JUST IN: Residents file suit against New Albany, Council, by Eric Scott Campbell (News-Tribune).
Twenty residents sued New Albany and the City Council Tuesday afternoon, claiming population imbalance in council districts and calling for a special commission to investigate.
To echo the words of our colleague Bluegill, there’s ample time for the council to grandstand over take-home police cars, but not time for it to address a state-mandated redistricting that is three years overdue.
Why is it that when some folks here in town – people who otherwise are willing and eager to worship raw numbers and the mystical discipline of numerology on an hourly basis – are shown statistics that clearly illustrate a disparity in population between various of New Albany’s city council electoral districts, and when the same people are confronted with the word “redistricting” as an equally obvious (and lawfully mandated) means of properly redressing the undisputable imbalance in numbers, their hurried response isn’t to agree or disagree with the evidence in such a manner that might lead to a healthy debate, but rather to launch into an immediate defense of Councilman Bill Schmidt, whose 2nd District just happens to be “home to 42 percent more people than Dan Coffey’s District 1, the second-most-populous district.”
For instance, take the 4th District’s ward-heeling council warhorse, CM Larry Kochert.
Please take him.
CM Kochert mimicked these responses in remarks last week to the Tribune: “I do recognize that Mr. Schmidt’s district is out of proportion. But Bill is 100 percent retired, and I think he responds to everybody that calls him … I don’t think there’s been any slighting of representation.”
Using this same Kochertian logic – his “spin the patronage wheel” rule of law and local politics – Bill Clinton might have remained in office forever. After all, he was doing a fine job, and like so many other inconvenient statutory limitations, enforcement of the two-term limit obviously ended up costing the Democrats voters when Bill was forced to go away and make room for the man who will be judged by posterity as the worst ever American president.
Speaking of laws, CM Schmidt’s name, employment status and length of tenure unsurprisingly do not appear carved in the stone of state legal passages relevant to this topic, as the Tribune’s Campbell recently reported:
A section of state law governs district apportionment for legislative councils in cities the size of New Albany.
The districts shall “contain, as nearly as is possible, equal population.” Redistricting, which is the council’s own responsibility, is also mandated every 10 years, two years after each federal census. In addition, “this division may be made at any other time.”
Though the council redistricted in 1992, it failed to do so in 2002.
Might this be because the core principles of fair and equal representation are contingent neither on the identity of the person currently occupying a specific office, nor on his or her performance of duties?
“I do recognize that Mr. Schmidt’s district is out of proportion,” concedes CM Kochert from the vantage point of three years of contemplation.
According to the law, this is the central point. It’s the only relevant point.
All the rest is smoke, mirrors, and pure politics.
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Wednesday morning update:
My, my … semi-literate hacks unsuccessfully masquerading as college professors sure all touchy nowadays:
NA CONFIDENTIAL & ROGER BAYLOR LIES AGAIN!
Strange how we keep jangling unbalanced nerves around town.
Note that the politically transgendered Erik/Erika – whose commitment to freedom of speech is so strong that he/she does not allow comments or responses of any sort — cannot refute either of NAC’s two basic premises in this case: Indiana law stipulates districts with a semblance of equal population, and the council has failed to redistrict for three years.
Instead, Erik/Erika merely rejigs his/her existing reams of venom, spite and vituperation into a fresh, new round of anonymous slander — and expects the reading public to buy the biggest “lie” of all: That the slime emanates from the pen of a genuine, educated academic.
My dear Erik/Erika, if CM Schmidt truly supported redistricting before, and if he admits that the districts are unbalanced – and if his commitment to law is as you and other continue to insist – then why has he failed to take the lead in this issue for the past three years? What has stopped him from standing tall and urging his fellow council members to do the right thing?
Or is this somehow “different” according to Little People Law?
Note yet again that NAC’s founder has yet to suggest that CM Schmidt fails his constituents when it comes to service.
What I have suggested, and what I will continue to suggest for so long as it is merited by the evidence, is that during the past three years, CM Schmidt has failed to support the wider interests of the city at large by combining with the others on the right/wrong side of the table in anti-progressive obstructionism.
Erik/Erika’s latest attack serves only to support NAC’s thesis by ignoring the central point of the redistricting issue and erecting another convenient straw man for intemperate lashing.
A real college professor?
No, she just plays one on her blog.
