{"id":4052,"date":"2011-04-11T05:23:41","date_gmt":"2011-04-11T09:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=4052"},"modified":"2011-04-11T17:44:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-11T21:44:00","slug":"morning-read-inmate-debate-roils-political-map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/04\/11\/morning-read-inmate-debate-roils-political-map\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning Read: Inmate debate roils political map"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last week, David Sommerstein reporte<\/a>d that Republican lawmakers — including state Sen. Betty Little – are suing to make sure prison inmates are counted where they are incarcerated, not where they’re from.<\/p>\n

The dust-up was also raw material for Marquil’s latest political cartoon.\u00a0 Now the Utica Observer Dispatch has an article<\/a> illustrating just how significant this debate might be.<\/p>\n

They point to the district of Oneida County legislator David Wood, where roughly one-third of his “constituents” are behind bars.<\/p>\n

Views on this differ wildly.\u00a0 Here’s what Sen. Joe Griffo, a Republican who took part in the lawsuit, told the newspaper:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like [inmates] come here, and everything is self contained,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a draw on resources and a cost to them being here.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But Republican county legislator Edward Welsh, from Utica, sees it differently:<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, I\u2019m against gerrymandering prison populations for political use only,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m happy the prisoners are here and the jobs are here, but when everything is equal, prisoners should not be counted here.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This lawsuit could significantly reshape state, county and perhaps even Federal political districts across the North Country.<\/p>\n

So what do you think?\u00a0 Tens of thousands of New York inmates — who can’t vote and don’t have any kind of regular access to “their” elected officials — are clearly pawns in a big political struggle.<\/p>\n

Should they be?\u00a0 Should they be tallied here or in the communities where they hail from?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, David Sommerstein reported that Republican lawmakers — including state Sen. Betty Little – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[20,4885],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4052"}],"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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4054,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4052\/revisions\/4054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}