The current ten year redistrictingmap proposed for Maryland finds me at odds with myself. The proposed map as I
understand it does everything possible to distort any sense of local community.
The thin swirls of the proposed congressional districts look like a tort
created by master chefs. The elongated gyrations that reach across historic,
geographic and political boundaries have no bearing on the views and needs of
local communities other than political control of the elected few.
Who actually expects Donna Edwards
and the core of the 4th District to find common ground between her urban established
Washington DC suburban county needs and dreams with those of rural agrarian
southern Anne Arundel County with its historic eye towards the bay and
Baltimore. Of course there are some common goals but it is in the minutia of
needs that a Congressperson works, and this plan is a recipe for divided
loyalties, divided time and resulting critique of performance from all sides.
I would have expected that at the
very least, if the 4th was to lose Montgomery County that it would have picked
up the eastern wide of the Potomac River down in Southern Maryland. Of course I
am skirting the problem of Hoyer's 5th which hooks up into Prince George's
County along the western side of the Patuxent River. Many I assume would have
thought that the 4th should have included as much of Prince George's county as
possible thereby creating a compact cohesive unit.
And here is my conflicted state of
mind for as a grass root advocate for the people and programs of USDA ARS BARC
and NAL I am delighted to see Mr. Hoyer keep the federal faculties in his
district. As far as Prince George's County is concern BARC and NAL are on the
other side of the moon. There is no visible interest, no desire to support and
no recognition of the 300 million plus that these federal agencies pump into
the region which, in the case of BARC, has been provided at some level for over
100 years. When is the last time a County Executive visited the world's largest
research center? Not in the last 15 plus years; and so I succumb to narrow focused
parochial interest - support of world class research recognized around the
world everywhere except for right here in the county - the same kind of
interests which I think are in some
small part at the heart of the current, contorted congressional redistricting maps
of Maryland now before us.
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