The redistricting saga isn’t over for Florida just yet -- for the Florida Senate maps, the party’s just begun.
State lawmakers descended upon Tallahassee once more on Monday, kicking off the third special session of the year, this time to hammer out new lines for Florida’s 40 Senate districts.
The 19-day session is a result of a July ruling from the Florida Supreme Court which demanded that legislators work together to draw up new sets of maps for the state’s congressional districts and the state’s Senate districts.
This special session is the latest after a contentious few months between the two chambers. During this year’s regular legislative session, state lawmakers left without an agreement on the budget due to an impasse on whether or not to expand Medicaid in Florida. As a result, they had to reconvene in June to create a state budget to avoid a government shutdown.
The special sessions didn’t end there, though. State lawmakers met again in August to draw up new congressional districts, but were unable to reach an agreement on the proposed maps, ultimately leaving the mapmaking responsibility up to the court.
Three legislative staffers drew up six base maps to start off negotiations. Like the congressional maps, the trio of staffers created the maps in private, and did not receive any input from any state lawmakers during the mapmaking process.
Staffers said in a memo attached with the maps that they were the only ones who had been a part of the mapmaking process, staying locked away in a room where no lawmaker was allowed to contact them.
"Since the drafting process began, no information concerning the details of any base map or its earlier iterations were provided to anyone other than the map-drawing staff and counsel, and no legislator, political consultant, or member of the public has attempted to influence us in the drawing of the base maps," legislative staffers wrote.
On Monday, staffers presented their maps and discussed how they drew up the maps. They told the Committee on Redistricting that they did not crunch numbers before drawing up the maps, instead focusing on how maps looked as they drew them and then running the numbers for compactness afterward.
The staff tried to keep most counties whole and tried to keep districts mostly contained to one county. They also tried to avoid splitting counties too many times, drawing three maps with each of these approaches.
House Speaker Steve Crisafulli said he anticipated the Senate would mostly lead the way when it came to the new maps.
“Since the subject of this session is the Senate map, we’ve established the Senate to proceed first,” Crisafulli said. “I think it is wholly appropriate that body takes the lead on sending a compliant map to us.”
There were hints of potential disagreements between the chambers, however, when Sen. Bill Galvano said he believed senators could keep their seats even if their boundaries were changed during the redistricting process.
But Crisafulli disagreed.
"We've always understood it to be everyone has to go back and run again,” he said on the proposal.
Session is scheduled to end Nov. 6.
Reach Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com
