Changes in store for House, Senate districts

The new state representative map would give most of Jackson County to Benton, with a remaining portion in South Jackson represented by the new House district number 117.

The General Assembly started a special session on Monday to redraw new state House and Senate redistricting maps using population data from the 2010 Census.

“It looks pretty good,” Benton conceded Monday before the session began. “Jackson County still has two people representing it, but I moved out of Hall and Barrow and am solely in Jackson County. I’m going to lose a section of South Jackson that has been very supportive of me. I hate to lose them.”

But State Senator Frank Ginn (R-Danielsville) isn’t as happy about the proposed district lines.

“I guess I can say I’m pleased that I’m not representing South Carolina,” Ginn joked.

Ginn represents the state Senate’s 47th District — which currently includes all of Barrow, Madison and Oglethorpe counties, most of Jackson County, a portion of Elbert County and the western portion of Athens-Clarke County.
Under the proposal, Ginn would still represent all of Barrow and Madison counties, but he’d no longer serve voters in Oglethorpe and Elbert counties. The 47th District would further expand into Athens-Clarke County, while giving up a large portion of Jackson County to District 50 in the state Senate.

That district would also include Banks, Franklin, Stephens, Habersham, Rabun and Towns counties, according to the preliminary map. State Sen. Jim Butterworth (R-Cornelia) represents the 50th District.

“I’m not very happy, quite honestly,” Ginn said. “It cuts me out of about half of what I’ve got in Jackson County and pushes me much more into Athens-Clarke, an area I don’t currently serve.”

Ginn knew change was coming. His district needed to shed 21,000 voters.

“The number they (the Reapportionment Committee) came up with is that I’m still representing about 80 percent of the people I have now,” Ginn remarked.

Benton was less thrilled about how Jackson is split on the proposed Senate map, with its lower half remaining in the 47th District but the upper half going to the 50th, which runs north to the North Carolina line.

“I won’t have anything to say about that,” Benton noted, observing that it is customary for the House to approve whatever Senate redistricting plan the Senate sends over (and vise versa).

“Jim Butterworth, who is a good senator, who lives in Habersham County, is going to represent half of Jackson County,” Benton said. “I am sure he will do a good job, but I don’t know that we have a whole lot in common with those counties north of Habersham.”

Benton said he is not sure how much wrangling may take place before either side adopts its map, but there is potential for all of the boundary lines to shift.

He said a House vote on the House map could come as early as Friday, with the Senate bill coming to the House as soon as the Senate approves a map.

Then both houses can turn their attention to re-drawing the lines for the congressional districts. North Georgia stands to get two more districts in the process.

“I have not seen any of the congressional districts,” Benton said Monday. “I don’t know who has seen them, other than the Reapportionment Committee. That will probably be the last thing we will do.”

Gov. Nathan Deal called a special session of the General Assembly to include the redistricting of Georgia’s House and Senate and congressional districts, technical changes to the 2012 T-SPLOST (Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) vote and ratifying the governor’s gas tax rate freeze.

Once adopted by the General Assembly, the redistricting maps will have to get approval from the U.S. Department of Justice before the 2012 election cycle begins.

—Reporters Mark Beardsley, Susan Norman and Kerri Testement contributed to this story.