Panel: Rethink RTM Districts

Paper: Greenwich Time (CT)

Date: July 8, 2007

A special panel wants the town attorney's office to review how the RTM's district lines are drawn, to see whether they comply with the constitutional principle of one man, one vote.

Currently the districts are all different sizes, and have varying numbers of seats. While voters are equally represented in the RTM proportionally -- the number of registered voters determines how many delegates a district gets -- the individual districts have very different numbers of town meeting members representing them.

District 3/Chickahominy has just 10 seats, compared with 21 in District 10/Northwest, for example.

"I think, as far as I'm concerned, (the current system) doesn't comply with what the Constitution requires -- one man, one vote," said Frank Mazza, a member of the town's Charter Revision Committee.

While the focus of the special panel's work has been on the overall size of the 229-member RTM and its procedures, the group is poised to recommend a legal review of the way seats are apportioned to districts when it releases its final report to the Board of Selectmen later this month.

Mazza said he doesn't think it's fair that he can only elect 15 representatives in District 2/Harbor, where he resides, when people who live across the street from him on Indian Field Road get to elect 19 representatives because they live in District 1/South Center.

"I think you have to have equalized districts," said Mazza, a former longtime member of the Board of Estimate and Taxation.

Combining smaller caucuses for voting purposes or redrawing district lines to have equal numbers of representatives were two options mentioned as ways of achieving equilibrium.

Historically, there have been few if any issues that have pitted one district against another, but if one did arise, the number of RTM delegates each district has could become a point of contention.

"Conceivably, two large districts could sway the vote in a townwide matter," said former First Selectman John Margenot Jr., the committee's chairman.

Margenot said combining districts with fewer seats for voting purposes could be a solution to what he characterized as an imbalance.

"I think it would be fairer," Margenot said, explaining that the Board of Selectmen could initiate the change.

The number of delegates in each district has always been disparate, said Moderator Pro Tempore Joan Caldwell, who is chairman of the District 10 delegation. A special committee was formed in the 1970s to bring the districts into compliance with census numbers after an influx of residents in the 1950s and '60s, she said.

The prospect of changing things again had RTM leaders recoiling, though.

"We are not looking at redistricting," said Thomas Byrne, the RTM's longtime moderator.

Caldwell said the last redistricting of the 1970s was a "nightmare" because it put some neighborhoods into districts with other neighborhoods they did not share a common association with previously.

Despite Chickahominy having the fewest seats of any delegation, District 3 Chairman Robert Tuthill said he worried about neighborhoods being unnaturally divided or combined with others.

"What you do is lose the sense of a community, which would be a terrible thing to do," said Tuthill, who favors the current system.

However, Town Attorney John Wayne Fox said the charter change committee had raised a fair question about the constitutionality of the way seats are apportioned and that his office was already examining the issue.

The number of registered voters in a district is a fact that Fox said cannot be discounted in the legal analysis, which will focus on whether certain neighborhoods hold a distinct advantage over others.

"Is there something inappropriate? Is there an imbalance?" Fox said, giving examples of the types of questions his office will try to answer.

Special panel member Nancy Brown said getting those answers will be important.

"I don't know whether we meet the standard of one man, one vote that is required by the Constitution, and I think that's what we need to determine," said Brown, who is director of the town's Community Development Office.

Tuthill, on the other hand, said that the different districts are rarely pitted against each other in the current system and generally look out for the best interests of the town as a whole.

"We're not like the state legislature," Tuthill said.

Author: By Neil Vigdor Staff Writer

Section: Local News

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