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Bruno's captive majority
by Errol Louis
New York Daily News
April 18, 2006
It is time for New York to end the practice of counting prison inmates as residents of the mostly upstate counties where they are temporarily incarcerated. An estimated nine out of 10 prisoners don't live upstate, can't vote upstate and won't stay there after being released - yet they get counted as upstaters when political district lines get drawn.
According to the Prison Policy Initiative think tank, seven sparsely populated upstate Senate districts - six of which are represented by Republicans - would be more than 5% smaller than the average district if it weren't for thousands of inmates imprisoned upstate.
Courts have held that districts more than 5% below the average size run the risk of violating the principal of one person, one vote and can be dissolved as invalid. That matters a great deal in a mostly Democratic state that has endured years of political deadlock because the Senate remains in the hands of Republicans - specifically, Sen. Majority Leader Joe Bruno, the boss of the state Senate - by an eight-seat margin.
Although a loss of only four seats would cut his power to nil, Bruno governs as if he owned a statewide mandate, blocking progress on everything from reform of the Rockefeller drug laws to enacting fair school funding. This year, for instance, in the face of orders from the state's highest court to provide billions to needy school districts, Bruno called the order "lunacy" and announced he would continue to defy the court.
Dem strategists have been trying for years to end Bruno's reign by snatching four or more winnable seats like the Westchester district where GOP state Sen. Nick Spano won reelection in 2004 by only 18 votes.
But a simpler move would be to have New York's 65,000 inmates counted, for census and apportionment purposes, as part of the communities where they live - their "home of record."
According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, that practice is already followed for more than 900,000 military servicemen and other government personnel stationed overseas - as well as boarding school students and members of Congress - thanks to a 1992 Supreme Court case, Franklin vs. Massachusetts.
The ruling, which caused Massachusetts to lose a congressional seat, should apply to New York's prisoners and end the unfair practice of giving mostly empty, mostly GOP upstate districts the same clout as packed urban areas.
The problem isn't confined to New York. Complaints from across the nation led to a recent Census Bureau estimate that it would cost $250 million to recount the nation's more than 2 million inmates. While the cost would be considerably less for an adjusted census count in New York, whatever expense incurred would pale in comparison to the billions currently denied urban schools by the Republican Senate.
Bruno has been talking brashly of late, vowing to hold onto his slim majority and even add to it this fall. Democratic leaders, who have everything to gain, should be leading the charge - through litigation, public education and legislation - to strip the Republican boss of his illusory majority.
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