After months of debate, state lawmakers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo approved a redistricting deal last week that will re-set State Senate and Assembly lines for the next decade, and establish an independent commission to take over the process after the next Census in 2020 — a plan that many local leaders are unhappy with.

The new lines, many Bronx leaders and community groups argue, split like-communities across legislative districts, diluting their voice in the political arena and violating the federal Voting Rights Act, which is designed to protect the voting power of minority communities.

“This plan violates federal law that protects minority communities from being split between several districts with the intention of diminishing the ability of minority communities to elect a representative of their choosing,” said Bronx State Sen. Gustavo Rivera in an e-mail. “Despite large population growth in the Latino community in the Bronx, no additional Latino majority senate districts were created.”

The final maps were approved in a late night legislative session Wednesday night (March 14) and Thursday morning (March 15) that ended in Senate Democrats walking out in protest. Senate Republicans on the LATFOR panel, charged with coming up with the new maps, had added an additional 63rd Senate seat, a move that Democrats say was a ploy to maintain the GOP’s slim majority in the state, and which they’re challenging in court. The Justice Department is currently reviewing the final districts, and has 60 days after submission to accept or reject them.

Locally, changes are in store for State Senate districts encompassing the Norwood News’ coverage area. Ruth Hassel-Thompson’s 36th District will now include portions of Norwood and Bedford Park, previously represented by Rivera. In the first draft of maps proposed by lawmakers last month, those areas were drawn in State Sen. Jeff Klein’s district. Many Bronx community groups had criticized the first maps as an attempt to pack the area’s mostly-white, more affluent neighborhoods into Klein’s coverage area.

“[The fact] that they purposely tweaked Ruth Hassel-Thompson’s district demonstrates the fact that they saw how racially gerrymandered it was,” said Lucia Gomez, executive director of La Fuente, which has been advocating for greater minority representation in the redistricting process, and one of many groups that pushed for the formation of a new, majority Hispanic district in the Bronx.

Klein’s new 34th District will absorb all of wealthy Riverdale, which had previously been split between his district, Rivera’s and that of Bronx State Sen. Adriano Espaillat. Klein and the three fellow members of his Independent Democratic Caucus were the only Democrats to vote in favor of the redistricting package.

In a phone interview, Klein said that while the redistricting process was “far from perfect” he had opted to vote in favor of it because of the State Amendment attached to the plan that would create a 10-member independent redistricting commission to take over the process in the next re-drawing after the 2020 Census.

“It would have been much better to have had the independent redistricting commission take place this year, but that didn’t happen,” Klein said, adding that he didn’t agree with the decision of Senate Democrats to walk out during the session.

“I think it was wrong,” he said. “A good part of our job is coming to Albany and voting on legislation. Leaving session and voting absent is not part of your work.”

Others, however, criticized the amendment as not going far enough to take the redistricting process out of the hands and away from the influence of lawmakers.

“Since individuals would be appointed by the legislature on this commission, it would not be an independent commission,” Rivera said in an e-mail, adding that, if the commission is gridlocked, then lawmakers will again take over the process.

Cuomo had vowed to veto any maps produced by lawmakers that looked gerrymandered, but consented to approve the lawmakers’ final lines in exchange for the passage of the amendment.

“I think he did a bad trade,” Gomez said.

Locally, lines for the Assembly districts encompassing the Norwood News’ coverage area will remain relatively unchanged, namely because Assembly Democrats, who hold the majority in that chamber, get the final say in how the lines are drawn there. The northwest Bronx will remain under the representation of the 78th, 80th and 81st assembly districts, seats currently held by Jose Rivera, Naomi Rivera and Jeffrey Dinowitz, respectively. Dinowitz’s district will gain sections of Kingsbridge Heights.

Meanwhile, maps for new state congressional districts drafted by a judge were imposed by a federal court this week, merging Kingsbridge and Norwood in the Bronx with a district in northern Manhattan currently represented by Charles Rangel, and which Espaillat has expressed interest in running for. The congressional lines were taken up by the courts after New York legislators failed to come to an agreement on how to draw them in a way that would reduce the number of seats from 29 to 27, as required by population changes in the Census.