Following extended consideration, Supreme Court Justice Steven Jaeger determined that the redistricting plan, adopted by the Republican majority of the Nassau County Legislature, violated the purpose, intent and provisions of the redistricting statute adopted by that Legislature a decade ago. The Court ordered that the new district boundaries could not be applied to the elections of this coming November, and directed that the former boundaries remain in place until the proper procedures are followed.
The Republican majority appealed that decision to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court that presides over Nassau, Suffolk, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island . Yesterday,
August 11th, a bare majority of a panel of that Court released its decision, dated August 9, and reversed Justice Jaeger's Order, and reinstated the boundaries that were produced by Republican operatives in less than a week, without discussion.
The Democratic minority will now seek to have the case reviewed by our State's highest court, the Court of Appeals. When you review this decision, look to see if there is any discussion of the facts that:
- The actual adopted plan was developed in secret, by persons who were not Legislators, using County resources, including an expensive computer program.
- The Republican Majority did not disclose to the Democratic minority any of the details concerning the numerous options that were fed to the program to produce the result that was presented as an accomplished fact.
- The Democratic minority were never advised as to any alternate redistricting patterns that were produced by the program.
- The Democratic minority was never given the opportunity to use the same county resources, including the computer program, to determine the "what if" alternative possibilities that the program would have produced.
In short, the only issue considered was whether all parts of the redistricting statute had to be followed, and the court's bare majority decided that one part of the statute could be implemented in isolation of the others. There was no discussion of the issue of whether the legislative process, itself, had been corrupted. What is the point of having any legislative discussion, if the majority can simply ram through its will without any substantive opportunity for the minority to examine and discuss the very important factual and discretionary decisions that are involved in redistricting?
All of the foregoing, compounds the improper, crippling impact that the sole redistricting option, as revealed, considered and adopted, will have upon the political stability of vast communities of voters that are in the overall racial and ethnic minorities and to the disadvantage of the other political parties and of the working class voters.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
After the disastrous move by the County Executive and the Republican Majority to close half of the police precincts in Nassau County, the Democratic caucus was successful in pushing Ed Mangano's back against the wall so that he gave us a signed guarantee that there would not be one less patrol car in any neighborhood. The agreement additionally stated that there would be more law enforcement personnel in all of the policing centers.
Comments
RSS feed for comments to this post