Committee to Begin Discussing Redistricting Maps Next Week

The Nebraska Legislature’s redistricting committee set a schedule Thursday to discuss proposals for redrawing district lines, despite a disagreement about whether those discussions should be held in public.

Redistricting Committee Chair Sen. Lou Ann Linehan wants the committee to meet starting Tuesday to consider maps redrawing district lines to reflect last year’s census. Linehan wants to do that in executive session, closed to the public but open to the media. Sen. Carol Blood, a prospective Democratic candidate for governor, wants the meetings open to the public.

“I think it’s important that the entire process when it comes to redistricting be available to the public – that we be completely transparent because it’s really hard to explain to constituents how something happened when they don’t see it for themselves. But more importantly, I don’t think we should allow for revisionist history where people can sit in on that meeting and then come to the (legislative) floor and say something else happened,” Blood said.

Linehan, a registered Republican in the officially nonpartisan Legislature, said she’s concerned if the meetings are opened, representatives of political parties and others will spin the proceedings.

“Different groups would show up that want to affect the narrative and they would sit here and tweet… And that’s the way things run now when you let (the) public in. They sit there and they tweet like they would take something I said or Sen. Briese said or Sen. Lathrop said, and take it out of context and tweet it out to the world and then that becomes the narrative,” Linehan said.

The committee of five Republicans and four Democrats has to vote each time it wants to go into executive session. Linehan said she wants to have maps proposals approved by a majority of the committee by next Friday. The Legislature’s special redistricting session begins the following Monday, when any senator can propose alternative plans.

Linehan said there will be public hearings on the committee’s proposals Tuesday the 14th in Grand Island, Wednesday the 15th in Lincoln, and Thursday the 16th in Omaha. If other proposals are introduced, the hearing on them will be held Friday the 17th. The full Legislature will then debate the bills, with the goal of finishing up by the end of the month.