{"id":1651,"date":"2010-02-24T11:25:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-24T15:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/02\/24\/prisoners-and-the-census\/"},"modified":"2010-02-24T11:25:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-24T15:25:00","slug":"prisoners-and-the-census","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/02\/24\/prisoners-and-the-census\/","title":{"rendered":"Prisoners and the census"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

This will be a big deal when district lines are redrawn after the 2010 census.<\/p>\n

For Inbox readers, here’s a special preview of the stories: the take from Downstate<\/a> and the view from here in the North Country<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As I did reporting for these stories, one facet struck me in particular.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

Some would say this is already happening. What do you think? Do rural areas deserve a special geography exemption?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow on The 8 O’Clock Hour and All Before Five, we have a special look […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}