MORGANTOWN — Monongalia County Clerk Carye Blaney said her office has already started deciphering how the West Virginia Legislature’s redistricting efforts will impact local elections.
“We have begun the process of starting to look at our magisterial lines and our precinct lines. As I indicated to the commission about a month ago, now that we have all of the data that we need, this is going to be a pretty quick turnaround process,” Blaney said, explaining that she intends to present any necessary changes to the commission ahead of next week’s meeting.
From there, the changes will be posted for 30 days to allow for public feedback before returning to the commission for an order Dec. 1.
“All of our precincts, of course, will be potentially changing because we’re moving from three House of Delegate districts in our county to six,” she said. “And then we’re moving; from what I understand, we were not fortunate enough to be kept whole in the senatorial districts, but we are moving from what we currently have, three, down to two. So we are making progress.”
Blaney said that magisterial districts will only impact county commission and board of education races.
Any candidate interested in being on the ballot in 2022 would need to live in that district a year before being elected. That’s a problem if a potential candidate was moved from one magisterial district to another as the local changes would need to be finalized by Nov. 8 in order to meet that deadline.
“Because of us not getting the legislative data until right now, this week, there’s just no way that we can meet that deadline,” Blaney said. “We will do it as quickly as we can.”
Once the commission issues an order finalizing the changes, the clerk’s office will begin notifying voters.
Commissioner Tom Bloom said he was “extremely disappointed” with the Senate map, as he wanted to see the county made whole.
Commission President Sean Sikora responded, “It is what it is.”
“No matter which way you did it, it was going to make somebody unhappy. I think, for the most part, the House and Senate did what they were supposed to do,” Sikora said. “There’s a bunch of different ways to look at that argument. That’s why I just prefer to just stay out of it and let the Senate do the work. If people don’t like what they did, then vote them out of office.”
In other news, the commission approved the transfer of ownership of law enforcement K9 Apache to Sgt. Randall Stockett upon his retirement at the end of the month.
Lastly, the commission continues to encourage county residents to participate in the ongoing broadband survey, which can be found at monfiber.servicezones.net.
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