State Senate passes redistricting bill with last-minute amendment
The Pennsylvania Senate passed a redistricting reform bill Wednesday that had been dramatically changed the day before, drawing fire from anti-gerrymandering advocates who began lobbying against legislation they had helped craft.
The bill, approved 35-14, largely along party lines, would ask voters to amend the state constitution to have political maps drawn by a citizens commission, rather than lawmakers. Proposals had been debated for months, but Republicans added an amendment Tuesday that would put an additional proposal before voters: Should state appellate judges, including Supreme Court justices, be elected from regional districts across the state instead of in statewide elections?
With the amendment, the redistricting reform bill, SB22,
became unpalatable to advocates, and Democrats called the amendment a “poison pill” meant to retaliate against the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which in January overturned the state’s congressional map as a partisan gerrymander.
“What we have now is a hijacked concept [of] a bill that utilized the energy and the commitment of individuals to try to make a difference,” state Sen. Vincent Hughes, D-Philadelphia, said on the Senate floor. Republicans, he said, “hijacked that commitment … in retaliation to the state Supreme Court’s decisions.”
“This bill now not only does not decrease gerrymandering, in fact it increases gerrymandering because it adds the judicial branch,” he said.
Republican leaders say the measure was meant to ensure “geographic diversity.” State Sen. Ryan Aument, R-Lancaster, who introduced the amendment, said Tuesday the creation of regional districts would apply the principle of “one person, one vote” — which requires equal populations in election districts — to the judicial system.
Many appellate judges have hailed from Philadelphia and Allegheny counties, Republicans said, including five of the seven current Supreme Court justices. Adopting the language of anti-gerrymandering advocates, Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre, said in a tweet he was “looking to create fair districts for the courts.”
Before the vote, Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, attempted to remove the Aument amendment, first by reverting the bill to a previous version, then by splitting the amendment from the original bill. In party-line votes, the Republican majority voted to keep the amended version of the legislation.
Two Democrats, Andy Dinniman, D-Chester, and Lisa Boscola, D-Lehigh, voted for the bill. Both said they were doing so because it improved the redistricting process, not because they supported the judicialdistricting.
“I would have preferred the pristine version,” said Ms. Boscola, who has long worked on the bill and redistricting reform efforts. Still, she said: “It’s progress and a vast improvement on what we have now. And unfortunately, to make any change, time’s growing short. Make no mistake: Senate Bill 22 is historic and profound. … This bill is progress in the right direction.”
Under the bill, a commission would be set up to draw congressional and legislative boundaries.
“It’s the obvious time,” Mr. Corman said Tuesday. “I’m not sure when else you would do it.”
Wednesday’s vote sends the bill, with Aument’s amendment and other changes, to the Republicancontrolled House. Because it would amend the state constitution, the bill must pass both the House and Senate in the exact same form during two consecutive legislative sessions before going to voters to approve or reject the ideas.
The amendments are contained in one bill but would appear as two separate questions on the ballot, Senate officials said. One would ask whether a commission should be established to draw political maps, and the other would ask whether districts should be set up for judicial elections. Voters would hypothetically be able to vote to create a commission but vote against forming judicial districts, or vice versa.
If both pass, the independent commission also would draw the lines for judicial districts from which judges would be selected.
To affect the next redrawing of election lines, which would occur in 2021, the bill would need to pass the state Legislature by early next month and then pass again next session.
Mr. Aument rejected the idea his bill was a “poison pill,” saying it was a legitimate idea that deserved to be heard. He said he did not see a need for hearings on the proposal to create judicial districts and that most of the argument was not about the idea itself.
“It was interesting as I was listening to the debate that there was very little disagreement with the concept that I was discussing,” Mr. Aument said. “In fact, a number of members made the point of saying that they thought the regional approach to judicial districts made a lot of sense and required further review. So a lot of the debate yesterday was really around motive that just frankly wasn’t true but there was a lot of support for.”