What is going on in Algiers?

The city councilmembers are in a bind this week as they have to scramble to complete their decennial redistricting process during the thick of the Mardi Gras season.  If they don't finish by March 16, they forfeit the whole gambit to the university presidents and nobody wants that. 

The council's website has information about the compressed timeline and links to an "engagement portal" where you can submit comments and even draw up your own maps if you want to get super geeky about it. You can watch their consultants run through a training on the software in this video. But hurry. The "draft" maps are supposed to be up and ready by the middle of this week. Presumably the debate from that point on will be about picking which of those to approve. (Although maybe not. This stuff can get super improvisational toward the deadline.) 

Today, the T-P explains the preeminent issue in play.  Basically, over the past 10 years District D (currently held by Eugene Green) has gained significant population while District C (Freddie King) has lost a lot. Like a whole lot of people, actually.

District C lost more than 3,000 residents, with about 70% of those losses coming in Algiers, while District D grew almost everywhere; St. Bernard, Filmore, Dillard and several other neighborhoods gained more than 1,000 residents.

Wow what has been going on in Algiers? When I first saw these census numbers, I thought they might be due to the hollowing out of Bywater and Marigny by short term rentals. But, no, people are getting the heck out of Algiers for some reason. Curious to know more about that.

Redistricting nightmare

Some mornings you are reminded that the new legislative and congressional districts drawn after the 2020 Census will be handled by the most right wing legislature in recent memory. 

Senate rules require the Senate Finance Committee to include at least one member from each congressional district. But Cortez also extended that to the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee that will be overseeing the politically sensitive task of redistricting, the remapping of legislative and congressional political boundaries.

“I asked for requests from everyone, and I tried as much as I could to meet their requests by interest area,” Cortez told The Associated Press. “That played probably as big a part in it as anything.”

He noted, for example, that senators from coastal areas wanted to serve on the natural resources committee, while senators from rural farm areas sought seats on the agriculture committee.

Baton Rouge area Sen. Mack “Bodi” White will helm the Finance Committee that draws up the state’s annual operating budget. Sen. Bret Allain of Franklin will oversee the Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee that handles tax policy. And Slidell Sen. Sharon Hewitt will take charge of the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee that governs redistricting. All are in the GOP.

Hewitt very nearly ran for Governor last year but decided to come back to the legislature for another go at passing Medicaid work requirements maybe? Or maybe she can vote against equal pay for women again.   Anyway, she's in charge of drawing up the new districts.

See here for a full list of Senate committee members. 

They all moved to Dallas

Harry Shearer

Now for what we don't know. According to Allison Plyer, of the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, which makes it its business to collect all available statistical information on the area, we don't know where those 100,000 people are now, whether (as Barbara Bush famously predicted) they're happier in their new environs or whether they ache to come home. No public or private entity has thought it important to track those folks who were so suddenly uprooted. We have better information about the movie preferences of minor-league ballplayers than about these survivors of a major catastrophe.

Kind of like being the President of Brazil and also Pakistan

The hypothetical Congressman from Monroe and Plaquemines.

Update: David Vitter says it's kind of like being the Senator from "other states" and Mexico

Upperdate: And of course you want to play around with the Census data, right?

Form fastidiousness

Maybe I'm a little oversensitive but I have to wonder at what exactly is being implied here.

Though the 2010 Census might be the most highly anticipated census ever in southeast Louisiana, a survey of forms mailed back so far shows that parishes hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina lag the rest of the nation in returning completed questionnaires.

"We're concerned about the relatively low response from New Orleans," Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said today in a prepared statement. "Every household that fails to send back their census form by mail must be visited by a census taker starting in May -- at a significant taxpayer cost. The easiest and best way to be counted in the census is to fill out and return your form by mail."

What the hell? These things aren't even due for another month. Any excuse to complain about lazy, slow responding, New Orleanians, I guess.

Heck I haven't even actually received a census form yet. This could be a function of the quirkiness of delivering things to my apartment (the difficulties of T-P delivery were touched upon briefly in this "classic" Yellow Blog item). But I'm sure I'm not the only guy in town subjected to such obstacles. It could very well be that forms have been delivered to local residents at a lower rate of success than they have been elsewhere. Or it could be that people around here (like myself) aren't as unhealthily obsessed with accomplishing minor tasks according to assigned deadlines as the rest of the country seems to be.

Or maybe we all just really really want to meet Ludacris. Whatever the reason, could we at least wait until we've actually missed the deadline to complain?