Redistricting hearing set in Lubbock

Enrique Rangel
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
July 13, 2010

A-J AUSTIN BUREAU

AUSTIN — West Texans interested in attending the upcoming redistricting hearing in Lubbock should mark Aug. 18, on their calendar.

Starting at 10 a.m. at Tech’s International Cultural Center Auditorium, 601 Indiana Ave., two Texas House subcommittees will hear public suggestions on how the Legislature should redraw the boundaries of the state’s congressional, legislative, State Board of Education and other political districts when the lawmakers are back in session next year.

The Lubbock stop will be the sixth of 13 hearings the recently created Redistricting Subcommittee and the Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence Subcommittee are holding jointly throughout the state this summer.

Rep. Delwin Jones, R-Lubbock, chairman of the Redistricting Committee, which oversees the namesake subcommittee, along with Rep. Tryon Lewis, R-Odessa, will co-chair the meeting.

For the time being, this is the only redistricting hearing in the Panhandle/South Plains region this year. Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, chairman of the newly Senate Select Committee on Redistricting, said he hopes his panel also holds a hearing in Amarillo.

However, the committee has not scheduled any hearings yet because it is in the process of hiring a staff and getting organized.

The redistricting hearings are getting statewide attention because Texas is expected to gain three and possibly four congressional seats thanks to its explosive demographic growth of the past two decades and particularly since 2000. Major urban areas like Dallas and Houston, where most of the population growth has occurred, are expecting to gain one more congressional seat each.

However, for West Texas it is expected to be a different story. Even though Amarillo and Lubbock had a robust growth in the past decade, more than two dozen rural counties have continuously lost population since the late 1950s. Thus, the Panhandle/South Plains region is expected to lose at least one Texas House seat and possibly a congressional district as well.