Bucks County communities of interest

Good evening and thank you for permitting me to speak today. My name is Jean Weston, and I would like to talk about legislative districts in Bucks County where I have resided for 35 years. • I am the Co-President of the League of Women Voters of Bucks County and have been an active member of Fair Districts PA for many years. • The League is a founding organization of Fair Districts PA. The League of Women Voters has had a position on reapportionment for over 50 years and in addition to calling for equality of population, and compact / contiguous districts, it also urges the preservation and protection of communities of interest wherever possible. “Communities of interest” are groups of people who share a geographic area and have similar social, cultural, and economic interests or other shared interests that may be subject to legislative action. I am here to urge the LRC to consider long-standing, historic “Communities of Interest” in Bucks County when drawing the lines for Pennsylvania House and Senate legislative districts. • Bucks County has long recognized three such communities of interest with identifiably different priorities. These are Upper, Central and Lower Bucks. As early as 1752 when the current boundaries of Bucks County were drawn, the county consisted of these three distinct regions each of which developed separately. According to Carolyn T. Adams, Professor Emeritus of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University and associate editor of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, • Quote: “A largely bucolic Upper Bucks County remained distinct from the areas that became blue-collar Lower Bucks County and the white-collar townships of Central Bucks County. This tripartite division shaped many institutional patterns, from colonial-era disputes about where to locate the county seat to twentieth-century decisions to create three chambers of commerce and divide the county’s community college into three campuses.” End quote. (https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/bucks-county-pennsylvania-essay/) • To this day, Bucks Countians identify themselves as residents of one of these traditional regions. The 2011 district maps totally ignored this long-standing division of the county. Two of the most egregious examples of the inappropriate assignment of legislative districts in Bucks County are the districts in which I live. • The PA 10th Senate District extends from the far southeast corner of Lower Bucks through most of Central Bucks to the very center of Upper Bucks. • The PA 143rd House District carves out the middle of Central Bucks and attaches it to the eastern half of Upper Bucks. But these examples are not unique within the county. Other districts are also drawn without respect for these communities of interest. Bucks County is a long, narrow county shaped rather like a boot running from the southeast to the northwest. In creating both the House and Senate districts, lines drawn horizontally across this “boot” rather than vertical divisions would better represent the long-standing social, cultural, and economic interests of the residents of Bucks County. Dividing the county in this manner could easily continue to respect existing municipal boundaries and would also enable the districts to be more compact, as mandated by the Pennsylvania Constitution. I urge this Commission to base their criteria for legislative district boundaries in our county on the long-recognized and still valid communities of interest represented by the designations of Upper, Central and Lower Bucks. The divisions in Bucks are not geographical or physical but are nonetheless basic to the way the county views itself and therefore should be reflected in the way legislative districts are drawn. Other counties may well have similar, well-recognized communities of interest and I applaud this commission for allowing residents of these communities to bring them to your attention. Honoring these divisions will allow voters to elect legislators who truly represent the unique regional interests of their constituents. Thank you.