Assembly Republicans, Democrats working behind the scenes on path to new legislative maps

MADISON – Democrat and Republican leaders of the state Assembly have worked this month to try to form a committee of lawmakers to create the next set of legislative maps ordered by the state Supreme Court before the 2024 election.

Correspondence obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel between the office of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Assembly Democrats show the two caucuses have not yet agreed on how to design the districts and how much support within each caucus each new map proposal should receive in order to be considered.

The letters also suggest the negotiations over how the committee will tackle the task have been civil. The communication appears to contradict Vos' comments earlier this month describing Assembly Democrats as being closed off to the idea of passing new maps.

Vos on Jan. 16 said his caucus approached Democrats about the idea but said “we have not gotten a warm reception to that idea.”

According to the correspondence between Assembly Democrats and Vos, Assembly Republicans approached Assembly Democrats suggesting the caucuses create a new committee to write and pass the legislative maps ordered by the Supreme Court.

In a Jan. 5 letter to Vos, Assembly Democrats wrote they would agree if the committee was composed of an equal number of lawmakers from each party and would hold hearings in each quadrant of the state and Milwaukee.

Democrats also said they would only agree if the committee met state constitutional requirements, complied with the federal Voting Rights Act, counted prison inmates as voters in their hometowns and provided representation based on the median proportion of the vote received by each party over the last six years. The Democrats also called for a majority of each caucus to support the maps.

In a Jan. 8 letter to Assembly Democrats, Vos said Assembly Republicans agreed to most of the Democrats' proposed requirements and added new proposed requirements of drawing districts to be no less compact than current districts using an agreed-upon scoring method, would avoid pairing incumbents, and avoid splitting counties and towns.

Assembly Republicans agreed to holding hearings in Madison and Milwaukee and said they would support hearings in additional locations as time allowed. They said no hearings should be held until the committee had agreed upon a final product to present to the public.

Vos said Republicans did not agree with the Democrats' proportionality standard but would consider a standard that contemplates the median of contested legislative races dating back to 2016. He also said requiring a majority of caucus members to support a bill is "impossible."

"It’s antidemocratic to say that if two sides meet in good faith to negotiate a deal, that a simple bipartisan majority of the chamber should not be the standard," he wrote.

In the most recent letter obtained by the Journal Sentinel, Assembly Democrats responded to Vos on Jan. 18 and said the caucus won't accept a process that avoids pairing incumbents or the Republicans' standard for measuring proportionality, and that it's not impossible to gain support of a majority of caucus members.

"Our caucus has been clear that we are open to conversations with Republicans on the maps, but we are not going to engage in a process that is likely to produce a gerrymandered map," Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, told the Journal Sentinel when asked about the correspondence between the two parties.

Neubauer said Democrats are open to the maps being drawn by the state Supreme Court or by the Legislature as long as "the maps are fair and … the people of Wisconsin have equal representation."

Molly Beck and Jessie Opoien can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com and jessie.opoien@jrn.com.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Assembly quietly working on bipartisan path to new maps