Drawing legislative districts is traditionally a political minefield, but the Boston City Council may be setting a new standard for making the job difficult.
For months, the councilors have been trying to draw new City Council districts, as required by law. This should not be all that difficult an exercise, given that the demographics of the city are not radically different from a decade ago, the last time the council took on this task.
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" nothing ever gets done." no you know what, with the makeup of the entire council being 13 men and women who have never held a real job in their lives but all share in the DNA of ineptness, totally coopted and corrupted and entirely gutless. ma
Why do you live in Boston?
What makes you think he does?
If the city hasn't changed much since the last redo, then why redo it at all? If we went without district lines then the council would be less diverse. All of the winners would be from West Roxbury and South Boston-everyone there votes. While Boston has more people of color than whites, people who live in the "white" areas of town vote more than in areas where people of color live. The systems now while not perfect, works, don't mess with it.
I don't support the notion of eliminating the districts. The districts are not the problem, just a symptom of the real illness: that council members place protecting their personal interest (i.e. staying in the seat) above representing the interests of their constituents. Districts allow the neighborhoods to ensure that their interests are heard as part of the city-wide debate, and the at-large seats futher the city-wide interests. Having all seats at-large would allow some neighborhoods to dominate most, if not all, of the seats. Mr. Walker seeks to do that in the name of diversity, and he may find it will have, among other unintended consequences, the opposite affect.
There are two more urgent reasons that nothing gets done. 1. The Mayor holds the district Councilors hostage; if they don't do what he tells them, he withholds services from their neighborhoods and they get blamed by the voters (because they are afraid to tell the public that the Mayor did this, that would just make him angrier, and whoa, that's not good). 2. The Council has been cut out of any important decision-making by legal finagling by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA). Unlike other municipal legislative bodies, they have no say in city planning, zoning, or development review, the most important legislative function, because the BRA sneaked (snuck?) in legislation in 1960 making itself the city's planning body, in order to be sure THERE IS NEVER GOING TO BE ANY CITY PLANNING AND THEY CAN JUST MAKE DEALS WITH DEVELOPERS AS THEY AND THE MAYOR WISH. The BRA writes the zoning for the puppet Zoning Commission to sign, and is also the official adviser to the Zoning Board of Appeal. Further: Only in Boston and Springfield (that should tell you something) is the City Council excluded from the "tax-break plus zoning exemption" decision-making of Chapter 121A, leaving the BRA to declare "blight" for any developer anywhere who wants to avoid taxes for a few decades and build anything regardless of the zoning code. We lose, by my estimate, about $70 million a year in property taxes to this boondoggle, although the City Assessor never provides the required info to the state that would allow an accurate accounting of our loss. Note, however, that for the tax break programs on which the Council does have a voice, they vote yes as Menino tells them to, see #1 above. So it probably wouldn't matter if they did vote on 121A's. The above situations have dumbed down the Councilor quality, since they have been for decades a "Seinfeld Council" -- a Council about nothing. The Councilors don't even want those proper legislative powers now. Why think, work and take public heat, when they can just diddle around and collect $87,500 (or has that risen?)? To the extent that democratic government is structured to assure checks-and-balances and public accountability, the cradle of American democracy has none. When these fundamental problems are remedied, we can worry about districting.
This column highlights a classic conflict-of-interest issue. The Council has a fiduciary responsibility to come up with a redistricting plan which benefits the public, even though members have a very strong interest in not making themselves "unelectable" in the process.
Walker's proposal to do away with districts is one way around the conundrum. Another possibility is to remove the process from the Council's control and confide it to a different "neutral" body.
it is a fine line between advocating for a homogeneous district and representing the city as a whole. The current districts look geographically reasonable. Populations change over time. I see no benefit to the city in making major changes in the existing map, except to adjust for population shifts. Not composition, numbers. Other than a major spit geographically, or an intentional split of a demographic to reduce influence, leave well enough alone. Mr. Yancey should welcome other councilors who share his constituency, as they would share his interests in the Council.