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As part of an ongoing effort to make content more accessible, LAM will be making select stories available to readers in Spanish.

The state of Virginia has regulated landscape architecture as a profession since 1980, certifying practitioners through its professional occupational agency. In 2010, landscape architecture became a licensed profession in the state.

A few bills attempted to deregulate or lower the level of regulation back to certification, but none of them made it out of legislative committee. Around 2011, Republican then-Governor Robert McDonnell set up a commission to eliminate regulations in general, including of professions such as landscape architecture and interior design. Members of the Virginia chapter of ASLA persuaded the governor to remove landscape architects from the list.

Robert McGinnis, FASLA, an associate principal at Kennon Williams Landscape Studio and a member of the Virginia ASLA chapters government affairs committee, says that interior designers and landscape architects get targeted because people dont know what they do. They see the word landscape and think we put trees in the ground.

In 2017, Virginias Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission issued a report questioning the need for licensing of 11 occupations, including landscape architecture. The Virginia chapter of ASLA submitted a justification of continued licensure along with evidence, prepared alongside the national ASLA office and the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards (CLARB). When the Virginia Department of Professional and OccupationalRegulation completed its report in December 2020, it concluded that licensure was the minimal level of regulation needed to protect public health, safety, and welfare.

Once we show them what we do, they usually back off, McGinnis says. We believe that our defense of our licensure in Virginia is important not just to our licensure but to the entire licensure status of all landscape architects, because once you pull that one licensure out, it will be identified by another stateparticularly nearby abutting statesas an example.

McGinnis has been active in the profession for 35 years and engaged in advocacy for licensure for more than 20 of them. It is exhausting, he says. I never wanted to do it. I wanted to just practice. But once your license or regulatory status is threatened, somebody has got to do something.

Led by right-of-center advocacy organizations and often funded by private interests, state legislatures have increasingly been writing bills to restrict licensing requirements for professions and occupations. With legislative titles such as the Right to Earn a Living Act and Consumer Choice Act, the laws are put forward under the premise that professional licensing imposes an unfair barrier to entry into certain types of work, infringes on individual freedom, and increases the costs of services to the consumer.

Lawmakers have included landscape architecture in right-to-work bills reflexively, without clearly understanding the nature of the practice or its difference from other kinds of landscape work. Conservative and libertarian lobbying groups such as the Institute for Justice, the Goldwater Institute, and Americans for Prosperitythe latter funded by the libertarian Koch brothers, heirs to the commodities-production-and-trading conglomerate Koch Industriesbegan pushing these laws around 2016; by now, nearly every state has voted on some version of a law rolling back or limiting licensing requirements.

In License to Work: A National Study of Burdens from Occupational Licensing, the Institute for Justice, which pursues lawsuits on a variety of subjects, states:

Licensing laws now guard entry into hundreds of occupations, including jobs that offer upward mobility to those of modest means, such as cosmetologist, auctioneer, athletic trainer, and landscape contractor. Yet research provides scant evidence that licensing does what it is supposed to doraise the quality of services and protect consumers. Instead, licensing laws often protect those who already have licenses from competition, keeping newcomers out and prices high.

ASLA, other professional design associations, and licensing boards argue, on the other handwith decades of jurisprudence as evidencethat the rationale for licensing professional practices and occupations derives from the idea that their work can have significant impact on public health, safety, and welfare. The public has an interest in ensuring that someone calling themselves a doctor, engineer, or an architector, for that matter, a beautician using chemical agents on clients bodieshas adequate education, knowledge, and experience to perform their job without causing injury or harm.

One of the first direct assaults on landscape architecture licensure was in Arizona in 2016. Licensure came up for sunset review, a routine process in which programs, regulations, or agencies are reviewed for relevance. The Arizona ASLA chapter hired a lobbyist, went to legislative committee meetings, and then the licensing board, which makes decisions about licensure applications, passed the renewal through the legislative committee in a unanimous vote. (To get passed into law, a bill has to be approved by the relevant legislative committee, then put on the floor for a vote of all members of the legislature.) In February, a bill came up, introduced by Representative Warren Petersen,a surrogate of Republican Governor Doug Ducey, that included landscape architects with occupations such as geologists, citrus packers, and athletic instructors as licensed work that should be deregulated. The chapter had to scramble to figure out how to respond, with help from ASLA national.

Because the bill was being sponsored by the Republican governor, it was going to be difficult for Republican-majority legislators to vote against it. The chapters lobbyist advised a strategy of simply getting landscape architects removed from the bill. Then they notified their membership, called on state universities with landscape architecture programs, and engaged ASLA national and chapters in adjoining states. Students showed up en masse to speak and explained to the governors aides that, if the bill passed, theyd have to leave the state to practice after investing in a four-year degree. Within 24 hours, landscape architects were removed from the bill.

Galen Drake, ASLA, a senior landscape architect at J2 Engineering and Environmental Design, was president of the Arizona chapter of ASLA. After this experience it became clear, especially in 2016, talking to legislators, that they had no clueno cluewhat landscape architects did, says Drake. At one point they said, Why do we need registration? Why cant we just go on Yelp and see whos good? So, our focus became education: Lets educate them as to what we do.

Elizabeth Hebron is the director of state government affairs at ASLA, and she has led the fight to protect licensure as attempts to deregulate landscape architecture have proliferated in statehouses over the past five years. Hebron oversees the tracking of licensure bills and coordinating the response to educate lawmakers and the public on the importance of clear, responsible licensing standards for landscape architecturea highly skilled, technical profession with a direct public impact.

ASLA and the state licensing boards operate independently of each other, but ASLA has been engaging them in recent years through quarterly joint webinars with CLARB, sharing information about whats happening with legislation, organizing in-person summits, and encouraging closer communication between the state chapters of ASLA and licensing boards.

Hebron gives as examples a boy who nearly punctured his heart because of a spear-like thorny bush on the edge of a playground, and larger-scale flood mitigation failures in Louisiana. In presentations she gives to various groups about the importance of licensure, she offers images of unnavigable driveways laid abnormally steep at nearly 45-degree angles and playground slides that literally run into tombstones.

Anti-licensing advocates invert the logic of harm prevention: Occupations and professions should have to prove a continuing need for regulations. In some cases, they argue for mandating a periodic review or automatic sunsetting of licensing requirements. In the most extreme cases, they claim the free market will weed out the incompetent players and that wrongs can be pursued through the justice system.

In Wisconsin, the battle against deregulation started with a November 2016 report by the libertarian think tank Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, Fencing Out Opportunity, which argued that occupational licensing creates barriers to employment and identified landscape architecture among the target professions. Republican legislators moved to study an approach to professional licensure involving self-certification. Instead of licenses, a Yelp-like review platform would allow consumers to choose self-identified professionals based on evaluation by past clients.

Jonathan Bronk, ASLA, a landscape architect in the campus planning department at the University of WisconsinMadison, was the president of the Wisconsin ASLA chapter at the time. He spoke at the hearing, gathered others to speak, and coordinated with lobbyists to fight the bill. Among the occupations listed for the study, landscape architects turned out in the largest numbers to defend licensure, and the profession was removed from the list for the study. In the end, the bill passed committee but never made it to the floor for a vote; it was not prioritized by legislative leadership.

Recently, ASLA has joined a coalition to defend professional licensure alongside architects, engineers, civil engineers, accountants, and surveyors. Founded in 2019, the Alliance for Responsible Professional Licensing (ARPL) has an office at and receives most of its support from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). The other members of the coalition along with ASLA are the American Society of Civil Engineers, CLARB, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, and the National Society of Professional Engineers.

To support its defense of licensing, ARPL commissioned a study, published in January, to examine the value of the licensure process and its outcomes from Oxford Economics, a business consulting and forecasting firm. The report found that, as of 2019, nearly a quarter of workers in the United States held a certificate or license, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The report cites a public opinion survey finding that 75 percent of the public recognizes the importance of the distinction between trades and highly technical professions that have a direct impact on public health and safety.

Oxford also surveyed studies of the impact of licensure on salaries, which indicate that, on average, unlicensed workers earn wages that are 10 to 15 percent lower than those of licensed workers with similar education, training, and experience. Although this figure suggests an increased cost to the consumer, the report cited studies to show that two-thirds of the increase is because a license signals higher productivity on the part of workers. A plumber or an electrician earns more not only because the consumer is captive to licensed workers but because the requirement to have a licenseand the specialized nature of the knowledge necessary to perform the jobensures the consumer a higher value of work. The report also noted that for women and people of color, licensure led to significantly higher wages and earnings, even narrowing the wage gap between them and white men in professions, especially among highly trained professionals. One study found that college-educated women with licenses earned 20 percent more than their non-licensed counterparts, whereas college-educated men earned only 8 percent more than their non-licensed counterparts.

Marta Zaniewski, the executive director of the Alliance for Responsible Professional Licensing and vice president of state regulatory and legislative affairs at AICPA, notes that it isnt just libertarians and industrial lobbyists who push for limiting licensing. What we saw that began with the Obama administration and carried on with the Trump administration was suggesting legislation that would take a broad brush to everyone from your manicurist to your engineer, looking at deregulating these professions, she says. There was just too much risk [to the public] to say that everyone should reform regulation across the board, and they were fixing something that didnt need to be fixed.

Hebron says that ASLA doesnt necessarily oppose all of the features of the bills when legislated in a careful, responsible way that does not have the potential to affect public health, safety, and welfare. Some of the bills mandate reciprocity of licensing among states, also known as universal licensure, which allows professionals to move and work fluidly across state borders without additional testing, certification, and fees. Some state boards restrict licenses for people who have defaulted on their student loans, a practice that 13 bills have sought to limit. Many boards prohibit licenses for people with criminal records, which could be regarded as further punishing and ostracizing formerly incarcerated persons who have already paid their debt to society. Legislation known as Second Chance Acts limits the use of criminal histories in hiring and eligibility for a license: Sixty-three bills have attempted to limit use of criminal histories in hiring, with 15 of them so far passing and 23 others yet to be voted on.

For some landscape architects, there is also a concern with the barriers licensing creates to the profession, particularly as they impede those who are historically shut out of design fields. The licensing process became particularly arbitrary and onerous in the case of Sara Zewde, the founding principal of Studio Zewde and assistant professor of practice at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

By the time she began her licensing exams in 2016, Zewde had already become fairly recognized in the field. She had topflight credentials, having studied sociology and statistics at Boston University and earning masters degrees in landscape architecture from the Harvard GSD and city planning from MIT. Zewde started her exams in the state of Washington, where she lived at the time. After she moved to the East Coast in 2018, even though all states use the same examthe Landscape Architect Registration Examination, developed and administered by CLARBshe had to fly back to Washington at significant expense to finish the examinations where she had originally begun them. By 2019, her exams complete, she then submitted her paperwork for licensure in Pennsylvania, where she had most of her ongoing work. Then came the multiple reference letters and the requirement to undergo a criminal background check in every state where she had lived in the previous five years, involving hundreds of dollars in additional fees. A gap in her timeline in which she was traveling for research raised additional questions with the licensing board, leading them to ask her for additional background checks in those states or an FBI check, which she followed through on.

By this time, it was 2020 in the early months of the pandemic. Zewdes work had already been published in this magazine, Harvard Design Magazine, and Topos, among other places, and she had been working and teaching in the field for more than five years. Yet the state board rejected her license, saying she should have asked for permission from Pennsylvania to apply for licensure there before she began taking the tests five years earlierbefore she knew where she would be working, and something that she says was stated nowhere in any available public information.

During the appeals process, Zewde, who is Black, says she had to submit samples of work to demonstrate her proficiency and was told to prepare for questions from the all-white board in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to prove her credentials, though she had already passed all of the exams. Finally, in the spring of 2021 she received the approval.

I feel like I stand in a position of privilege, knowing that I am a professor and show some level of competence there, she says. Being put in that situation to be voted on by this board is a harrowing experience that I dont wish on anyone, but I especially dont wish it on young Black people or young people of color, or young people at all. Knowing that there are [so few] Black women licensed in landscape architecture in the country, it seems like something is wrong with this process. I never even questioned the idea of licensure, but in the form that it exists right now, I cannot defend it. (In response, the Pennsylvania State Board ofLandscape Architects cited the relevant regulatory statutes mandating its requirements.)

CLARB represents the state licensing boards that set policy and developed the universal examination that is used in every U.S. jurisdiction. Veronica Meadows, CLARBs chief strategy officer, agrees that some reforms in the process could be helpful but defends the public interest in licensing.

We know that landscape architecture does have a profound impact on people [and] the environment, and so we do push to defend the integrity of licensure in the publics interest, Meadows says. We have obviously seen in the last six years much more significant movement for licensure reform. She allows that reforms are needed but cautions, Reducing barriers to entry of a licensed profession that doesnt have a direct public safety outcome is a good thing. Smart, targeted licensing improvements are important, but those have been hijacked and taken to extreme.

CLARB joined ARPL as a founding member, and ASLA joined soon thereafter. ARPL provides support to local chapters and boards when proposed legislation would undermine the boards authority to protect the public interest and works with ASLA and other member organizations to track, monitor, and respond to the legislation. As of today, no landscape architecture licensing restriction has passed in any state, but several sunset regulations, reviews, and studies of the issue have been approved. ASLA and its local chapters remain vigilant, engaging in outreach, activating advocacy networks, and educating legislators about the profession and what landscape architects actually do.

In a sense, professional licensure belongs to a legacy of good multinational and transregional governance and oversight that suffers from being misunderstood and underappreciated, quietly preventing harm without fanfare.

I have not ever seen what I have seen in the last 10 years, Robert McGinnis says. Its scary to see how this may play out in the future. We dont know how long were going to have to deal with wrong-minded, uninformed individuals who hate government and just simply want to destroy it.

Stephen Zacks is an advocacy journalist, architecture critic, urbanist, and organizer based in New York City.

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LICENSURE ON THE LINE - Landscape Architecture Magazine

The Alaska State Capitol in Juneau. (James Brooks / ADN)

JUNEAU In five hours of public testimony late last month, a line of Alaskans criticized members of the Alaska Legislature for failing to come up with a reliable formula for Alaskas annual Permanent Fund dividend.

Legislators have heard similar testimony since 2017, but this years comments brought a new wrinkle: A growing number of Alaskans, dissatisfied with a lack of change, are calling for a constitutional convention to address the issue.

Voters are asked once every decade whether they want to call for a convention, and the next vote is in November 2022.

Because conventions arent limited to one subject, conservatives and libertarians are embracing the trend, saying it could allow them to pursue long-held goals like a ban on abortion, public funding for private schools, or changes to the way judges are picked.

Michael Chambers is a libertarian who is urging Alaskans to vote yes on the convention next year. He has a list of items hed like to see addressed and said the PFD issue is 100% helping the cause.

I dont mean this in a negative way, but for the low-information voter, it absolutely makes a difference, he said. The more the PFD festers out there and sits there, the more ... the low-information voters are the ones that say, Hey, wait a minute, this is enough!

Legislators say theyre not certain that a constitutional convention will bring conservative nirvana. Alaskas political divides could mean a convention split between conservatives and progressives, just as the Legislature is today.

What may start out looking like a solution on the PFD could turn into a social battleground like weve never seen in this state, said Senate President Peter Micciche, R-Soldotna.

I think there is a potential for unintended consequences beyond the scope of anything we can currently imagine, he said.

In a convention, uncertainty abounds

Alaska hasnt had a constitutional convention since its first, which took place in late 1955 and early 1956, but voters are asked every 10 years if they want to hold one.

In 1970, 1972, 1982, 1992, 2002 and 2012 they said no, mostly by wide margins. (The 1970 vote passed by about 500 votes but was overturned by the Alaska Supreme Court, which said the wording of the question was too leading. A re-vote in 1972 changed the result.)

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, said things could be different this time around.

I think theres a real chance that people could vote for a constitutional convention, he said, adding that any convention would be unpredictable.

If you go to a constitutional convention, you just dont know where it goes. You dont know whos going to be the delegates, you dont know how the decisions will be made. And you just dont know whats going to happen, he said.

Unless the Legislature passes a different guiding law, a convention would generally follow the rules in place in 1955.

Delegates to the Alaska Constitutional Convention at work, Fairbanks, winter 1955-56.

That means voters would likely be asked to vote for delegates during the 2024 election, and might be asked to approve a resulting draft in 2026.

Bob Bird, chairman of the Alaskan Independence Party, has been trying for years to convince Alaskans to vote for a convention, most recently in columns published by the Watchman, an Alaska-based Christian website.

He said hes been talking to groups he considers Ron Paul constitutionalist and said concerns about the Permanent Fund dividend unite them, but so does a desire to change the states judicial system.

The Alaska Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled in favor of abortion rights, and there has been a steady conservative push to change Alaskas judicial selection laws in order to overturn those rulings.

I cant tell you which is the most energizing in regards to the call for a con-con, he said, using shorthand for the constitutional convention.

Chambers said that while it might seem ironic, hes seeing libertarian interest in a PFD amendment.

We libertarians believe in less government, and the best way for you to have less government is if they dont have money. And the easiest way in Alaska for them not to have money is to give it directly to the people, he said.

Opponents and proponents see momentum

Bird said hes seeing growing interest in a convention, regardless of the issue.

I think its a small snowball thats picking up momentum, he said.

Those concerned about a convention are also seeing that momentum.

A group called the Permanent Fund Defenders has been urging lawmakers to guarantee Permanent Fund dividend payments in the state constitution. For at least two years, members have been warning legislators that unless they act, voters might seek a convention.

Juanita Cassellius, a spokesperson for the group, said the prospect of a convention is worrying because it could turn into a can of worms. Despite that prospect, many Alaskans might be willing to risk it in order to end perennial debates over the dividend.

There is a very vocal group that will get attention because its a simple message, she said. I think it would be very catchy. And now, the people in our group are very afraid of that.

Sen. David Wilson, R-Wasilla, represents one of the most conservative legislative districts in the state. He said that when the topic comes up in small groups, he reminds people that a convention of delegates is likely to resemble the mix of views present in the Alaska House of Representatives.

There, a coalition of independents, Democrats and moderate Republicans holds a narrow majority.

I think thats part of the issue: Theres a lot of unknowns, he said.

The Alaska Senate is taking the prospect of a convention seriously enough that some state senators have begun researching the potential costs and how a convention might operate.

Chambers and others said that if the Alaska Legislature fails to settle the dividend issue by the end of the 2022 regular legislative session, it will become a significant issue in next years races for governor and Legislature.

He speculated that the push will begin ramping up around February, because thats where campaigns start coming out and people start taking positions.

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Supporters of a big PFD are starting to back a constitutional convention. Alaska's conservatives and libertarians see an opportunity. - Anchorage...

Ever since President Trump started nominating new Supreme Court justices, reproductive health activists and court observers have sounded the alarm that Roe v. Wade was in jeopardy. Conservative legislators also took notepassing laws that would contradict Roe in case it did fall.

On September 1, in the middle of the night, the five most conservative Supreme Court justices issued an unsigned order denying an injunction against a new Texas law that bans most abortions and deputizes the citizenry to enforce the ban.

There is no silver lining, but there may be a layer of defense that hasnt been fully explored by activists and reproductive justice organizers to explore: the new progressive prosecutor movement.

Prosecutors are granted a high level of discretion under US law, and they have the authority to simply not criminally charge people using laws they know to be unjust or unconstitutional. Progressive prosecutors have mostly focused on non-enforcement efforts on low-level drug charges. However, in 2019, four Atlanta-area prosecutors promised they would not use a new Georgia law criminalizing abortions to prosecute people for obtaining them, regardless of whether there was a legal challenge to that law.

Such promises are not legally binding. The consequences of going back on their word would essentially amount to some of their left-leaning constituency remembering the betrayal in the next election cycle. But this use of prosecutorial discretionto not charge abortion patients or providerscould play a prominent role in our post-Roe society.

A starting place is to establish where your county DA stands on abortion.

The inverse is also true. Enterprising right-wing prosecutors can turn to new interpretations of old laws to criminalize abortion, even without a specific statute. In the 1990s, former Pinellas County, Florida, State Attorney Bernie McCabe attempted to prosecute a young girl under homicide statutes for getting an abortion.

Prosecutorial discretion is also probably why conservative donors who oppose mass incarceration, such as Charles Koch, never got involved in bankrolling pro-reform candidates in prosecutor elections. A decarceral Republican candidate for district attorney is essentially a libertarian, and many libertarians adamantly support the right to abortion without governmental inference. But funding candidates who might not prosecute people for abortion would alienate GOP allies needed for other parts of conservative donors political agenda. Relatively few Republicans think abortion should be legal.

Traveling from an abortion-ban state to get a legal abortion in a different state is still legal, because Congress never passed a federal law criminalizing abortion. Some Texas residents will be able to procure safe and legal abortions elsewhere; others who dont have the resources will not.

Groups like the ACLU and Color of Change have already been educating the public on the importance of district attorney races and knowing what ones DA stands for as a strategic lever for racial justice. Reproductive justice organizations might now consider doing the same.

A starting place is to establish where a county DA stands on abortion. Rarely have top prosecutors been asked to weigh in on the issue, and whether they run as Democrats or Republicans is not enough to know whether they support or oppose criminalization. Reproductive justice advocates should seek this information from as many DA offices as possible.

If the DAs refuse to not prosecute abortion, or glibly state that the law is the lawnot just downplaying, but outright ignoring, their own power of discretionthat information should be advertised where it will be seen by constituents who might not otherwise be aware. And if any DAs promise outright that they will not prosecute abortion-related charges, that promise should be publicly platformed, too.

In 2020, multiple plaintiffs sued in Tennessee to block a new law that would force abortion providers to tell patients it may be possible to reverse a medication-induced abortion in the middle of the procedure, under the threat of felony charges, fines and incarceration. To guide his decision, US District Judge William Campbell invited the four DAs named in the suitMemphis DA Amy Weirich, Davidson County (Nashville) DA Glenn R. Funk, Knox County DA Charme P. Allen and recently retired 15th District DA Tom Thompsonto state on-record that they would not prosecute providers for giving the required recitation but then stating they disagreed with it.

All of them filed the requested declaration except Nashville DA Funk, who filed a declaration that he would not enforce the new law because of his legal opinion that it is unconstitutional.

An October 2020 open letter from Fair and Just Prosecution also collected the signatures of dozens of locally elected prosecutors across the US who promised to not prosecute anyone who obtain abortions and health care professionals who provide themeven if the protections of Roe v. Wade were to be eroded or overturned.

Photograph via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0

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District Attorneys Could Be Key to the post-Roe v. Wade Abortion Battle - Filter

Joe Rogan isnt really a Democrat or a Republican. He did support Bernie Sanders in the 2020 nomination race. That endorsement, though, was met with outrage by Sanders supporters who considered Rogan to be racist and anti-LGBTQ.

The popular podcast host is more of a Libertarian that anything else. And that way of seeing things has become clear in how Rogan has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. After being diagnosed with the disease, the host said he was taking multiple medications including Ivermectin, a horse de-wormer.

During his how today, Rogan ranted about the way his treatment was covered by the media. He was especially angry with Jim Acosta and CNN.

The podcaster began, Theyre making shit up! They keep saying Im taking horse dewormer. I literally got it from a doctor. Its an American company. They won the Nobel Prize in 2015 for use in human beings and CNN is saying Im taking horse dewormer. They must know thats a lie.

Rogan continued, CNN was saying I am a distributor of misinformation. I dont know whats going on, man. You know, there is a lot of speculation. One of the speculations involves the emergency use authorization for the vaccines. That, in order for there to be an emergency use authorization, there has to be no treatment for a disease.

The host closed his comments, The grand conspiracy is that the pharmaceutical companies are in cahoots to try and make anybody who takes this stuff look crazy. But whats crazy is look how better I got [sic]! I got better pretty quick, bitch.

In addition to taken Ivermectin, Rogan also took drugs that are proven to work against COVID-19 including monoclonal antibodies.

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WATCH: Enraged Ivermectin Taking Joe Rogan Threatens to Sue Jim Acosta, CNN - HillReporter.com

With campaigning for next years elections underway, the countys redistricting commission will soon start drawing maps proposing new County Council districts.

The commission met last week and expects to have final data compiled from the U.S. census by Monday, allowing members to begin drawing maps.

Nicholas Holdzkom, a research planner for the county, said he and colleagues are working to collect and import the data, so the process can begin next week.

By the meeting of [Sept. 23], our big hope is that people will be able to show up with maps, Holdzkom said.

Pamela Dunn, a senior legislative analyst for the County Council who is assisting the commission, said a map-drawing tool should be available to the public by Sept. 16.

The commission is tasked with drawing a map dividing the county into seven County Council districts. Last November, voters approved a charter amendment that increased the number of council members from nine to 11.

Seven members will represent districts, up from the current five. Four at-large members will continue to represent the entire county.

For the proposed districts, the commissioners will focus on:

Their draft maps will be finalized and available for public comment in October.

The commission will submit its report with one or more recommended maps, and present them to the County Council by Nov. 15. The council decides what the final map will be.

Commission members agreed that it would be beneficial to split into smaller groups of about four or five people, preferably of differing party affiliations, to start drawing maps. They then would reconvene to compare maps and eventually agree on a final map to present to the County Council, but also provide back-up maps, in case a full consensus cant be reached.

Commissioner Valerie Ervin, a former County Council member, told her colleagues last week that the commissions work is important, but reminded them they have limited time before the final Nov. 15 deadline.

The calendar is not our friend right now, Ervin said.

Ervin predicted that the County Council public hearing on the final proposal will be well attended, and that the community will be heard then.

It will be important to give council members one preferred map, but also provide alternatives, so the council has a choice, commissioners said.

Commissioner Sam Statland said he hopes the County Council follows the commissions recommendations in its final report. He added that it would be smart to do so, because the commission consists of Democrats, Republicans, a Libertarian and registered independents.

I think that gives us a lot of firm ground to stand on, in what our selections are, Statland said.

Steve Bohnel can be reached at steve.bohnel@bethesdamagazine.com

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Montgomery County redistricting commission will soon begin map drawings - BethesdaMagazine.com