Editor’s note: Because of a document misreading, the percentage of decreases and increases of the populations in Berkshire County and the state of Massachusetts respectively have been corrected.
BOSTON — As the state legislature on Beacon Hill weighs the effects of last year’s census and gathers input from voter rights groups, one conclusion is inescapable: The Berkshires will lose a seat in the state House of Representatives.
The new census results show Berkshire County and neighboring Franklin County losing full-time population, while the Boston area and most of eastern Massachusetts, including Cape Cod and the islands, gained population.
The minimum population for a state House district in Massachusetts is now 43,000 and the maximum is 46,000. The population of the state as a whole has increased since 2010 to 7,029,917 from 6,547,629 for a gain of 7.37 percent. In contrast, Berkshire County’s full-time population is 129,026, down from 131,219 in 2010, or a loss of 1.67 percent.
“The math just doesn’t line up,” state Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli, D-Lenox, told The Edge in an interview.
Pignatelli said he anticipates that the state legislature will vote on redistricting before Nov. 1. In the next week or two, recommendations will be released by the House Redistricting Committee.
“So we’ll see new maps in the next week or two, then we’ll have a week or so to get public input based on the lines,” Pignatelli explained.
In hearings this week, the Drawing Democracy Coalition, a voter rights group that includes the Massachusetts Voter Table, MassVOTE and the Massachusetts ACLU, released a proposal calling for an increase in so-called majority-minority districts in which the majority of the constituents in the district are racial or ethnic minorities.
The coalition also unveiled its own redistricting proposal. The map of the proposal for the House can be viewed in its entirety here and the proposal for the Senate here. Berkshire County is represented in the Senate by Democrat Adam Hinds of Pittsfield. Berkshire County’s only Senate district also includes dozens of communities in Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden counties.
Berkshire County currently has four House members. The proposal from the Drawing Democracy Coalition not only strips Berkshire County of a seat, as was expected, but it configures a district that merges Pignatelli’s and Rep. Paul Mark’s district, the latter of which is mostly in Franklin County to begin with.
The proposed sprawling new district stretches from the northern tip of Florida on the Vermont border south to Sheffield and Mount Washington on the Connecticut border, but excludes New Marlborough and Sandisfield, both of which are currently in Pignatelli’s district. Pignatelli told Politico’s Massachusetts Political Playbook that it was “The stupidest-looking district I’ve ever seen.” He did not mince words with The Edge either.
“It’s a stupid looking map. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever,” he said. “I think [the district] should be more clearly defined — shape and size — to be contiguous north, central, south and not this ridiculous looking thing that they proposed.”
The new district would pit Pignatelli and Mark, who are longtime friends, against each other in a race for the seat, if they both decide to run for reelection. Pignatelli plans to run for reelection but would not speak for Mark, who did not return a message seeking comment.
“Much like the rail, they needed to start out in the west and go east,” Pignatelli said of the Drawing Democracy Coalition’s proposed map. “I think what they did was they focused on the east, looking at increasing the number of majority-minority districts. Then when they got to western Massachusetts, they thought, ‘Oh, what do we do now?'”
Pignatelli also said the population results for Berkshire County might have been considerably different if the census had been conducted this year instead of in 2020 because the county’s population has clearly increased over the last several months as city people move here to escape the COVID-19 pandemic and become full-time residents who are counted in the Berkshire County census rather their city of origin.
Meanwhile, Hinds has told both the Boston Globe and the Berkshire Eagle that he is “seriously considering” a run for statewide office, perhaps lieutenant governor, though he has made no formal announcement yet. If Hinds were to run for statewide office, that would leave the race for his successor wide open. Ironically, one of the announced Democratic candidates for governor is Ben Downing, who previously held Hinds’ seat until 2016.
For a deep dive into the redistricting process and its implications, see a story in Wednesday’s Boston Globe entitled, “Advocates propose sweeping changes to state’s political map.”
