Politics & Government

Senate Committee Approves O'Malley Congressional Map

The full Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill later tonight. Three alternative plans were rejected.

UPDATED (7:23 p.m.)—A bill redrawing eight congressional districts in Maryland moved one step closer to final passage in the Senate with a 33-13 vote Monday night.

The vote, taken nearly an hour after a specially appointed 15-member Senate committee voted late Monday afternoon to approve Gov. Martin O'Malley's plan, was anticlimactic. Republicans offered just one amendment to the bill in a debate that lasted minutes rather than hours.

Sen. E.J. Pipkin's amendment would have stripped out O'Malley's plan in favor of Pipkin's, which added a third majority minority district and kept intact the two Republican districts.

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In the end, the Senate voted 13-33 to kill the amendment.

Sen. Jim Brochin, of Towson, was the lone Democrat joining Republicans on both votes.

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Earlier in the afternoon, a special Senate committee voted 10-4 along party lines to move O'Malley's plan to a preliminary vote scheduled for 6 p.m. Sen. Joanne Benson, a Democrat from Prince George's County, was not present for the committee vote.

The same committee voted to reject three alternative plans offered up by state Senate Republicans.

There was no debate on any of the bills.

"It's a done deal," said Harford County Sen. Nancy Jacobs. "Why waste everyone's time talking?"

The House of Delegates will not take up the redistricting bills until Tuesday at the earliest.

Jacobs later asked Miller to delay a final vote on the redistricting plan until tomorrow.

Keep up with what's happening in state and Baltimore County politics by following Bryan P. Sears on his and on Twitter and Facebook.


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