For Immediate Release - August 9, 2001

Those who have been keeping up with the news in recent months probably remember all the debate and wrangling as the district lines for Missouri's nine congressional districts were ironed out. There was a lot of discussion about how these districts would be redrawn but in the end a compromise was reached. The job of redrawing the congressional boundaries fell to the state legislature which passed the compromise bill and avoided sending the issue to court (where it would have ended up if the legislature had deadlocked).

While everyone in the state is affected by the lines drawn for the nine congressional districts, another redistricting process is going on which will affect all of us much closer to home. As mandated by the law, every ten years every district in the Missouri House of Representatives and the Missouri Senate must also face redistricting. The reason for this is that over time populations shift and if districts were not adjusted, they would soon be far out of balance with each other.

The task of redistricting the state legislature is a complex one. Where the debate of the state's congressional redistricting involved only nine districts, the state legislative districts total 197. To add uncertainty to the mix, the term limits which went into effect in the early 1990 will come into full maturity and around half of the house of representatives and one-third of the senate will be forced to retire, meaning that a whole new crop of legislators will be running in these newly created districts.

These two realities, redistricting and term limits, will combine to shake up consistency in the legislature. Many Missourians could end up with new legislators and in some cases citizens could temporarily end up with senators representing them which they never had a chance to elect. This was the case shortly after I came to the senate in 1990. New districts were drawn and four counties were placed into my district even though I had never run for office there during the last election. In another quirk of politics, because of population shifts one senator's district was moved to a completely different part of the state, leaving him with little choice but to leave elected politics.

The way the process works for redrawing state legislative district lines is that two commissions (a 10 member commission for the senate and an 18 member commission for the house of representatives) composed of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans are supposed to submit a map by the end of this month. Seventy percent of each commission's members must agree to these maps or the issue will be taken to the Missouri Supreme Court. At this point the chief justice would appoint six judges to come up with a map. This group would then make the decision that would affect the fate of nearly two hundred current and prospective state representatives and senators and the millions of constituents they seek to represent.

If you have questions or comments concerning this issue or any other issue involving state government, please do not hesitate to contact me. Also, if you would like to receive a copy of this weekly column at your home via e-mail, please contact my office and give us your e-mail address. My address is: Senator Larry Rohrbach, State Capitol, Room 221, Jefferson City, MO 65101. The phone number is (573) 751-2780. My e-mail address is larry_rohrbach@senate.mo.gov. Keep in touch!