New county redistricting plan passes

With a single vote on May 24, the Nassau County Legislature shifted 576,000 voters out of their current legislative districts and into new ones, while also moving certain districts, such as the 19th, across the county.

Since a hearing on May 9 hearing, the GOP majority had tweaked the map to unite the Five Towns, which were split under the Republicans’ original proposal. Under the new plan, the Village of Cedarhurst would be removed from the newly proposed 19th District and moved to the 7th District.

“I am gratified that all of Cedarhurst is slated to return to District 7,” said County Legislator Howard Kopel (R-Lawrence), who sought to reunite the Five Towns area he represents.

Republicans control the Legislature, 11-8. The Legislature passed the redistricting plan with a 10-8 vote, and Legislator Denise Ford, a Republican from Long Beach, was the only GOP representative to vote against it. Legislator Robert Troiano, a Democrat who represents the 2nd District, was absent.

The plan, which the Legislature’s Republican majority recently crafted with help from the county attorney, John Ciampoli, drew sharp criticism from a variety of people during a May 9 hearing on the proposal. Representatives of Nassau’s African-American community said it would dilute the minority vote and potentially violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965, while Democrats said the plan represented an unlawful power grab by the GOP majority.

A State Supreme Court justice recently issued a restraining order on the plan, effectively prohibiting the Legislature from voting on the matter. But an appellate judge overturned that decision, allowing the vote to move forward on Tuesday.

Whether the plan will survive remains to be seen. Representatives of both the Legislature’s Republican majority and Democratic minority were scheduled to return to court on Thursday. Democratic sources said they hoped to halt the plan with a court order, but the outcome of that hearing remained uncertain as the Herald went to press on Tuesday.

If the plan does stand up to court review, it will take effect in time for this year’s election in November.

Deputy County Attorney Joseph Nocella represented the county attorney’s office at Tuesday’s vote, filling in for Ciampoli, who was in the hospital.

South Floral Park, portions of Elmont, North Valley Stream, Valley Steam and South Valley Stream would be added to the 19th District. According to Nocello, this was done to “increase the majority/minority [distribution] of the district.”

District 19, now located in central Nassau, is represented by David Denenberg, a Democrat from Merrick. Under the new plan, Denenberg would be forced to run in a primary against Joseph Scannell, a Democrat from Baldwin, as the current 19th District would merge with the 5th District to the west.

Additionally, part of Old Westbury, which falls in the 2nd District, would be moved to the 11th District. A section of East Meadow would be removed from the 2nd District and inserted into the 13th District. Finally, a section of the Village of Hempstead, known as the Terrace Avenue Section, would be moved from the 2nd District to the 13th District.

According to the Legislature’s presiding officer, Peter Schmitt, a Republican who represents the 12th District, Tuesday’s changes to the redistricting map “reflect very minor changes … to accommodate the public comment.”

Schmitt said that redrawing the Legislative lines was necessary because the current population deviation –– the difference between the least and most populous districts –– now stands at 22.7 percent. According to Nocello, that deviation violates the U.S. Constitution’s equal-protection clause.

Democrats say that according to the county charter, the Legislature must follow a set procedure for redrawing district lines, which includes a series of public hearings under the direction of a bipartisan commission. They say that process is supposed to begin in 2012 and end in 2013 with a vote by the Legislature.

Schmitt, however, said that an immediate vote was needed because the current district map potentially violates the Constitution.

Nocello said that lines were redrawn by a group of people in the county attorney’s office, as per Schmitt’s request. However, when asked who in the office was responsible for drawing the lines, Nocello said he did not know.

Judith Jacobs, a Democrat who represents the 16th District, was the Legislature’s presiding officer in 2003, the last time district lines were redrawn. Jacobs said that while the Democrats could have used the same “ploy” to reconfigure legislative lines in their favor 10 years ago, when they were in the majority, they used a bipartisan commission to gather information about the districts and reworked the lines two years later, after a series of public hearings.

The Legislature passed the 2003 map 19-0. “Not one time did we, 10 years ago, pit sitting legislators against each other in the same district,” Jacobs said. “This map did it in two cases. Not once did we actually remove the spine and heart from a district, and this map did it.”