The Arizona Supreme Court has decided that it will let the Legislature decide whether to give the Independent Redistricting Commission more money to defend itself in court.

The justices also decided in conference Oct. 28 to deny the commission’s request to delay a lawsuit that will begin next month. The justices also declined to consider whether the commission is entitled to an additional $4.2 million that would be used to pay lawyers in the trial.

Lisa Hauser, an attorney for the redistricting commission, said the court’s action means that the Legislature now will decide whether, and, if so, how much in additional funding the commission will receive.

“At least the funding has been added to the call [for the special session], so that’s good,” Ms. Hauser said Oct. 30. “But the legislative process is moving at a pace that puts us in real jeopardy.”

The jeopardy, as Ms. Hauser sees it, is the prospect that the special session of the Legislature will produce no additional funding, or too little funding, for the redistricting commission to defend the legislative and congressional district boundaries that are supposed to be in place for state elections until the next census is taken in 2010.

Voters created the Independent Redistricting Commission in 2000 to take the political boundary-drawing powers out of the hands of the Legislature. The voter-approved ballot measure that created the agency also gave it $6 million to do the task.

The commission last month announced that it had spent almost all of the $6 million but still had the task of defending its political maps in court against challengers, including a number of Democrats and members of Indian tribes who say the boundaries didn’t create enough competitive districts as required under the state constitution.

The additional $4.2 million that the commission is seeking has been described by staff as an amount needed in a worst-case legal scenario — that is, one in which the challenges to the maps go all the way to the state Supreme Court, the commission loses and then must redraw the boundaries. The commission estimates it will spend only $1.7 million if it successfully defends the district maps at the trial and there are no appeals.

Ms. Hauser said the $6 million provision for the commission in the state Constitution “clearly was intended to be only an initial appropriation,” because the proponents knew there wouldn’t be enough time to get the commission off the ground early in 2001 and to secure an appropriation from the Legislature.

“There’s been so much made about the $6 million,” Ms. Hauser said. “There’s also a constitutional provision that allows you to challenge the adequacy of your resources to do the job you’ve been charged with doing.”

Without an additional appropriation, Ms. Hauser said, the commission will face losing the lawsuits by default. —