There was unanimity and bipartisanship among those who attended a hearing last Thursday sponsored by the joint Indiana House and Senate Committees on Redistricting.
All who testified, including yours truly, were agreed on the following:
• That the Legislature must publicly reveal their maps and give the public time to study and comment on them.
• New legislative and congressional districts should respect “communities of interest,” along with county, township and city and town boundaries.
• The maps should try and eliminate those jagged, crooked, warped lines, swiggles, loops and curves district lines have had.
“Confusing,” people said. “Inhibits people from being involved in elections,” said others.
Nearly all said don’t protect incumbents, prepare maps that create fairer districts, not ones that are one sided for one party or the other.
Even a lady from the tea party agreed with things I, AARP and others said.
Listening were the two committees, bipartisan, but with a strong conservative tinge.
Republican leaders, including Gov. Mitch Daniels have talked a good game that redistricting this time should create cleaner and fairer maps. But I and many Hoosiers don’t believe them.
Last week, Senate Democrats called the Republicans bluff by preparing their own maps for Congress and state Senate.
The Senate Democrats congressional map would give the party three seats (the 1st in Northwest Indiana, the 7th here in Indy and the 3rd from South Bend down to Kokomo). Over the decade, Democrats could recapture a couple more seats under their plan.
Most important, the Democrats congressional map respects county boundaries, doesn’t divide Hoosier communities into multiple congressional districts and respects communities of interest.
In Marion County, the Democratic plan creates a simple 7th Congressional district, consisting of Pike, Washington, Lawrence, Wayne, Center and Warren Townships, plus all of Beech Grove and a sliver of Franklin Township.
The Democrats’ Senate maps also respects townships, clearly recognizing the city/county’s growing Black and Hispanic communities. The Democratic plan creates clean, easy to understand district lines, and gives our growing minority community an opportunity to elect Senate candidates of our choice in four districts, instead of the current two.
Contrast that to the current map which has more twists and turns than a Kings Island coaster, bound together by jagged lines which divide neighborhoods, townships, and cities to create bizarre shaped districts.
Senate Minority Leader Vi Simpson, D-Bloomington, is blunt when talking about how Republicans have shortchanged Marion County. She believes Indiana’s largest city/county should have six Senate districts within its boundaries. Right now, there are just two districts.
Now, the onus is on the Republicans to see if their rhetoric about an open redistricting process will occur, or whether their words are hollow and they’ll try and create maps that divide our community and potentially violate the Federal Voting Rights Act.
In talking with Republican legislators, they insist as late as last week that they were just “starting” the redistricting process. Yet, reading about what happened in Virginia, I question their veracity.
Virginia received their Census data a week before Indiana. Democratic and Republican lawmakers have already released finished redistricting maps to the public and they’re in session this week to approve their redistricting plans.
Virginia lawmakers made no attempt to communities of interests or stay away from wavy, jagged bizarre shapes. The Washington Post reports the Republican and Democratic National Committees “helped” Virginia’s lawmakers prepare their plans.
So, I have to believe the RNC has been helping Hoosier Republicans and I await their handiwork.
What I’m hearing in the streets
Now we’re finding out what the true intentions of educational reformers, including radical Republicans bent on pushing school vouchers down Hoosiers’ throats.
During the campaign, unlike right to work and union busting, Republicans running for the Legislature were open about their goals for school vouchers. They wanted them to be a chance for parents whose students attended “failing” schools to have “a choice” to put their kids in a “better school.”
When Gov. Daniels talked about vouchers in his State of the State message in January, the camera cut to cute Black kids and their parents in the gallery as visual testimony of the target for the voucher efforts.
Now, the truth comes out. Vouchers aren’t really for African-American and poor children trapped in a poor performing school. Instead vouchers will be available to middle class and middle income Hoosier families. What started as an effort to benefit African-American children has morphed into an effort to help far more whites.
On our “Afternoons with Amos” radio program, I asked Luke Messer, representing those pushing vouchers, if the bill passes the Legislature and is signed by the governor when would it take effect. The start of the next school year, in “August” Messer said. An answer that stunned me.
I pressed Messer, telling him that private high schools have already picked their freshman classes of 2015 and wouldn’t adding vouchers cause uncertainty? Messer had no answer.
Democrats tried to amend the voucher bill by insisting that vouchers go to students in the worst performing public schools. But Republicans voted it down.
According to the Louisville Courier Journal, House Speaker Brian Bosma told reporters that helping kids in failing schools was NOT the goal of the vouchers.
Yet, during the campaign, the Republicans’ own literature clearly stated they wanted vouchers “to provide children who attend failing schools grants to attend their school of choice.”
One of the concerns Democrats have raised about vouchers is Indiana’s constitutional prohibition against directly using tax money for religious purposes.
But, Messer told me that he hoped vouchers would encourage churches and faith based groups to open schools. He specifically cited Eastern Star Church’s closing of Jewel Christian Academy last year as an example of how vouchers could have helped that school.
Like redistricting, Republicans’ words ring hollow and inconsistent.
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What an embarassment! The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department had joined with mostly Black churches to stage a gun return program April 16. But the plan brought a firestorm of criticism from many African-Americans as well as Democratic mayoral candidate Melina Kennedy. There was concern that IMPD was giving amnesty so criminals could hand in guns used in crimes without repercussions.
IMPD has now “postponed” the effort. Another embarrassment for Mayor Greg Ballard whose police department was ready to give de facto amnesty for criminals while Ballard told the Indianapolis Star he opposed amnesty programs for criminals.
See ‘ya next week.
You can e-mail comments to Amos Brown III to acbrown@aol.com.
