CLEARFIELD – While the state’s congressional districts are being remapped in Harrisburg, the Clearfield County Commissioners on Tuesday heard from John Balliet, director of the DuBois-based Taxpayers United for Representation Now (TURN), who attended the first of three public hearings on the topic.
Balliet told the commissioners that he presented written testimony to the joint House and Senate state government committees at the hearing. The committee is currently prepping to remap congressional districts, a process that’s done once-a-decade based on census information.
According to him, Pennsylvania will lose one congressional seat and drop to 18 in the redistricting process, while its growth was slower in comparison to other states around the country. However, when looking at the current congressional map, members of TURN believed its region – the 3rd, 5th, 9th, 12th and 14th Congressional Districts – deserves revaluation by the committee.
“Especially with the loss of a district and the resulting increased numbers of citizens per representative,” wrote Balliet, who focused his testimony on the 5th Congressional District, which currently geographically covers an area of 17 counties.
He wrote that five of the seventeen counties have more than one U.S. Representative. In Clearfield County, where citizens fall into both the 5th and 9th Congressional Districts, problems have arisen and are believed to be caused by the division.
For example, when the county stood against the tolling of Interstate 80, most of the 5th Congressional District lies within the I-80 corridor. However, the bulk of the population of the 9th Congressional District resides in areas that highly-favored the revenue that would have been generated from it, he wrote.
According to Balliet, each representative will experience an approximately 60,000 constituent increase this year. “This will give the legislature the opportunity to restore counties that have been divided . . . We would strongly urge the legislature to add the constituents from within the counties currently being served,” he wrote.
The third and final public hearing regarding the remapping of the congressional districts was held Tuesday, June 14 in Harrisburg. Afterward, Reps. Daryl D. Metcalfe of Cranberry and Charles T. McIllhinney Jr. of Bucks County will redraw the congressional map for display and public comment and seek its approval by the end of this year.
Commissioner Mark B. McCracken favored placing the entire county in one congressional district rather than having it split. Also, he would like the county to be divided into no more than two senatorial districts, which it currently has three.
“This is something that we need to be concerned about. As commissioners, the three of us have worked hard to break this barrier. We want to make this county a whole,” said Commissioner Chairperson Joan Robinson-McMillen.
