In backing new redistricting plan, Pa. lawmakers say previous map wasn’t bad either

Legislative redistricting is under way again in Harrisburg, after a mapmaking panel approved a new preliminary plan.

But the fact that the initial redistricting effort was tossed out by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is still a sore spot for Republicans.

At the latest meeting of the legislative mapmakers, House Majority Leader Mike Turzai stood up for the plan his commission approved last year.

Turzai, R-Allegheny, supports the new plan, but spent a few minutes defending the old one.

Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, the initial map was a fully constitutional plan, he said, the result of the kind of political compromise his panel is assigned to tackle.

“Anybody can go and draw and arbitrary map,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, who also voted for the new plan, echoed Turzai’s comments that the first maps were valid.

“The map which was remanded met every constitutional and supreme court precedent that had been published,” Turzai said.

He says the court’s decision to reject the panel’s initial plan represents a “sea change.”