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Saturday, July 01, 2006

Ind. Law - Bosma says GOP won't redistrict next year

"Bosma says GOP won't redistrict next year" is the headline to a story today by the Louisville Courier Journal's Lesley Stedman Weidenbener. This is the first story I've seen on the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Texas redistricting case, LULAC v. Perry, on Indiana. Weidenbener writes:

House Speaker Brian Bosma said yesterday the Republican caucus won't push to redraw maps for legislative districts next year, despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision that might allow it.

Bosma, R-Indianapolis, said the current Indiana House maps drawn by Democrats in 2001 were meant to try to protect the party's control of the chamber and incumbents.

But Bosma said his caucus supports changing the process by which maps are created -- not redrawing them mid-decade, as Republicans tried in 1995.

"There may be extraordinary circumstances where interim redistricting is appropriate," Bosma said. "But I don't see any of those being in place now."

I didn't remember that the Republicans tried a mid-decade redistricting in 1995. I'll have to check the back newspapers. The story continues:
On Wednesday the Supreme Court upheld mid-decade congressional redistricting in a Texas case, although the justices found fault with some of the maps drawn there.

Typically redistricting is done the year after the federal census because those numbers are used to determine the maps. But GOP lawmakers in Texas drew new congressional maps in 2003 to increase the likelihood that Republicans would be elected.

In the majority opinion, the court noted that neither the Constitution nor Congress "has stated any explicit prohibition of mid-decade redistricting to change districts drawn earlier in conformance with a decennial census."

The ruling might not be the controlling opinion in an Indiana legislative redistricting because the Indiana Supreme Court likely would interpret what the state constitution says about such a step. But the federal case could be a guide.

When Republicans took control of the House in 1994, they arrived at the next year's session ready to redraw the maps.

They said then that they wanted to eliminate a seat -- going from 100 districts to 99 -- to avoid future 50-50 ties between the two parties. But Democrats saw the move as a power grab and went home, where they stayed for days, stopping all business. Eventually, Republicans gave up, and the Democrats came back.

Ah, I do remember that --the effort to create an odd number of House members, to avoid the co-speakership situation.
Now House Republicans are proposing that a bipartisan commission be charged with developing districts based on population and compactness. It would be prohibited from considering political factors.

Democrats, who hope to gain control of the House in this year's elections, say the idea could be unconstitutional because the state constitution requires lawmakers to approve the maps.

Of course, current House Speaker Bosma will only be in a position to push for a map redraw next year if the House again goes Republican. Earlier this week I wrote:
It makes the November election even more important than before, because whichever party wins the Indiana House this year will want to do a mid-decade redistricting to change the House from a closely split body to one whose district makeup guarantees (as far as such a thing can be assured) that the party that wins the House will rule the House for years to come. Whichever party loses the election will argue for the creation of a redistricting commission.
"Wanting to do" a mid-term redistricting and actually doing one successfully are two different things. Giving more thought to the matter, a redistricting brings into play both the House and the Senate and the Governor. If all three are Republican next year, a mid-decade redistricting could be possible, provided that the House majority is large enough - remember the Democrat walkouts. If the House turns Democrat next year, the Democrats may want to do a redistricting, but it would likely die in the Republican Senate. The key is that there is no constitutional mandate to conduct a redistricting in other than decennial census years. Art. 4, sec. 5 of the Indiana constitution provides:
Section 5. The General Assembly elected during the year in which a federal decennial census is taken shall fix by law the number of Senators and Representatives and apportion them among districts according to the number of inhabitants in each district, as revealed by that federal decennial census. The territory in each district shall be contiguous.
(History: As amended March 14, 1881; November 6, 1984).
This mandate is why the court will become involved if the legislature cannot come to an agreeement during the post-census session. But there is no constitutional mandate to redistrict in mid-decade.

Another issue of course would be what population figures to use.

Section 5 also points out Rep. Bauer's issue: "the [commission] idea could be unconstitutional because the state constitution requires lawmakers to approve the maps." Here is what I've written (1/30/06 ILB entry) about the commission concept:

My thoughts. There are valid concerns about the redistricting bill. It is ambiguous. It may well be unconstitutional. It could be repealed next year, one General Assembly can not bind the next.

A redistricting commission is an excellent idea, but it has to be done right -- by constitutional amendment. Going the constitutional route would solve each of the above problems.

A constitutional amendment needs to be passed by two separately elected General Assemblies. 2006 was the second session of the 114th General Assembly, 2007 is the first session of the 115th. If the constitutional amendment route (rather than creating a commission by statute) had been initiated last year, the proposed amendment could have been adopted in the 2007 session and been eligible for submission to the voters at the next general election. If the proposed amendment is adopted in the upcoming 2007 session, it will have to wait until the 2009 session for the second vote.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on July 1, 2006 07:38 AM
Posted to Indiana Government | Indiana Law