Finneran defends new redistricting plan
Massachusetts House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran yesterday defended a new redistricting plan for Boston's 17 legislative districts as "a good effort" that "increases in a significant way the number of African-American seats," but minority advocates continued to express their "grave" disappointment with it.
Finneran, in his first comments since House leaders unveiled their plan Tuesday, said they had been "very specifically responsive" to the recent orders of a three-judge panel in US District Court, which found that the House's 2001 map unlawfully deprived blacks equal voting opportunities in favor of protecting incumbents.
"The members of the [Boston] delegation worked with [Redistricting Committee Chairman Thomas M.] Petrolati to try to come up with a plan very specifically responsive to the court," Finneran told reporters at an unrelated event yesterday morning. "It increases in a significant way the number of African-American seats. . . and I think the number is very impressive."
The new plan, Finneran said, would leave at least six of the city's 17 districts with a majority black population.
"So I think it's a good effort," he added.
Under the House's 2001 plan, minorities constitute a majority in five of 17 districts.
In a letter to Finneran's attorneys yesterday, lawyers for minority-rights groups denounced the new House plan as having "fatal flaws," saying it "continues the practice of subordinating racial fairness to incumbency protection."
The letter, authored by plaintiffs' attorney Richard W. Benka, accused House leaders of leaving the districts represented by Shirley Owens-Hicks and Marie St. Fleur, who are both black, "unlawfully packed with minority voters."
"Both districts remain over 85 percent minority," the letter states.
In addition, Benka accused House leaders of "even more drastically" reducing minority voting power in a district that the court believed already diluted black and Hispanic voting strength. That district is represented by Elizabeth A. Malia, who is white.
"Rather than remedying the dilution of minority voting strength" in Malia's district, Benka wrote, the new plan "exacerbates it."
Finneran yesterday conceded that "some uncertainty" remains in how the final House plan will look, and chalked up the outrage expressed with the latest map to "the normal reaction for a party that's in a negotiation." The federal court, which issued its ruling rejecting the House plan Feb. 24, gave Finneran and his lieutenants six weeks to submit a new plan that passes muster with the three-judge panel, or they would create a plan for them. 