11th District

State Sen. Janice Piccinini, D-Balto. Co., has launched a campaign to derail the county delegation's legislative redistricting plan, saying it would "gerrymander into oblivion" communities in the northern county.Piccinini complains that the plan, for example, would divide most sections of Owings Mills and Reisterstown between two districts.The plan would create a single-delegate subdistrict in the majority black community along lower Liberty Road and attach it to the mostly Republican, rural 10th District.

Little noticed in the legislative muddle that has engulfed Annapolis is a simmering controversy in Baltimore County over redistricting. Demographics has radically altered the profile of the county's 11th District, which is now 40 percent black but has virtually no real chance of electing a black representative. The new Census statistics, and the Voting Rights Act, point to the need to create a majority black district. But the battle is getting bloody.It boils down to this: Every state legislative district now elects three delegates and one senator.