Dominion Post Editorial: MONDAY, JANUARY, 2018

House errs on side of politics

The House of Delegates didn’t even give us time to urge caution about House Bill 4002. Indeed,
the House mopped the floor with discretion Monday to establish 100 single districts following
the U.S Census in 2020. The bill passed on a 75-22 vote, with about a dozen Democrats voting
yea and three Republicans voting nay.

Currently, there are 67 House districts, 20 of them with more than one delegate. The district with
the most delegates is the 51st House District, which comprises nearly all of Monongalia County,
where there are five.

Whether this bill embodies partisan politics is uncertain, however it certainly has politics written
all over it. It is telling that a bill as substantive as this one advanced to the House floor for a vote
10 days after being introduced. Not to mention passing out of a major committee within days of it
being on the table there.

But what’s truly extraordinary is that HB 4002 determines how many of these politicians will be
elected in 2022. That’s right, four years from now. So, when did that become the state House of
Delegates’ top priority? Pardon us, but we thought our state had a lot of bigger problems than
single-menber House districts, if that’s even a problem.

Take the opioid epidemic, for example. The latest numbers on the rate of fatal overdoses for
every 100,000 people in West Virginia increased from 41.5 in 2015 to 52 in 2016. Of course,
we’re still No. 1 in that statistic, which is more than twice the national average.

Then there’s job creation, the continuing loss of population and those pesky roads. If they should
tire of that then there’s always poverty — 18 percent of our population lives below the poverty
line — and appalling health indicators. But no, that would be putting people ahead of self-serving
politics.

Before this bill got the House’s nod we were going to insist before whatever’s done politics
should not be among the reasons. Furthermore, it would be in the public’s interest to see some
models of how this redistricting might look before it happens in 2021. Perhaps also ensure before
redrawing these House districts that several public meetings be required on their new boundaries.

That way the public, who this legislation is supposedly serving, might have some input.

There are other questions that come to mind, too, including the number of citizens it would take
to create a district and who draws the lines.

For the record, we have mixed thoughts about this legislation on single-member districts.
However, it looks as if the House of Delegates decided to err on the side of politics.