State district lines not yet final

ALBANY -- The new state district lines drawn by the majorities of the state legislature will undergo changes before lawmakers vote on a final plan, the co-chairs of a task force drawing the lines said Monday.

"We look forward to having citizen input so we can make appropriate changes focusing on 'communities of interest,' " Sen. Michael F. Nozzolio (R-Fayette) told reporters before the first of nine hearings on the proposed lines, released last week.

Critics have said the Senate Republican plan dilutes the votes of African-Americans and Hispanics. On Long Island, for example, Hempstead is divided among four Senate districts. In Suffolk, the minority communities in Babylon, Brentwood and Islip are broken into two districts, they said.

"There's a historic gerrymander there" that "keeps minorities from aggregating the political power to which their numbers would seem to entitle them," Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, a government watchdog group, said last week.

Senate Republicans counter that their plan is nondiscriminatory and constitutional.

At issue is the fiercely partisan task of drawing new Senate and Assembly districts, required every 10 years to comply with new census data. The process is controlled by the majority in either house -- leading to long-standing complaints that districts are drawn to protect the powers that be.

The battle is especially important in the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow 32-29 advantage, with one vacancy.

Assemb. John McEneny (D-Albany), who co-chairs the Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment with Nozzolio, said Monday the staff would listen to testimony over the next three weeks about the proposed districts and then "we would adjust lines accordingly in response to citizen input."

McEneny said those revisions would be incorporated in legislation drafted during the week of Presidents Day. He said the bill could be brought to a vote as soon as March 6.

During a television interview Monday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo repeated a threat to veto the lines if they are sent to him in their current state.

Minority populations have grown on Long Island from 2000 to 2010 while the non-Hispanic white population has decreased as both a percentage of total population and in real numbers, according to the latest census data.

The non-Hispanic white population fell 13 percentage points and is now 66 percent in Suffolk County; in Nassau County, it dropped 2 points to 72 percent.

The problem, critics said, is that the Island's nine State Senate districts barely change under the proposal. Each is balanced to make sure that whites make up at least 62 percent of each district, said Todd Breitbart, a former Democratic staffer who worked on redistricting plans in previous decades.