By JAN McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
The last time Bowling Green City Council drew new lines for its four wards was in 2002, following a long drawn out battle from BGSU students seeking fair representation.
Twenty-four years later, the ward maps have remained the same while the populations have shifted. The ward representation on City Council is now lopsided, with the most populous ward having 2,235 more residents than the least populous with 6,790 residents.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that state and local districts must be “substantially equal” and it has become generally accepted that the population difference between the largest and smallest districts may not be more than 10% of the average district population. The total deviation in Bowling Green is hovering near 29%, according to Trevor Martin, of the Ohio League of Women Voters, who works with Ohio communities that need to redistrict their council wards.
Bowling Green isn’t alone in its delayed redistricting efforts. Wards often naturally fall out of compliance because of local population shifts.
“A lot of our cities are decades behind doing redistricting,” said Martin, who is working with the communities of Warren, Struthers, Alliance and Ravenna on drawing new lines for council wards.
Martin recently reached out to council members in Bowling Green and Fostoria about the disproportionate representation.
Bowling Green City Council is made up of three at-large members – Mark Hollenbaugh, Jeff Dennis and Katelyn Elliott – who represent the entire city, and four ward members who represent their wards. The ward lines basically run along the community’s main thoroughfares – Main Street and Wooster Street.
The first ward, represented by council member Jordan Musgrave, sits northeast of the intersection of North Main and East Wooster. The second ward, represented by Joel O’Dorisio, is located southeast of South Main and East Wooster. These two wards include the bulk of BGSU students in the community.
On the west side of the city, the third ward, represented by Kathleen Dennis, sits southwest of South Main and West Wooster. And the fourth ward, represented by Bill Herald, is northwest of North Main and West Wooster.
According to the numbers from the 2020 census, the city’s second and fourth wards have too many residents compared to the first and third wards. The city’s total population of 30,808 should be divided into roughly 7,702 per ward. That would put the city in compliance with a target deviation of approximately 5%.
But the current lines divide the population as follows:
- First ward: 6,790 residents, which is a 11.8% deviation.
- Second ward: 9,025 residents, which is a 17% deviation.
- Third ward: 7,009 residents, which is a 9% deviation.
- Fourth ward: 7,984 residents, which is a 3.6% deviation.
The task of finding a more even distribution of the population now rests with BG City Council.
“City Council has the sole responsibility of redistricting,” Martin said.
On Monday, Elliott said she and Jeff Dennis would be meeting with the Wood County Board of Elections this week to talk about the process for redistricting.
Council member Jordan Musgrave stressed the need for community involvement in the process. “Input from the public is ideal,” he said.
In the 1990s, a lawsuit was filed against the city by a Bowling Green State University student challenging the constitutionality of the city’s ward system. The lawsuit was filed through Student Legal Services.
When the student who filed the lawsuit graduated, the city tried to end the case because the plaintiff no longer lived in Bowling Green. But another student picked up the fight, and the District Court allowed the case to continue.
The fact that much of the BGSU student population is not year-round is irrelevant, Martin said. All that counts is the number of residents present when the census was conducted.
“They are still represented by city council when they are living in that ward,” Martin said. “They are still constituents.”
In 2002, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth District ruled in favor of the students that the wards needed to be redistricted.
But as with elected governmental bodies that change often, the need for cities to redistrict every decade based on the latest U.S. Census often gets forgotten as newly elected members take over for previous council members.
When the city charter was updated in 2018, Hollenbaugh proposed a method to address the redistricting issue. However, the proposal didn’t get enough support from the charter review committee to proceed.
Now the League of Women Voters of Ohio has volunteered to help Bowling Green City Council with the redistricting process.
“We’ve offered to help anyway we can,” Martin said. “We don’t intend to pursue any legal action.”
According to the LVW of Ohio, municipalities must redistrict city wards to comply with local, state, and federal laws and protect constituents’ Fourteenth Amendment rights which guarantee equal protection of the laws.
In Ohio, municipalities typically must redistrict either following the decennial census, or when the number of voting wards or total seats on council changes. Municipalities can also redistrict at any time if the city wards do not have substantially equal populations.
The new districts must have nearly equal population totals to each other, must not discriminate or otherwise violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and must be composed of adjacent and compact territory.
The timing is also important. The city’s legislative authority must pass an ordinance that is effective 150 days before the next municipal primary election.
In order to be in place for the primary election in May of 2027, City Council would need to have adopted a new ward map and forward it to the Wood County Board of Elections by early December.
Though there is no requirement for public meetings to be held on the redistricting, Martin suggested that transparency is recommended.
Leaders in some communities meet behind closed doors to decide on new ward lines. That can leave residents frustrated, especially if they show up at the wrong polling places to vote, Martin said.
“A lot of people aren’t even aware that this happens,” he said. “We want to make sure voters are aware and maybe even participate in it.”
