City appeals ruling in redistricting case

3 plans presented during Redistricting Committee’s meeting; discussion scheduled to continue this week

By Daniel Kittredge
Posted 6/8/16

The city has moved to appeal a recent federal court ruling that would require the redrawing of ward maps for City Council and School Committee seats, while the council's Redistricting Committee was set to meet again this week to

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City appeals ruling in redistricting case

3 plans presented during Redistricting Committee’s meeting; discussion scheduled to continue this week

Posted

The city has moved to appeal a recent federal court ruling that would require the redrawing of ward maps for City Council and School Committee seats, while the council’s Redistricting Committee was set to meet again this week to continue consideration of multiple options that meet the requirements of the judicial order in the case.

Director of Administration Robert Coupe confirmed the city last week filed an appeal in U.S. District Court, along with motions to stay the order and seek an expedited review.

As of Monday, Coupe said U.S. District Judge Ronald Lagueux, who presided over the case, had yet to issue rulings on those motions. He said the city is preparing to bring the matter to the U.S. Court of Appeals if needed.

“We want to give him some time to rule, but time is short,” Coupe said.

The case, Davidson et al. v. the City of Cranston, was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island and other plaintiffs as a challenge to the city’s inclusion of inmates at the Adult Correctional Institute in population counts when drawing ward lines. The ACLU has dubbed the practice “prison gerrymandering.”

Particularly at issue is Ward 6, in which the ACI resides. Those who brought the case argue the practice of counting prisoners in the ward’s population total effectively weakens the power of voters in the other five wards in violation of the “one person, one vote” principle under the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment.

Lagueux in his ruling agreed with the plaintiffs, writing that the counting of prisoners in the Ward 6 population “is unfairly inflating the voice of the Ward’s other inhabitants.” He wrote: “[T]he district lines for Cranston’s wards serve to dilute the voting strength and political influence of the residents of wards 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, thereby causing an infringement of the individual constitutional rights of the residents of those wards.”

Lagueux’s ruling tosses out the redistricting plan adopted by the city in 2012 based on the results of the 2010 Census. It orders the city to devise within a month a new map in which the ACI population is removed from the city’s total population figure, and the wards lines are redrawn as needed to provide for “substantially equal numbers of people in each ward.” It also bars the city from holding new elections for council and school board seats until a new map is in place.

The redistricting committee met twice last week, first on May 31 and then during a continuation of that meeting on June 2. At the second gathering, three proposed ward maps that would meet the terms of the judge’s order were presented by GIS Manager Maria Giarusso and Steven Sepe, registrar for the Board of Canvassers.

The maps – dubbed Scenario 2016A, 2016B, and 2016C – are based on the removal of the 3,433 inmates at the ACI from the city’s total population as calculated in the 2010 Census, bringing the citywide figure to 76,954. As a result, the “target population” for each ward falls from nearly 13,400 to 12,825. Ward 6’s population drops to 10,209 – roughly 2,600 people, or more than 20 percent, short of the target.

To bring the wards back into balance, the new maps must move approximately 2,000 people into Ward 6 from other wards. Kimball Brace of Washington, D.C.-based Election Data Services, who was retained as an expert by the city during the legal case, was present at the June 2 redistricting meeting and noted that courts have generally recognized the necessity for a “10-percent deviation” – 5 percent below or above a target figure – in population counts for local ward and district lines.

“With local districts, you have a little bit more leeway,” he said.

It was also noted that in drawing the local maps, flexibility is the limited by the fact that “census blocks” – which include population within small, defined areas – cannot be split. The various maps represent the blocks in small-print figures, representing the population they contain. Those figures range from zero to the hundreds.

Scenario 2016A would bring Ward 6’s total population to 12,181, moving in portions of wards 2, 3, 4, and 5. Giarusso told the council members the first map was designed to be the least disruptive.

The second map, Scenario 2016B, is largely identical to the first, except it moves a small portion of Ward 1 into Ward 2. Portions of wards 2, 3, 4, and 5 would be moved into Ward 6, which would have a total population of 12,219.

Giarusso said the second map was developed in case a slight deviation in the Ward 1 population under the first plan – which she said was roughly three people over the 5-percent over-target threshold – became an issue.

The third map, Scenario 2016C, differs most significantly. It draws a larger piece of the southern edge of Ward 5, in a different geographical configuration. It would put Ward 6’s total population at 12,347. It also draws a piece of Ward 1 into Ward 2, and moves portions of wards 2, 3, 4, and 5 into Ward 6.

A fourth map, Scenario 2016D, was developed based on Ward 4 Councilman Mario Aceto’s request at the June 2 meeting. It has yet to be formally presented or discussed. Its contours are largely similar to those of 2016C, although it draws a slightly larger share from Ward 1 into Ward 2 and reduces the number of people moved from Ward 3 into Ward 6.

Ward 5 – which is 7.7 percent over its “population target” under the baseline map – would lost the most people under all of the proposals currently being considered.

There was no immediate consensus at the June 2 meeting, although the 2016C proposal drew criticism from several council members.

Ward 5 Councilman Chris Paplauskas after the meeting said he felt the third option would split up the Meshanticut neighborhood.

“It should be whatever is least disruptive,” he said. “I don’t think you should split a neighborhood … I think that’s wrong.”

Paplauskas said he would “absolutely” support 2016A or 2016B. He also criticized the judge’s ruling in the court case.

“I don’t think we should have to do redistricting, period,” he said.

Ward 3 Councilman Paul Archetto said he would favor 2016A or 2016B, but felt 2016C took too much of his ward. The third proposal would bring the Ward 3 population down from 13,171 to 12,674.

“You’re carving a large chunk out of Ward 3 … I think it should be more fairly distributed,” he said.

Ward 6 Councilman Michael Favicchio said he agreed with Archetto’s point, noting that Ward 3 had one of the lowest populations of the six wards before the court’s ruling and redistricting order.

“This seems to create a further gap between them,” he said.

Ward 2 Councilman Donald Botts was most critical of 2016C, suggesting that it had been developed as part of a Democratic effort to harm the re-election prospects of Paplauskas, a Republican.

“This map goes after Ward 5 which happens to have a Republican councilman,” he wrote in a Facebook post following the meeting. “It takes what is perceived to be a favorable part of Meshanticut and puts it into Ward 6 and also moves more people around in other wards. It is the most disruptive of the 3 maps.”

Botts at the meeting was most supportive of 2016A, which he said appeared to be “the least disruptive of the three” and “seems to be the most favorable to the citizens of Cranston.”

Coupe on Tuesday said: “Redistricting is almost by its nature a political exercise. I think given the circumstances, my hope is that it won’t turn into a game of sort of political opportunism, and that whatever the council does will be the minimal amount of disruption that’s absolutely necessary.”

Links to copies of the maps, and data related to the various proposals, can be found under the Board of Canvassers page on the city’s website, cranstonri.com.

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