Better way to redistrict

Paper: Victoria Advocate, The (TX)

Date: May 20, 2006

With the 79th Texas Legislature almost certainly adjourned for the final time, state Sen. Jeff Wentworth is not sitting back and relaxing in his San Antonio home. Instead, the veteran Republican lawmaker is out recruiting more support for another reform to benefit the state.

Wentworth took part in a panel discussion on congressional and legislative redistricting Thursday at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, trying to build support for the Texas House of Representatives to do what the Texas Senate did a year ago.

Last year, Wentworth's chamber passed a bill to create an independent commission of citizens who are not public officials or registered lobbyists to redraw Texas' congressional district boundaries. Unfortunately, the Texas House did not go along with even that modest reform.

The San Antonio senator is realistic enough to know that state lawmakers are not likely to give up the power to redraw the boundaries of their own districts to protect themselves and their allies and to thwart their opponents. So he is working solely on redistricting for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The need for such practicality is unfortunate. An independent commission should redraw districts for both the Legislature and the state's U.S. House delegation.

"That is the big gorilla in the living room, and all of the other things that the people of Texas really do care about take a back seat," Wentworth told his Texas Tech audience.

"They're on a back burner while we focus on our self-preservation, and helping our friends who want to run for Congress and the rest," the senator added.

Texans do not have to remember too far back to recall how congressional redistricting interfered with much more important state priorities in 2003, helping push back much-needed reform of public school financing by three years.

The Legislature, carrying water for now-disgraced and indicted former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, redrew those districts to boost the number of Republicans in the Texas congressional delegation.

The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to rule on challenges to that map, based on alleged violations of the federal Voting Rights Amendment, on whether a state's district lines can be redrawn more than once following each federal census and on whether they can be redrawn at any time during that intervening decade.

To remove the redistricting process from petty partisan politics, with all the distractions and bad feelings that go with it, this newspaper supports creating an independent, bipartisan commission to redraw both congressional and state legislative district lines once - and only once - each decade, as soon as possible following each decennial federal census. We believe this should be done by amending the Texas Constitution.

This should result in more fairly drawn districts that are more likely to be genuinely competitive, rather than districts that protect incumbents and the party in power at the time, at the expense of giving voters real choices.

A more modest reform, such as the one Wentworth is pushing, would not do as much. But it would be much better than the current system. So we urge state Sen.-elect Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, and state Rep. Geanie Morrison, R-Victoria, to support this legislation when the 80th Legislature convenes next January.