PA Senate Committee Advances Bill To Transform Electoral Map-Drawing Process

By Dave Lemery | Watchdog.org

When it comes to the topic of redistricting reform, the paths in recent months of the Pennsylvania House and Senate Finance Committees couldn’t be much different.

In the House, Chairman Daryl Metcalfe, R-Cranberry Township, has in recent meetings used a “gut and replace” tactic to commandeer bills that were designed to create an independent commission of citizens to draw congressional and state legislative maps. These rancorous meetings have proceeded with much sniping between Republican and Democratic committee members and party-line votes.

On the other hand, in the Senate, Chairman Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon, has given attention to exactly the sorts of bills that Metcalfe disdains, holding public hearings with extensive testimony from experts both in favor of and opposed to the concept of independent commissions.

Now, a piece of legislation in the form of a constitutional amendment has emerged from Folmer’s committee, Senate Bill 22 by Sen. Lisa Boscola, D-Bethlehem. With Boscola’s support, Folmer introduced a significant amendment during a committee hearing this week to address concerns from those who opposed the bill, and to allay some of his own qualms.

“I had two major concerns going forward with Senate Bill 22, the random selection process for choosing citizen commissioners and the role of the court should the commission fail to approve those maps,” Folmer said. “I simply cannot in good conscience agree to a random selection process when I believe the General Assembly has a responsibility to fulfill it and the redistricting process. … Similarly, I have trouble with the court selecting just one person as a special master to draw maps, should the proposed independent commission not be able to finalize the maps.”

Folmer’s amendment does away with the random selection of commission members, but doesn’t provide an alternative, either. A mechanism for choosing the commission members would have to be established by enabling legislation if the constitutional amendment goes into effect.

To address Folmer’s second concern, if a redistricting commission finds itself unable to agree on maps, instead of potentially forwarding the decision on to the courts, the commission would send two or three proposed maps for each category to the Legislature to make the final decision.

Folmer’s amendment and the bill itself garnered unanimous support from the committee and will advance to the full Senate for consideration.

Even after gaining committee approval, SB22 faces long odds for its provisions to go into effect. As a constitutional amendment, it must pass the Senate and House of Representatives during one two-year session (the current 2017-18 session), and then pass again, unamended, in the following two-year term (2019-20). Following that second approval, it would have to go to the voters in a referendum, and only after that could it actually be implemented.

The recently completed May 15 primary election and the upcoming November general election are both taking place on the congressional level using a map drawn up by an outside redistricting expert at the behest of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The imposition of that map was the culmination of weeks of accusations, recriminations and legal filings after the court threw out the maps established in 2011 by the Legislature – maps that were derided nationally as among the worst examples of gerrymandering, the practice by the party in power of deliberately grouping constituencies to keep their candidates safe from challengers.

The topic of gerrymandering has become a national issue as several states have seen legal disputes around their electoral maps reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Political observers have suggested that the replacement of Pennsylvania’s map in particular could have significant repercussions for national politics since it did away with a number of reliably Republican congressional districts, increasing the odds that the Democratic Party could take control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati gave a nod this week toward Folmer’s efforts to improve the redistricting process, and House Majority Leader Dave Reed has also said that he supports the concept of an independent commission.

During an appearance this week before the Pennsylvania Press Club, Scarnati said that when he and House Speaker Mike Turzai filed suit to block the imposition of the Supreme Court’s map, it wasn’t so much about defending the old map as it was about preserving the separation of powers between the branches of government.

“I never defended the maps, necessarily,” Scarnati said. “Could they have been drawn better? Certainly, but they were drawn under the parameters we had. But what I was doing was defending our constitutional duty, the Legislature’s constitutional duty to draw these maps.”

Scarnati said that Republican leaders were still looking at legal options to support his position that the state Supreme Court didn’t have the authority to throw out the old map or impose the new one. But in the meantime, he said he supports efforts to try to come up with a better map-drawing process

“We also have to find ways that we can draw better congressional maps,” he said. “And just as we are doing now in the Senate and in the House, we are working through that with Senator Folmer and members of the State Government Committee.”