Pileggi defends changes that split some municipalities
By Eric Boehm | PA Independent
HARRISBURG — Delaware County Democrats have a splitting headache over proposed new state House and Senate districts that would divide some communities for political purposes.
Sheamus Bonner, a 19-year veteran of the armed forces and a registered Democrat from Drexel Hill in Delaware County, said he wondered why he was fighting overseas to defend politicians’ right to draw political maps that favor one party or the other and leave voters without a real voice in the redistricting process.
“It’s a sad state of affairs,” said Bonner, who offered testimony to the state Legislative Reapportionment Commission at public hearing here Friday.
Like Bonner, most public testimony from Delaware County focused on the plan to divide the borough of Swarthmore and the township of Haverford into two different state House districts and the plan to divide Upper Darby Township into three different House districts.
Swarthmore and Haverford currently are represented by one member in the state House and Upper Darby is split between two districts.
The situation in the county is particularly acute, because two of the five members on the panel that drew the new legislative districts have ties to the area: Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Chester, and former state Superior Court Justice Stephen McEwen, a Delaware County Republican who was appointed by the state Supreme Court to be chairman of the commission.
Pileggi said the new map had fewer municipal splits than the map that has been used for the past 10 years, but changes in population required some districts to shift.
"The process is such that with changes in population, not every representative can have the exact same district," Pileggi said. "I think everyone agrees that it is impossible for all 203 House districts to remain the same."
Bonner said he did not believe that explanation.
“It’s unconstitutional what they are doing, and it is meant to cushion the incumbent Republicans here,” Bonner said. “They are repaying a political favor, that’s all this is.”
Along with Pileggi and McEwen, the commission consists of Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny; House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny; House Minority Leader Frank Dermody, D-Allegheny. The commission is charged with redrawing the state legislative districts every 10 years following the national census to keep the same number of residents in each House and Senate district.
Turzai said the commission made a concerted effort to reduce municipal splits statewide.
Costa said the divisions of existing political subdivisions were the primary concern the Democrats have with the new maps.
State law requires that the commission make preliminary maps available for public review and comment for 30 days after they are finished.
Democrats have accused Republicans of drawing the maps to protect their majorities in the state House and Senate, but Republicans on the commission have denied allowing politics to influence the process.
Democrats said the most egregious case of partisan mapmaking in Delaware County is in Upper Darby Township, which now will be divided three ways with most Republicans packed into the district of state Rep. Nick Micozzie, R-Delaware, while the Democratic-heavy parts of the township have been added to state Reps. Greg Vitali, D-Delaware, and Margo Davidson, D-Delaware.
Upper Darby is similarly divided along racial and registration lines in the proposed Senate maps, with state Sen. Anthony Williams, D-Philadelphia, taking the most black and Democratic parts of the township, while state Sen. Edwin Erickson, R-Delaware, gets the mostly white and Republican parts.
On the current Senate map, only Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are split, and Upper Darby is entirely represented by Erickson.
Swarthmore and Haverford, which are smaller than Upper Darby — making them easier to keep in a single district, at least in theory — are divided similarly along party registration lines in the new state House map.
Lora Lavin, a redistricting specialist with the Pennsylvania League of Women Voters, which advocates for governmental transparency, said the Delaware County municipal splits run afoul of the state constitution, which forbids the division of counties, cities, incorporated towns and boroughs for representative or senatorial districts “unless absolutely necessary.”
In the cases of Swarthmore and Haverford, the splits exist for no reason other than to create safer districts for incumbents, Lavin said.
“Partisan gerrymandering may be good for politicians, but it is not good for voters, especially when it dilutes the voting strength of cohesive communities,” Lavin said. Gerrymandering involves drawing districts that favor one party over another.
Amanda Holt, a piano teacher and registered Republican from Lehigh County who designed her own state legislative maps with a focus on reducing county and municipal splits as much as possible, said she created a House map for Delaware County that included no splits except for Upper Darby, which has too large of a population to fit in a single state House district.
She also fit nearly all of Delaware County into two state Senate districts, unlike the proposed map which divides the county between two Republicans and two Democrats.
“There are probably a few reasons why they split it the way they did, but not a constitutional reason,” Holt said.
The hearing dealt mostly with issues in central and western Pennsylvania, but a second hearing is scheduled for Wednesday to address concerns in other parts of the state, including the Philadelphia suburbs and the northeast, where new House and Senate districts are proposed.
The public comment period will continue until Dec. 1, at which point the commission has 30 days to approve the maps and make them official.
Changes to the preliminary maps are not expected, as the redistricting commission has the final say on them unless a challenge is made to the state Supreme Court after the maps become final.
