UPDATED: Was County Supervisor Map Politically Motivated?

UPDATE: Members of the Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board voted to extend an investigation of the process to redraw the political districts for five Polk County supervisors.

Megan Tooker, executive director for the board, said board members wanted more information.

"There's a few things that I need to follow up on and I hope to do that next week," she said. The board will meet again once she has the additional information, she said.

Two long-time Polk County Supervisors who represent the western suburbs would have to run against each other next year unless a proposed election district map is set aside and redrawn.

This afternoon the Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board is scheduled to decide whether there is enough evidence to suggest that the map was improperly drawn based on political considerations. If it finds there is, the board will have a full hearing on the issue.

At stake are the political futures of the board's only two Republicans: E.J. Giovanetti, former mayor of Urbandale and its county supervisor for nine years; and Robert Brownell, former mayor of Clive, and the 11-year supervisor representing Clive, West Des Moines and some of southwest Des Moines.

Both men said they suspect that political considerations were involved in redrawing the map — a task that is undertaken every ten years to respond to population shifts reflected in the U.S. census.

"Obviously, it's not difficult to look at the map and ask yourself whether it's gerrymandered,"  said Giovanetti, who represents the current District 2, which includes Urbandale, Johnston, Grimes and Ankeny and some of unincorporated northwest Polk County.

The new map puts Clive in District 2 and takes Ankeny out of it. 

"It's suspicious to me," said Brownell, who represents District 1, and would be in District 2  under the new map.  "I'm not sure that the fact that the two minority (party) folks are in the same district is necessarily a coincidence."

He said he doesn't blame the five people who were appointed to redraw the boundaries; each supervisor appointed one person. Rather, he said the system for redrawing political boundaries is flawed and should be changed.

"I know these five people and they're all good people," he said, but he noted that each were appointed to "keep one eye on the population and one eye on the voters."

"You could take five of the 12 disciples and put them on this committee and get the same result," he said.

"It's the Republican supervisors' position that 'Let's just have Legislative Services Agency draw the map and be done with it," Brownell said.

Megan Tooker, executive director for the ethics board, and its legal counsel said that Matthew Whitaker, former U.S. Attorney for the southern district of Iowa and a Republican, filed a complaint about the map.

Under a 2008 change in the law, the board now has jurisdiction to rule on complaints. She conducted an investigation into the complaint, reviewing about 2,000 emails and taking sworn statements of several people involved.

She will present that information to the commission late this afternoon in what is expected to be a closed telephone meeting.

Tooker said the commission has the choice to either dismiss the complaint or to schedule a full hearing on the complaint.

If it has a full hearing and finds that political motives were involved, the commission will send the map back to the county to be redrawn.

The deadline for submitting new maps to the Iowa Secretary of State is Oct. 15.