Court documents reveal private meetings in Senate redistricting

Senate leaders crafting new districts for the chamber in 2012 held confidential meetings to discuss maps with lawmakers before the maps were made public, while at the same time boasting about “the most open and transparent redistricting process in Florida’s history,” according to court documents.

Depositions and other evidence in a long-running lawsuit about the Senate districts were released this week, at the same time that lawmakers are holding a special session to redraw congressional lines that were struck down as unconstitutional gerrymanders by the Florida Supreme Court.

The Senate has essentially admitted that its districts also violate the “Fair Districts” standards approved by voters in 2010, and the Legislature will return to overhaul that map in a spe- cial session beginning in October. In response to a Miami Herald-Tampa Bay Times story on the documents published Thursday, Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, said that admission was only made because of the court’s earlier ruling on the congressional districts.

“The Senate entered into a consent judgment with the plaintiffs because on July 9, more than three years after they approved the current Senate map, the Florida Supreme Court imposed a new and unprecedented definition of legislative intent,” Gardiner said.

In any case, the documents provide some of the most in-depth information about how the maps for the 40 Senate districts were produced.

In an at-times contentious deposition taken last month, former Senate aide John Guthrie discussed a series of behind-the-scenes meetings among himself, then-Senate Reapportionment Chairman Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, and other senators. Among those who had in-person or video-conferencing meetings with Guthrie and Gaetz, Guthrie recalled, were Gardiner; Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater; and thenSen. Nan Rich, D-Weston. Guthrie said a meeting also likely took place with then-Sen. Larcenia Bullard, D-Miami.

“And Chairman Gaetz and I had had conversations with — collaborating with staff, but also in the week preceding release of that, there were some conversations with senators just to report to those senators the progress that Senator Gaetz had made on the map that he was working on,” Guthrie said.

The final version of Gaetz’s draft of the map was not shown to senators before it was released to the public, Guthrie said. But those who had meetings with the chairman and Guth- rie saw an earlier version.

The Senate was drawing lines for the first time under the Fair Districts standards, which required the map to be drawn without attempting to benefit or harm a political party or incumbent. Lawyers fighting the map in court on behalf of a coalition of voting-rights organizations pressed Guthrie on whether senators were able to recommend that their districts be drawn in a particular way.

“One of the purposes of those meetings was for the chairman and staff to get insights from members of the committee about factors that (they) may not have been otherwise aware of regarding what made sense in terms of providing effective representation to the constituencies in their region,” Guthrie said.

Guthrie said Gaetz had the final say on whether any changes to the map were made, based on the meetings with the senators.