A bid to reform politics

COLUMBUS

State Sens. Frank LaRose, R-Copley, and Tom Sawyer, D-Akron, have been down this road before.

The two have been pushing redistricting reform measures in the Legislature for several years now, hoping to take the politics out of the process Ohio uses draws it’s legislative and congressional districts.

They found some success late last year, when lawmakers OK’d a late-night, last-minute compromise package on state legislative borders, to be ultimately decided by voters in November.

Now they’re pursing a similar proposal for congressional districts.

Fall action

LaRose and Sawyer announced their latest resolution in recent days, while lawmakers are home for the summer recess, with no expectation of action until later in the fall.

Currently, congressional districts are redrawn every decade to account for population changes noted in the decennial U.S. Census. State lawmakers control the process, with the Ohio House and Senate required to pass legislation setting new boundary lines.

The process is separate from legislative redistricting, which is handled by a panel of state officeholders.

Late last year, lawmakers agreed to place a proposed constitutional amendment before voters in the coming general election to reform legislative redistricting.

The issue proposes creating a seven-member panel, including the governor, auditor, secretary of state and four legislative members from both parties.

Supporters say the setup would provide clearer criteria to consider when redrawing district lines and require minority party member votes for final maps. In cases where members of both parties can’t reach an agreement, disputed maps would remain in effect for four years, then the redistricting commission would have to restart the whole process.

The new resolution offered by LaRose and Sawyer would implement the same panel and process for congressional redistricting, along with the same consequence for partisan plans — going back to the drawing board after a few years rather than implementing borders that would stick for a decade.

“Functionally, it’s the same thing,” LaRose said of the new resolution compared to the issue on the November ballot. He noted that the latter “was a bipartisan compromise, so there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. ... There’s no reason to seat a separate commission. .... It’s one commission for all state redistricting.”

Ticking clock

The clock is ticking on the whole issue of redistricting reform, however. The closer we get to 2021, the year of the next redrawing process, the less likely politicians will want to change the system.

“If we don’t do this now, there’s a very good chance it will be another decade before we can fix congressional redistricting,” Sawyer said in a released statement. LaRose is eyeing the 2016 primary ballot for the new issue.

“My goal is to get it done as soon as possible,” he said.

It should be noted that state Rep. Kathleen Clyde, D-Kent, an attorney who has focused much of her attention on elections issues, introduced a comparable congressional redistricting reform amendment back in February that went nowhere fast.

It remains to be seen whether LaRose and Sawyer will find enough support to move their resolution.

Marc Kovac is The Vindicator’s Statehouse correspondent. Email him at mkovac@dixcom.com or on Twitter at OhioCapitalBlog.