Like eggnog, proposed Senate map spoiled fast

Column

Call it what you will — armistice, gentlemen's agreement or head feint — the arrangement Will Weatherford and Don Gaetz worked out over the redrawing of district lines appears to have come with an expiration date.

And, like eggnog lingering in your grocer's refrigerator, that sell-by date has passed.

Rightly so.

It was early December when Weatherford, the Wesley Chapel Republican, state House Speaker-designate and all-around rising political star, struck a rare inter-chamber conciliatory tone that resonated throughout the capital. As chairman of the House Committee on Redistricting, Weatherford embraced the proposal extended by his counterpart in the Senate, Destin's Gaetz: Regarding the state Legislature, the Senate would draw Senate maps and the House would draw House maps.

The arrangement fractured decennial reapportionment tradition. Ordinarily, each chamber designs three sets of maps, one for each legislative chamber and one for Congress. The result produced grand political theater, given the combination of upwardly mobile ambitions boiling in once-a-decade opportunity. After all, in some regions of the state, doors to the next level flew open simply by including this neighborhood, or eliminating that one.

Voters counted on eliminating such cynical shenanigans when they passed the Fair Districts amendments in November 2010, but — as we shall see — politics is as politics does. It turns out, even under threat of court sanctions, drawing district lines is a lot like a Popping Martian stress reliever. Squeeze Wesley Chapel and Carrollwood together, and out pops a grotesque absurdity: Holiday and Bushnell, 40 miles apart as the scrub jay flies, in the same district.

So, while we congratulate Gaetz's attempt to dial back the heat, Weatherford was right to declare the negotiations reopened.

The state Senate map designed by Gaetz's committee divides Pasco in two, but if the fractions were anticipated, the arrangement was not. As drawn, Pasco's southern tier generally east of Little Road and below State Road 54 are bound up with northwest Hillsborough County down to Ben T. Davis Beach. The district is, simply, two things: A favor to incumbent Jim Norman, and an abomination.

Not that we have any difficulties with Norman, a shrewd and skillful veteran politician who managed to score a half-million-dollar lake house in Arkansas through a benefactor without getting his hands legally dirty. Voters will deal with him in November, or they won't.

The abomination is in Pasco's unconscionable vivisection. Senate mapmakers have scooped out the portion of the county that is its fastest-growing, its emerging economic engine, and lumped its fortunes together with, and almost certainly rendered them subordinate to, Citrus Park, Carrollwood, Town 'N Country and Westchase.

That leaves the rest of the county alloyed with Hernando and most of Sumter. The proposed maps resemble absolutely nothing recommended by witnesses during July's open house with the reapportionment committees.

Testimonials then fell along two lines. Make Pasco its own Senate district; it's just about the perfect size. Or bunch up communities of interest by dividing it east and west along one of the major thoroughfares; add some of rural Hernando, Sumter or Polk to flesh out the east Pasco district.

But, no. It is almost as though, to appease Norman, the Senate committee struck the worst of all possible bargains. At the risk of waxing parochial, having been carved like a rump roast, it is utterly conceivable that Pasco, deserving at least one state senator, will be represented by residents of Hillsborough and Hernando.

As Weatherford told The Pasco Tribune's Laura Kinsler, "It doesn't make sense, and I want to make sure my community isn't shortchanged."

Time to take back that handshake.