Majority Leader Albert Sommers, R-Pinedale, proposed a plan for Region 10 (Lincoln, Sublette, Teton, Uinta) while co-chairman of the committee, Sen. Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower presented a new plan for Region 6 (Campbell, Crook, Weston).
Driskill’s plan, which featured keeping Weston County whole, implicated changes in Region 7 (Converse, Goshen, Niobrara, Platte) as well.
The previously agreed upon state plan split Weston similarly to the current map while also having a diagonal line through Goshen County just above Fort Laramie, Lingle and Torrington. Driskill’s regional map kept the diagonal line but also required a district from Laramie County to go along the Nebraska border outside of Torrington and also all the way up to before Yoder.
The committee has received several testimonies from Weston County commissioners including in the last meeting about why the county should remain whole. Weston County Commissioner Chairwoman Marty Ertman said the county’s population should equal 0.71 of a representative, which would be right around the distribution for Weston with the new regional plan. Ertman said the county’s request has had some pushback and added it was if they “asked to move the capital to Newcastle.”
Ertman also said keeping Weston County whole with Niobrara County meets the ideals created by the committee.
“Looking at the numbers and keeping with the guidelines that this committee set forth keeping Weston with Niobrara together fits perfectly within those ideals, but that too was dismissed with testimony that Weston County would then hold 69% of the voting population and theoretically Weston would run the tables over Niobrara,” Ertman said. “To which I would gently pushback.”
Ertman added Weston has been split for a long time with plenty of representation – including currently – outside of the county.
“History tells us that the voters choose the best candidate regardless,” Ertman said.
Niobrara County Commissioner Chairman Pat Wade spoke against the proposed plan stating the county clerks of Region 7 did the work asked of them by the committee but the new plan disregards it. Wade also said candidates will not have to go to Niobrara County during election season since Weston County will hold an overwhelming majority of the district’s votes.
“A representative that was elected out of Weston County wouldn’t even need to ever pass-through Niobrara County other than to come down [to Cheyenne],” Wade said. “They wouldn’t need our votes; they wouldn’t need Goshen County’s votes.”
Wade also told the committee he was speaking on behalf of all counties with small population in the state.
“We’re getting pushed around here in this part of the world in eastern Wyoming. We’re getting crowded from the north and we’re getting crowded from the south,” Wade said.
Keeping Weston whole will also require changes to be made in the south, specifically with Goshen County having to shed some population to Laramie County.
Sharing southern Goshen County with Laramie County has been a contentious issue in most of the meetings with a general agreement to not let it happen. Rep. Shelly Duncan also mentioned Driskill’s plan keeps the “arm” which goes all the way up to the prison and is one of the two major changes requested from the people of Goshen County.
“The two primary goals of Goshen County was to correct Torrington because it was split into three different pieces and then to get rid of that arm that goes down the side,” Duncan said. “This map in particular does not fix the arm. It fixes the circle around Torrington… but it doesn’t fix the arm, so that right away is an issue.”
Duncan also said a map proposal which had Fort Laramie with Platte County was more palatable for Goshen than sharing with Laramie despite having to split the county three ways.
A motion was made by Driskill to determine whether or not to force Weston to stay whole which was voted down. However, the committee approved Driskill’s overall regional plan with friendly amendments to take the prison out of Laramie County’s district, redraw the line from Yoder to now Hawk Springs, and to allow county clerks in Region 6 and 7 to adjust the lines to avoid unnecessary splits.
Senator Cale Case, R-Lander, clarified to the audience the first motion proposed to force Weston to stay whole while the second motion with the plan allows it to be whole.
The committee also discussed plans for the senate district map. Some areas such as Laramie County possibly having 10.5 representatives brought up talks about moving away from “nesting” house districts in some cases. Co-chairman Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne, reminded the committee Wyoming is one of four states which are not required to do nesting but do so anyway.
The committee scheduled another meeting on Jan. 12, in Casper before the upcoming budget session.
