From the Legislative Gazette.
As the 10-year redistricting process for New York draws near, more attention is being paid to proposals for improving the process used to determine how Senate, Assembly and congressional district lines are drawn in the state.
Last week the Nelson Rockefeller Institute of Government and the League of Women Voters held a forum in Albany to discuss legislative redistricting.
The panel, which consisted of Assemblyman Daniel Burling, R-Warsaw; Assemblyman William Parment, D-North Harmony; counsel to Sen. Martin Malave Dilan, D-Brooklyn, Jeffrey Wice; Blair Horner, New York Public Interest Research Group legislative director; and Gerald Benjamin, who was named a distinguished professor of political science and now serves as director of the SUNY New Paltz Center for Regional Research Education and Outreach, pointed out different ways to make redistricting more fair.
Horner indicated support for a Senate bill (S.1614) sponsored by David Valesky, D-Oneida, that would amend the state legislative law to create an 11-member reapportionment commission. The leaders of the minority and majority conferences in both house of the Legislature would name eight of those members. Each leader would get two appointments. Those members, in turn, would appoint the other three people, one of whom would serve as chair of the commission.