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Legislature to shuffle the election deck

By DAVID HULSE

MONTICELLO — It looks like some of the county’s urban-based legislators in the geographically smaller central districts will have to start expanding the horizons after the next panel is elected in 2003.

Should he seek re-election, it also appears that Chairman Rusty Pomeroy (D-3) will be putting a little more mileage on his vehicle to cover his northerly district.

Sullivan County will have to re-district its legislature to conform to the results of the 2000 US Census.

The Legislature’s General Services Committee began the process last month by agreeing to seek a firm to design the re-districting plan.

Any district out of variance with the 1/9 ideal population by five percent or more will have to be re-districted, Pomeroy said. The Legislature is considering a firm that re-districted Westchester County after the last census. “…and they were the only county that wasn’t sued over the resulting plan,” he added.

Only three of existing districts created by the Board of Supervisors in 1994 now conform to the five percent formula: Districts 1, 4 and 9.

Pomeroy’s District 3, with a population loss in Rockland, and the Monticello-Fallsburg District 8 appear to be on the down side of the five percent “ideal.” Election district census numbers for Districts 5 and 6 are incomplete, but Liberty, which is the main population in both, decreased in size in the last election, while the ideal district population grew an apparent nine point five percent with the new census.

The difference between the nine point five-percent increase in district size and the county’s six point 77-percent growth would be the inclusion of the entire census population.

In 1994, the supervisors were already leery of Fallsburg’s clout on the new legislature and balked at including the county’s prison population, largely located in Fallsburg.

The prison issue was only one amongst numerous debate points during the initial district planning. Neversink sued, unsuccessfully fighting its division amongst two legislative districts.

They may get reunited this year, as District 7 population has increased more than 25 percent above the ideal and should shrink geographically. The other significant gainer was the southerly District 2, including Wurtsboro, Forestburgh, Lumberland, Highland and Tusten.