Something’s gotta give when city redraws ward map - Chicago Sun-Times

Something’s gotta give when city redraws ward map

Mark brown markbrown@suntimes.com

' + first_letter + ' Feb 27, 2011 02:11AM

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According to new census data, Ald. Brendan Reilly’s downtown 42nd Ward now has 78,742 people living within its borders while Ald. Pat Dowell’s 3rd Ward on the South Side is home to just 40,506 residents.

That stark disparity may be the simplest illustration of why something’s gotta give when Chicago aldermen set about the process later this year of redrawing the city’s ward map.

The principle of one-man, one-vote requires that each of Chicago’s 50 wards have approximately the same number of residents, and every 10 years following a census, aldermen have the task of configuring new boundaries to reflect the current demographic reality.

It’s a contentious process in the best of times, and this is not shaping up as the best of times as the City Council must come to grips with an overall population loss of nearly 200,000 people, most of it coming from the African-American community.

In the worst of years, the map ends up in court and costs taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees as factions fight for personal power and adequate minority representation. That could be the rub again.

Over the past decade, the city dropped 181,453 African-American residents along with 52,499 white residents, losses that were partially offset by an increase of 25,218 in the Hispanic community.

At first blush, those numbers might lead you to believe that the likely outcome of a city remap would be a reduction in the number of African-American wards and an increase in the number of Hispanic wards.

While that definitely is a possibility, a whole bunch of folks hastened to advise me Friday that it’s a lot more complicated than that, and I’m sure it is. I’m also sure that nobody involved is in any hurry to start discussing it in those stark terms before they’re ready to deal with the political fallout.

African-American aldermen are going to be intent on preserving everything their predecessors had to fight to get, while the Hispanic community isn’t going to want to be seen as making its gains at the expense of blacks.

Still, like I say, something’s gotta give.

Most of the aldermen I reached Friday said they haven’t even seen any ward-by-ward census data, having been preoccupied by Tuesday’s election. Indeed, it may seem crazy to focus on matters affecting future elections before this cycle is even finished — with 14 aldermanic runoffs to be held April 5.

True, but you’d better believe senior members of the Council are already devising their strategies on how to survive and strengthen their positions through the new map.

When you divide Chicago’s new population of 2,695,598 by its 50 wards, you find that each of those wards will need about 54,000 residents after the boundaries are redrawn.

Using census data crunched by Rob Paral and Associates, a Chicago-based research company with a specialty in demographic information, I made lists of the city’s most and least populous wards to give you an idea of where you might see changes.

Most populous: 42nd (Reilly), 78,742; 2nd (Fioretti), 69,367; 13th (Olivo), 64,394; 32nd (Waguespack), 63,701; 36th (Rice), 60,473; 14th (Burke), 60,280; 41st (Doherty, retiring), 60,020.

Least populous: 3rd (Dowell), 40,506; 9th (Beale), 43,530; 16th (Thompson), 45,955; 17th (Thomas), 45,993; 5th (Hairston), 46,263; 8th (Harris), 47,655; 15th (Foulkes), 47,675.

Detailed charts and maps using the ward data can be found at robparal.com.

The growth in the 42nd and 2nd wards is part of the same downtown residential boom, while the drop-off in the 3rd Ward was clearly caused by emptying out CHA projects.

The uptick in the 13th and 14th wards reflects the continued growth of the Hispanic population on the Southwest Side. Burke’s 14th now has an 88 percent Hispanic majority, while Mike Madigan’s 13th is now 72 percent Hispanic, which shows you just how tricky it can be to create a Hispanic ward.

Some of you wonder why we even continue to draw political boundaries factoring in race when we’re coming off a mayoral election where voters showed little attention to racial lines. Well, the simplest answer is that’s what the courts have ruled is necessary to ensure minorities are properly represented.

City Council redistricting isn’t expected to come to a head until the fall, after Congress and the General Assembly have had first crack at their own maps.

Mayor-elect Emanuel may want to put his stamp on the map as well, if only to keep it from biting him in the rear.

via suntimes.com

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