BEMIDJI — A district judge last week ordered Beltrami County to start over on its redistricting process after siding with a former county commissioner in a lawsuit over its handling.
The court will now appoint a five-person commission to form a new redistricting plan, with the two parties of the lawsuit required to confer on who will fill those seats. If no decisions are made by the parties within 21 days of receiving the Oct. 13 order, the court will make a decision on the commission’s makeup with a list of names from both parties.
In a judgment filed Thursday, Oct. 19, Ninth Judicial District Judge Christopher Strandlie opined that the Beltrami County Board applied the wrong legal assumption in choosing from one of seven map options drawn up by a redistricting committee in the spring of 2022.
“As a matter of law, while the Board ‘was not required to pick the plan with the lowest population deviation from the idea, it must explicitly address all of the statutory factors, particularly equal population’ to justify its selection of map proposal 2,” Strandlie’s ruling stated.
“ … In the present matter, there was nothing in the record to show that the Board’s selection of map proposal 2 was unavoidable when (the other proposals) had significantly lower population shifts.”
Strandlie wrote while former District 2 Commissioner Reed Olson stated on the record that state law allows for a “10% buffer” to “better group common communities together,” a previous court ruling found that population equity is the most important factor in county board redistricting.
Jim Lucachick, the former Beltrami County District 5 commissioner pursuing the suit, contends he was deliberately drawn out of his district by his fellow board members. He said the lawsuit proved the County Board did not follow state statute in its redistricting process.
“Minnesota statute clearly states that you will make populations as equal as possible,” Lucachick said in a phone interview. “That is the foundation of our lawsuit and that's the foundation of the finding, that there were four maps on the table, and they picked the worst one to meet that statute.”
Lucachick said he and his co-plaintiffs — 30 total, many of whom are his former constituents — have gone about the matter respectfully and will continue to do so.
“We're just saying the county board voted 3-2 the wrong way and the judge has given his decision,” he said.
Olson, who introduced the motion to adopt the proposed map last year, disagrees with Strandlie’s ruling and encouraged Beltrami County to appeal.
“I think we operated in good faith and came together with a good map,” Olson said by phone. “I've been in enough lawsuits as an elected official to see judges make some really weird decisions, where the remedy may sound good to them, but they’re operating in isolation, and we have to work in the real world.”
Olson also takes issue with the judge’s ruling allowing Lucachick and the rest of the dozens of plaintiffs an equal say in the new redistricting commission’s makeup.
“Who is Jim Lucachick representing? Himself. Who is the county representing? 46,000 souls,” Olson said. “Jim can say that this was wrong and needs to be redone, but that doesn’t mean he gets to put his thumb on the scale.”
The Beltrami County Board is anticipated to discuss this ruling in a closed meeting Oct. 30.
Coinciding with the U.S. Census every 10 years, government units must review their districts and draw new maps to make districts as even as possible. In Minnesota, the courts have historically handled drawing the state and congressional district maps.
Beltrami County’s redistricting committee included County Administrator Tom Barry, Auditor-Treasurer JoDee Treat and GIS Director Kevin Trappe. A number of maps were drawn in the spring of 2022, with Beltrami County required to wait until the Bemidji City Council finished its redistricting process. The city level redistricting also ended with a local elected official drawn out of his district.
Ward 3 council member Ron Johnson’s bids to continue serving on the council for the at-large position in 2022 and Ward 1 in 2023 were unsuccessful. Unlike the county’s redistricting laws, city law allows Johnson to continue serving Ward 3, even as a resident of the newly drawn Ward 1, until the end of his term, which ends in December 2024.
