Timothy McNulty | October 6, 2009
You think the state budget process is going badly? It will pale in comparison to redistricting of congressional seats, writes Chris Briem at Null Space. Mike Doyle's Pittsburgh seat may expand its borders and the state as a whole is due to lose a seat on Capitol Hill.
Here's Chris:
That all comes to mind because the Swing State project has come out with a ranking of congressional districts which have grown or shrunk
the most since 2000. Not surprisingly PA-14 which is the Mike Doyle's
district covering the city of Pittsburgh end some environs shows up as
the district with the 4th largest decline. They estimate the distrtict
has gone from 645,809 people in 2000 to 574,861 in 2008. A loss of
70,948. Federal law will require congressional districts to be
equalized within a very narrow band of variance once 2010 census data
is released. So PA-14 is going to have to grow geographically no
matter what. That in turn will impact all other local districts even
if they were not shrinking in themselves... which they are anyway for
the most part.
I do suspect the lengthening recession has schifted a lot of commuting
patterns across the nation, but since it started so late in the decade
I don't see it shifting much for Pennsylvania. The commonwealth is
well within a range to lose 1 congressional district as a result of
2010 reapportionment at the federal level.
The redistricting process is controlled in Harrisburg and compared to
2001 the status quo in Harrisburg is obviously a lot more muddled than
ever. Back then the Republicans controlled both house and senate and
the governorship. This time the house and senate may be split, we
don't know who will be the governor and even the state supreme court
has a close split politically. It all bodes for a similar dysfunction.
Posted
Oct 06 2009, 01:35 PM
by
Timothy McNulty