GOP’s redistricting antics to cost cash-strapped state
Earlier this year, the Legislature muffed its redistricting job under the 2010 Census and Gov. Haley Barbour, who has a state constitutional mandate to call lawmakers back to work on reapportionment, shows no sign of doing so.
Now, it looks as though a mal-apportioned Legislature will meet January 3, 2012, waiting weeks, or months, for a federal court to draw a map lawmakers should have done. It’s another example that Mississippi is incapable of self-government.
The likely incoming governor, Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, evidently is happy with a federal court doing the job, since he pulled the plug a redistricting measure in April approved by the joint legislative reapportionment committee. It’s unclear if Barbour backed Bryant in steering redistricting to the feds.
Bill Minor
9/1/11
