In October, the chairwoman of the Cole County Republican Central Committee criticized Jefferson City's ward redistricting efforts at a City Council meeting.
This week, the chairwoman and two other committee members filed a lawsuit against the city in Cole County Circuit Court.
Cole County Republican Chairwoman Penny Quigg, Carolyn McDowell and Douglas Thomas are named as the petitioners of the suit. Committee members are elected positions, with McDowell representing Ward 2, Thomas representing Ward 3 and Quigg representing Ward 4.
When she addressed the council in October, Quigg said she was concerned about a lack of public input before the city drew potential maps, a lack of transparency and a lack of understanding about the larger impact of new ward lines.
She also expressed concern about the city not including prison populations when drawing ward lines.
In November, the council approved a new ward map on a 7-3 vote with Ward 4 Councilmen Ron Fitzwater and Derrick Spicer, along with Ward 3 Councilman Scott Spencer, voting against it.
With no response to their concerns, Quigg said they decided to take the matter to court.
The city had to redraw the ward lines because the 2020 census showed population changes had created too much discrepancy between the wards. Ward 4, the largest, has a population of 8,813 while Ward 1, the smallest, has a population of 7,386. The ideal ward population is 7,992.
The map ultimately approved was a substitute that had not been previously discussed.
Under the original map, two sections in the southern part of Ward 4 would have been moved to Ward 5 while one section of Ward 5 moved into Ward 1 and another into Ward 2.
The substitution map -- which the council approved -- moved an area at the southernmost tip of Ward 4 reaching from the city limits to Route C. It also moved a section of Ward 5, from Locust Street to Bald Hill Road, into Ward 1 with a border along East Atchison Street.
Those two sections were in both maps.
The substitute also took an area from the northern section of Ward 4 -- which was considered in other maps -- into Ward 2. The area is south of U.S. 50, from Dix Road to Missouri 179.
Of the total population of Jefferson City, which in 2020 was 43,228, 3,472 persons resided in either the Jefferson City Correctional Center or Algoa Correctional Center. During the redistricting process, the suit states, city staff recommended the council exclude the prisoners from the city's population figure.
The main concern for the committee, Quigg told the council in October, was how the city was addressing the incarcerated population.
Prisoners are counted as part of the census, but since at least the 2000 ward redistricting process they haven't been included in the ward populations in the city.
City Attorney Ryan Moehlman said he didn't know whether prison populations were included before 2000, but the impact of having those two prison facilities next to each other became an issue when JCCC moved next to Algoa in the early 2000s, so, "they were unavoidably inseparable."
In October, Quigg said her other main concern was the greater impact of the ward redistricting process.
Members of political party commissions, she said, are elected based on ward.
"The commission also has a concern that the overarching idea was that because City Council races are nonpartisan, there is no political element to be considered," she said. "So it would seem logical that the Census numbers would be taken into account without exclusion, paralleling the state process."
Quigg said she's spoken with the chair of the Cole County Democrat Central Committee who also expressed reservations about the process.
"So there is a bipartisan element to this situation," she said. "Political parties are an important component in the electoral process and, as such, deserve to be consulted and considered during the redistricting process."
When the City Council first discussed the redistricting process at the beginning of September, Fitzwater brought up the committees and wanted to see them included.
At the time, Moehlman said city politics are meant to be nonpartisan, so they are two separate things.
The city put out a notice to the public about the process -- which would include the partisan committee -- he said, and council members could individually seek input from the committee. However, Moehlamn advised against the city specifically seeking their input.
In the lawsuit filed this week, Quigg, McDowell and Thomas allege, in one instance, "the carve out (in the substitute map approved) appears to have favored a potential future candidate for city office by moving that individual's residence into a more favorable voting ward (moving a specific area from Ward 3 to Ward 2)."
The name of this person does not appear in the lawsuit.
It's also alleged in the suit that in another instance, "the carve out moved a specific area containing the address of Quigg from Ward 4 (where she serves as the Republican committee representative) to Ward 3, resulting in Quigg's removal from the Ward she served."
When counting all residents (including prisoners), as the group said is required by the city charter, the actual population totals for each ward after the substitute redistricting would be: Ward 1, 11,193 (7,721 residents and 3,472 prisoners; Ward 2, 8,072; Ward 3, 8,113; Ward 4, 8,355; and Ward 5, 7,697.
"As a result of the City's failure to count and consider inhabitants who are incarcerated, the wards set forth in the map passed by the City Council in November do not contain, as nearly as possible, an equal number of inhabitants as required by the City Charter," the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit has been assigned to Cole County Presiding Judge Jon Beetem; no court date has been set. Quigg, McDowell and Thomas are asking Beetem to find the redistricting map the City Council approved is in violation of the city charter and is void. They are also asking he order the city to temporarily, preliminarily and permanently be kept from enforcing provisions of the ordinance that approved the redistricting map.