Commentary –

 Census Is Connecticut’s Failing Grade

By Chris Powell

Connecticut’s dismal census figures and the resulting loss of a seat in the US House of Representatives should mean more than extra political maneuvering in the usual 10-year reapportionment of congressional and state legislative districts. They should mean some embarrassment and reconsideration too.

The cause of the problem is that Connecticut’s population in the last decade has grown only about a quarter as fast as the rest of the country’s – by only 3.6 percent compared to 13 percent. Only three states – Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and God-forsaken North Dakota – grew slower.

Of course people who think that this continental nation is already too crowded with 285 million people may consider Connecticut virtuous, but the virtue was unintentional. It happened for other reasons. Being small and already fairly densely populated to begin with, Connecticut may have been at a bit of a disadvantage compared to the South or desert West, like Nevada and Arizona, which have plenty of room and the warm weather sought out by the increasingly affluent, numerous, and portable elderly. But something else is up when Connecticut can’t grow even close to as fast as New York, New Jersey, or Idaho. Indeed, Connecticut was the only state to lose population for three years in a row during the 1990s.

This is something to be reflected on by the people in state government in Hartford, and it may be the ultimate measure of their work. Have they improved the state and ameliorated its problems, or, in the name of doing so, have they just raised taxes dramatically and nurtured an ineffectual bureaucracy while making private enterprise more difficult?

Taking a new approach to government is for the long term. For the immediate future, the census means redistricting, and the General Assembly, which is in charge of that, can take one of two approaches: It can draw the new congressional and state legislative districts to make them more competitive politically, or less so.

While the first political rule of redistricting is to protect incumbents, that may not be possible this time with Connecticut’s congressional districts. Connecticut may get some competition out of this redistricting for a change simply because two of its congressmen will have to be put into the same new district, unless one of them retires or seeks other office, which doesn’t seem likely. But that alone won’t do much to fulfill the public interest.

The public interest in redistricting is that districts have a community of interest, that their towns have something to do with each other and haven’t just been flung together on a map because their population numbers add up right; that they be reasonably shaped; and that they not be so dominated by any political party that elections become mere formalities and incumbents don’t have to pay much attention to the folks back home.

Ever since it became likely a couple of years ago that Connecticut would lose a congressional seat, the congressional district that has seemed the most susceptible to elimination has been the 5th, shaped like a snake and running from Danbury to Waterbury to Meriden, the state’s most conservative and competitive district. For the 5th is the only district that touches all five other districts, and of course all the surviving districts will have to get larger by one fifth.

But even if the 5th came to be divided up, there would be quite different ways of doing it. Its conservative- and Republican-leaning towns could be placed in the 4th and 6th districts, which have Republican congressmen, making those districts even more favorable to the incumbents. Or they could be placed in the 3rd District, a comfortably Democratic district, giving the incumbent something to worry about for a change.

If redistricting was ever done on a completely rational basis, isolated from partisan politics, Connecticut would do it as with building blocks. Redistricting would start with 150 state House districts (there are 151 now), and then state House districts would be assembled in groups of five to create 30 state Senate districts, of which there are now 36. Then the Senate districts would be put together in groups of six to form the state’s five congressional districts.

Everything would be contiguous, overlapping, simple, coherent, understandable, and a perfect fit.

Under the circumstances it will be remarkable enough if the General Assembly can muster the constitutionally required two-thirds majority – possible only with the approval of both parties – for anything that eliminates a congressional district and pits a couple of incumbents against each other.

(Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.)