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Politics

Northwest Florida Districts to Run East to West

October 5, 2011 - 6:00pm

Senate mapmakers will draw legislative districts that run east to west as they carve new political boundaries for the Panhandle, members of the Senate Reapportionment Committee agreed this week.

The bipartisan consensus answers the tricky question of how to divide Northwest Florida, where rural residents from the northern part of the region feared having their votes diluted by more urbanized coastal areas. Some residents at public meetings had pushed for districts that run north to south, only to encounter pushback from rural interests.

The current districts are already horizontal, an arrangement the Senate panel decided to continue with.

"I think it's our responsibility to do everything we can to respond to the wishes of these people, and draw the district lines horizontally," said Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla.

But the free-flowing, lengthy discussion Wednesday about the nature of the compactness required by the new Fair Districts amendments and what it meant for often-sprawling districts in sparsely-populated areas in the Panhandle also showed how tricky it could be for lawmakers to agree on even the least contentious issues.

Even as lawmakers generally agreed on how the lines should be drawn in the Northwest corner of the state, they struggled with whether that definition would hold -- and how to defend what could be shifting definitions as the committee moves from one area of the state to another.

"We would do well not to have a fluid definition of compactness that's not clearly articulated," said Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico. But she said later: "What compactness will look like here [in the Panhandle] will be different than what compactness will look like in Miami-Dade."

Others argued that compactness was just one of the standards, and that lawmakers also had to keep in mind the interests that might unite or divide people when drawing the lines.

"There are different definitions of community," said Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee. "But to me, that's what's most important."

Complicating the efforts: A paucity of settled case law, even from other states, on how to define compactness when it comes to redistricting. Some courts have taken into account issues like the flow of commerce, while others have used more rigid interpretations of how tightly district lines are drawn.

Legislative leaders have long argued that no matter what they do, the Fair Districts standards for how lines must be drawn according to a recent constitutional change will lead to new court fights over the maps. The 2010 constitutional amendment prohibits legislators from taking political considerations like party or incumbency into account when drawing maps.

"And I think it's inevitable, although unfortunate, that there will be multiple lawsuits from the left or the right or both," said Reapportionment Chairman Don Gaetz, R-Niceville.

Senators also agreed to avoid a three-way split of Bay County in maps for the state Senate.

The region's relatively small population can only accommodate two full congressional districts, making it easier to draw them; the line for that district will run roughly north-south under a public plan the committee said should serve as a rough guide for its staff's efforts to craft districts.

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