SYCAMORE – The DeKalb County Board voted 13-11 Wednesday to adopt the county district map created by member Scott Newport, R-DeKalb, which has been criticized for dividing Cortland and Somonauk.
Residents and elected officials from both Cortland and Somonauk spoke during the board's meeting, urging members to put aside partisan politics and vote against Newport's map.
The map divides Cortland among districts 3, 10 and 11, and its critics said the map would dilute the voices of Cortland residents.
The map also splits Somonauk into two districts.
During the redistricting process, county board member Paul Stoddard asked the county's Information Management Office to create a map using its computer program, with the goal of not dividing municipalities.
That map didn't receive much support from the ad hoc redistricting committee June 7. Newport said the map's population per district varied too widely among districts.
The county is required to redraw district maps every 10 years after the U.S. census to make sure each district contains about the same number of people.
The county's population is 105,160 in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, up from 88,969 in 2000.
The Cortland and Somonauk boards each passed resolutions Monday objecting to Newport's map and asked the county board to consider Stoddard's IMO map, which also is supported by a group called Fair Map DeKalb County.
That group wants county board members to choose a map not created by elected officials and that doesn't divide municipalities.
The group recently brought a state statute to the attention of DeKalb County State's Attorney Clay Campbell that reads a district "may divide townships or municipalities only when necessary to conform to the population requirement" of creating districts of equal population.
Both Stoddard and Newport have pointed out the other provisions of that statute say population among districts should be as equal as possible and districts should be compact.
At Wednesday's meeting, Campbell said districts should be equal and there should not be a more than 10 percent deviation in population among districts. Case law shows a preference for the lowest population among districts, he said.
Municipalities should be divided only when necessary, "but you can do it if you feel it's necessary to satisfy paragraph A, which is the equal population," he said.
Campbell said he hadn't seen anything on the county's part that would make it seem the redistricting process has been tainted or arbitrary, and it's up to the board to make a decision considering the parts of the statute. He added that federal courts tend to defer to legislative bodies in such cases because they don't want to micromanage county redistricting, he said.
Cortland Town President Robert Seyller told the board he understands the difficulty of the redistricting process, but the Newport plan divides Cortland and relegates the community's population in each district to "minority status at best." After the meeting, he called the board's vote "absolutely ridiculous."
Somonauk Village President Aaron Grandgeorge said the division of the approximately 2,000-person community simply does not make sense. He encouraged board members to listen to their constituents and revisit the map.
Mark Pietrowski with the Fair Map DeKalb County group singled out board members Dan Cribben, R-Somonauk, and John Gudmunson, R-Somonauk, and said they now know how the Somonauk Village Board feels on the issue. He urged them to vote against Newport's map and stand with their community.
Newport stood up for his map and said the population shifts that have taken place within the county played a large role in the map's creation.
"I tried very hard to create the map with the fewest flaws," Newport said.
Stoddard made a motion to table the map and send it back to committee. That motion failed, 13-11.
Democrats who said they would vote against the Newport map planned to do so because they believed IMO should have handled the process from the beginning. They also felt it was important to keep communities together and give serious consideration to the concerns of Cortland and Somonauk elected officials.
How they voted
• Yes: Marlene Allen, R-Sandwich; Kenneth Andersen, R-Sycamore; Larry Anderson, R-Malta; Dan Cribben, R-Somonauk; Russ Deverell, R-Kingston; John Emerson, R-Genoa; Charles Foster, R-Shabbona; Julia Fullerton, R-DeKalb; John Gudmunson, R-Somonauk; Jeffery Metzger, R-Sandwich; Scott M Newport, R-DeKalb; Riley Oncken, R-Sycamore; Jeff Whelan, R-DeKalb
• No: Jerry Augsburger, D-DeKalb; Bob Brown, D-DeKalb; Sally DeFauw, D-DeKalb; Julia Fauci, D-DeKalb; John Hulseberg, D-Sycamore; Stephen Reid, D-DeKalb; Paul Stoddard, D-DeKalb; Ruth Anne Tobias, D-DeKalb; Anita Turner, D-Sycamore; Derek Tyson, D-DeKalb; Pat Vary, D-DeKalb,