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Cook County redistricting process nears end but not without disagreementsMonday, June 11, 2012 Chicago Muckrakers by Chicago Reporter The Cook County board is winding down the once-a-decade task of redrawing district boundaries, a process based on new racial data from the 2010 U.S. Census.
The Chicago Tribune reported Sunday that the board's redistricting committee will meet Friday to consider a new map.
The committee will discuss the map county staff put together and disclosed on May 30. In it, Latinos pick up three districts in which they'd become the majority population.
In addition, it would retain the five majority African American districts.
Three other maps were proposed at public hearings: one by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education fund, another by the NAACP, and an alternative map proposed by 1st District Commissioner Earlean Collins.
Only the staff map was introduced as an ordinance, though, so that's the map on the table for the committee to examine, said Commissioner Larry Suffredin, of Evanston.
But, any of the other proposed maps could be tacked on to the staff map as amendments, which means the official map could be tweaked based on boundaries in the alternative maps.
Fourteen of the 17 commissioners have sponsored the staff map in its current form--Suffredin is not one of them.
He said on Sunday that he is studying all of the maps and is still shaping his opinion, adding he doesn't want to rush to "jump onto a map".
"We need to make sure it fairly reflects the legal requirements of the U.S. Consitution and the Voting Rights Act," Suffredin said.
The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform also recently called on the county board to be more transparent about the process.
The county's remapping process has gone relatively smoothly, though, considering the fireworks at the state level, and how angry some city residents were over the new ward boundaries.
One of the few hiccups is a disagreement between Collins and neighboring 2nd District Commissioner Robert Steele over placing their West Side districts farther south, which Collins pitched in her map.
Collins told Mark Brown of the Chicago Sun-Times she wants the two districts farther south because population shifts over the next 10 years could see the loss of one of the five predominantly black districts.
She insists she's not running for re-election, so the map she pitched is not designed to serve her in any way.
But Brown pointed out another "school of thought" some commissioners have about Collins' intentions: some feel she may run again in 2014. Collins has said she's quitting in the past and not followed through with it. And she could be worried that an increase in the district's white population could hurt her come election time if she decided to give it a go again.
The redistricting committee will rendezvous on Friday at 10 a.m. If the board OKs a map, it could vote to approve it at its June 19 meeting.
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