|
 Montgomery Advertiser columnist Sebastian Kitchen lays into the Permanent Legislative Committee on Reapportionment ...
Redistricting could be smoother, more open So, there were not maps anywhere apparently until after the committee listened to all of the input from the public hearings from Mobile to Huntsville. And those committee meetings were not only poorly attended by the public, but also not many of the 22 committee members attended.
Yes, the Legislature took 2 weeks off to allow legislators to attend these public hearings and deal with reapportionment, but it sounds like most legislators (even those on the Committee) didn't read past the "2 weeks off" part of that memo. And then there's the bait and switch on the reapportionment map itself. Kitchen reports that at the final public hearing in Montgomery, several people rose to speak against any map that separated Montgomery into three districts. They were told they couldn't talk about that because it wasn't the draft map the Committee had just approved. The very next day the Committee voted to approve a map which -- you know where this is going -- splits Montgomery into three districts! Just one day after telling the public they couldn't even talk about it because that map wasn't on the table, the Committee approved the very map that carves Montgomery into three parts. Who got to comment on that map? Members of Congress, not the public. [Sen. Gerald] Dial, R-Lineville, said after the original public hearing in Montgomery that there were not any maps. They were there to listen to the public and receive input before beginning their work. Then, a week later, when the committee was considering a plan similar to his, he said he had been working on a plan for weeks, had input from members of the state's congressional delegation, and had spent hours on the phone with them. So, while there allegedly was not a map in the works that people could comment on during the public hearings, there was at least apparently a plan he had been working on for weeks -- not with public input, but with the input of seven members of Congress.
Legislators nominally work for the people of Alabama, but it's pretty clear that a majority of the members of the Legislative Committee on Reapportionment have been working to benefit the 7 Alabamians (more likely just the 6 Repubs) currently in Congress, not the general public. They even ginned up a pretext -- and that's all their "draft map" was -- so they could tell the public to sit down and shut up at the final public "hearing" on reapportionment. How is this new Republican rule in Alabama more open, more ethical or more responsive to the public than what it replaced? New pigs, same trough. |
