Wednesday, January 22, 2003
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Wednesday, January 22, 2003 |
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It's time to get started on re-redistricting
By
CAL BEVERLY You may have read in The Citizen last week that Fayette County is partly represented by 10 state legislators. That's right in a county of more than 97,000, we share 10 legislators with other counties: seven representatives and three senators. How many are Republican? Half five. In one of the most solidly Republican counties in Georgia, five of our 10 legislators are from the other party. How many live in Fayette? One Virgil Fludd, and he's a Democrat. Thank you, former Gov. Roy Barnes. We editorialized at the time of the Democrats' dismembering of the state's political boundaries two years ago that voters would remember how Barnes had raped the state's communities of interest. They remembered that and other Democrat arrogance and put in a GOP governor for the first time since just after the Civil War. Now, the new governor is moving to redress our many redistricting grievances. "Gov. Perdue has vowed to redraw the lines so that communities are represented by one or two elected officials who live among their constituents," according to a news release from Sen. Dan Lee (R-LaGrange). Lee switched parties after the November election to help give the GOP control of the Georgia Senate. "We have counties now that have 16 representatives and eight or nine senators that is ridiculous," Lee said. "The people of Georgia need to know who their elected officials are so that they are able to contact them with questions, concerns and other issues." Lee has been appointed chairman of the Senate Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee. "He vowed, following the special legislative session in the fall of 2001, to change the maps to something more 'reasonable.' As chair of the committee, he will have the power," the news release said. "I pledge ... that these maps will be drawn in a fair and honest manner," Lee said. "It is important to our citizens that their representatives in Congress and the Georgia General Assembly be like-minded and vote accordingly. Neighborhoods, communities and counties don't need to be chopped up and split between a multitude of representatives. I do not believe that is what our forefathers envisioned when they devised this system of representation." Amen. There are people representing this county in the state legislature that not even we at this newspaper have been able to contact. Some of them maybe even most of them never set foot inside Fayette County during the course of a normal week. Why should some elected officials in Democrat Clayton County care what happens to a few Republicans in Fayette County? After all, they represent only a northern slice of Fayette and their power base is securely elsewhere. I have no problem with Democrats representing majority Democrat districts and Republicans representing majority GOP districts, so long as those "districts" have some reasonable relationship to historic county boundaries or other political subdivisions. For example, not to pick on GOP Sen. Mike Crotts, but what does a guy living in Conyers know about Fayetteville's traffic problems? How well can he really represent our local, Fayette, interests? Let's give the legislators back to the geographic areas in which they live, and give back to the people of those geographic areas identifiable, local representatives with local ties and local interests. Press on, Sen. Lee and Gov. Perdue. Undo some of King Roy's damage to this state.
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