Sunday, December 19, 2010

WDT:St. Lawrence County questions law on counting prisoners in redistricting

Counting inmates in a State Correctional Facility for local redistricting can skew representation...we would also lose state money and decrease representation; ultimately hurting the county. 

This legislation was pushed by the Democratic controlled Assembly and Senate.  The Senate was floundering in criminal activity and ethics violations and this was their last chance to gain more legislative power during redistricting.  The NYC democrats along with our own Senator Aubertine voted to give NYC more representation in the future. With the Senate so close moving tens of thousands of inmates back to the New York City area could gain them another Senator...currently 25 of the 32 Senators in control of the Senate are from NYC...this could have a major impact on NNY. 

The Federal Census counts them where they are located at the time of the count.  Some of these inmates are doing 20 to life and will never return to NYC. If your child is in college at SUNY Buffalo they are to be counted there not at home...so why should this be different for inmates?  Why, More Power for NYC! 

On the county level we must consider the amount of representation gained by Ogdensburg and Gouverneur and compare it to the amount of State Aide lost if we do not count them. If it is an insignificant amount of aide they should not be counted and the district lines adjusted appropriately.   

WDT Article

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just another example how Senator Aubertine sold NNY down the road. We will be feeling the effects of his tenure with New York City Democrats. He was well liked and who knows if he is not offered a position in Cuomo's Administration

Anonymous said...

Move to prisoners back to NY > i have zero problem with that at all. We need to get over the dependence on government for employment . Out source the service

Poly Information said...

Anon 2:31 the reality is there will be inmates, the question is who will gain in representation. If there are inmates here why should we give NYC more representation than they already have.

This is the city playing with NNY. If they are here then we should be counted as they are for the census.

Anonymous said...

Move the inmates to other locations cut the payroll streamline the approach to "corrections , recidivism and ultimately cut the cost of incarcerating or warehousing

Anonymous said...

Poly.. The reality is there should be zero inmates at OCF within the year. Why are we paying taxes for mt beds. I hope its just not a case of paying babysitters just to keep and old facilty open/