Our View: Bravo, Mr. Howell

Though we must admit that revisions made to the most recent legislative redistricting plan may very well have been an improvement over the original, the way they were rammed through the General Assembly could have poisoned the partisan well for years to come.

In case you don’t recall, Republicans used the absence of a Democrat in the evenly divided state Senate to push through the redrawn legislative map. From there, it was simply a matter of waiting on House Speaker Bill Howell to see if he would declare the measure — Senate Republicans grafted the new map onto a House bill making minor tweaks to legislative boundaries — germane.

Mr. Howell, perhaps sensing larger battles looming (on transportation, for instance), deemed it not germane. That’s the requisite legalese. He could have just as easily said his party-mates in the Senate were grossly out of line.