New proposed redistricting maps became available just after midnight Friday morning, and it wasn’t long before members of the 27th House district were fuming over the results.

In a special second session to reconvene this morning, West Virginia delegates will vote on a plan that would split what is now the 27th district. Currently, five house members serve an area that covers Raleigh County and a portion of Summers County.

The new maps split Raleigh into six separate districts. Pieces of Raleigh County are now shared with Wyoming, Summers, Fayette and Mercer counties.

During the first special session, a plan was passed, but was vetoed by the Governor due to technical errors.

Delegate Rick Snuffer, R-Raleigh, said he will introduce two amendments, one aimed at keeping Raleigh County whole, and possibly even expanding the old district, and another that would involve single-delegate districts in the area.

He added that he had already been gathering Democratic support of his amendments.

“My biggest complaint with the plan is the process. They said it was going to be open and transparent with input from all the local officials and input form the delegates,” Snuffer said. “I (and other Raleigh Republican delegates) still haven’t been invited to one meeting to discuss this redistricting plan.”

He said the incumbents and the “party in power” drew the maps to protect their seats in the House.

Despite promises of “open and transparent” redistricting, Snuffer said, the House leadership has created a redistricting plan that was “vengeful and spiteful.”

Delegate Ricky Moye, D-Raleigh, was one of the members of the redistricting committee, and said he was very dissatisfied with how Raleigh County was fractured.

“From the very beginning, from day one, I have said that Raleigh County needs to be left alone,” Moye said. “We didn’t lose population so, don’t shift other people’s problems on to us.”

He said at the minimum, Raleigh County should have four delegates contained solely within the boundaries of the county with any leftover population left in one group to be given to another county.

“It makes me furious to see it this way,” Moye said of the proposed map. “I fought so hard for the people of Raleigh County, not Rick, and not for any party, but for the people of this county so we would have good and fair representation.”

Moye said he plans to offer amendments to the bill this morning, aimed at keeping the county intact.

“Our neighbors lost population and we were outnumbered,” Moye said. “... Our neighbors wanted a piece of us and they weren’t going to join with me to protect it because they wanted a piece of it.”

The proposed 27th District would put a small sliver of Raleigh County just outside of Ghent into Mercer County. That three-member district would contain about 840 Raleigh residents and more than 57,000 Mercer County residents.

The two-delegate 28th District would be made up of the Shady Spring area of Raleigh, a piece of Summers County around Hinton and a stretch of Monroe County including Union and Peterstown. Raleigh, Summers and Monroe would have, respectively, 15,990, 11,759 and 11,160 residents each in the district.

Snuffer and Delegate Virginia Mahan would now be a part of the 28th district.

Mahan was also displeased with the current plan. She said she would introduce an amendment that would guarantee that in the newly drawn 28th District, no more than one delegate could come from any given county.

“Two someones from Raleigh County could be representing both Summers and Monroe and they would be knocked out of having a delegate,” Mahan said. “Right now both of those counties (Monroe and Summers) have delegates.”

She also criticized the current redistricting process. Mahan said that though she had made her concerns known, she still felt like her region had been largely ignored in preparing the new maps.

“We are not happy with the treatment of our district in that Raleigh County and Summers County did not lose population, we should have been able to remain basically what we are now,” Mahan said. “Instead, we’ve been up for grabs.”

Mahan said she also would like to see more flexibility from the federal level on how West Virginia can district within its borders. She said she would have liked to seen an independent commission for redistricting.

“This is not a good way to garden,” she said. “You get really nasty crops when you garden like this.”

The 29th District will consist of southern Raleigh County from Mabscott farther south and with one delegate representing 19,453 people.

Moye resides in the proposed 29th District.

District 30 covers Beckley and will contain 19,477 people and be represented by one delegate.

District 31 includes 15,435 Raleigh County citizens from areas around Bolt, Eccles and areas slightly north of those towns. About 4,000 Wyoming County residents from as far west as Oceana are also included in the single-delegate district.

District 32 will consist of five counties Clay (1,405), Fayette (46,039), Kanawha (671), Nicholas (1,777) and Raleigh County (7,694). This district will include Bradley, Prosperity and Stanaford of Raleigh County and extends north into the lower portion of Kanawha County.

Moye said the public has not been as interested as perhaps they should have been.

“After this thing is done, they will wake up and they won’t know the difference at all,” Moye said. “They will look out the door and everything will still look the same, but when they go to vote and they find out they can’t vote for the people they want, or where they vote is different, then they will realize.

“I just hope they will remember that I have put every ounce of energy I’ve had into trying to keep them whole and it’s frustrating. So frustrating to be a part of a process and not be listened to.”

— E-mail: tkuykendall@register-herald.com