Richard S. Gilbert – 70 Harper Street – Rochester, NY 14607-3142
Monroe County Office Building – Rochester, NY
February 15, 2012
I’m the Rev. Richard Gilbert, a retired Unitarian Universalist minister, and live at 70 Harper Street in Rochester. I have lived and worked in the city since 1970. I speak on behalf of Common Cause of New York State.
Democracy is the capacity of the people to govern themselves, to elect their representatives, and to engage and advocate with them for the services government can provide. Its function is to have the people choose their representatives, not to have those representatives choose the people they want to represent.
The current proposals of the State Assembly and Senate are, in my opinion, woefully inadequate to measure up to any fair understanding of democracy for two reasons:
First, the process is flawed. To expect elected officials to be objective and disinterested in drawing district lines is to place too great a faith in human nature. Politics is the art of the possible, but to expect individuals to eschew their self-interest for the common good is nearly impossible.
Before the 2010 election, my understanding was that there was a commitment on the part of many candidates who were elected to refer this matter to an independent bi-partisan commission which would propose district lines, receive feedback from the Legislature and ultimately be approved by the Legislature. Why those pledges have not been kept mystifies me as a citizen.
The idea I’ve heard that creating such an independent commission requires changing the Constitution and could not be implemented until 2022, strikes me as ludicrous. Democracy delayed is democracy denied. It is also a shame that the public will not have the opportunity to comment on a Congressional draft.
The State Legislative proposals before us do not measure up to democratic standards. I have seen the power point presentation created by Blair Horner, formerly of New York State Public Interest Group and now of the American Cancer Society. That presentation would have been amusing, if these lines were not so tragically compromised as a gerrymandered political insult to the intelligence of the citizenry.
The current proposals for the Rochester area are tinged with partisanship and rife with bias toward the incumbents. In the Assembly the City remains gerrymandered to protect the three incumbent Democratic Assembly members, as you can see on page six of this testimony.
In the Senate, Rochester continues to be chopped into three districts when the whole City can easily fit in a single district as you can see on page five of this testimony. A single district can also be drawn for most of Rochester’s suburbs.
According to the law, legislative districts should have a common “community of interest.” Looking at the districts proposed by the Assembly, and particularly the Senate, I do not, for example, find that “community of interest” between parts of the City of Rochester, with one of the highest child poverty rates in the country, and the suburb of Amherst, outside Buffalo, one of the richest communities in the country. Our city desperately needs strong representation, and carving the city into quarters and linking them to wealthy suburbs that are not even a part of our own region does not do the job. It gives Amherst suburban voters, already empowered by affluence, still more power at the expense of Rochester voters.
Our two top institutions of higher learning would be in districts represented by senators from the Buffalo area, which has its own colleges and universities. While, Buffalo is slated to receive one billion dollars of special state financial aid, Rochester, which for years has not asked for extra state aid, is once more neglected. This, despite the fact that our city has essentially lost its one-time largest employer, Eastman Kodak. This city needs a stronger voice in the State Senate.
Democracy requires, according to the U. S. Supreme Court, one-person one-vote. District boundaries should reflect the common good and not favor particular parities nor incumbents.
In conclusion, speaking for Common Cause, I strongly oppose the redistricting proposals proposed by the Assembly and the Senate. I applaud the governor’s promise to veto any partisan proposal put forth by this task force. If the legislature fails to put forth a fair non-partisan redistricting plan then the task will fall to a special master appointed by the courts. From what we’ve seen from LATFOR so far, this looks to be the better option for the citizens of New York State.
Democracy is a very imperfect system, as Winston Churchill said, the worst form of government except for every other. E. B. White once defined democracy as the faith than more than half the people will be right more than half the time. He also spoke of democracy as the score at the beginning of the ninth inning. It is not too late to through these proposals out and start over, and move toward fair and objective redistricting to enhance democracy in the Empire State. You only need to look to the Common Cause plans for how this can be done. Thank you for your attention.
In LATFOR’s draft, Senate Districts 59, 61, and 62 stretch from Niagara and Erie all the way into Monroe County.
Rochester and its suburbs are awkwardly broken between six different districts that extend far into surrounding rural counties.
The Common Cause Reform Plan orients separate districts around Buffalo and Rochester, recognizing that each city is the core of its own distinct regional economy.
Looking closer at Rochester, LATFOR continues to break the city between three districts.
This is a partisan gerrymander that disenfranchises Rochester communities. Not a single incumbent Senator actually lives within the City.
Common Cause Reform SD 56 keeps Rochester entirely within a single compact district with Irondequoit and Brighton.
Common Cause Reform SD 59 forms a Rochester suburbs district entirely within Monroe County.
These districts keep communities of interest together and would empower both Rochester and its suburbs with a stronger voice.
Assembly Districts proposed by LATFOR continue to divide local communities and neighborhoods.
These lines seem to be drawn to with the priority to maximize the chances of electing three Democrats.
The City of Rochester is too large to include in a single Assembly district, so the CC Reform Plan divides it as neatly as possible, attempting to keep communities and neighborhoods together as much as practicable.
Current Congressional districts in Western New York divide the region into an awkward jigsaw puzzle.
Rochester is plucked from Monroe County and connected to part of Buffalo by a corridor along Lake Ontario in NY 28 – known as the “earmuffs” district.
The Common Cause Reform Plan for Congress focuses on creating regional districts.
Individual districts can be drawn for the Rochester and Buffalo metro areas to replace the current “earmuffs” district.
Monroe County is currently split between four different Congressional districts which each extend dozens or even hundreds of miles into other regions.
Rochester and its suburbs could instead be contained in a single compact district that would provide a stronger, unified voice for the region in Congress.
