Jeffries: 'New State Legislative Maps Headed in Wrong Direction'

The proposed redrawn State Senate and Assembly district maps are out.

But Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislators in Albany, including Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, D-Fort Greene, think the legislative task force that drew up and released the new maps yesterday is headed in the wrong direction.

"The Senate GOP has once again abused the redistricting process to protect incumbents, punish the opposition and artificially maintain their power,” said Jeffries, an outspoken opponent of gerrymandering—the practice of manipulating geographic boundaries to create partisan, incumbent-protected districts.

Jeffries, along with then-State Sen. Eric Schneiderman introduced a bill in 2010 to end prison-based gerrymandering. The bill passed in August that year, making New York only the second state in the country to count incarcerated individuals in their home communities for purposes of legislative reapportionment.

A task force represented by Albany’s majority parties—the Republicans in the Senate and the Democrats in the Assembly redraw the new state legislative maps—and they attempt to reconcile the state’s changing population with the latest Census figures.

However, according to some politicians and at least one redistricting watchdog group, the maps play into familiar attempts to establish a political advantage by the map’s authors.

Bill Mahoney, research coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group, described the proposed Senate map as containing “clearly the most gerrymandered lines in recent New York history.”

Jeffries and state Sen. Michael Gianaris, D-Astoria, are the lead sponsors of state legislation to create an independent redistricting commission. Cuomo also is a big supporter an independent commission to handle the redistricting process and vowed he would veto anything the task force put forth.

True to form, by yesterday afternoon, after the maps were released, a spokesman for Cuomo issued a statement saying, “At first glance, these lines are simply unacceptable and would be vetoed by the governor.”

The legislative task force that drew the new maps has scheduled nine hearings to gather public comments. The first is scheduled for Monday morning in Albany.