Public Hearings On Redistricting Conclude

HARTFORD (AP) – Members of the Legislature’s Reapportionment Committee wrapped up public hearings on redistricting Tuesday, listening as speaker after speaker urged them to make changes in someone else’s congressional district.

The committee, comprised of four Republican and four Democratic lawmakers, will spend the next several weeks deciding how to eliminate one of the state’s six U.S. House districts. The state is losing a seat in Congress and must redraw district lines because its population did not grow as fast as other states.

The legislature must approve a new district plan for Congress and the state House and Senate by September 15. If lawmakers cannot agree, a ninth person would be added to the reapportionment committee, with a new deadline of November 30. If a plan is not approved by then, the state Supreme Court would step in.

Speaking at Tuesday afternoon’s hearing, Jeff Nicholas, the First Selectman in Bethlehem, recommended the committee keep the 5th and 6th districts intact. He said the political clout of Democratic U.S Reps. Jim Maloney in the 5th District and Nancy Johnson in the 6th District was too important for the state to lose.

“Seniority has its strengths,” said Nicholas, who wants to split freshman Republican US Rep. Rob Simmons’ 2nd District.

Residents of the 2nd District balked at that idea Tuesday, saying eastern Connecticut’s communities of rural towns are too unique and intertwined to merge with another district.

Committee co-chairman Louis DeLuca, R-Woodbury, said the committee had not begun forming a redistricting plan. But he said he was impressed by last week’s hearing in Norwich, which was attended by more than 200 people who opposed splitting the 2nd District.

DeLuca, the state Senate’s minority leader, said the committee will try to keep politics from becoming a major factor in the redistricting process.

“We’re in a political business, therefore politics is going to enter into it, but it shouldn’t be the first item on our plate,” the Senate minority leader said. “The first thing should be to make sure people are properly represented, but politics is going to enter it somewhere along the line.”

The hearings did not focus exclusively on the state’s congressional districts. Minority groups spoke out against breaking up legislative districts in their communities, and criticized the legislature for not including any minorities on having any ethnic minority members.

“We start off with exclusion, not inclusion in terms of people of color,” said former Hartford Mayor Thurman Milnor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

He offered to the NAACP’s assistance in redrawing district maps and committee members said they would consider it.