Shirley offers 10 options for a 24-member council
(Times photo - Leigh T. Jimmie)
Delegate Leonard Tsosie (Whitehorse Lake/Pueblo Pintado/Torreon), left, sits in the front row at a meeting about proposed reapportionment plans Tuesday at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock.
By Jason Begay
Navajo Times
WINDOW ROCK, Jan. 14, 2010
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President Joe Shirley Jr. is shopping around 10 reapportionment plans showing alternative ways a 24-member council could be distributed throughout the Navajo Nation.
In 11 public meetings that began Monday and will be held throughout the reservation, Shirley's representatives are explaining the proposals and fielding concerns and comments.
Six of the plans call for adding a sixth agency and assigning four at-large council seats to each agency. The location and configuration of the sixth agency varies from plan to plan.
Reapportionment meetingsPresident Joe Shirley Jr. has scheduled a series of public meetings to discuss maps that show possible ways to reapportion council districts for a 24-member council. Meetings were held Monday in Shiprock, Tuesday in Window Rock and Wednesday in Crownpoint. The meetings continue throughout the month. Future meetings are scheduled as follows:
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Two plans group chapters by population, using 2000 Census data, to form 24 districts each represented by one delegate. Under this plan, the largest chapters - Chinle, Tó Nanees Dizí and Shiprock - would each get one delegate.
"We kept the chapter boundaries and we tried to keep the agency boundaries," said Arbin Mitchell, Division of Community Development director, who helped draft the plans with other Shirley staffers. "In some cases, we had to cross over."
Though Shirley was not present at Tuesday's meeting at the Navajo Nation Museum, several of his staffers and appointees attended. The maps were presented and described by Mitchell. Around 75 people attended the meeting.
The reapportionment plans represent the next step after voters approved ballot initiatives to reduce the council and expand the president's veto power. Results of the Dec. 15 special election have not been certified pending a complaint filed by a group of voters. A hearing on the complaint has been set for Thursday, Jan. 21.
Although there has been some dispute as to when the council reduction would actually take effect - some have said reapportionment could not be completed until the 2014 election - Shirley is pushing to get a new map in place for this year's election.
Under Navajo Nation law, the Navajo Board of Election Supervisors is in charge of drafting and approving such maps. The Navajo Nation Council has final approval over the plan chosen.
There is no prohibition on anyone else offering proposals, but formal responsibility to act resides with the election board and the council.
Council Delegate Leonard Tsosie (Pueblo Pintado/Torreon/Whitehorse Lake), a vocal supporter of council reduction, said he plans to have all 10 of Shirley's maps offered in separate pieces of legislation.
Tsosie plans to present the plans to the election board today and to the full council during its winter session, which begins Jan. 25.
No plans to act fast
NBOES Chairman Larry Biltah said the board has no plans to undertake reapportionment at this time. According to tribal law, reapportionment is done every 10 years following the most recent U.S. Census. When new data from the 2010 Census becomes available in the next year or two, that's the time to do reapportionment, Biltah said.
"We haven't had a part in any of it yet," Biltah said of Shirley's proposals. "I don't know exactly what they're doing, but we'll see what happens (at today's meeting). I'm looking forward to that."
The first plan presented at Tuesday's meeting, and the map most favored by Shirley, would group chapters based on population. In this plan, the larger chapters would get their own delegate, easing concerns that they would swallow their smaller neighbors when electing shared delegates.
Mitchell said the plans were drafted using 2000 Census data, which reported that 175,232 people lived on the reservation. Divided evenly by 24, this would mean each council district should have about 7,300 voting members.
Chinle, Shiprock and Tuba City each had more 8,000 registered voters in 2000, meaning they would easily qualify for their own delegates.
The remaining chapters are grouped based on population and location. For instance, one district would group Tachee, Tselani, Nazlini, Low Mountain, Jeddito and Steamboat chapters, and would have 7,728 voters.
However, Mitchell admitted that this plan leaves out urban tribal members. Perhaps, he suggested, the council could include two non-voting delegates to voice the concerns of Navajos living in cities like Phoenix, Albuquerque and Salt Lake City.
At least one attendee argued that using decade-old data is unacceptable. Mitchell acknowledged the concern, but proponents of doing reapportionment now say any inequalities could easily be fixed once the new numbers are released.
Tsosie said the 24-member council could revise the district boundaries using 2010 Census data when it becomes available, likely in 2012.
"Let the next group of 24 worry about that," Tsosie said.
Tsosie said the numbers may change, but the reservation has not seen any major population shifts in the past decade.
"There's a little variation, but nothing big," he said.
Different paths to goal
Under Shirley's preferred plan, some districts would have slightly fewer than the target number of voters, such as the district to include White Cone, Greasewood Springs, Teesto, Indian Wells and Dilkon, which would have 6,802 voters, about 500 under the ideal number.
Another potential problem is how to handle the satellite chapters - Tóhajiilee, Ramah and Alamo - which under one proposal would be grouped together with Baca-Prewitt to form a 6,078-voter district.
The satellites are far from the mother ship and far from each other - Ramah is a two-hour drive from Tóhajiilee and nearly four hours from Alamo.
Mitchell said the plans are open to public comment. He welcomed new ideas to revise and address concerns regarding the maps.
Another popular notion was to divide the reservation into six agencies. One plan would create a Southwest Agency made up of Birdsprings, Leupp and Tolani Lake from the Western Agency, and Dilkon, Teesto, Indian Wells, White Cone and Greasewood Springs from the Fort Defiance Agency.
A separate version of this plan would stretch the Southwest Agency from Cameron and Coalmine Mesa chapters in far Western Navajo, to Kinlichee and Oak Springs, bordering Fort Defiance.
Other plans would create a Utah Agency. One version includes a disjointed agency grouping Navajo Mountain, Mexican Water, Red Mesa, Teec Nos Pos, Oljato and Aneth chapters, which don't connect on a map but are all located mostly in Utah.
Another plan would add Kayenta, Dennehotso, Shonto and Ts'ah Bii Kin chapters to the suggested Utah Agency.
The team also drafted maps using IHS service areas as a basis, but Mitchell acknowledged that it produced less than optimal results.
"They use eight districts, the numbers aren't really there," he said.
