McLean County Clerk Kathy Michael stormed out of this month’s county board meeting. Michael was visibly upset after the openness of the county’s procedure determining a new precinct map was questioned by board member Geoff Tompkins.
“I just want to make one thing clear,” said Michael before leaving her spot at the dais. “The County Clerk’s Office did not put much input into this. And none of you came to me asking. Nor did you return my phone call Mr. Chair.”
This happened after Tompkins said, “I just wanted to say I as a board member feel that there was an amazing lack of transparency in public awareness around these maps and that I would have liked to have heard more from our county clerk, G.I.S. (Geographic Information Systems) as a body rather than in a committee meeting.”
While all of this was happening board member George Wendt, who attended remotely, could be heard in the background trying to make a motion regarding the map which had just been adopted. Wendt was ruled out of order by board chairman John McIntyre several times for trying to make motions after the opportunity for doing so had passed.
The board adopted what was referred to as Map 1 after some discussion on a split vote. Map 1 added 11 new precincts while Map 2 added nine. Some board members favored the second map because it would have cost a little less due to fewer precincts needing to be staffed.
Precincts are redrawn every ten years after the census. Typically that is two years after the census and in a typical decade that would have been last year. But delays to the 2020 census created by Covid-19 delayed drawing district maps and that in turn delayed drawing the precinct maps.
McIntyre said, “By statute we had to redraw some precincts so we approved the G.I.S. people to objectively redraw the precincts.”
McLean County Administrator Cassy Taylor said, “The precincts had to be started with the map drawing after the last election because the districts are based on total population. The precincts are based on voter counts. So we had to wait until the last election before the counts could be tallied. Once those were tallied our G.I.S. team started working on that and they just finished up a couple of weeks ago.”