Opinion ID: 2604170
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Southeastern House Districts.

Text: The Board's principal decision in formulating the 1984 reapportionment plan was the removal of Cordova from House District 2 and the retention of a unified Juneau District. This decision resulted in a total deviation from the ideal district population size for house districts of 14.8%. [1] The communities of Metlakatla and Hoonah, which formerly comprised parts of House Districts 1 and 3, respectively, were added to District 2 in order to replace most of the 2,200 Cordova residents. The Board noted that this proposed configuration was the only identified means of retaining the Inside Passage District, which was devised to unite small rural communities in Southeastern Alaska and to facilitate review under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. [2] The Board considered and rejected a series of proposals to move a portion of the Juneau community into another house district because the Juneau District retains the boundaries of a political subdivision and because maintaining all of Juneau as a two-member house district recognizes the unique social and economic nature of the community. The Board reasoned that while other Southeastern communities depend principally on fishing and timber, Juneau is inextricably tied to the operation of state government. The state directly employs approximately 4,000 people in Juneau, and tourism, not fishing or timber, is the community's second principal economic activity. The Board believed that a division of Juneau might contravene the state constitutional requirement of social and economic integration within the district. [3]