Calling special session for redistricting a waste of 1.7 million tax dollars

Editorial Board
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Friday, June 6, 2003

There are reports that Gov. Rick Perry plans to call the Texas Legislature into special session at the end of June, primarily to redraw congressional district lines to elect more Republicans. The governor's office isn't saying for sure, but it's not ruling one out, either. It should.

A special session just to elect more Republicans to Congress is a waste of taxpayer money -- an estimated $1.7 million. No law requires it. No court requires it. The people aren't demanding it.

But U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay wants more Republicans in Congress, and that may be enough for our Republican governor. DeLay, from Sugar Land, is the Republican majority leader in the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives, and he needs more Republicans to bolster his majority.

Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, a Republican from Midland, tried to accommodate DeLay during the recent regular session. But that effort came late and was wretchedly handled. Fifty-one House Democrats stopped it by fleeing to Oklahoma, thus denying the House the quorum it needed to function. Craddick lost that fight and the House got back to business.

DeLay and others have complained that, although Texas clearly is a Republican state, its delegation to the U.S. House has 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans. Redraw the lines "properly," the GOP figures, and it could elect as many as 20 of Texas' 32 House members.

The reason the GOP hasn't won more congressional seats is that voters in several otherwise Republican-leaning districts like their conservative Democrats, representatives such as Charles Stenholm of Abilene, Jim Turner of Crockett, Ralph Hall of Rockwall and Chet Edwards of Waco. Once they retire, or perhaps if the GOP puts up serious candidates against them, they almost certainly would be replaced by Republicans.

But DeLay can't wait on the voters to get it right, so Perry and the GOP majority in the Legislature are going to redraw the lines. The politicians will pick their voters, rather than the voters pick their politicians.

The current districts were drawn up by a panel of three judges after the Legislature failed to do the job in 2001. There's no need to redraw them until after the next Census, in 2010. And if the map generated by the DeLay allies in the regular session is any indication, there will be a court fight over whatever map lawmakers approve this summer. Austin and Travis County, for example, were divided into four congressional districts, one of which stretched to the Texas-Mexico border.

This all points to the need to enact a plan proposed by state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, to set up an independent commission to draw district lines. Judges might not be the best ones to draw such lines, but they're no worse than elected officials who have built-in conflicts of interests and purely partisan concerns.

If Perry does call a special session for congressional redistricting, he should at least get DeLay and the National Republican Committee to donate $1.7 million to the state treasury.