Deal reportedly reached

At 12:13 PM, the Quorum Report says:

HOUSE AND SENATE REDISTRICTING NEGOTIATORS REACH DEAL

Official announcement to be made early this afternoon

Time to get the lawyers warmed up.

UPDATE: Oopsie! QR has a later entry that says:

WE JUMPED THE GUN ON THE REDISTRICTING MAP

No map yet. Confirmation is that House and Senate adjourned until Friday.

If there was a map, it would be laid out today or brought to the floor of both chambers tomorrow. While there has been some modest movement, as far as we can tell, it is marginal at best.

So the lawyers can stand down for now. (And BTW, ElGato, my mental image is a bullpen, while a stocky guy with a chaw is saying "The lefty needs a few more tosses" on the phone.)

UPDATE: The papers are now reporting that a deal has been struck in principle. Here's the Dallas Morning News, the Statesman, the Chronicle, and the Star-Telegram. The map is currently being vetted for compliance with the Voting Rights Act and if it passes muster will probably be unveiled tomorrow and brought to the House and Senate floors on Friday. According to Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, if the lawyers give the plan a thumbs down, the Senate will not take up the matter again this year.

"(T)his is the last bite at the apple," Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst told the Statesman on Wednesday. "If our lawyers tell us our plan is legally defensible, we're going on to address school finance, Medicaid reform and other issues. And the governor's office and the (Republican) congressional delegation understand and agree that the Senate's not going to take up this issue again."

Dewhurst said the Senate would not consider redistricting again if the Justice Department failed to clear the plan and Gov. Rick Perry called yet another special session on congressional redistricting.

"We're not going to take it up," Dewhurst declared, without going into specifics about how that would occur.

It should be noted that at 5:03 PM, four minutes before the DMN story was published, Rep. Phil King is being quoted in the Quorum Report saying that the report of a deal was still premature. I cannot tell if this is still true, but with all the other papers chiming in I've got to assume the deal is in.

UPDATE: Dewhurst has confirmed the deal, according to the Quorum Report, although the "final details of the map still needed to be ironed out". It should be available tomorrow.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on October 08, 2003 to Killer D's | TrackBack