A conference committee approved the first conference committee report on HB 26-1038 by a 4-2 vote, advancing a redistricting bill that would bring county commissioners into an Independent Redistricting Committee process with new safeguards including a three-year prior party affiliation requirement and a 30-day public application notice period. Senator Janice Rich voted no and declined to sign the report, stating she did not believe the underlying bill was necessary.
After the chair announced the report was approved 'as amended,' Pierce Lively of the Office of Legislative Legal Services corrected the framing, explaining that the committee was adopting the draft report as originally presented — not an amended version of it. The chair accepted the correction and restated the announcement accordingly.
“Should someone want to stack a independent, quote unquote redistricting committee, that all it would take was having somebody go change their party affiliation right before that is what this came out of.”
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Sign in to subscribeThe first conference committee on House Bill 26, 1038 will come to order. Ms. King, please call the roll. Senators and Representatives. Clifford. Here. Linnell. Here. Rich. Here. Wallace. Here. Snyder. Here. Madam Chair? Here. Forgot that was me. All right, so we are here to discuss the changes that we are making for 1038. So, Madam Chair. Yes. I don't think Senator Wallace has gotten the handout. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. All right. Thank you, Senator. Thank you. Perfect. Okay. So we had some changes that were made in the Senate, and we're not here to dispute those changes, we're here to accept them. But we wanted to make some additional changes, and those have to do with putting a little bit more guardrails on the Independent Redistricting Committee. And so while we fixed a typo, that's the first thing in the report. And then we have made changes such that the members of the Independent Redistricting Committee. There's a requirement for a balance between Republican, Democrat and Independent. More specifically, the largest party and the second largest party. We put in a requirement that you must be affiliated in those positions for at least three years previous to…
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