Kent Thiry, CEO of the dialysis company DaVita, has been named chairman of a nonpartisan redistricting reform coalition. Fair Districts Colorado, which last week filed three proposals for ballot initiatives on redistricting, announced Wednesday that Thiry would lead the coalition.

Thiry is the latest to join the political battleground over redistricting, which draws congressional boundaries every 10 years after the census. The next census is in 2020, and under current law, the Colorado General Assembly is tasked with redrawing congressional lines before the next election in 2022.

“I’m excited to engage with a group of civic leaders to help solve a pervasive flaw in the way legislative districts are created in Colorado,” Thiry said in a statement Wednesday. “The monopoly created by the political parties in the drawing of voting districts is unfair to Colorado voters and games the system.”

He pledged to build support for reform efforts that would create competitive districts and a system to empower all voters, including those unaffiliated with any political party.

Thiry, who was rumored earlier this year to be considering a run for governor, put $2.3 million of his own money last year into two successful ballot measures, Propositions 107 and 108, which allow unaffiliated and independent voters to participate in primaries. The Colorado GOP opposed letting those voters join in the process, claiming primaries are a function of party membership, but ultimately its central committee decided to allow it.

According to the Wednesday statement from the Fair Districts coalition, Thiry joins an effort led by former Democratic Speaker Pro Tem Kathleen Curry of Gunnison, who left the Democratic Party in 2009,  and Bill Hobbs, former Deputy Secretary of State.

“The Fair Districts Colorado coalition boasts support from Democrats and Republicans, including former Republican Governor Bill Owens and former Democratic Governor Dick Lamm, as well as non-partisan members of Colorado’s League of Women Voters,” the statement said.

The coalition has already drawn criticism from minority groups that also dogged a 2016 effort led by many in the Fair Districts coalition. Minority leaders, such as former state Sen. Jessie Ulibarri, D-Commerce City, claim the Fair Districts efforts don’t have a single minority member in their coalition and fear that the same problems that existed with the 2016 measure will happen again. (The coalition does have minority representation, according to Aaron Cohen of Fair Districts: Rep. Clarice Navarro-Ratzlaff and former state lawmaker Larry Trujillo, both of Pueblo.) Those concerns were based on lack of minority input as well as putting near dead last the redistricting criteria on “communities of interest,” which minority leaders have claimed would destroy the Latino voting bloc.

But former Speaker of the House Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, a Fair Districts leader who also led the 2016 failed ballot measure effort, shot back that the coalition has attempted to reach out to minority groups but those groups haven’t been interested in participating.

Editor’s note: This article was changed at 6:47 p.m. on Oct. 26 to add a statement from Fair Districts’ Aaron Cohen regarding minority representation in the coalition, and to amend the statement that redistricting criteria on “communities of interest” is dead last on 2018 ballot proposals.