Contact: Maria Cilenti - Director of Legislative Affairs -
[email protected] - (212) 382-6655 COMMITTEE ON ELECTION LAW REPORT ON REDISTRICTING REFORM -AND- S.3331 (BONACIC) / A.5271 (GALEF) This report is respectfully submitted by the Election Law Committee (the “Committee”) of the New York City Bar Association (the “Association”) in order to address redistricting reform generally and S.3331/A.5271 specifically. Appended to this report is the Committee’s March 2007 report A Proposed New York State Constitutional Amendment to Emancipate Redistricting from Partisan Gerrymanders (the “Report”). On March 14, 2011, the Senate passed S. 3331, a constitutional amendment relating to reform of the redistricting process. During the debate on S.3331, it was argued that the Association recommends that the redistricting process be reformed by way of constitutional amendment, not by legislation.1 While the Committee is pleased that members of the Legislature are aware of the Report, we wish to take this opportunity to highlight significant and material differences between the recommendations in the 2007 Report and the provisions contained within S.3331/A.5271. We discuss some of those differences here in hopes that the Legislature will adopt the recommendations of the Report during its continuing discussions of redistricting reform. Procedurally, it is correct that the Report recommended proceeding with redistricting reform by constitutional amendment. However, the Report set forth two principal reasons for this recommendation: (1) the amendment proposed by the Association is quite ambitious, such that a constitutional amendment may be needed to avoid quick repeal at a later date, and (2) as of the Report’s issuance in 2007, there was sufficient time to enact a constitutional amendment before the 2012 redistricting cycle.