The much-maligned New York State legislature gained a degree of credibility the first half of this year, passing an on-time budget and demonstrating it could forge compromises on intractable issues like ethics reform and gay marriage.
It appeared that under the leadership of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the support of Speaker Sheldon Silver and Majority Leader Dean Skelos, functional government was not only possible but doable.
Yet old habits die hard, and while New Yorkers turn to vacations and relaxation, the state legislature is sowing the seeds of future dysfunction.
Across the state this summer a little-known entity, the Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment, or LATFOR, is conducting public hearings on redistricting reform. Redistricting is a once-in-a-decade process in which district boundaries for state legislative and congressional seats are redrawn to reflect changes in population so they are equal or nearly equal in the number of people.
But LATFOR sees the purpose of redistricting much differently.
It has drawn maps for decades with one primary aim: Ensuring incumbent legislators get re-elected. And it has been dramatically successful. Since 1999, incumbents in the state legislature have had a 96 percent re-election rate.
Only 53 incumbents since 1982 have lost a general election because districts are drawn in a way that discourages competition. The New York State Senate has been controlled by the Republican party every year but two since 1965. The New York State Assembly has been run by Democrats every year since 1974. This is due in no small part to rigged gerrymandering.
To establish their incumbency protection program, line-drawers carve competitors’ homes out of the district. They draw bizarrely-shaped districts while dividing communities and diminishing their ability to advocate for their interests. And they marginalize growing minority groups to protect the old guard.
Here in Queens, ten adjacent Assembly districts and three adjacent State Senate districts have an Asian American population of 20 percent or more. Yet there is only one Asian American state legislator representing Queens in Albany.
Despite this track record of gerrymandering, LATFOR persists with hearings masquerading as listening to the public on how district boundaries should be drawn. But New Yorkers have already spoken loud and clear on the drawing of district lines.
The public wants an independent commission – not the partisan, legislature-controlled LATFOR – to draw state legislative and congressional district boundaries according to fair and objective criteria while allowing for robust public input into the process.
Citizens Union is leading a diverse redistricting reform campaign, ReShapeNY, consisting of 37 different organizations, including civic, issue-advocacy, labor and business groups united behind creating a more independent redistricting process. Beginning with the 2010 campaigns and continuing during the legislative session, groups that are part of our coalition – led by former Mayor Ed Koch’s New York Uprising – were able to obtain record support for redistricting reform, including obtaining the backing of Cuomo who introduced a program bill in February to reform redistricting. Of the state legislature’s 212 members, 184 pledged or co-sponsored bills in support of changing the state’s rigged process for drawing district lines.
Ignoring the public will and continuing with LATFOR proceedings, though the only legally mandated process at this time, will only end in Cuomo vetoing, as he has publicly vowed to do, the very lines it draws, making this entire process a waste of time until the power of the pen is placed in the hands of an independent commission.
To make that happen, lawmakers need to return to Albany during a special legislative session to end partisan gerrymandering and enact redistricting reform by passing legislation to form an independent commission to draw impartial legislative and congressional lines.
The public has long since tired of legislators whose promises are not fulfilled, whose commitments are not kept. Redistricting can’t wait until next year, and New Yorkers deserve far better than ten more years of delay.
Dick Dadey is executive director of Citizens Union
