Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 27, 1991 TAG: 9103270213
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE LENGTH: Medium
He was a minority of one.
"I just want you to tell me that you think it would be better for Giles County, as a whole, to be split," challenged committee member Barbara Stafford, R-Pearisburg, who would find herself in the same district as Del. Tommy Baker, R-Radford.
"Yes, ma'am," Mitchem said. "I think Giles County would benefit from having two votes in the legislature. . . . I wish we could get three or four or five."
Since the four-laning of U.S. 460, he said, the western part of the county leans toward retail outlets in West Virginia and the eastern part toward Montgomery County.
Mitchem said many people in eastern Giles County work in Montgomery, and a growing number of people from Montgomery County are moving into that part of Giles, giving those two areas a community of interest.
Other speakers at this first hearing on the working draft for new House of Delegates districts urged the committee to leave their localities intact, especially those in Giles and Tazewell counties.
Committee Chairman Ford Quillen, D-Gate City, said, in effect, lots of luck.
"We would like, if we can, to make adjustments a little more palatable," he said. "We also very much don't want counties divided if it can be helped."
But it probably can't be helped, he said.
Del. Robert Ball Sr., D-Richmond, and Del. Victor Thomas, D-Roanoke, were the only other representatives of the 20-member committee at the hearing, prompting Stafford to say that she was sorry more had not come to the Southwest Virginia hearing. She said she planned to attend the remaining hearings - in Northern Virginia and Tidewater today and in Richmond on Thursday.
Quillen said work probably would start on the redistricting bill Thursday night or Friday morning. "It's moving pretty fast."
Nearly half of the about 70 people at the hearing were from Tazewell County, which has been divided among three House districts for the past 10 years. Giles never has been divided.
Jack Reasor, vice chairman of the Tazewell County Board of Supervisors, said Mitchem is wrong about such a situation being beneficial. It leaves the divided county a minority in all its districts, he said, and the delegates naturally must represent the majority interests.
Reasor presented an alternative plan to leave Tazewell County intact in a district that would include Russell and Smyth counties and part of Buchanan County. That would leave Buchanan divided, he said, but Tazewell has had its division and "for those counties now being divided for the first time . . . you must take your turn."
"The guy who asked to be split many ways, good luck to him," Bluefield Mayor Cecile Barrett said.
Botetourt County Administrator John Williamson said his county would go from being the largest segment of its current district to the smallest parts of three districts under the plan.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY POLITICS
by CNB