Last Friday, the House P&E committee killed HB38, the bipartisan redistricting bill. I understood that Del. Jim Scott planned to try to revive the bill this coming Friday at the next regularly scheduled meeting. Rather than wait until Friday, I’m told that the committee called a meeting Monday afternoon with 15 minutes notice to hear the motion. The meeting took place after the House adjourned and bill was killed, with the vote split along party lines (with the exception of Johnny Joannou, who voted with the Republicans).
Is this what we have to look forward to? Secret meetings with no notice? How is this doing the people’s business? Has the House of Delegates become the latest Fusion Center?
Technorati Tags: Redistricting
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
This is going to come back to haunt them. They’ve got their chance to fix redistricting now, but they’re blowing it. When the Dems nail them to the wall in the next redistricting, I’ll still think it unhelpful to good government, but I’ll do nothing to oppose it.
I doubt if the Republicans in the House even read this bill. Simply because it came over from the Democratically-controlled Senate was enough to kill it.
I guess no one told Johnny that partisan redistricting would actually make it easier for us to change the boundaries of his district enough that it’s a tougher proposition to win a primary there, not harder.
Seriously now, this is starting to get ridiculous; my one reservation against bi-partisan redistricting is that the cynic in me is hedging that only a handful of districts at the most will become competitive and that, by and large, the process will err on the side of letting self-important part-time legislators keep their nifty job titles. What do Republicans lose by voting for a process that will largely protect the status quo?
anon – the biggest issue for me in any redistricting reform is the removal of incumbent protection as one of the criteria for drawing the lines. That should make the districts more competitive, although name recognition remains as a major issue to challengers to overcome.
Nothing. Which is why I said they didn’t bother to read the bill. This bill was far from perfect but was a first step. All they “won” by killing it was showing that they had the power to do so.
In my glass-is-half-full moments, I think it’s a hopeful sign indicating I have yet to lose the naive innocense of my optimistic teenage years that I am still perpetually stunned with wonder by the fact that we send so many stupid, stupid people to Richmond.
When the Dems nail them to the wall in the next redistricting, I’ll still think it unhelpful to good government, but I’ll do nothing to oppose it.-MB
The legislature is split. No one is getting nailed to the wall anytime soon. We will most likely see the status quo remain mostly unchanged.
Republicans who’ve been around for more than 4-5 terms remember how they were treated when they were the minority party. That’s all the reason they need to kill this sort of bill.
Ds did it, Rs did it – everyone agrees on that part. So why not try to fix it? And what better time to fix in than when the legislature is split?
If the Rs lose control of the House in 2009, they will be wishing they had at least gotten a seat at the table.
“I doubt if the Republicans in the House even read this bill. Simply because it came over from the Democratically-controlled Senate was enough to kill it.”
THIS is the lock-step bull to which I just referred in a comment on your “rotten” piece. This is infuriating. And sickening that so few people can just blow off any semblance of being fair.
Changing the redistricting method is fine with me – subject to particulars. Wresting control of the HoD from the GOP will be a very tall order. If it had not been for the actions of a few Repubs in the Senate, it would be all but impossible (the Senate would still be in Republian hands, too.) Those guys are pretty much gone now.
Joannou is nothing more than a DINO or a local Virgil Goode. I wish Light would have won.