White Plains, NY – The Westchester County Board of Legislators (BOL) voted tonight to override County Executive Robert P. Astorino’s veto of the legislative re-districting plan, and now the new maps of the county’s seventeen districts will be in effect until the next Federal Census is completed ten years from now.
The vote, 12-5, was entirely along partisan lines.
The re-districting plan was initially approved and unanimously voted out of the Legislation Committee, chaired by Legislator John Nonna (D-Mount Pleasant), on May 2 by the Republican and Democratic committee members. Following two public hearings, where a total of eight people raised their objections, the plan was approved by the full Board again a week later, but on a partisan 12-5 vote.
When the County Executive vetoed the re-districting plan last week, without offering any alternative plan or idea of how to proceed with new re-mapping, BOL Chairman Ken Jenkins said, “The re-districting plan approved by the Board of Legislators was the result of a careful and thoughtful process that included full bi-partisan participation, open deliberations and well-publicized opportunities for comments and objections from county residents. In the end, the Board of Legislators adopted new district maps that are fair and hard to fault. The fact that the re-districting was completed extremely close to the existing lines, with necessary changes the result of population shifts, was clearly understood by most Westchester residents…”
The County is required to redistrict its legislative districts every ten years after the Federal Census. The principal reason for re-districting is to comply with the “one person, one vote” requirement mandated by the United States Constitution and New York State law. Voting districts must have substantially equal population. The basic standard for determining compliance with this mandate is that no district should be more or less than 5% of the average district population of approximately 55,000 people. State law also requires that districts be as compact and contiguous as practicable.
The Board received the federal census data in the last week of March 2011. This data revealed that two districts, District 1 (which includes the City of Peekskill and parts of the Towns of Yorktown and Cortlandt) and District 6 (which includes part of the Town of Harrison, and the Villages of Rye Brook and Port Chester) were not in compliance with the standard because they were more than 5% over the average population. Thus, adjustments had to be made to these districts by taking population away from them without making any other district non-compliant at the same time.
Dr. Andrew Beveridge, a consultant hired by the Board (and the low bid on the project), formulated the new re-districting plan for Westchester. In the end, he did not make any major changes to the County’s legislative districts, moving just 4% of the population. In comparison, a new re-districting plan on Long Island seeks to move over 40% of the residents from one district to another.
“After all the hard work that has been put into this, why spend another dollar and start the project from scratch when these new maps have raised so few objections?” asked Chairman Jenkins. “If the County Executive really thinks the re-districting is flawed, then he should step forward and explain to the taxpayers what he would do otherwise. As is, this is a fair plan for all of Westchester’s residents.”
Legislator Nonna said, “We made every effort to make sure that any changes requested by the legislators, the League of Women Voters and members of the public were discussed in the open at the Legislation Committee meetings. I am dismayed that the re-districting has become a political issue, and hope that we can move forward with the electoral process now that we have voted the new re-districting plan into law.”
“No re-districting plan is perfect, but we feel this one is fair,” Nonna continued. “Anyone can find something to disagree with in these instances when the mapping is finished. This plan, though, was created in an open and transparent process with bi-partisan participation, and that is hard to fault.”