State board OKs new legislative districts

A bunch of lines on a map will help decide who will be writing state laws that could affect your life during the next decade.

The Republican-controlled Ohio Apportionment Board voted Wednesday to adopt new boundaries for Ohio House and Senate districts that critics say likely will help Republicans control the Ohio General Assembly until 2022.

Republicans Gov. John Kasich, Secretary of State Jon Husted, State Auditor Dave Yost and Senate President Thomas Niehaus voted for the plan, fulfulling the state constitutional requirement that the board change state legislative districts every 10 years to reflect population shifts.

The fifth member of the board, House Minority Leader Armond Budish, D-Beachwood, voted against the plan, saying it was unfair and unconsitutional.

In Stark County, the board altered all of the county’s house districts, attaching far western Stark County to much of Summit County. The board expanded the House district that includes Canton to include most of Massillon and south central Stark County, due, in part, to Canton’s drastic population loss.

The state constitution requires each of the 99 House districts have roughly the same population, about 116,530, and that each of the 33 Senate districts include three House districts.

Voters will elect people to represent the new House districts beginning with the primary and general elections next year. The new Senate district lines take effect in January 2013.

The board scrapped Stark’s U-shaped 50th House District, represented by State Rep. Christina Hagan, R-Marlboro Township, which since 1992 had run from Canal Fulton to south central Stark County, then up to Louisville and Hartville. The district comprises Hartville, Waynesburg, northern Plain Township and Stark County portions of Alliance and Minerva.

The district of State Rep. Kirk Schuring, R-Jackson Township, loses Massillon and the area of Plain Township generally north of North Canton and Easton Street NE, but it gains almost all of Perry Township.

LOSS OF CLOUT?

Local Democratic officials criticized the plan, which splits Plain Township among three Ohio House districts. Republicans in the Ohio General Assembly divided Plain into two congressional districts.

“It’s a disaster for Plain,” Plain Township Trustee Louis Giavasis said. “We no longer have unified representation in Columbus. ... one person’s going to have Hagan as a representative, the other’s going to have Schuring ... and they live in the same community.”

He said the new districts don’t make sense.

“What do the people in that part of Plain Township have in common ... with a rural populated or sparsely populated area like Nimishillen Township or Minerva?” Giavasis asked. “It’s a travesty to take a community of our size and divide it among three legislators.”

Mike Dittoe, spokesman for Republicans on the Apportionment Board, said the board wants to avoid splitting communities but it is unavoidable in order to fulfill the requirement that each House district have the same number of people.

GERRYMANDERING?

The plan places most of Massillon, a predominately Democratic city, into a district with Canton, another Democratic city represented by Democrat Stephen Slesnick of Canton. The move reduces the number of Democratic voters in Schuring’s district. Meanwhile, observers say the districts of Hagan and Schuring remain Republican-leaning.

Jim Slagle, manager of the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting, said Republicans have drawn as many Democrats as they could into a relatively small number of districts, while creating or solidifying Republican-leaning districts.

“They packed Democratic voters into districts where the Democrats have a super, super majority, so those voters can’t influence elections in other districts,” he said.

The result, Slagle said, based on election results from 2008 and 2010, is 51 House districts that lean strongly Republican, 10 districts that lean slightly Republican, 33 districts that lean strongly or slightly Democratic and five districts that are even.

Dittoe said Slagle did not use results from other presidential elections to calculate fairly the levels of average support for Republicans in each district. And Dittoe said even though Republicans controlled the Apportionment Board in 2001, Democrats still gained control of the House in 2008 after gaining seats in 2006.

POLITICAL CHESS

Republicans severed Carroll County, represented by State Rep. Mark Okey, D-Carrollton, from a district with Democratic-leaning Alliance and northern Mahoning County and placed it in the 95th House district, which stretches south to Washington County.

“It’s extremely difficult for a Democrat to win that seat,” said Shane Jackson, Stark County Democratic Party political director. “All of those counties are solidly Republican.”

The new 38th House District, with western Stark, brings into one district two Republican Summit County incumbents, State Rep. Lynn Slaby, R-Copley Township, and State Rep. Todd McKenney, R-New Franklin. Slaby and McKenney represent two swing Summit County districts that have both been represented by Democrats and Republicans the last decade. With Republican-leaning western Stark, the new 38th would favor Republicans.

“The races will be competitive when there’s a vacancy and a primary,” Jackson said about Stark County state legislative elections. “Other than that, they won’t be competitive.”

Ex-Democratic state Rep. Johnnie Maier of Tuscarawas Township said western Stark is not going to get good representation under the plan.

“Whoever the legislator, they’re going to be beholden to Summit County, not Stark County, so we lose influence,” Maier said.

Richard Gunther, a political science professor at Ohio State University, called the Republican map a “very, very heavy gerrymander.”

“When you have these super-majority districts, voters have no realistic chance of ever voting incumbents out of office,” he said. “Voters of Ohio should be angry about these maps. They’re being very poorly served. They’re not being given the opportunity to hold these public officials accountable.”

Jarrod Tudor, a political science professor at Kent State University Stark campus, said he can’t imagine Democrats ever taking control of the Ohio House or Senate anytime soon.

But in the short term, “there won’t be a whole lot of effect one way or the other. Most people generally do not know who their representative is.”