LRC Testimony Solutions: Submission 777
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This amendment to the LRC's preliminary House map alters the following districts in Allegheny County: HD21, HD24, and HD33. The LRC draft is otherwise unchanged. The changes are very modest, but they improve school district cohesion. Etna moves to HD21. HD33 absorbs one Aspinwall precinct that may have been drawn into HD24 in error. HD24 is backfilled with a single Pittsburgh precinct, W11D8. Other submissions have requested far more extensive changes in this area, such as shifting Shaler into HD30 with Hampton. Such movement does not appear practical, as the districts south of HD21 - HD24 and HD19 - have been carefully crafted by the LRC to optimize opportunities for minority representation. (The resulting boundaries are not uncontroversial; see Rep. Kinkead's testimony before the LRC.) Eschewing major changes, the proposal reflected here affects less than 1% of HD24, and it does not alter HD19 at all. The changes are so small as to constitute a "bug fix" rather than a substantive modification. Accordingly, there is no material impact on core metrics or indicators of partisan bias. Notably, the minority and Black percentages of VAP in HD24 increase, by .45% and .38% respectively, because the removed Aspinwall precinct is over 90% white. Submission 777 also proposed a separate change to McCandless and Pine. This suggestion appears to create population deviation issues, and is not taken up here.