REDISTRICTING RESTART; LEGALITIES LINGER

posted by Michael Chihak

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission will resume meeting Tuesday. As it does, the specter of more legal fighting hangs over state politics.

The commission's will meet after a three-week hiatus for legal proceedings over the unseating and reinstalling of chair Colleen Mathis.

Meetings will be held Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in Tempe so the five-member commission can review comments and testimony that came to it during a month of public meetings around the state. Those meetings ended in early November, when the commission was supposed to begin finalizing its congressional and legislative maps.

Instead, Gov. Jan Brewer notified Mathis that her removal was being sought for "gross negligence" in the way she conducted the commission's business. Brewer -- backed by a two-thirds vote in the state Senate -- accused Mathis of violating the state Open Meeting Law and of violating the state constitution's provisions for redistricting.

Mathis was removed on the Senate's vote, but she and the commission appealed to the state Supreme Court. The court first ordered Mathis reinstalled, saying Brewer had overstepped, then rejected the governor's request for a stay of the order pending further appeal.

The legal fireworks almost certainly won't end with that. Brewer's spokesman says she is considering her options, and legislators are considering theirs, too.

Don't be surprised if the governor takes another legal step this week, and that could include calling a special legislative session at which an early ballot measure would be proposed to in effect repeal the 2000 voter initiative that created the commission.