The Vermont House is one vote away from signing off on its legislative district lines for the next 10 years, having advanced a reapportionment bill Wednesday by a vote of 129-13.
If the updated map, or H.722, wins final approval, Vermont’s multi-member districts will have survived a sometimes contentious debate this session.
The decennial reapportionment process was tough to wrangle from the start. Vermont officials were forced to begin the process behind schedule due to the U.S. Census Bureau’s nationwide delays in providing updated population counts.
With the Secretary of State’s Office needing the new map in hand by April 1 to prepare for this year’s elections, Rep. Sarah Copeland Hanzas, D-Bradford, who chairs the committee tasked with drawing up the map, said the theme of redistricting this cycle was “really one of a tremendous time crunch.”
After weeks of testimony, the House Government Operations Committee last week voted 11-0 in support of H.722, which was largely based on the map currently in place. It determines legislative representation for 150 House members, who are to represent as close to 4,287 constituents as possible, across 68 single-member districts and 41 two-member districts.
Copeland Hanzas said the committee’s unanimous support was telling, especially because the updated map was not favorable to every committee member.
“But everybody supported the bill because they supported the process and the fairness and inclusion of the process,” she said.
Not only was time working against lawmakers, but some made a lot of noise early on about Vermont’s use of multi-member House districts. The practice is expressly permitted in the state Constitution, but opponents say it’s fundamentally unfair.
“The mix of single- and double-member districts is problematic because, fundamentally, some Vermonters get twice as many votes as other Vermonters,” state Republican Party Chair Paul Dame told VTDigger Wednesday afternoon.
In October, a majority of the tri-partisan Legislative Apportionment Board threw its support behind a proposed map that would have established statewide single-member districts.
Single- versus multi-member district maps wouldn’t have offered a major competitive advantage to one party over the other — at least not an obvious one in the foreseeable future. It wasn’t a question of Democrats versus Republicans, but more so status quo versus reform, Dame said.
“I think it’s disappointing that the Legislature didn’t even really consider what I thought was a fundamental issue of fairness,” he said. “They didn’t even really pretend to try to make that a reality.”
Copeland Hanzas said it’s more complicated than that. If Vermont were to adopt an entirely single-member map, district lines would chop up more towns and cities to avoid deviating from the 4,287 constituent-per-lawmaker goal. It’s an occupational hazard of redistricting that’s not entirely avoidable, but legislators try to keep it a last resort.
“The single-seat district model is really the most disruptive proposal that you could put forward,” she said. “It’s disruptive not only to the current districts as they’re configured, but it’s disruptive to the towns and cities within all of those districts who would have to figure out how to deal with internal divisions.”
Despite the debate in January, single- versus multi-member districts weren’t a hot topic of debate during Wednesday’s floor discussion. Only a few members spoke up on the bill at all. But Dame said he may seek to elevate the issue to the state GOP platform. He also said he is encouraging Republican House members to introduce legislation guaranteeing a single-member map next time around in 2032.
Of the 13 House members who opposed the bill Wednesday, all but two were Republicans.
As for the committee’s process this session, Copeland Hanzas said she started by looking at which of the current districts could maintain their current boundaries while keeping the appropriate number of constituents. She said she tried not to change those boundaries because “if it’s not broken, let’s not bust it up and try to fix it.”
From there, adjustments were made to the districts with notable population shifts. For cities and towns in Chittenden County, where Vermont’s population is most concentrated, those were population increases. Same went for ski towns, which saw significant in-migration this decade. Rural areas in Rutland, Windham and Bennington counties, as well as the Northeast Kingdom, saw population decreases.
A final House vote on the bill is expected Thursday.
