News Today – Philly redistricting 101: What to know about the city’s fast-tracked political mapmaking

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Philadelphia’s political map is changing this year. New borders are being created for each of the city’s 10 councilmanic districts. Some will get larger, and others will get smaller, based on population changes.

That’s redistricting: the process of drawing new maps to determine which areas elected politicians will be representing. This happens every decade when census numbers come out, and is meant to make sure every resident has equal representation. It happens at the state and federal levels, too.

The whole thing can be arcane and wonky — which might be why City Council thought they could rush it through without much notice.

But when Philadelphians got their first chance to offer feedback on Wednesday, they had plenty to say. The general tone of testimony was exasperation and disappointment, with complaints ranging from the inaccessible drafting process to prison gerrymandering to communities split between multiple districts.

The redistricting process is taking place around the nation with varying degrees of controversy, which often hinges on the process chosen for writing new maps.

Redistricting can be many things, but it’s rarely easy. Crafting the geographic markers of political representation is essential to representative democracy, and liable to the political hijinks that often accompany such important duties. In Philly, lawmakers have gone for months without pay over redistricting, and Pennsylvania’s congressional maps are so contested that they’re going to be decided in state courts, with observers expecting the issue to reach the state Supreme Court.

Want to stay informed? With the city’s proposed map being created mostly behind closed doors, there’s plenty to explore. Here’s your cheat sheet to redistricting in Philadelphia.

As instructed by the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter, a revised map must be approved by City Council six months after U.S. Census data is released. This time around, the new population counts were put out on Aug. 12, 2021, so the deadline for the map is Feb. 12.

It’s a big deal because it’ll mark City Council district boundaries for three election cycles: 2023, 2027, and 2031. Once the details are finalized, only a select few changes can be made.

If the map isn’t approved before the six-month deadline, penalties begin, and lawmakers salaries get withheld. Says the Charter: “[I]f the Council shall have failed to redistrict the City as herein required, the councilmembers shall not receive any further salaries until the Council shall have passed … a redistricting ordinance.” That has actually happened before (see more below).

At the federal level, congressional districts are crafted by the Pa. Legislature through the State Government Committee. Republicans are currently in control, and their proposed map was vetoed by Gov.Tom Wolf, sending the decision to Commonwealth Court.

For state districts in Pennsylvania, this work is done by the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, or LRC, a panel that composes state House and Senate maps.

In Philadelphia, all 17 members of City Council must approve new district maps, but the process is led by the council president, currently Darrell Clarke. On Jan. 20, Council Majority Leader Cherelle Parker introduced the relevant legislation, Bill No. 220003, on Clarke’s behalf.

The maps are approved via Council legislation, which is always required to include time for public comment — but not a whole lot of it.

Public hearings on bills are must be advertised in the three city newspapers with the largest circulation at least five days prior. Hearings are also open every time Council deliberates on a matter, including the session where the bill is up for final consideration.

For manners as crucial as redistricting, many other jurisdictions provide more opportunities for civilian input, even when not mandated to do so. For example, Erie County’s charter includes the District Revision Commission — a body appointed by majority vote by the County Council — which held a meeting open to the public last November.

Philadelphia did not do that this year.

At the one hearing so far, held virtually, many people commented about the lack of public involvement in the process. Said one witness, “Having an input in our everyday lives shouldn’t be a question.” The hearing didn’t finish during its allotted time, so it was recessed to next week, meaning there’s another chance to weigh in with comment on Wednesday, Feb. 2.

Advocacy groups like the Committee of Seventy and Northeast Against Racism have pressed for more effort to get input from Philadelphians.

Who is responsible for the lack? “This particular process has been dictated by the council president,” affirmed Committee of Seventy Policy Director Pat Christmas.

Councilmanic districts have to be of relatively equal population, with counts within 10% of each other. This is known as the “one person, one vote” principal, and it meant to make sure each resident has an equal voice in Council. As people move into different parts of the city, different areas gain or lose residents, which is why the borders often need to change.

But it’s often hard to make districts even in population without splitting neighborhoods. When that happens, it can lessen the impact residents have.

“If a neighborhood is split across multiple districts, [residents] will probably have a more difficult time advocating around the sort of land use issues that matter to them, whether it’s a zoning variance, a land sale, or any other matter that’s relevant to that community,” said Christmas, of Committee of Seventy.

The map Council President Clarke proposed this time around was hailed by River Wards residents for keeping the North 2nd Street commercial corridor intact in one district. On the other hand, it oddly lumped a segment of Brewerytown with West Philadelphia in Councilmember Jamie Gauthier’s District 4.

As it happened, Clarke’s map didn’t adhere to the equal population rule.

The new lines for Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr.’s 4th District made it 10.2% smaller than the new 6th District, formerly represented by Bobby Henon, a flaw first reported by the Inquirer. That’s due to be changed before the map is finalized.

This redistricting cycle has seen a heightened focus on prison gerrymandering. The term refers to the idea that when incarcerated people are included in the population count of the area where they’re imprisoned, that district gains excess political power. Instead of the people being counted as constituents where they lived before going behind bars.

Prison gerrymandering has already been addressed by the LRC, who voted last August to no longer count many state prisoners as residents of the districts where they’re incarcerated, but as residents of the districts where they originally lived instead.

In Philly, that dynamic is mirrored in the city’s jail complex on State Road, in the 6th District. Due to its placement, the 6th District’s population was boosted by nearly 5,000 people, in line with the count taken during the last Census. While the state level prisoner-adjusted data has existed for months now, Christmas explained that addressing the city level data would take some work.

“The city adjusted data would have to be crunched. That would require the Kenney administration to go through their records for the individuals who were up there in the State Road facilities during the 2020 Census. For each one of them, check their home or last known address, take them out of either of those two precincts and then put them back in their home precinct wherever that is in the city of Philadelphia.”

After it was brought up time and time again, Council president Clarke singled out prison gerrymandering during the hearing on Wednesday, saying that it was among the select issues that could be addressed after the Feb. 12 due date.

Before maps were redrawn in 2011, Philadelphia had one of the most gerrymandered municipal maps in the country, due to a chaotic redistricting process in 2001. That go-around, City Council deliberated over the map for five months beyond the allotted six months, with disputes over how to divide Center City and growing populations in Lower Northeast Philly dragging out the process.

Council members went without pay for those five months, and Rick Mariano — the representative of the 7th District at the time — was convicted and served time for taking bribes to pay off credit card debt during that period.

The end result was a blatantly gerrymandered map, which was amended considerably after the 2010 Census.

Today, the clearest controversy over the redistricting process has been the lack of consultation between Council President Clarke and the public at large. The good news is that better models for the process are happening across the state, according to Christmas, the Seventy policy director.

At the state level, the LRC drafts a preliminary map, and has a 30 day public feedback window, Christmas said, going “above and beyond what the Constitution requires, enfolding dozens of public hearings and meetings about their process, both before and after they released a map.”

He cited Pittsburgh as another good example, where lawmakers set up an advisory council that consults with the public.

For any of these measures to be a requirement in Philly, there would need to be reforms to the City Charter.

Time has long run out for the 2022 redistricting process to adapt to civic engagement measures, a point that witnesses made repeatedly on Wednesday. “In a meaningful public engagement process,” Christmas said, “it takes weeks or more likely months to have those conversations.”

The short answer is no.

Redistricting is a complex process, and with a city as segmented by neighborhoods as Philly, the lines are sure to leave some disappointed.

“There’s no map that can be of equal population between districts, not split any communities whatsoever, and have compact districts with the amount of contiguous parts. Any political map involves tradeoffs,” said Christmas, “and in a sense there will be winners and losers in any given map. But we can and we should be very clear about what the goals are.”

One goal Seventy identified, through consulting with civic and community leaders, is maintaining “communities of interest.” The idea is to first prioritize neighborhoods, then ethnic and language groups, and then business corridors.

There are at least two more times there will be a public hearing on Bill No. 220003. Wednesday, Feb. 2, and whatever date the bill comes up for a vote, which has yet to be determined. You can sign up to offer testimony at either of these hearings.

If speaking at a City Council meeting isn’t your style, you can contact your councilmember directly.

There are also many grassroots organizations and neighborhood groups attuned to the redistricting process.

The Committee of Seventy wrote a preliminary report on public input regarding redistricting in Philly that lists some of these organizations. It includes the Urban Affairs Coalition, Amistad Law Project, League of Women Voters of Philadelphia, and multiple neighborhood associations.



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