Pa. panel submits revised remap
The bipartisan commission hopes this version will pass court muster. Elections in 2012 will use the 2001 map.
HARRISBURG - For the second time, a state panel has proposed new maps for Pennsylvania's 203 House and 50 Senate districts.
But this time, the hope is that there will be no need for court challenges - or court decisions declaring the proposed maps unconstitutional.
By a 4-1 vote, the bipartisan panel charged with crafting new Census-based legislative maps signed off Thursday on a proposal that sought to address the problems with its previous plan.
The state Supreme Court in January threw out the original plan adopted by the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, which had aimed to meet a constitutional requirement that all districts be rebalanced every decade to account for population shifts described by the Census. The high court said those proposed maps would have divided, or "split," too many municipalities into separate legislative districts, creating districts that weren't compact.
As a result, votes for legislative races on the April 24 primary and Nov. 6 general election ballots will be based on the old map, enacted in 2001.
The commission's latest proposal, which would take effect in 2014's elections, contains far fewer divided municipalities: For House seats, the original plan contained 108 so-called splits, while the new map has 68. The new Senate map contains 30 splits, as opposed to 58.
You can view the proposed maps online by going to www.redistricting.state.pa.us/Maps/
Thursday's vote set off a 30-day time frame for public input. The five-member reapportionment panel can then further revise its plan if it chooses to. Then the maps could again be challenged in court.
Commission chairman J. Stephen McEwen Jr., a senior state Superior Court judge, scheduled a public hearing on the maps for May 2.
"We need to keep the process moving," said Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware), a commission member. "This is the best we can achieve today."
Said House Minority Leader Frank Dermody (D., Allegheny): "I strongly believe our work needs to continue. It's important for the commission to understand that we are not yet done."
Dermody offered no specifics, but his spokesman, Bill Patton, said Dermody believed there were still too many splits.
'We can do better'
Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (D., Allegheny) was the only "no" vote. He said the proposed plan still needed work, including reconciling proposed divisions of wards in Philadelphia.
Four of the city's wards in the new map would be split into two or more senatorial districts. "I think we can do better," said Costa.
The new map - like the one struck down by the court - would move to York County the House seat that was long held by Rep. Dennis O'Brien, now a Philadelphia city councilman. It would also give Chester County an additional House seat.
But it would make whole again the borough of West Chester in Chester County, which had been divided into three separate House districts under the previous map.
Defending first map
Both Pileggi and House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) defended the original maps - the ones thrown out by the court - saying they believed that plan met constitutional requirements.
"The Supreme Court focused on division of municipalities rather than communities of interest," said Pileggi. "That's what we complied with in this map."
But will more lawsuits test the latest version? Amanda Holt, the citizen mapmaker from the Allentown area who successfully challenged the previous plan, said she couldn't say whether she would sue again until she had a chance to study the new configuration of districts.
"The focus," said Holt, who attended Thursday's meeting of the reapportionment panel, "should be on adhering to the constitutional requirement that political subdivisions be split only if necessary."
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