Harford County gained another state legislative district in last month's election, with three new delegates and a senator.
District 6 is now part of the county legislative delegation. Never mind that there's not a single Harford resident among the district representatives. Or that the only part of Harford that voted for these legislators is a sliver of Fallston and Joppa. Or that District 6 legislators' primary mission will continue to be the welfare of Baltimore County.
But under current House of Delegates practice, these three House members from the district would be invited to the Harford County delegation meetings with voting rights.
They would make up nearly 40 percent of the votes on positions staked out for Harford's benefit. And if the delegation chair continues to rotate annually, as it did during the 1991-94 term, then a Baltimore County resident could end up heading the Harford delegation during the next four years.
Inclusion of the District 6 delegates would also further tilt the delegation balance in favor of Democrats over the next four years, five to three instead of three to two.
You will note that I've said would in noting these potential changes. Because they may not happen.
Saddled with the inequities of the governor's 1992 cross-county legislative redistricting plan, at least two county delegations are fighting back to exclude these "outsiders" from their strategy and local-bill decision meetings.
Montgomery's House delegation has voted to exclude two delegates who represent a small portion of Montgomery but mainly the interests of Howard County constituents.
Baltimore County's delegation did the same with six Baltimore City delegates, who lay claim to a small number of county voters; later, they accepted the city delegates but gave them only a third of a full vote.
It wasn't bare party politics: Baltimore Democrats voted to uninvite Democratic legislators, Montgomery Democrats locked out Republicans.
While the cheerleaders for Gov. William Donald Schaefer's gerrymandered map may call them undemocratic and arrogant, these delegation decisions are in fact a rational reaction to an irrational redistricting, a democratic vote to protect the integrity of county representation.
Counties were torn apart by the ex-mayor of Baltimore, whose main purpose was to magnify the city's waning power and create more racial minority seats in the legislature. Crossing county lines to carve out new legislative districts aimed to dilute effective county representation in the holy name of "regionalism."
So it should come as no surprise that two county delegations are shutting out these interlopers, whose paramount political and constituent interests lie outside those counties.
This is not to denigrate the integrity and the goodwill of these excluded legislators. But in the heated contest for state funds, in deciding on bills that affect the county's economy and welfare, these delegates cannot be expected to vote in the best interests of their minority county. These tough decisions include bond issues, road projects and especially school aid allocations.
It's been the practice in the House of Delegates to open county delegation meetings to any delegate who represents any part of that county; Eastern Shore delegates, in particular, have represented multiple counties for years. But there's been no hard and fast rule.
In the wake of the recent Montgomery and Baltimore county delegation decisions, House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. has warned that he will create such a rule unless all county delegations follow this traditional open-door practice.
If it comes to a showdown, Mr. Taylor will likely get his way and all delegation meetings will be open to any delegate with constituents in that county. Unfortunately.
Multi-county representation began in 1965, and has expanded since. The primary justification has been to make population numbers equal, rather than to achieve a harmony of jurisdictional interest or rational constituent representation.
One of the 1992 moves was to cut out the conservative Republican precincts in Harford's south and submerge them in the Democratic machine strongholds of Essex-Middle River in Baltimore County. Voila, the new Legislative District 6!
Partisan politics aside, however, the major effect of redrawn District 6 was to deny meaningful representation to 6,000 Harford residents and to allow Baltimore County a major voice in Harford's legislative future.
And we thought that yoke had been lifted in 1773, even before American independence.
The Harford County delegation hasn't taken a position on this issue, deferring to Mr. Taylor and soft-pedaling any potential conflict. Some delegates seem to favor a non-voting status for the District 6 contingent, but admitting them to meetings.
The 1992 legislative redistricting clearly shortchanged a rapidly growing Harford County. Harford's population increased by 60 percent from the 1970 census, yet this county got a single additional delegate for a total of five. Baltimore County, on the other hand, had a 12 percent increase in population over that period and ends up with the same number of delegates it had two decades ago, 21. The over-representation of Baltimore City's declining population is even more blatant.
If Harford County's delegation is to clearly represent this county's residents, and not some misguided regionalist contrivance, it needs to stand up to the Annapolis establishment now and make its voice heard.
Mike Burns is The Baltimore Sun's editorial writer in Harford County.