It’s interesting you mentioned textbooks. I think the key disruption there is not going to be replacing paper textbooks with electronic textbooks on iPads or whatever, it’s going to be replacing high-cost proprietary textbooks with low-cost freely-available textbooks that have equivalent quality (including alignment with Common Core standards) but can be distributed via print-on-demand for $5 or so a (paper) copy. See my recent blog post in which I referenced the Utah Open Textbook Initiative, which is doing just that. I think it’s worth looking at for potentially significant cost savings when replacing current textbooks (as opposed to just stretching out the replacement cycle from 8 to 9 years, as proposed in the FY2013 budget).

I posted most of this on HoCoRising so I apologize if it’s a breach of etiquette to repost it as a comment on this blog. But here are some of my thoughts on the Ken Ulman’s decision to not sign the Council’s bill.

Regardless of whether the Council’s map was truly bipartisan, Ken Ulman is hiding behind a falsehood if he is saying that the Commission’s plan was bipartisan. The Commission was comprised of four Democrats and three Republicans. In the final vote, the three Republicans voted for a map developed by citizen Ray Rankin (not a Commission member but a former Democratic Central Committee member and Democratic appointee to the Howard County Board of Elections). The four Democrats voted for a map submitted by Democratic Commission member David Marker. That map became the map the Commission recommended to the Council. There was nothing bipartisan about the Commission’s map.

Ken Ulman should be called to task for the deception in his press release. He said he supported the “map presented by the bi-partisan Commission.” I’m not going to flat-out call Ulman a liar because his press release is too calculated and refined for me to be able to say that honestly. The Commission was in fact bipartisan and the Commission did recommend a map. In a literal sense, his statement is factually correct. Yet, Ulman’s press release creates the impression (or at least invites the inference) that the Commission’s map had bipartisan support. For the reasons stated above, the Commission’s map was not a bipartisan proposal. Is it the first time a politician made a factually correct statement that was also misleading? No. Will it be the last? Certainly not. However, that should not excuse Ulman’s misleading public statement.

Moving on to the “communities” aspect of redistricting, my poker face is terrible. However, I can tell you with a straight face that my primary motivation was creating compact and contiguous districts that were substantially equal in population and respected the public testimony. The common theme from all the public testimony was to keep communities together as much as possible. I knew what impact certain moves had on voter registration numbers and where incumbents lived, but that did not trump efforts to keep communities together. (Map 100, the Rt. 1 map, was intended to be a conversation starter about whether Elkridge had more in common with Jessup, Savage, and North Laurel, as several people at the hearing at the Elkridge library stated) Consequently, I take issue with you saying that the talk about “‘splitting’ communities is mostly putting lipstick on a pig.”

I also think the residents of Wheatfield and Brampton Hills would take issue with that characterization. It’s an insult to the six months they invested in the redistricting process. They showed up and testified in numbers at the Commission’s public hearing. They wrote the Commission a score of e-mails and showed up at our work-sessions and voting session to show how much they cared. They testified at two separate Council hearings, wrote dozens of e-mails to Council members, and were there for the Council’s public work session and final vote. They then kept up their efforts and urged the County Executive to sign the Council’s bill. It was a sustained, motivated, dedicated, and intelligent effort by those neighborhoods to remain in a district that, frankly, they should have remained in.

It’s a shame that the Democrats on the Commission and Ken Ulman didn’t listen to them. Instead of commending those communities for doing everything the way it should be done in our civil society, Ulman turned his back on them. He failed them.

There may not have been a perfect map, but the Council’s map was better than the Commission’s map. Elkridge was not going to be happy under either map. At least the Council’s map respected the will of Wheatfield and Brampton Hills as well as Dorsey’s Search. It’s a poor excuse to say that just because not everyone can be happy then no one can be happy. Yet that’s what Courtney Watson appeared to say when she cast her vote against Mary Kay Sigaty’s amendment.

This brings me to the significant role that Courtney Watson played in the redistricting process. Whether she intended to side with Ulman over the Wheatfield community or not, her vote against Sigaty’s amendment allowed Ulman to hide behind the “narrow margin” of the Council vote. A 3-2 vote counts as a narrow margin. A 4-1 vote does not. Watson handed Ulman another excuse for rejecting the requests of her own constituents.

In the end, Ulman’s official reasons for rejecting the Council’s bill are lacking as his reference to the bipartisan Commission is disingenuous. I think he made a calculated, partisan decision and he chose politics over the wishes of Howard County’s communities.