ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

This is the group of residents — seven Democrats and seven Republicans — tasked with redrawing ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County Council districts based on population shifts since the last census a decade ago. Such groups meet in cities, counties and statehouses every 10 years to redraw political boundaries. In too many places, the process is colored by politics, with incumbent politicians — or their allies — designing districts less for fairness and more for political advantage.

The commission in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County has reached an impasse before a single bit of data has been crunched or a line on a map drawn. It started at the first meeting, Aug. 19, after the group elected co-chairs — John Bowman is the Democrat, Becky Arps the Republican. During public comment, a man named Patrick Fox testified that one of the Republicans on the commission, Amy Poelker, isn’t qualified to serve under the county charter.

that appointees to the reapportionment commission “shall hold no other public office or employment.� Poelker announced at the first meeting that she is an alderman in Ward 2 in the city of St. Ann. That got Fox’s attention.

“The charter specifies you can’t hold public office,� Fox said.

Poelker, it turns out, isn’t alone. Another Republican on the commission, Curtis Faulkner, is a member of the board of the Special School District of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County. After the issue was brought up, Bowman read the charter, talked the issue over with his fellow Democrats and asked Arps if the two Republicans would resign so they could be replaced with members who qualified for the position.

Bowman didn’t want to be in a situation where the commission drew maps that could get tossed out because the commission was improperly constructed.

“The charter is very simple,â€� said Bowman, who is president of the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County NAACP. “It’s not complicated. It clearly states that you cannot hold another elected office and be a commissioner.â€�

In fact, the same provision already had tripped up one of the Democrats who had been appointed to the commission by ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County Executive Sam Page. The executive chooses from a list put forward by the central committees of each of the two major political parties. One of the Democrats he originally appointed was Jean Pretto of Oakville. But when Pretto read the charter, she realized she wasn’t qualified to serve. She’s on the Mehlville School Board. She withdrew her nomination, and Page replaced her.

The Republicans, on the other hand, have no plans to resign, says Arps.

She said that she doesn’t believe the provision applies to Poelker and Faulkner.

“They are appropriately seated,� Arps said. “They’ve been sworn in.�

The impasse led Bowman to cancel the commission’s September meeting. Bowman figures that won’t bother the Republicans too much. In the past couple of iterations of the commission, the two slates of party representatives couldn’t come to agreement on maps, and the final maps were instead drawn by judges. Arps blames Bowman for the slowdown.

“We really have a short time frame,� she said.

This is the tragedy of reapportionment battles in too many states. It’s why, for instance, a group called Reform ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ is seeking to pass a ballot initiative in the city of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ to take the reapportionment of aldermanic wards out of politicians’ hands entirely. The proposal is similar to the statewide Clean Missouri initiative that passed in 2018 but was scrapped by voters two years later when Republicans in the Legislature placed a misleading initiative on the statewide ballot. The idea behind such reforms is to draw fair legislative districts that aren’t gerrymandered by whichever political party happens to have the most sway.

In states that don’t have truly nonpartisan processes to redraw legislative districts, politicians of whichever party happens to have an advantage often draw skewed maps to benefit incumbents. In Illinois, it’s Democrats who of such a process. In the state of Missouri, it’s often Republicans.

In this case, Bowman has no clue what the final maps will look like, he just wants a commission of people who can legally serve. When the Republicans refused to resign, he asked for help from Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, who is now considering filing a legal action, called a quo warranto, to remove the two Republicans from the commission.

“There is no gray area here,� says Bell, who is a Democrat. “The language in the charter is clear. It’s not like this is political. If the two Republicans are removed, they will be replaced with two Republicans.�

Faulkner, in an interview after a version of this column published online, called the dispute “a folly about nothing.� He said he hadn’t heard from anybody who suggested he needed to resign.

Poelker had a different reaction. She resigned Thursday afternoon after a conversation with Bell in which, according to Bell, she said she understood the charter explanation he provided and didn’t want to be an obstacle to the commission’s work.