As a member of the Nassau County Redistricting Commission, as well as a long time Great Neck resident, I want to compliment you for the Jan. 18 editorial entitled “Rip this up.”
I am in total agreement with you that “[t]he entire procedure has been a complete failure …” and that hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars were wasted.
You are correct that “the two sides [Republicans and Democrats on the Commission] did not meet even once to … see if at least some of their differences could be reconciled” and you rightly point to “the complete failure of the two sides to work together on a map that would serve the best interests of the residents of Nassau County.”
I, and my fellow Democratic members of the commission, share your view that “[t]here is no reason why the two sides couldn’t sit in a room together to work out the lines.”
However, I believe you are already aware, and I would like your readers to also be aware, that the Democratic members did everything we possibly could to generate some discussion with our Republican counterparts over appropriate guidelines for drawing a redistricting map, and were rebuffed at every turn when we requested joint meetings to try to reach some consensus on what the map should look like.
Early on they rejected our proposal for such basic guidelines as keeping districts compact and contiguous and that we should avoid breaking up communities and school districts. No matter what entreaties we made, it became clear that the Republicans had no interest in any kind of bipartisan cooperation and their goal all along, as you say, was “only to strengthen the Republican power base.”
It was never the intention of the Democratic members of the commission to have two competing maps and right up to the final vote we were hoping for some kind of effort by the other side to work with us on a consensus map.
Only when it became absolutely clear that such cooperation was never going to be extended, did we reluctantly release our own map, a map that makes minimal necessary changes to reflect population shifts and certainly doesn’t break up communities such as Great Neck.
I understand your and your readers’ frustration with the meaningless outcome of the commission’s work – basically no recommendation to the Legislature – but let’s be clear as to why that happened and who was responsible.
Steven Markowitz
Great Neck
