Lancaster County House and Senate districts
I appreciate the work done by the LRC to reverse decades of gerrymandering. It is a colossal task that takes creativity and fortitude. I wanted to provide feedback for the current legislative map. For me, the 98th house district is another point of concern. While we are glad to have the whole of Elizabethtown Area School District in the 98th, the current map gives us large areas of Lebanon County. We feel that it would be more appropriate to have the 98th district follow north along the Susquehanna river, as has been seen in previous years. The last version of our district stopped short of Middletown, a river town we feel we share much in common with in Elizabethtown and Marietta. Especially in comparison to the extremely rural additions we are given in the current map. We believe that there is a common history and culture that connects river communities in a way that justifies including a borough like Middletown in our district. The preliminary House map recognizes the Lancaster metro area as a clear community of interest. This makes sense. The city and its immediate suburbs rely on each other for workforce, employment, education, and recreation. Residents live in the city and work in nearby municipalities and vis versa. In contrast, the preliminary Senate map splits the Lancaster metro area into two Senate seats. This cracking of the community dilutes the voice of Lancaster’s residents and divides a clear community of interest. Lancaster and its nearby municipalities can easily be served by a single Senator instead of two Senators who share the city with districts that sprawl into rural areas that have very different needs and ideologies. The LRC can look to nearby Harrisburg to find a model for how to better distribute citizens in a metro area. There is a single Senate district for the city and its northern and eastern suburbs. The district is likely to include constituents’ residences and their places of work, respecting that the area represents a community. Please revisit the Lancaster metro area in the Senate map and recognize it for the community of interest it is. The mapmakers at the LRC should treat Lancaster and its immediate suburbs as a community of interest and assign a single Senate seat to Lancaster and its neighbors instead of splitting the city in two and dragging the lines out to the neighboring rural towns. While the LRC’s preliminary maps make significant progress toward proportionality and representation - particularly in the House - it is important for the LRC to review and revise the Senate map over the next month. It is widely acknowledged that mapmakers should seek to keep communities of interest intact, and Lancaster and its neighbors are a clear community of interest. The current map and the proposed map both split the city of Lancaster between two Senate districts. This creates two Republican districts that draw in rural areas to dilute the importance of the city. A fairer and more representative map would keep the city of Lancaster whole and include more of its immediate suburbs while grouping the rural areas with more like-minded outer suburbs. These are small changes that would dramatically improve the map in its representation and proportionality. Sincerely, Robert Misciagna Lancaster County resident