Under city law, Council members have until tomorrow to come up with a district map based on the latest census data or they start losing pay. They still probably have a little give - the city's biweekly pay schedule means they likely wouldn't lose a check as long as a final version is passed by Sept. 22. But that's looking less and less certain.
Members have been bogged down for days over how to deal with massive population shifts from west to east and with two districts that are badly gerrymandered, as well as who will represent a controversial ward in the Northeast.
And it looks as if the behind-the-scenes race to be the next Council president is also playing a role. Both Clarke and Tasco are privately vying for that gig in 2012 and seem to be using redistricting as leverage with current and future members.
Nowhere is this more clear than the 56th Ward, now split between the city's two Northeast districts - O'Neill's 10th and Councilwoman Joan Krajewski's 6th - as well as the tortured 7th District, which snakes through North Philadelphia, Kensington and up into the Northeast.
Quinones-Sanchez, who represents the 7th, wants a more compact district that doesn't include the 56th. But attempts to divide the ward between the 10th and 6th have failed thus far. O'Neill, a Republican, reportedly doesn't want additional Democratic votes in his districts, and no one wants to deal with the ward's powerful Democratic ward leader, John Sabatina.
As a Council working group attempted to reach consensus yesterday, Councilmen Frank DiCicco and Jim Kenney were peddling an alternate map that cleans up Quinones-Sanchez's district and gives O'Neill all of the 56th ward. That option will likely get introduced today, according to sources.
But that map could leave Tasco in a quandary. She and O'Neill are longtime allies, and she reportedly expects his support for president. Tasco last night denied that the Council presidency played a role in negotiations.
"My position and my role is to make sure that we get a plan that's workable and acceptable and legal," Tasco said. "So, all of the other issues are not in play for me on this."
Mayoral spokesman Mark McDonald said that Mayor Nutter, who must sign off on a map, wants to see some of the gerrymandering resolved, as well as having no more than a 5 percent population difference between the smallest and largest district.
So far, it looks as if Council may develop a map with a higher deviation than that. Most of the working drafts have been close to 9 percent, according to sources.
