As if the job of redrawing 187 congressional and legislative districts weren't complicated enough, liberal groups are ascribing the worst possible motives to Florida lawmakers assigned to the task.
At nearly a dozen public-input meetings conducted around the state over the past month, representatives from the ACLU, the NAACP and the League of Women Voters, among others, have read nearly identical scripts assailing the redistricting process.
More of the same was on display Wednesday in Orlando -- a hotly contested political battleground and likely home to a new congressional district in 2012.
Liberal groups, suspicious of GOP lawmakers, complain that ready-made maps are not available for review at the public hearings. These critics alternately charge that district lines have already been drawn behind closed doors or that the legislators are unduly dragging their feet.
In either case, skeptics from the left are convinced that the Republican-controlled Legislature is bent on subverting the Fair Districts mandate for compact and contiguous districts by perpetuating the status-quo, which favors the GOP.
"Currently, Florida's 'bleached' districting strategy painstakingly sections off potentially progressive or moderate voting neighborhoods into a small number of minority-access districts that historically favor Democrats," Julie Delegal wrote in a Florida Times-Union op-ed Wednesday.
Delegal and "progressive" critics at the public hearings accuse the Legislature of earmarking $30 million for a legal fight to maintain gerrymandered majority-minority districts such as Democratic Rep. Corrine Brown's CD 3 that stretches in serpentine style from Jacksonville to the upper reaches of Orlando.
State Rep. Will Weatherford, who chairs the House Redistricting Committee, calls the oft-repeated $30 million figure exaggerated and rejects any insinuation of partisan backroom dealing.
Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, and his state Senate counterpart, Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, insist that they are committed to a process that passes legal muster.
But "legal" becomes a slippery term when the federal government's 47-year-old civil-rights provisions for minority representation conflict with Fair Districts' more color-blind philosophy.
Though Fair Districts' Amendments 5 and 6 were promoted primarily by Democrats and left-wing groups, conservative organizations, including tea parties and 9/12 groups, now appear to favor them, too.
"If there's agreement on one thing, it's that we don't want our cities split up," says Maureen Siebold, a 9/12 founder who lives in rural north Lakeland.
While saying she was "absolutely shocked" at what she called the raucous behavior of left-wing agitators at the Lakeland redistricting hearing this week, Siebold agreed that the current congressional lines disserve the public.
"My congressman is Richard Nugent, who lives in Hernando County. I never see the man. The rest of Polk County is represented by Dennis Ross, who I've seen tons of times," Siebold relates.
Similar complaints are heard throughout Central Florida, where counties are segmented into two, three or even four congressional districts.
Karen Diebel, a Republican who intends to run in a new, yet-to-be-identified congressional district in Central Florida, says "Gerrymandering works both ways."
"Boundaries like [Corrine Brown's district] are why these amendments passed. There's too much division in what's going on. It's costing us time and money," the Republican businesswoman said.
Diebel said she would like to see the public hearings "come up with options" to move the redistricting process forward.
Henry Kelley, who has attended two previous meetings and monitored others online, credits the legislative delegation for keeping its cool in the face of hostile crowds.
"As you might expect, people in Gainesville called lawmakers fascists. In Volusia, a riot almost broke out. Pensacola was a train wreck with liberals behaving badly," recalled Kelley, head of the Fort Walton Beach Tea Party.
Wednesday afternoon's meeting in Orlando attracted three dozen legislators. More than 150 people signed up to speak during the session -- the first of two that day.
The Orlando Sentinel reported that the afternoon meeting got off to a contentious start when state Rep. Steve Precourt, R-Orlando, tried unsuccessfully to get the audience to stop cheering after the first few speakers called the proceedings a farce.
Kelley's biggest frustration is the naysayers' refusal to provide constructive criticism by drawing their own maps on the state's redistricting website. Kelley, who has offered two sets of congressional districts, said critics would have more credibility if they spent a few hours applying the map-making software.
So far, 12 maps designed by individuals can be viewed at www.floridaredistricting.org.
Lawmakers call their "listening tour" a publicly transparent step to drawing maps in 2012, as required by law. Reaching its halfway point in Melbourne on Thursday, the traveling road show of 26 public hearings takes a two-week break before resuming Aug. 15 in Stuart. The remaining slate of meetings is scheduled to wrap up Sept. 1 in Clewiston.
Ultimately, all sides expect that the seemingly impossible act of balancing Fair Districts' geographic priorities with the U.S. Civil Rights Act's racial imperatives will wind up in court. And that angers Siebold.
"We are a sovereign state under the 10th Amendment. The federal government has no business telling Florida what it can and cannot do," she said.
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Reach Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 559-4719.
