Politics & Government

County Council Does Redistricting Do-Over

Charter language was ambiguous, officials said.

The Jefferson County Council performed a do-over this week, voting to approve new council district boundaries that the council initially approved by a flawed vote in July.

Facing a deadline to approve or reject a proposal by the county’s redistricting commission, the county council on July 25 voted 4-1 to approve changing the Antonia No. 2 voting tabulation district (VTD) from Council District 4 to Council District 7, and splitting the Pevely Outside No. 2 VTD between Council Districts 4 and 5.

At issue was whether the county council approved the changes according to the county charter language.

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The charter requires any redistricting proposal be accepted or rejected “by the affirmative vote of all council votes,” which the charter defines as “the number of votes that would be cast by council members on any matter if no council members seats were vacant and all council members were present and voting.”

County council members voted to approve the changes in July with only 
five of the seven council members present.

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District 1 Councilman Don Bickowski and District 7 Councilman Kelly Waymon were both absent from the meeting.

Retired attorney Michael Turley, who helped write the charter, advised council members at the July meeting that “all council votes” meant all seven council members.

But county counselor Wes Yates said the language was
 ambiguous.

Following the vote, Bickowski and Waymon filed suit seeking a declaratory judgment on the meaning of the charter language.

Jefferson County Circuit Judge Gary Kramer found that the language required an affirmative vote of all seven council members.

The redistricting changes were approved by the Jefferson County Council Monday by a vote of 7-0.

“It was a friendly suit,” Waymon said. “There was no animosity between the council members on it. It was just to clarify it so we could move forward. The people who wrote the charter did a good job in the short amount of time they had to deal with it, but there is a little ambiguity and a couple different ways you could deal with it on ‘all council votes’. Just to clarify it, we asked that the suit be filed.”

Bickowski said there are three circumstances requiring all council votes under the county charter: redistricting, removing the director of
administration and removing an elected official found guilty of a felony.

“‘All council votes’ is a number, it is not a concept,” Bickowski said. “It required all council votes, which is seven.”

County Executive Ken Waller said the suit was necessary to clarify the intent of the county charter.

“The charter is ambiguous in some areas,” Waller said. “All we wanted to do was to clarify what was actually said in the charter. I don’t think it will be the last time that will happen, either. There are a lot of areas in there that are just not cut and dried.”


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