Last week Columbia news, views & reviews shared the ugly re-districting game playing that politicians do to insure they keep their spot at the “trough.”

Here’s another look at the practice that is anything but representative of “true representation.” This is a York Daily Record opinion column.

Take a look at state Senate District 15 in the (above) map. The district is the proposed reapportionment of a seat held by Republican Sen. Jeff Piccola.

His proposed district snakes through five separate counties, including York, and is shaped sort of like a C.

What do you suppose that C stands for?

Creative? Maybe. It takes some unbridled creativity to imagine how such a district could hold together as a coherent community. Parts of Sen. Piccola’s proposed district are about halfway to State College, for crying out loud. How can those areas realistically be in the same district as Springettsbury Township?

How about C for conniving?

Everyone in the state Capitol is talking about how the district was gerrymandered to remove Harrisburg from Sen. Piccola’s district. He’s not exactly Mr. Popularity there right now, having engineered a state takeover of the financially ailing city. (He was right about that, by the way, but that’s no excuse for making Dover Township residents share their senator with parts of Adams, Perry, Cumberland and Dauphin counties.)

Or maybe C stands for corruption. We’ve long heard government reformers knock the reapportionment process as corrupted by both parties for political influence and gamesmanship – and this particular district is a perfect example.

How could anyone in either party or on the state Legislative Reapportionment Commission defend this shameless gerrymandering with a straight face?

This process must be reformed to take it out of the hands of politicians in the proverbial smoke-filled rooms – to create competitive districts in a state where there are far too many “safe” seats for incumbents.

And this plan must not be enacted as proposed.

Frankly, it’s disappointing that state Sen. Mike Waugh, R-Shrewsbury Township, would stand still for such blatant gerrymandering to be put forth in this county. It was just a couple of months ago that he said he was hopeful we’d have two (or most of two) Senate districts in York County.

This is an important, growing community, and it deserves two senators who are solely focused on its issues. The current situation, with just Sen. Waugh’s district in the county and the edges represented (if you can call it representation) by senators with power bases in other counties, is not acceptable.

This plan doesn’t change that situation much.

Sen. Waugh is supposed to be a member of the Senate leadership, but this travesty of a plan shows he’s simply not that influential – or, perhaps, that he just doesn’t care that his home county has been carved up to save Sen. Piccola’s political hide. He has said he supports the plan.

As for the state House redistricting plan, it’s generally OK from a York/Adams perspective. The main change is that Rep. Will Tallman’s district would be shifted fully into Adams County, and the Hanover area would get a new district – actually the 169th District, shifted from the Philadelphia area.

It will make folks in the Hanover area happy not to share a state representative with Adams County.

But the proposed district for Sen. Piccola must change.

In fact, that’s what the C should stand for: Change it.

Write to the Legislative Reapportionment Commission and demand local Senate districts be redrawn to create districts that conform to communities.

How to object

Anyone with an objection to the preliminary reapportionment plan can comment. Such comments must be in writing and contain a name, signature, mailing address, and daytime telephone number. They should be addressed to:

Charles E. O’Connor, Jr., Executive Director, 2011 Legislative Reapportionment Commission, 104 North Office Building, Harrisburg, PA 17120.

A public hearing on the objections will be held at noon on Nov. 18 in Hearing Room No. 1, North Office Building, Harrisburg. Call 717-705-6339 for additional information.