Editorial: Rethinking redistricting

The controversy about the City Council redistricting plan raises real concerns about minority representation and ham-handed incumbent protection. But it is just a symptom of underlying problems and our city leadership’s stubborn refusal to let the people rethink their form of government.

No matter what boundaries are chosen, the City Council districts, redrawn every 10 years to match new U.S. Census data, are a sham. That is because the wards and precincts, those smaller building blocks that make up voting districts, have not been redrawn in 80 years and are ridiculously out of whack. Everyplace else in the Commonwealth redraws precincts every 10 years, too, as logic dictates.

The City might finally redraw those wards and precincts in 2020, thanks to mighty efforts by local City Councilor Mike Ross.

Let’s say all of these lines on the city map made everyone happy and we had a City Council that looked demographically more like its constituents. Those city councilors still would find that they have almost no actual authority in our extreme strong-mayor form of government. The main power councilors have is simply to vote a strict yes or no on the mayor’s proposed budget. Their oversight of such massively powerful agencies as the Boston Redevelopment Authority is zero.

Most cities in Massachusetts regularly convene a charter commission to publicly review the city’s government and alter it as need be. New York City did it two years ago. Boston hasn’t done it in more than a half-century.

Several of Boston’s current councilors supported the formation of a charter commission when they ran for office. We haven’t heard a peep about it since. It is time for citizens to have the chance to rethink the way this city runs.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.