Prisoners and the census

Tomorrow on The 8 O’Clock Hour and All Before Five, we have a special look at a particularly controversial niche of census politics.

For decades, state inmates have been counted as residents of the place where they’re imprisoned. That town is often hundreds of miles away from their place of residence.

New York City politicians have sponsored a bill to change the practice, saying it artificially inflates the population of prison towns, and therefore, pads the political districts that contain them.

This will be a big deal when district lines are redrawn after the 2010 census.

For Inbox readers, here’s a special preview of the stories: the take from Downstate and the view from here in the North Country.

As I did reporting for these stories, one facet struck me in particular.

Let’s say the bill passes and inmates are counted in their “home” districts. The North Country would lose something on the order of 25,000 people.

That’s hardly enough for the region to lose an Assembly district, let alone a Senate district. But it would make each of those districts larger. And they’re already pretty big.

June O’Neill, longtime chair of the state Democratic Party and a Canton resident, says at some point, those districts become too big for one politician to effectively represent. Listen to this:

That made me think: as rural populations remain stagnant or shrink further, at what point does “proportional representation” just not cut it? A similar issue holds true for schools, DMVs, and any of a number of services government provides.

When does does government say, look, it just costs too much to keep a DMV open five days a week in your county. You’re going to have to drive to Watertown or Plattsburgh.

Alternatively, when will schools become so far away from one another – due to low enrollments and mergers – that it’s physically/temporally impossible for a boy or girl to make the round trip bus commute in a single day?

Some would say this is already happening. What do you think? Do rural areas deserve a special geography exemption?