CENSUS DATA raises redistricting concerns in Delta.

Redistricters hear worries about population dip’s effects on region’s future clout

Concern about 2020 U.S. Census results was high Thursday during the state Board of Apportionment meeting in Phillips County, where several officials and residents voiced worries about how the reported population drop would affect the state’s Delta region.

The raw census results released that afternoon were being processed by the state, Shelby Johnson, geographic information officer for the Arkansas Geographic Information Systems Office, told those at the hearing held at Phillips County Community College in Helena-West Helena.

“Unfortunately, in this decade, the pandemic has wreaked havoc on the delivery schedule on the census data,” he said.

Census results, which usually are delivered months earlier, will be used by the Board of Apportionment to redraw legislative districts. It has been using 2019 census data for projections and the information has uncovered a glaring trend.

“The rural areas are becoming less populated and the urban areas are becoming more populated,” Johnson said.

The 2019 estimates showed rural Phillips County had lost more than 4,000 people over the past decade, but the final 2020 census numbers might be even higher. The raw data released Thursday showed that Phillips County’s population dropped from 21,757 in 2010 to 16,568 in 2020, a 23.8% drop.

Kevin Smith, the mayor of Helena-West Helena and a former state senator, claims the census data was historically flawed and said there needed to be talk of a recount.

“I have been part of the census in the past and there has always been an undercount in some areas, but this was epically bad,” he said. “The data which upon this is based has to be the worst data in the history of the Republic. I say that as an office that coordinated closely with the U.S. Census Bureau, but between covid, the politics coming out of Washington, D.C., the timing and all the other issues you already know about it, this really is historically bad.”

Smith said the rural areas of the state are always underrepresented but these census results were too drastic. He said he knew the Board of Apportionment’s duties were to follow the census data, but he also wanted the members to tell the public what options they had if they wanted a recount.

“Point out to the folks that these numbers represent the census and that the census was unbelievable bad, the public needs to understand that,” he said. “Their power is being diminished because of it and all those things we told them when we told them to go do the census is now coming home to roost but we made it very difficult. Now, the whole state is going suffer, not just our area.”

Bradford Nye, a representative for the attorney general’s office, said there were concerns regarding the response rate to the 2020 census, but when it comes to a recount, board members’ hands are tied.

“The Arkansas Constitution limits us to the data we get from the U.S. Census Bureau,” he said. “Any remedy for a recount would have to come from the [Census Bureau] and I don’t know if there is an appetite in Washington right now for that to happen.”

Phillips County’s county judge, Clark Hall, asked the board, when it begins redrawing legislative districts, to keep the county intact and not split it between districts.

“We need to make sure we are whole in order to enhance our opportunity to create economic development and to stabilize the population of this county,” he said. “If not, we will continue to lose population.”

Robert Lawson, a Wynne resident in Cross County, requested the board fix the lines created a decade ago.

“Ten years ago, there was clear gerrymander,” he said. “Wynne was taken out of the rest of Cross County and put in another district. The rest of Cross County, that does everything in Wynne, which is the county seat, was separated from us. Wynne and Cross County go hand and hand, and we would like to be in the same House district.”

Several other participants also asked that the Board of Apportionment start its process on the eastern side of the state so the Delta region wouldn’t be cut up into several pieces late in the process.

Betty Dickey, coordinator of the Board of Apportionment and former Arkansas chief justice, told those attending that once the board has finished its work, the public would have 30 days to submit their input before the map was finalized.