Borders Blur, Balance Tilts When Politics is Involved

The Exeter News-Letter (Print Edition Only) ^ | 6/18/2002 | Ken Goodall

[Bowana]

Borders Blur, Balance Tilts When Politics is Involved

The law states that political districts need to maintain populations within a certain percentage of each other. Now the time has come for redistricting to keep this balance intact. Unfortunately when Politics is involved suddenly the lines of borders become blurred.

The problem is that playing politics often causes issues to come to a stand still and forces courts to become involved. When lines are crossed either by political bodies or by the courts themselves, it's the people who pay the price. In my opinion lines were crossed when the courts tried to establish what an adequate education means in New Hampshire.

When the court decided adequacy, it left the NH legislature with tough choices to make regarding the way property taxes pay for education in NH. The legislature creates laws and the courts interpret them. If the courts interpreted the word "Adequate" differently than the legislature, then the legislature should have created a law defining the word more to their original intent.

Instead the legislature and Jean Shaheen, the governor of NH, allowed this issue to fester until the courts had to intercede. When the issue arose at election time, the governor, in her infinite wisdom, set up a blue ribbon commission that would not report until after the election. The legislature continued to delay taking action until finally, with school budgets close to coming to an end, an emergency tax plan was put into place to temporarily fix the problem. That temporary plan is still in effect.

The same kind of inaction by the NH legislature that put education funding into a tailspin is the same inaction that has put redistricting into the hands of the court. The inability of the Democrats and Republicans to come to some sort of agreement has left an issue in the hands of the court, again. The theory of give and take is a part of everyone's lives, but it seems that the NH legislature has forgotten this theory.

That theory doesn't work in Massachusetts where political districts look more like lightning bolts grasping up Democrats to keep the powerful seats in Democratic hands. The Massachusetts Congressional district map looks like a warped version of a jigsaw puzzle. Representative Barney Frank's district starts in Newton, MA, and narrowly runs from town to town all the way to Fall River and New Bedford.

Some kind of regional order should be maintained and using the census data of the population, NH should be able to redistrict in such a way to keep regional areas somewhat uniform. Whether the NH courts do it or they force the legislature, like little children, to stay in their rooms and not come out until they reach an agreement, NH, by law, must redistrict.

The Republicans, using their majority power, created an initial plan that would have created more Republican seats, but they must have known that Governor Shaheen would veto the plan. Governor Shaheen rather than exuding her power and forcing the legislature to deal with the issue allowed it to pass through the legislature only to veto it when it got to her desk.

The Democrats on the other hand were playing political games of their own. They wanted to introduce election reform into the redistricting plans. Instead of dealing with the single issue they wanted to add another to the mix, and add reforms that might have helped them regain some power in the NH legislature. Neither side was willing to give and the Governor sat back and watched.

This inaction is reminiscent of the education-funding crisis when NH schools almost ended up with no budget. The legislature then passed an emergency funding bill establishing a set property tax rate and allowing certain towns to become receiver towns and certain towns to become donor towns depending on their established education funding needs. This was and is a band-aid at best.

In April of this year, in regards to supplying the students in NH an adequate education, the NH Supreme Court stated that ""we conclude that the state needs to do more work." Well it seems that the court can just carbon copy that same statement in regards to redistricting as well.

We elect representatives to represent us in the decision making process of running the business of the State of New Hampshire, well it seems that the NH legislators have been lax in their duties in allowing these important issues to fall into the hands of the courts. I had hoped that the legislature would stand up to the court in the Claremont case and fix the education-funding problem. They didn't.

Now I would like the NH Legislature to take a stand and work out some compromises to the redistricting issue, but again it seems that they won't. We send these men and women to Concord to make the tough decisions. Isn't it about time that they made some? That's my side of the story.