Caffeinated Politics is one of the few Wisconsin liberal blogs I can stand to read, because its author actually criticizes Democrats and liberals and very occasionally has something not unpleasant to say about his opposite political side.

(It is a sign of political maturity when you can criticize your own side. Almost all of Caffeinated’s fellow-traveler bloggers are thus brats.)

The blog notes the crusade of state newspapers to compel the Republican Party, which now controls the executive and legislative branches of state politics, to adopt a nonpartisan non-gerrymandering redistricting process:

From Beloit to Green Bay, and from Wausau to Milwaukee there was great unity from newspaper editorial boards about the need to have public hearings on legislation designed to take partisan politics out of drawing boundaries for congressional and legislative districts.   The level-headedness of this idea for reform has allowed for a broad consensus to jell around the state.   The problem is getting those who have the power to grant even a public hearing on these bills. …

Since 1981, Iowa’s congressional and state legislative maps have been drawn by nonpartisan legislative staffers without considering voter registration numbers or the location of incumbents. Their main considerations are keeping districts compact and uniform in population.   Politics was removed from the creation of the maps, and it has never failed to produce fairness and agreement from all quarters.  In other words such a method of redistricting  works!

The reluctance to even have a hearing on this idea is most regrettable.  State Senator Mary Lazich who chairs one of the committees that needs to hold a hearing has no plans to do so as she is adamantly opposed to the whole idea.  Whatever happened to a deliberative body weighing the pros and cons of an idea, especially one that has such broad-based bi-partisan support?

I would like to think this idea about reforming our outdated way to redistrict might rise above partisan labels and the usual politicking.  But it seems given the inability to even get a hearing that perhaps a partisan spin might be needed to get Republicans energized over this idea.

So it might be noted that when Wisconsin Democrats had the power in both the executive and the legislative branches they let slip by a perfect chance to make this policy shift that would have greatly benefitted the state.  If Republicans want to show that they care about effective governing, and do hear the needs of the voters they claim to advocate for they can now hold hearings on Assembly Bill 185 and its counterpart Senate Bill 163.

Then the GOP can pass them out of committee, send them to the assembly and senate floor, pass them, and await Governor Walker’s signature.

The Republicans can then rightly lay claim for doing something Democrats were unable to achieve while in power.

Meanwhile the entire state can know something was done in Madison that allows for a better functioning government.

Caffeinated suffers from a bit of naïveté in suggesting that anyone in Madison, whether a D or R follows his or her name, is really concerned about “better functioning government” in this age of zero-sum winner-takes-all politics. The better reason, which he doesn’t really bring up, is that the GOP can prevent the Democrats from doing to them what the GOP did to Democrats, which is the same thing the Democrats would do if they had controlled the Legislature and governorship after the 2010 elections. (To wit: After the 1982 election, when Gov. Anthony Earl was elected, the Democrats who controlled the Legislature passed a redistricting that overturned a federal court-drawn map.)

However, as this brilliant writer points out, redistricting does not trump elections. If that were the case, then the Legislature would not have shifted, after 2001 redistricting, from Republican control to split control to Democratic control and back to Republican control.

The bigger issue has to do with the excessive stakes in elections because of the excessive power of government and the excessive perks of being in office. Read http://legis.wisconsin.gov/assembly/acc/Documents/Benefits.pdf, and you will  find that legislators each make $49,943 per year, plus $88 per day when in Madison on state business, plus 51 cents per mile. By themselves, each legislator makes nearly as much as the median household income in this state, $51,598 as of the 2010 U.S. Census. Call me cynical, but I also recall no legislator who left public office in worse financial position than when he or she entered the Legislature. That’s not “public service.”