— Tomorrow on KSLG: Eureka Councilmember Linda Atkins, who is leading the charge against City Manager Dave Tyson, speaks with John Matthews about the Garr Nielsen affair. That’s at 9 a.m., 94.1 FM and online at kslg.com.

— I will definitely say one thing for the California Citizens Redistricting Commission: It’s prompting our elected representatives to perform some pretty amusing contortions. Witness today’s Humboldt County Board of Supervisors meeting, which resulted in a 5-0 vote to officially protesteth the first-draft plan for new electoral maps that the non-partisan commission released earlier this month.

Here’s a playbill. Back in May, you may remember, the supes similarly voted 5-0 to beg the commission to preserve the standard north-south orientation of our Congressional and legislative districts. The fear, back then, was that we would be lumped in with Redding. So the supes appealed to a clause of the Citizens Redistricting Commission’s charter that mandates it to look at “communities of interest” in drawing lines for new districts. The argument put forth back then was that northern coastal counties form a particular community of interest; we share certain cultural values, economic bases, etc., etc., etc.

Well, the CRC listened to us. They listened too well! When the first-draft maps came out, there was the coastal superdistrict. In the case of Congress and the state Senate, the proposed line hugged the coast all the way from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border. Only problem: Two of our lawmakers – Rep. Mike Thompson and Sen. Noreen Evans – were drawn out of this new coastal superdistrict entirely, because they lay their heads slightly inland: in Napa County and Santa Rosa, respectively. Dilemma!

Now, the CRC is expressly forbidden from considering the needs of politicians or political parties in drawing its lines. That’s the whole point of the thing – the reason voters moved to establish it in 2008. So if Thompson, Evans or their supporters want to protest, they have to invent high-falutin’ rationales for doing so. And here is the source of the comedy.

Witness the letter the board voted to send the Citizens Redistricting Commission today, which was penned by Board Chair Mark Lovelace. Where the rationale before was that the coast needed to stick together, now the rationale is the coast is gonna be too stuck together. Quoth:

The North Coast from San Francisco to the Oregon border is currently represented by two Assembly members, two Senators and two Members of Congress, giving our coastline two voices, and two votes, in each house. Under the Commission’s proposal, that entire 400-mile coastline would be represented by only one Senator and one Member of Congress. Thus, our representation on important coastal and fisheries issue would be diminished by half.

So, wait – if the commission had joined Humboldt with Redding, Sonoma and Mendo with Yolo, Marin with Napa – wouldn’t we then have three representatives in those august bodies? Wouldn’t east-west therefore have been in our best interest?

But it gets better. In the case of the coastal issues, apparently, one Congressman bad. In the case of the wine industry, though, one Congressman good!

Dividing the wine country of Napa and Eastern Sonoma into a different district might weaken the strength of representation for our own burgeoning wineries and vineyards in Humboldt and neighboring Mendocino, and could impact other areas of specialty agriculture as well.

Uh huh. I won’t say that this is a completely threadbare attempt to keep Rep. Mike Thompson and Sen. Noreen Evans — they of the wine-besotted Sonoma and Napa valleys — in our district. But I will say that it is a all-but-completely threadbare attempt to keep Rep. Mike Thompson and Sen. Noreen Evans in our district.

Download the complete board item here.