ROGERSVILLE — Hawkins County officials are still waiting for an attorney general’s opinion regarding the status of District 2 Commissioner Dustin Dean, who found out a year and a half into his term he actually lives a few feet inside District 3.
Fellow District 2 Commissioner Jeff Thacker said during Monday’s Hawkins County Commission meeting that if the attorney general’s opinion resolving this issue hasn’t been received by next month’s meeting, he intends to submit a resolution for commission approval setting the district lines back to where they were in 1991.
Dean hasn’t attended meetings since February, when he was advised by County Attorney Jim Phillips to stop voting until his status as a commissioner is resolved.
Thacker said his goal would be to place Dean back in the 2nd District because his constituents have been without Dean’s representation for the past several months, which is particularly crucial on the Budget Committee, of which Dean is a member.
But an official at the state Comptroller’s Office said Tuesday that Thacker’s proposed resolution would be illegal.
David Tirpak, who is GIS (geographic information system) manager for the Comptroller’s Office, recommended Tuesday that the county election office work with the state coordinator of elections to find an alternative solution.
“Per TCA 5-1-111(c), any discretionary county redistricting that takes place after the required decennial redistricting would be undertaken when ‘necessary to maintain substantially equal representation based on population,’” Tirpak said. “Redrawing commission district lines in order to accommodate a commissioner would not be an action undertaken to maintain substantially equal representation, especially if that action results in increasing the county’s overall deviation.”
The state calls for a redistricting every 10 years to ensure equal representation throughout a county. In 1991, the district line was moved from what was to become Dean’s back yard to the road in front of his house.
A few years later, Church Hill annexed North Central Avenue north to Carters Valley Road for the purpose of extending a sewer line to Carters Valley Elementary School.
Subsequently, Dean’s home was built inside Church Hill’s city limits but outside of District 2.
Dean had always registered in District 2, voted in District 2, and was qualified as a County Commission candidate in District 2.
Neither Dean nor the election office was aware of the mistake until it was caught during a review of the 2011 redistricting by the University of Tennessee’s County Technical Assistance Service.
“I contacted (Sen.) Mike Faulk today, and he said he still hadn’t heard anything,” County Mayor Melville Bailey told the commission Monday. “I don’t think there’s any deadline. I don’t know how long it takes to get an attorney general’s opinion. But I felt like that was the proper way to go based on the circumstances surrounding the situation.”