(Source: MIRS.news, Published 04/04/2024) When asked if serving on the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (MICRC) merits a more than $55,000 salary, which the panel approved for itself last month, Rhonda Lange, a Republican commissioner, said "absolutely not."
"And for the record, I did not take this last raise. I declined it," Lange said on this week's episode of the MIRS Monday Podcast. "I am not receiving the raise because I think it's unethical. I think it's self-serving, and I think, considering the reasons that we're still drawing, and we're not dormant, and to give yourself a raise, my personal opinion is (that) it's disgusting, and that's just me being my blunt, honest self."
Lange, of Reed City, spoke on this week's podcast episode alongside Erin Wagner, a Republican commissioner from Charlotte.
The MICRC was established after 2.5 million voters in the state approved it during the 2018 general election. The ballot question was to transfer the power of constructing Michigan's congressional and legislative districts from lawmakers – which traditionally took place behind closed doors – to a 13-member citizen-run commission.
A federal three-judge panel ruled in December that seven state House districts and six Senate districts drawn by the commission for the 2022 elections violated the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause and racially gerrymandered.
After dedicating the beginning of the year to redrawing House districts in the Detroit area, the commission submitted a new map, altering 15 state House districts, titled "Motown Sound FC E1" to the federal judicial panel near the end of February.
Around six days before the federal judges gave the revamped districts the green light on March 27, commissioners approved increasing their salaries from $39,825 annually to $55,755, covering Jan. 15 to March 3, by a vote of 9-4.
In the ballot language creating the commission, map-drawing commissioners were required to receive at least 25 percent of the Governor's salary, which would have been $39,825 for commissioners based on the Governor's $159,300 salary during that year.
"(There are) people out here in Michigan that are working two or three jobs to make ends meet, and we're basically – honestly – not doing the kind of work nowadays," Wagner said.
Wagner consistently opposed the various proposed raises for commissioners, alongside Lange.
"We signed up knowing that it was 25 percent of the Governor's salary, whatever it was, and I just think it took a lot of hubris to decide to add (another extra) $20,000 on to your own paycheck. I don't know any other organization (where) you can dictate your own pay," Wagner said.
She said when last month's proposed raise was brought up, she mentioned there were a lot of "Help Wanted" signs around her area, and she imagined Metro Detroit would have an even worse workforce need.
"There's no reason to milk the cow when you don't own it," she said.
However, the interview revealed more than Wagner and Lange's issues with the raise. They discussed feeling like the public comment portion for designing "Motown Sound FC E1" was too spearheaded by organizations, as opposed to organic conversations with everyday Detroit residents.
Moreover, they discussed the contention between individual commissioners. Specifically, Lange said there have been accusations made by panel members – who she did not name – that Wagner and Lange have been attempting to "sabotage the commission" and to "gaslight."
"I don't exactly know what you would call it, but we've always been in a different light with the commission because we've attended remotely. They've made it an issue repeatedly, 'we don't understand what it's like' because we've attended remotely for medical reasons, so we've always kind of been on the outside looking in," Lange said.
She said there are instances when herself and Wagner feel like their voices have been shut down, adding that there are occasions "when we reach out, and we get no answers. We get no resolution to issues that we have."
There are a lot of times when Wagner and Lange are not in lockstep with the majority of commissioners, Lange explained, "and I think that gets held against us."
When it comes to commissioners being able to participate remotely, even in the post-coronavirus era, the Michigan Supreme Court in December 2021 determined that the argument that the MICRC is subject to the state's Open Meetings Act (OMA) was not applicable.
Under the OMA, which the commission does not follow, public bodies were previously only permitted to conduct business electronically, regardless of the circumstances, from March 18, 2020, to March 21, 2021.
"I would love to attend meetings in person right now, but I am still going through health issues where I've got doctor's appointments and everything going on like crazy," Wagner said. “But, as to that fostering any camaraderie (between) the two of us with team, I don't even think had we been present to the whole process, that we would be anymore in sync with the majority of the commission than we are now.”
However, Wagner added that she's received phone calls from other Republican commissioners "trying to see" how she's going to vote for the upcoming meetings. She said she doesn't believe that it's very open and transparent.
Currently, there are two other Republicans on the commission alongside Wagner and Lange, including small business owner Marcus Muldoon and Cynthia Orton of Battle Creek.
Following this week's interview, MIRS reached out to Voters Not Politicians Executive Director Jamie LYONS-EDDY, the organization behind Proposal 2 of 2018. She explained how, even without the OMA applying to the MICRC, the federal lawsuit leading to the House districts being redrawn "and everything that's followed has been informed not by guessing what the commissioners did during the original mapping, but by hours of video and word-for-word transcripts."
"Recently, I was trying to confirm something the commission did, and I pulled up the transcript and found the exact exchange I was looking for. I don't know of any other part of our Michigan government that is so transparent and easy to follow," Lyons-Eddy said.
As for salaries, Lyons-Eddy said if the commissioner posts did not offer a living wage, low- and middle-income Michiganders would have been effectively excluded.
"Since the commission is only authorizing this raise during this round of mapping, which we expect to take about half a year, it amounts to about $8,000 each. Against Michigan's $81.7 billion budget, that doesn't seem worth getting worked up about," she said.
On Tuesday, the federal three-judge panel revealed that it will approve a revised Senate map by July 26, as the MICRC did not work on the six state Senate maps that were ruled to have been racially gerrymandered. The Senate seats will not be up for reelection until the 2026 election cycle.
For the Senate redraw, Lyons-Eddy said Voters Not Politicians hopes the MICRC will consider having a partisan fairness expert on hand as they analyze maps, as well as using partisan fairness scores of zero as their benchmark, instead of "the partisan fairness measures from their previous maps."
"They should also consider making the (U.S. Voting Rights Act) and other analysis more easily accessible to the public, in addition to the maps themselves. Additionally, we think they should spend more time up front coming to consensus on their objectives and processes, and less time collectively mapping," she said.
