Debate over redistricting: Hearing today on plan to change how Ohio draws new boundaries

A proposal to change the way Ohio draws legislative districts every 10 years is set for a hearing in the House of Representatives today after already passing in the Senate.

The move comes just as many were saying a legislative mapping change was not likely to occur for another 10 years, thanks to a gridlock in state politics.

Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering, sponsored the proposal. Husted is running for secretary of state, Ohio's top elections official, in 2010, as is Rep. Jennifer Garrison, D-Marietta. State Sen. Jimmy Stewart, R-Athens, said that potential matchup could be a reason for Democratic opposition to the plan.

"Objectively speaking, I can't imagine that when you have a member of both houses in opposing parties, each running for secretary of the state, that either one wants to give the other one the edge," Stewart said.

Any change in the redistricting process would need to be approved by voters. The General Assembly has until Feb. 3 to put such issues on the ballot, which would require two-thirds majority votes in the House and Senate.

Husted's proposal would set up a seven-member commission to draw up new state legislative and congressional districts. The commission would be comprised of the governor, secretary of state, auditor, House speaker, Senate president and House and Senate minority leaders. Before any plan is put in place, five members would have to agree to it.

Garrison, the third-highest-ranking Democrat in the House, said she hasn't stood in the way of the bill in her side of the General Assembly, even if she doesn't support it.

"That redistricting plan is not a true reform plan, and I am not the one who makes a decision on whether anything happens with this bill. In fact, it is getting a hearing in the House," she said. "That's absolutely not true (that I'm playing politics)."

Under the current system, the political party that holds three seats on the five-member State Apportionment Board controls the way legislative districts are drawn. The board is comprised of a General Assembly member from each party, the governor, secretary of state and auditor. Therefore, whichever party wins two of those statewide posts this year will control the board.

Critics say this leads to gerrymandering, when district lines are drawn to favor certain candidates or parties. This can result in oddly shaped districts that sometimes differ greatly from other established governmental boundaries.

In a recent column in The Columbus Dispatch, current Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, called the current way of drawing legislative districts "nothing short of a bald-faced partisan process.

"It allows lines to be drawn with computer-assisted precision to create a majority of sure-fire districts that virtually guarantee enough wins for the party that holds the pen, no matter how distorted the districts look on a map or how the lines separate common community interests," she wrote.

In 2009, the League of Women Voters, Ohio Citizen Action, Brunner's office and other groups and individuals sponsored a competition to come up with a better way to draw legislative districts. In her column, Brunner said the state should use the competition's criteria - emphasizing compact but competitive districts - to determine the best way to redraw the lines.

Stewart said the time is right to make a move toward accepting a new legislative mapping plan since it's too early to tell which party will win which seats in the statewide races for auditor and secretary of state.

"Right now (Democrats) have the majority, but the governor's poll numbers are under 50 percent and the secretary of state's not running for re-election, so you have an open race between Garrison and Husted," Stewart said. "If there were a time when some kind of reform would pass it would be now because both parties recognize there's no clear lock on this."

Garrison said she opposes Husted's bill because it puts a permanent, one-party majority into the state's Constitution.

"That's not what we're looking for," she said. "I think any redistricting plan should have competitiveness (for legislative seats) as its priority."

Garrison said compactness, which deals with the "look" of a district and tries to ensure that oddly shaped districts are minimized, is a major factor in Husted's proposal. She said studies by Michael McDonald, a nationally recognized redistricting expert from George Mason University, found that Midwestern states, such as Ohio, tend to favor Republicans when compactness is a major factor.

"When you have that factor and don't take into account competitive districts and representational fairness, you don't have a true bipartisan redistricting plan," she said.