Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 30, 1991                   TAG: 9104010173
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-13   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LEGISLATORS SHOULDN'T REDISTRICT

Redistricting should be done by an independent, non-partisan commission. The goal of the commission should be reasonably compact districts, fairly drawn, to help ensure effectively representative government.

Every couple of years, groups such as Common Cause of Virginia propose redistricting by independent agency. Every time they do, the notion gets shot down in legislative committee.

But the idea is not pie in the sky. Not every legislature shares the assumption of Virginia's that only state lawmakers can be entrusted with the decennial task. Some states have independent redistricting commissions, and they work.

Even mediocre plans would be better than the highly partisan incumbent-protection schemes approved Thursday by the legislature's Privileges and Elections committees. Compactness and communities of interest were thrown out the window, in the name of protecting Democratic incumbents and forcing Republicans to run against each other.

Sometimes, the pols didn't even get that right. In the effort to reduce the GOP contingent in the House, Pittsylvania County was carved up to form parts of six different House districts. But it turns out that Republican Charles Hawkins of Chatham was put by mistake in the same district as a Democrat, Willard Finney of Rocky Mount.

Meanwhile, Senate redistricters have accomplished the seemingly impossible. They have taken an atrocious plan and made it worse.

One change splits Buchanan County into two different districts. The apparent point? To (a) make even dicier Bristol Republican William C. Wampler Jr.'s prospects for re-election, and (b) eliminate any prospect that union miners might deny renomination to Wytheville Democrat Danny Bird.

Another revision splits Bedford County into three, rather than the initial two, districts - so Roanoke Democrat Granger Macfarlane can get his beloved Hardy precincts.

The redistricting plans, reported out of committee Thursday, are to be taken up Monday by the full General Assembly. There, Democratic control presumably ensures approval of Democratic plans. But they might earn a veto from Gov. Wilder; they almost certainly would win the attention of the U.S. Justice Department and perhaps the federal courts.

It wouldn't be the first time. After the 1980 Census, it took several rounds of remapping and almost $1 million of the taxpayers' money before the House of Delegates devised a plan that passed gubernatorial and federal muster.

But more, the redistricting follies may be symptoms of a deeper ailment infecting Virginia's body politic. Virginians are fond of thinking of the Old Dominion as a good-government state, where outright corruption is minimal and politicians generally are public-spirited citizens.

The feeding frenzy on the GOP minority, and the avidity with which incumbents scramble to keep their positions whatever the cost to reasonable redistricting, suggest otherwise. They smell of party-hack politics, and of legislators who see office-holding not as public service but as a career.

Keywords:
POLITICS