Barring a breakthrough compromise, it appears Maine lawmakers will have to consider opposing congressional redistricting plans when they return to the State House next month. Members of the public weighed in during a public hearing today. Both Republican and Democratic versions for the new districts have their share of detractors, but negotiators for both sides say consensus is still within reach.

After efforts to reach a compromise on a single plan failed, Republican state Sen. Debra Plowman said her party was sticking with its original proposal that divides the state along east-west lines and results in a deviation of one voter between the two districts, but relocates more than 300,000 people into new ones.

Democrats have dismissed the plan as gerrymandering because it places 1st District Congresswoman Chellie Pingree's hometown in the 2nd District and relocates Lewiston-Auburn and its abundance of Democratic votes from the 2nd District to the first.

Plowman says neither point will matter if Democrats try to mount a legal defense based on those arguments. "No where in case law are these elements listed as criteria for meeting a constitutional challenge, or for that matter being any kind of suggestion as to how a district can be formed," Plowman said at today's public hearing on the issue.

Democratic State Sen. Seth Goodall, assigned to a special redistricting committee with Plowman, said the Democratic plan is supported by more Mainers because it leaves the current boundary lines more or less intact, although it falls a handful of voters short of Republican demands for a deviation of one voter between the two districts.

Goodall also worries that the Republican plan makes so many changes to the 1st District that population changes will force a new round of reapportionment negotiations before the 10-year cycle for redistricting expires. "We don't want to be back here, whether it's two years, three years or four years, we want this to last an entire 10 years," Goodall said.

For the last several days, Republicans and Democrats tried to reach consensus on a single plan--although Republicans never made their new political maps public, as the Democrats did. Goodall said Republicans told the Democrats they would agree to keep Lewiston-Auburn in the 2nd District and return Pingree's North Haven town to the 1st, if the Democrats would sign on to a plan that would move more Republican-leaning portions of Kennebec County into the 2nd District.

Goodall said Democrats couldn't go along with that plan without receiving some other concessions. "That plan basically looks at Kennebec County and makes it as Republican as possible," Goodall says.

And even that plan evaporated after Plowman and other Republicans heard that Democrats were telling the media that the GOP compromise effort was nothing more than quote "a good start." Plowman said the chracterization was insulting.

"We came to play, they came to play, we made an offer--we're on the field by ourselves," Plowman said. "I'm on the field, I expect to play. I don't expect to just be told I can sit on the bench with my bat and my ball and that's it."

State Rep. Les Fossel, an Alna Republican, says the GOP plan actually brings greater equity to the two districts by talking more of an east-west tact, as opposed to the current north-south division that has come to define the phenomemon known as the two Maines.

"One of the things that we wanted to do, and why we did this, is we are one Maine and we thought that we needed to do that in our congressional districts," Fossel said. "You represent rich and poor, urban and rural, large population areas, large geographical areas, growing areas and shrinking areas. We are one Maine and our map represents that."

Jim Matlack drove from his Rockport home to tell the panel that he couldn't understand why Republicans couldn't see that a plan that caused the least change and disruption to the existing congressional districts was the one preferred by most Mainers. "I testify here as a private citizen deeply opposed to the radical Republican plan for redistricting," he said.

Anita Brosius-Scott, of Camden, agreed, and said she expected more from the majority party in the Legislature than to present a plan that would trigger a costly court challenge.

"The Republican plan is not likely to stand up in the court challenge that will be undertaken, I expect, if this inappropriate redistricting does take place," she said. "I am very concerned about the significant waste of scarce state funds proving this fact in court."

"The Democrats' scare tactics are ridiculous," said Wendy Turner, of Buckfield. "The issues they bring up have nothing to do with congressional district lines."

Turner told the panel that she likes the way the GOP plan makes both of the two districts look more like all of Maine--a point that was also embraced by Michael Coleman, of Old Orchard Beach.

"Doesn't it make sense from a resource management point of view that we have both of our congressmen familiar with all of the issues of our state," Coleman said. "Do we want to be southern Maine versus northern Maine, or are we going to be just Maine?"

The Maine Legislature is scheduled to take up both plans on Sept. 27th.