Rep. William Jewett and Legislative Council attorney BetsyAnn Wrask look over a version of the redistricting map. VTD/Josh Larkin
What a difference a weekend makes.
After a bruising battle at the end of last week over a redistricting plan that would have nixed a GOP House seat in Rutland County, lawmakers found love, peace and harmony on Tuesday morning.
That’s because they were able to split the baby three ways this time. In an amendment proposal that passed 8-3, House Government Operations members added a rep to the Burlington entourage and eliminated a House member in southern Vermont who would represent towns in both Rutland and Windsor counties, effectively cutting a half of a rep from each county.
The compromise was in striking contrast to the redistricting plan the committee approved on Friday. In that scenario, Democrats pitted three GOP members against one another in a two-seat district and carved Castleton State College out of the town of Castleton and added it to a competitive district. Republicans saw this shift as an attack on one of their strongholds. They used two words to describe the double-whammy: partisan and gerrymander.
Rep. Ron Hubert, a Republican on the committee, said on Sunday, “If I’d been told up front we were going to slug it out for three days, I wouldn’t have wasted three weeks of the people’s time. I feel this was the plan all along. Unfortunately, under single party rule there’s not much we can do about it.”
House Speaker Shap Smith said that fight was necessary. “We needed to have Friday happen to take a look at what the other possibilities were.”
The redistricting bill and the new amendment will be taken up on the floor of the House on Wednesday and Thursday.
“It’ll be impressive if it’s out of here by Feb. 3,” Smith said. “My hope is we’ll have bipartisan redistricting and I think we’ll once again show why Vermont is one of the few states to reach across party lines and get things done.”
Smith praised Reps. Eldred French, a Democrat, and Dennis Devereux, a Republican, for their willingness to run against each other in a new one seat district that would include Mount Holly, Shrewsbury and Ludlow.
“All you have to do is look at Texas,” Smith said. “I know the speaker in Texas, he’s a Republican, and he would have jammed it down the Democrats’ throats.”
Republicans were happy about the new plan, which Rep. Don Turner, R-Milton and House Minority Leader, said fulfilled their objectives to find a nonpartisan way to fairly represent districts statewide.
“I think it’s positive,” Turner said. “I’m happy the committee brought forward this amendment. It makes for fair representation in the House in it does it in a less partisan way.”
Turner’s comments on Tuesday are an about-face from his rebuke of the map the committee passed along party lines on Friday night. GOP House members complained that they had been operating under different assumptions for the first three weeks of the legislative session when a new plan from the Democratic leadership emerged just three days before the committee vote deadline.
Rep. Donna Sweaney, D-Windsor, said her stomach was “a mess” all weekend because she, too, was unhappy with the first map her committee approved.
“I wanted a bipartisan vote,” Sweaney said. “I wanted to prove it could be done.”
On Tuesday lawmakers passed an amendment that minimized the damage to incumbents in Rutland County, a Republican stronghold and made Castleton whole. This time, a Democrat and two Republicans voted against the amendment.
Sources say there will likely be additional amendments to address changes to Shaftsbury/Arlington and Johnson/Eden districts.
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In addition to the districts covered in this story, another interesting part of the House Gov Ops plan involves redrawing district lines in the southern part of Washington County.
A new 2-member Mad River Valley / “Harwood Union” district is created consisting of Warren, Waitsfield, Fayston, Moretown, and Duxbury. Two incumbents currently represent towns in this district: Adam Greshin (Ind), who now represents Fayston, Waitsfield, and Warren; and Maxine Grad (Dem), who now represents Moretown, Northfield, and Roxbury.
The existing 2-member Moretown-Northfield-Roxbury district is broken up in the Gov Ops plan. Moretown goes to the new Mad River Valley district, Roxbury goes to the Orange-Addison district with Braintree, Brookfield, Granville, and Randolph, and Northfield is combined with Berlin in a new two-member district. Two incumbent Republicans (Anne Donahue of Northfield and Patti Lewis of Berlin) now represent towns in the Northfield-Berlin district.
This area of Washington County now sends 2 Republicans, 1 Democrat, and 1 Independent (who tends to vote with Republicans on economic and budget issues and with Democrats on other issues) to Montpelier. It will be interesting to see which parties end up winning the new districts in November, assuming no further changes in the map.
It will also be interesting to see how the Burlington Board of Civil Authority divides the city into the 10 new districts required by the plan. Among other things, will there be five two-member districts or some combination of one- and two-member districts?