AP:  Arizona’s redistricting commission is already embroiled in partisan controversy even before it starts the politically sensitive job of drawing new congressional and legislative districts for use in elections in the coming decade.

Republicans say key staff choices, including a Democratic-leaning consulting firm whose president did work for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign as mapping consultants, are suspect.

And the commission’s chairman, registered independent Colleen Mathis, is under fire from conservatives. That’s because she sided with the panel’s two Democratic members in outvoting the two Republicans in making the controversial staff choices and because she didn’t disclose that her husband did some 2010 campaign work for a Democratic legislative candidate.

Arizona created its commission system in 2000 when voters approved an initiative measure taking redistricting out of the hands of self-interested legislators