New year, new try at aldermanic boundaries
Council up against clock to rework vetoed plan
The Milwaukee Common Council will take another run at redrawing the boundaries of the city’s 15 aldermanic districts early next year.
The continued effort follows a Dec. 14 council vote to sustain then-Mayor Tom Barrett’s veto of a proposed district map that the council had overwhelmingly approved just weeks earlier.
Officials cited concerns raised by Latino leaders about the map’s representation of the burgeoning community that now makes up about 20% of the city’s population.
The council is on an expedited timeline to approve new boundaries due to pandemic-related delays in releasing the once-a-decade U.S. census data and a lengthy Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors redistricting process that cut into municipalities’ time.
The final boundaries will define the city’s aldermanic districts for the next 10 years.
The city’s previously rejected map had two Latino-majority aldermanic districts (Districts 8 and 12) and two considered “districts of influence” for the Latino community (Districts 13 and 14).
There had been calls for further effort to draw a third Latino-majority district on the city’s south side, but it was not clear that the population shifts would make that possible.
The new proposed map reflects small shifts from the rejected map in the Latino population in Aldermanic Districts 13 and 14 on the city’s south side. Neither the new proposal nor two other potential maps included with the legislation create a Latino majority in either district.
The new proposal would increase the Latino population in District 13 from 29.2% in the rejected map to 36.4% but would decrease the Latino population in District 14 from 33.8% in the rejected map to 26.6%.
The voting-age population would shift in District 13 from 25.6% Latino under the rejected map to 32.6% and in District 14 from 28.1% Latino to 21.6%.
The new proposal will be taken up on Jan. 10 by the council’s Judiciary and Legislation Committee, which has been overseeing the redistricting process with technical assistance from the city’s Legislative Reference Bureau.
The current goal is to have a new map approved by the committee and go before the full council at its regular Jan. 18 meeting.
The effort to finally adopt a map early next year comes amid changes at City Hall.
That includes the departure of former Mayor Tom Barrett to become U.S.
ambassador to Luxembourg and the rise of Common Council President Cavalier Johnson to become acting mayor.
Johnson cannot vote on the council while serving as acting mayor.
He and District 14 Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic are also in the race to fill the remaining two years of Barrett’s term, with a primary on Feb. 15 and the election on April 5.
If either were to win the right to lead the city after the redistricting plan is adopted, state law dictates that a special election to fill the vacant council seat be held in the aldermanic district with the boundaries in place today.
Milwaukee is not alone in fielding challenges to its proposed district boundaries over concerns about their effect on the voting power of communities of color. In some cases, states like Texas and North Carolina are facing litigation.
Wisconsin in general has been caught in a tug-of-war between Democrats and Republicans during the redistricting process that has raised concerns of gerrymandering, voter dilution and transparency during the 2011 cycle.
In early December, Democrats blasted the state Supreme Court’s decision to make minimal changes to political district lines, which have favored the GOP for the last 10 years. The court said it would alter the 2011 GOP-drawn maps “only to remedy malapportionment produced by population shifts made apparent by the decennial census.”
A final decision determining where the lines will be drawn is expected from the state court early next year. A federal case has been paused for the most part as the state case has moved forward.