VIDEO: Council, Committee Chairs, React to Harford's Redistricting Decision

The chairwoman of the Democratic Central Committee said her party will file a lawsuit after the County Council voted to appoint three Republicans and no Democrats to the Decennial Redistricting Commission on Tuesday night, as .

“They have acted in an inappropriate way, an unethical way, trying to make backroom deals with me, and then pretending that it’s OK. It’s not OK,” Wendy Sawyer said. “I can’t wait for a judge to hear what’s going on, on this County Council.”

The Republican Central Committee chairman, Scott DeLong, said the Democrats should only blame themselves.

“The only reason the Democrats are in this position is because they totally let their voters down,” DeLong said. “They didn’t run candidates in seven races across the county, four of which were County Council races.”

Although the County Council, which features five Republicans and two Democrats, will have the final say on district lines for the next 10 years, Sawyer and her peers say they deserve to have two voices on the advisory board.

“We intend to represent the Democrats in this county and we intend to be on this council,” Sawyer said. “I am a volunteer. I am the leader of the Democratic party in this county. I am not Superman.”

Councilman Dion Guthrie, a Democrat who represents District A, said the legal provision in the County Charter that caused the exclusion of Democrats from the commission is unfair.

“If it was reversed I think the same arguments would be made,” Guthrie said. “My problem with the process is that well over 15 percent [of Harford County] Democrats voted.”

According to the charter, a party’s candidates for the County Council must cumulatively receive at least 15 percent of the votes cast. Democratic candidates received less than 12 percent of the County Council votes in the November election, but Sawyer and other Democrats say the system is flawed.

The County Charter states that the council is made up of seven members, which means that votes cast for council president affect the percentages. Republican Billy Boniface ran unopposed in the general election.

Boniface thinks the council did the right thing, but is glad it could go to court.

“I took an oath to uphold the charter. To me, the language in the charter is clear,” Boniface said. “How the courts interpret it—I think it’s great that they open the issue up and look at it.”

Guthrie and Boniface both agree that changes to the charter may be necessary in the future.

“I think that you can’t record, either way, you can’t record a Democratic vote as a Republican vote, or a Republican vote as a Democratic vote and that’s what has happened in this process,” Guthrie said.

Boniface said the change cannot take place for nearly two years.

“I believe that we should, as a council, down the road, recognizing that we can’t do any charter amendments until a referendum vote on the [November] 2012 ballot,” Boniface said, “put in place a Charter Review Board that will look at this issue and several other issues that have come up in the past and have a good debate on it.”

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