The commission's Web site can be found at http://wedrawthelines.ca.gov/; the maps page is at http://wedrawthelines.ca.gov/maps-congress-working-draft.html .
The discussion was brought up as an emergency item at the Tuesday board meeting.
County Administrative Officer Kelly Cox, who – along with Supervisor Denise Rushing – went to Sacramento last Thursday to give testimony to the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, told the board, “I've been advised that we may have one last opportunity to provide input to the commission.”
He added, “I'd like to have a discussion with the board about what that input would be.”
After the board voted to take it up as an extra item, Rushing explained that she told the commission last week that she wanted to see Lake County kept whole in is congressional district, and have it continue to be joined with Napa County.
Rushing said she didn't like the commission's proposed congressional district map, which would split the county in half.
Supervisor Rob Brown said no one is going to be 100 percent happy with the results.
“There's no good scenario, there's just better scenarios,” he said.
Brown also stated his belief that having Lake County represented by two different members of Congress – especially two from different parties – would be beneficial.
Rushing said she and Cox were planning to go back to the commission's meeting this Thursday.
“It's pretty obvious that our voice as a county hasn't been heard at all,” she said, adding that it would have value if all five board members signed a letter voicing concern over the options.
Cox told the board that Lake County was being treated as a pawn in the process.
The board unanimously approved sending the letter, which Cox had prepared and submitted to them on Tuesday.
The letter to the commission questions the decision not to group Lake County with Napa County but instead to put it in the Yuba Congressional District, which includes several North Valley counties, including Colusa and Glenn.
“You concluded that you could not do this without dividing either Vallejo or Benecia if you wanted to keep Lake County whole,” the letter stated. “You did not want to divide Vallejo or Benecia.”
Cox's letter went on to explain that the commission had asked county leaders if they would consider splitting Lake County so that Fairfield could be made whole within the Yuba district.
When Cox and Rushing appeared before the commission last week, they said the county preferred to remain whole but they offered a proposal that would have seen Lakeport, Middletown, Soda Bay, Clear Lake Riviera, Kelseyville, Upper Lake, Nice, Lucerne and Clearlake Oaks remaining with Napa, while Clearlake, Hidden Valley Lake, Lower Lake and Spring Valley would be whole within Yuba.
However, the commission never discussed that congressional districting option, which the county is asking be considered before the congressional maps are finalized.
Rushing told Lake County News in a Tuesday afternoon interview that when she spoke to the commission last week she emphasized that if Lake County wasn't kept intact it should at least be grouped with counties to the south or to the west, not to the east.
“I don't believe that this redistricting commission is really considering the interest of Lake County and the affinity of Lake County,” Rushing said.
She pointed out that the county fought long and hard to leave the North Central Counties Consortium, which had grouped it into a workforce investment area with several valley counties with which it would be grouped in the proposed congressional districting.
“We have very little in common with them other than the border in the middle of the mountains,” she said.
Lake County is both isolated and unique, and home to the headwaters for three watersheds. Rushing said Lake County has much more in common with Napa, with which it now shares a new workforce investment area, as well as the premium winegrape growing industry.
“I really dislike the idea of splitting Lake County but I think it would be better to do that than have us intact over in the valley,” she said.
Congressman Mike Thompson has indicated to county officials that if part of the county ends up in another district, he will still continue to promote all of Lake County, said Rushing.
Rushing is worried about losing Thompson as the county's representative in Congress, because she said he has been extremely responsive to the county's unique issues, from wine to geothermal- and lake-related matters.
She's going to offer her own alternative map to the commission that would have the county divided on a line that follows Highway 29 from north of Middletown up past Lower Lake, cutting across the lake to Glenhaven and then over to Clearlake Oaks and north through the mountains.
This Thursday's redistricting commission meeting will be Rushing's fourth.
At her first, in Santa Rosa on May 20, she said she was speaker No. 55 in a room lined with NAACP and the Urban League members holding signs to protect some proposed redistricting options in Southern California that they believe would disenfranchise black voters.
“We are a small blip on the radar,” she said.
This Thursday's meeting will be broadcast live on the commission's Web site from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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