Redistricting

What the proponents of Proposal G in the West Towson/Rodgers Forge Elementary redistricting matter fail to realize (or won't admit publicly) is that under any of the four proposals, some children who can currently walk to Rodgers Forge Elementary School will be bused to West Towson. It is disingenuous for the supporters of Proposal G to premise their support based on their proximity to the school because Proposal G will still force other people who live nearby to be bused away. The supporters of Proposal G couch their viewpoint in terms of neighborhood unity when it is really little more than neighborhood chauvinism.

Maryland Republican Party interim chairman Diana Waterman fended off challenges and won election as head of the state GOP this past weekend, taking the reins as the party faces a shortened fundraising session for state lawmakers and challenges from newly redrawn election districts. Waterman had been interim chair since February, when the previous chairman, former state Sen. Alex X. Mooney, announced his plans to resign. Waterman, of Queen Anne's County, won a majority of votes on the second ballot at the party's spring convention, beating Collins Bailey, popular with the Tea Party and a member of the Charles County Central Committee, and Greg Kline, an Anne Arundel County attorney and blogger.

Late tomorrow afternoon, community leaders and other interested individuals from around the state will get a chance to voice concerns about the legislative redistricting plan proposed by a special advisory committee. There is still time for the panel to make modest changes in its maps. But federal laws, population shifts and the complexities of drawing 47 districts make it impossible preserve the status quo that so many politicians and communities desire.In revisiting the redistricting maps before submitting them to Gov. William Donald Schaefer, the advisory committee ought to make amends in cases where it has divided neighborhoods or dissected counties.

The conservative group Judicial Watch has asked the Court of Special Appeals to overturn last November's referendum on a new congressional redistricting map for Maryland, contending the wording of the ballot question was misleading. Backed by Del. Neil Parrott's MDPetitions.com, Judicial Watch filed an appeal of a Circuit Court decision last year upholding the wording. The plaintiffs asked the appeals court to require a new election using different ballot language. The General Assembly approved the new map drawn up by Gov. Martin O'Malley and Democratic legislative leaders in a special session in 2011.

MAYOR MARTIN O'MALLEY'S most challenging task this year is to draw new City Council districts. Voters mandated this reapportionment in November when they approved a ballot question that replaced the six three-member council districts with 14 single-member ones. This downsizing from 18 to 14 members - plus a president elected citywide - is the most sweeping reorganization since 1922, when the council's current setup was introduced. The redrawing has the potential to trigger a flurry of other changes as well - from the way members deal with the powerful mayor to their handling of constituency concerns, because colleagues can no longer cover for a nonperforming member.

There is nothing magical about the redrawn political boundary lines approved last week by the City Council and Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke. They assure no one an easy reelection. They assure neither white nor black politicians control in the next City Council. That decision still rests with voters, especially groups of citizens who are concerned enough about the city's future to participate in the upcoming elections.The new maps create five majority-black districts and one with a lopsided white majority.

County political leaders are expected to file suit in federal court today, challenging a congressional redistricting plan that divides Anne Arundel four ways.Delegate Michael Busch, D-Annapolis, was expected to announce the suit today at an 8 a.m. news conference.Busch is chairman of Anne Arundel County's 13-member House of Delegates contingent.The county's State House delegation has opposedthe redistricting plan, which eliminates the Anne Arundel-dominated congressional seat held by three-term Democrat Tom McMillen, since the General Assembly adopted it Oct. 22.Lawmakers said the plan improperly splits established communities, such as Crofton and Ferndale.

Parents in Severna Park had one message last night for the committee developing a redistricting plan for Anne Arundel County public schools: Don't move our children."

For a while, it seemed we had devoted so much attention to the subject of redistricting Columbia's Wilde Lake High School, we were in jeopardy of being just one more discordant note in the cacophony surrounding this matter.The last two months, however, have revealed a noticeable drop-off in the amount and intensity of the rhetoric aimed at this problem. Different factions must have had their own reasons for quieting down.Once the screaming subsided, Howard County's school board acted to resolve this contentious dispute.

Despite the high-handed action of House Speaker R. Clayton Mitchell in recessing the House of Delegates until Oct. 21, substantial progress was made yesterday on breaking the congressional redistricting deadlock in the State House. A sensible compromise plan, SB14, gained broad support in the state Senate and was winning a growing number of allies in the House. It is the best map on the negotiating table.Speaker Mitchell acted in anger in sending his delegates home for three weeks rather than negotiate with senators to resolve the redistricting dispute.

Anne Arundel County school officials moved forward this week with plans to redistrict schools in the Crofton area without provisions for a possible $38 million elementary school in Odenton - which developers had pledged to build if an age-restriction covenant were lifted to allow a new development. On Wednesday, the school board voted to take to a public hearing a plan crafted by a redistricting committee and proposed by Superintendent Kevin Maxwell that would address overcrowding at Nantucket Elementary School in Crofton.

The Anne Arundel school board received Superintendent Kevin Maxwell's redistricting recommendation Wednesday for Crofton-area schools, which delays plans to draw boundaries for a $38 million elementary school in Odenton that a developer has promised but some area residents have opposed. The proposed school, still included in the redistricting plan, would be along Evergreen Road and is part of the school system's efforts to ease crowding at Nantucket Elementary. Those plans also include redistricting Crofton Meadows Elementary, Arundel Middle and Crofton Middle.

Like many Marylanders, I am frankly embarrassed by the strange congressional districts just approved by the electorate. I humbly suggest that future redistricting efforts attempt to make more compact districts in which the representatives can better attend to local issues. For example, my home in rural western Howard County is represented by Rep. Elijah Cummings whose primary office is in downtown Baltimore nearly 30 miles away. And I see that the 3rd Congressional District joins Owings Mills, Annapolis and Montgomery County in a long narrow twisty district.

Gerrymandering is never going to change - unless we fix this states' problems from the ground up. The recent gerrymandering of congressional districts made me come to the realization that the only way Marylanders voices will be heard is if we force our elected officials to step out of the redistricting process. My thought is that two non-partisan firms compete for drawing the maps based on actual census data collected. The second firm comes in to audit the work of the first. They are both paid, but the incentive is a bonus to the first if it draws the map correctly.

The outcome of the recent referendum notwithstanding, the process and result of congressional redistricting in Maryland was a disgrace and remains a badge of shame for the state ("Against Question 5," Nov. 6). It would be hard to imagine a clearer case of politicians choosing their voters, rather than the other way around, undermining the fundamental purpose of the election process. But that was the only transparent part of this exercise, since the actual wording of the referendum question seemed intended to mislead.

Maryland's highest court upheld Gov. Martin O'Malley's new legislative redistricting map on Friday morning. The Court of Appeals issued an order, but no opinion, denying the claims in three challenges. The order comes only two days after the challenges were argued in court. The order said the judges found the plan, which will take effect with the 2014 elections, passed constitutional muster. The new map shifts the districts of Baltimore County Democratic Sens. James Brochin – whose new district is majority Republican – and Delores Kelley, both of whom objected to the plan.

Lawyers for the state defended Maryland's new General Assembly districts Wednesday, telling Maryland's highest judges that while the map may not please everyone, it's legal and proper. "Somebody can always draw a better map. That's not the issue," Assistant Attorney General Dan Friedman told the Court of Appeals, as he argued against three challenges to the redistricting map. "The issue is whether this map is constitutional. " Among those challenging the plan are two Democratic state senators from Baltimore County, who asked the judges to throw out the plan created by Gov. Martin O'Malley and General Assembly leaders and tell them to try again.

In her first 100 days on the job, Howard County schools Superintendent Renee Foose has revamped the system's legal services, established an office of accountability and called for revision of a redistricting proposal to shift hundreds of students to new schools, a move that some parents have decried. Foose is steadily imposing her management approach on the 50,000-student system as she attempts to fulfill promises to make it more transparent and accessible - directives spelled out in the entry plan she unveiled as she took over July 1. Perhaps the most controversial move she has made involves the redistricting plan.