Redistricting ball in the Dems' court?

Daily Point

Whose lines are these anyway?

This fall New York’s top court is expected to face an essential and explosive question: Which partisan side in the state’s extended fight over redistricting is trying to game the state's constitution.

An appellate division panel in Albany ruled 3-2 last week that the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission, in failing to complete its mission of sending a second set of map proposals to the legislature for approval or rejection in 2022, should get another crack at the process — even though we are no longer in a decennial redistricting year and new lines are in place. That means Democrats could come back from defeats last year when their gerrymandered map blew up in the same state court. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which lost control of the House in 2022, started this legal challenge last September.

Presiding Justice Elizabeth Garry of the Appellate Division Third Department in Albany said that “due to the then-fast-approaching 2022 election cycle, there was a reason to forgo the overarching intent” of setting up the IRC process created by constitutional amendment in 2014. Garry, a Democrat, says it was because of the time pressure of last year’s midterm elections that the top Court of Appeals ordered new maps be drawn by a special master chosen by a lower-court judge, Patrick McAllister, in Steuben County. Now they can supposedly be redrawn under the IRC system. And, Garry notes, the top court was “silent” on how long the maps should last.

In a dissent, appellate judge Stan Pritzker, a Republican, disputes all that. He writes that the current map (by which the GOP picked up congressional seats last year) was plainly intended to remain in place until after the 2030 census. And Pritzker strongly suggests the current case was an attempt at a retroactive fix when he writes dryly: “Significantly, the judicial redistricting plan has been found to be competitive — although perhaps too competitive for some.”

Who’s right on the constitution — and how will the state’s highest jurists perform in this unprecedented partisan fishbowl? The case is expected to be taken up in the fall term, either Sept. 12, 13, or 14 or Oct. 17, 18 or 19.

Back in March, Garry happened to express interest in becoming the chief judge of the Court of Appeals. Instead the Democrats who rule Albany abruptly changed a law so that Rowan Wilson, who was an associate justice on the top court, could ascend to the job. Now, as chief judge, Wilson and his colleagues are due to hear this latest, different redistricting case. His role as a dissenter in last year’s rejection of the Democrats’ gerrymander suggests that he could tilt toward the party’s plaintiffs in the current case, which is Hoffmann v New York State Independent Redistricting Commission.

As a result, State Sen. Anthony Palumbo, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Commitee, has slammed the fact that Wilson chose as his top staff attorney Noah Mamis — who has most recently worked for the Senate’s Democratic majority. Palumbo argues that Mamis’ hiring should cause Wilson to “recuse himself from any decision relative to the redistricting maps.” That seems unlikely to happen.

The current court includes three members who sided with former Chief Judge Janet DiFiore in voiding the legislative map last year, and three other members who dissented from her opinion.

That could leave the new associate judge, Caitlin Halligan, with a swing vote. But one cannot assume that the exact split on the court last year over the Harkenrider v. Hochul redistricting case will repeat itself in the Hoffman redistricting case. Perhaps a judge will go a different way than expected. After all, the questions and arguments are quite different this off-year. They hinge on the timeliness and duration of redistricted maps and exactly when the legislature gets to control them.

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Up in the air

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Final Point

The LIRR heads downhill

Who would have thought a brand-new train terminal would lead to sinking customer satisfaction?

And yet, in the first survey since the opening of Grand Central Madison — the Long Island Rail Road’s East Side terminal — and the service changes that came with it, customer satisfaction didn’t just fall — it plummeted.

“The results were certainly not welcome,” Long Island Rail Road interim president Cathy Rinaldi said, during her report early in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s commuter rail committee meeting Monday, before the LIRR customer satisfaction survey responses were officially unveiled.

The bad news was indeed really bad.

Overall satisfaction with the LIRR sank to 68% in the spring of 2023, down from 81% in the fall of 2022. Nearly 21,000 riders participated in the survey — a 29% increase in participation from last year, perhaps showing just how much LIRR riders wanted to share their displeasure.

By comparison, Metro-North Railroad’s customer satisfaction stood at 89%.

While the MTA wasn’t able to provide The Point with a history of its customer satisfaction results, an analysis by The Point found that this spring’s statistics appear to be the lowest in recent history for the LIRR. While the MTA has used different survey methodology over time, it began using a percentage system to measure rider opinion in 2008. This spring’s results seem to be the lowest since then.

Even at previous low points, customer satisfaction never dropped to anywhere close to where it is now. In 2018, for instance, massive service disruptions and delays, equipment breakdowns, difficulties caused by track repairs at Penn Station and a lack of communication about all of it angered riders, customer satisfaction hit what was then considered a low point — 77%. Just a month after those results were released, Long Island Rail Road president Patrick Nowakowski stepped down.

And at other times over the last decade, even when LIRR riders suffered and the LIRR struggled, customer service ratings never went below that point. In 2011, when the LIRR was dealing with a host of delays, fare hikes and service cuts, customer satisfaction was at 78% — and that was down 10% from the year prior. In 2016, as a #WeDeserveBetter hashtag began to percolate through Twitter, as riders complained about unreliable service and decrepit trains, the MTA touted customer service “at over 90%.”

This spring’s results were directly tied to the LIRR’s service changes in the wake of the opening of Grand Central Madison, although the new station itself got high marks. The riders who were most unhappy were those who needed to transfer to get to their final destination. Much of that consternation came from those who no longer had a one-seat ride into Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn. The satisfaction rate among those going to Atlantic stood at 41% — down from 82% in the fall 2022 survey.

The lowest satisfaction by branch came on the Oyster Bay line, where just 52% of riders said they were satisfied or very satisfied, down 24% from fall of 2022. The branch with the highest level of satisfaction was the Far Rockaway branch — and even there, satisfaction stood at just 76%. Montauk was the only branch to avoid a double-digit decline.

LIRR officials have said they’re continuing to tinker with the schedules and shift their plans. Whether that helps improve the rider mindset remains to be seen.

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com