Legislative Leaders Diverge On Goals For Redistricting Reform

By Dave Lemery | Watchdog.org

Two prominent lawmakers charted very different courses for how they see the future of legislative redistricting in Pennsylvania, with one reaffirming a belief that legislators should retain the responsibility, while the other suggested that the state look to the example of jury selection.

Rep. Dave Reed, R-Indiana, the Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives, put forth the outlines of a group of reform bills he intends to introduce. One would limit the tenure of committee chairmen in the House, another would introduce open primaries in the state, and the third would create a commission to draw legislative maps.

While there are a number of “independent commission” bills in the House and Senate already designed to create independent bodies to draw the boundaries for congressional and state legislative districts, Reed suggested in a memo to his colleagues that those existing proposals had introduced too much potential for bias and political influence.

“This proposal would establish a truly independent commission for the purpose of the decennial drawing of boundaries,” Reed wrote. “The commission would be selected in a similar fashion as a jury is selected: randomly from all eligible voters. The members of the commission would be seated in a way that preserves party and geographic balance.”

Reed also wrote that the commission would have to meet a number of set criteria to ensure fairness.

“The boundaries adopted under this new process would be required to meet neutral criteria to provide protection for an individual against dilution of his or her vote in the creation of the districts,” he wrote. “Those criteria would be compactness, contiguity, minimization of the division of political subdivisions, maintenance of population equality among districts and keeping intact communities of interest.”

Reed’s proposal contrasts with moves by the House’s State Government Committee and its chairman, Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Cranberry Township. Metcalfe this week once again led his committee to “gut and replace” a redistricting proposal into a new version that would have lawmakers drawing boundaries.

The original version of House Bill 563 by Rep. Ed Neilson, D-Philadelphia, would’ve amended the state constitution to create an 11-person independent commission of citizens and would’ve barred any legislators from being part of the commission.

Metcalfe’s amendment would have the commission be made up of six legislators, one each appointed by the House and Senate majority and minority leaders, and one each selected by the House and Senate chambers as a whole.

When Democratic members of the committee protested that Metcalfe was once again dramatically rewriting bills without any notice, he replied that the amendment he was using to replace the bill’s original provisions was the same one he’d used on April 11 to supplant House Bill 722, and thus their complaint wasn’t valid in this instance.

“You’ve seen the amendment before because we debated it in a previous meeting on House Bill 722,” Metcalfe said. “The majority of the members on this committee believed in this amendment enough to gut and replace [HB]722. … This bill was referred to the State Government Committee [on] February 21, 2017, so it’s been in the committee for over a year. It’s not like there’s any surprises.”

Rep. Pamela DeLissio, D-Philadelphia, argued that Metcalfe’s commission would represent a small minority of Pennsylvanians.

“If you look at the six individuals who would form this commission, they represent roughly just under a million of the citizens of Pennsylvania, which is about 8 percent of the population,” she said. “So only 8 percent of the population of Pennsylvania can hold their elected officials accountable for their decisions in redrawing the lines.”

But Metcalfe argued that the California model being emulated by many of the independent commission bills in the Legislature was an elitist body, filled with advanced degrees, leaving blue-collar workers unrepresented.

“To claim this as a citizen’s commission when you’re hand picking 11 individuals at the high end of the educational scale, rather than people that are truly representative of our state, I think is a serious flaw,” he said.

Metcalfe’s amendment of HB563 was approved on a 15-10 party line vote, but the bill was not passed on to the full House with an amendment from DeLissio pending consideration.