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Monday, December 7, 2009

Unsurprisingly, there's more bad news about redistricting in Philly

John Perzel's district is by no means the only funky one in the Philadelphia region. We just checked out redistrictingthenation.com, a joint project of the Committee of Seventy and local geographic analysis firm Avencia; it ranks the Seventh and Fifth Councilmanic districts in the country's top ten "least compact local districts" (meaning the shape is irregular, which may be a sign of gerrymandering).

There's more. From a press release the groups sent out announcing the site a couple of months ago:

Pennsylvania's Senate District 3 (Philadelphia) and House Districts 170 (Philadelphia/Montgomery) and 202 (Philadelphia) also rank at the top of the national list of least compact state-level districts, while Pennsylvania's 1st Congressional District (Philadelphia/Delaware) is the 11th least compact congressional district in the country.

Over at the project's Philadelphia region homepage, you can read stories of ugly redistricting battles past (including an epic battle over Darrell Clarke losing access to wealthy center city constituents and a redrawing of Rick Mariano's then-district that diluted its Latino population). You can also enter your address to find out about your own districts, and how their "compactness" compares to similar districts.

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Posted by Doron Taussig @ 9:20 AM  Permalink | 1 comment
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Every year, city government spends slightly more than $4 billion. Where does all that money come from? More importantly, where does it go? Are we getting the most bang for our tax buck? “It's Our Money” is a joint project between Philadelphia Daily News and WHYY, funded by the William Penn Foundation, designed to answer these questions.




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