Adopting an Orphan

It was a real orphan of a bill: no politician wanted to claim credit for its parentage. Small wonder. It proposed throwing one-third of the legislators in Massachusetts' 240-seat house of representatives out of jobs. "It wasn't me that pushed it," declared House Speaker Thomas McGee in a typical disclaimer last week. "It wasn't McGee."

It was, in fact, the League of Women Voters that ten years ago first proposed reducing the bloated house to 160 members. Vigorous lobbying by the league got the proposal on the ballot in a 1974 referendum. It passed by a huge margin of 4 to 1.

The league's arguments made good sense: a scaling-down would save money that the surviving representatives could use to upgrade their research staffs; it would sharpen the body's procedures; and it would provide a more effective check on the executive's power by creating a more efficient, more disciplined legislature. Besides, the Massachusetts house, with one representative for every 24,204 people, was more swollen than any other state legislature except New Hampshire's, with one for every 2,055. California, with a population almost five times as large as Massachusetts', has an assembly of only 80 members.

Nonetheless, every politician capable of reading a map knew that the redistricting would inevitably be bloody. Given the thankless task of drawing new electoral districts. Majority Whip George Keverian realized that he could not possibly please all 194 fellow Democrats in the house, at least 53 of whom were bound to lose their jobs in the November 1978 election. For example, two liberal Boston representatives, who are longtime friends, will be pitted against each other in Boston's new Back Bay-Beacon Hill district: Elaine Noble, 33, the first avowed lesbian in a state assembly, and Barney Frank, 37, a colorful and outspoken leader of the party's liberal wing. Outraged incumbents called Keverian a "butcher" and a "stooge." Keverian conceded that his plan involved not so much punishing dissidents as remembering loyalists, but defended it as a fair one.

The most vociferous reaction came from Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The vacation islands now have one representative apiece; under the redistricting plan, they will share a single representative with either upper or lower Cape Cod. Complaining that they will be deprived of an individual representative for the first time since the 17th century, some islanders threatened secession (TIME, March 21, 1977). New Hampshire's archconservative Governor Meldrim Thomson muddied the waters further by promising Nantucketers that he would give them "two or three representatives and maybe a senator" in Concord's legislature; he also pointed out that as undertaxed New Hampshirites, they would be able to buy the same bottle of Scotch that now costs $8.80 for a mere $5. Still, secession is a virtually impossible solution, since both the Massachusetts legislature and the U.S. Congress would have to approve.

After 20 hours of tortured debate, the house voted 162 to 52 to shrink itself by one-third. The senate is expected to give final approval to the bill this week, and Governor Michael Dukakis to sign it into law soon thereafter.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.