Opinion

New lines, same game

Albany’s every-10-years’ reapportionment war is well under way.

Legislators are tending to their best interests — and the results are sordid.

The good-government types are beside themselves with disapproval.

The governor is wagging a stern finger.

Judges are — or soon will be — viewing the scene with concern.

Politicians, in other words, are practicing politics — and guess who pays for it all?

That’s right. You.

Every state goes through reapportionment following each federal Census, when changes in political district lines must be made to reflect population shifts.

It’s never a pretty process, but rarely does it get more ugly than in New York — suffering a decades-long decline in population and burdened, as it is, with a particularly odious political class.

Each time, legislative bosses draw lines that essentially protect their incumbent members as well as their respective majorities in each house.

Despite pledging during last year’s campaign to defer to an independent redistricting commission, Assembly Democrats and Senate Republicans drew the new maps themselves — ones that, says Gov. Cuomo, betray “political machinations.”

Ya think?

Just for the record, it’s a little naïve to attempt to proscribe all politics from a necessarily political process.

And it would be wrong, too — as the US Supreme Court found in a Texas case this month.

Certainly it’s no mortal sin to draw lines that would lean toward preserving a modicum of two-party government in New York — that is, a Democratic Assembly and a Republican Senate.

But there’s such a thing as going overboard.

And this year’s lines, which Cuomo correctly calls “unacceptable,” would produce bizarrely misshapen districts aimed at rendering impossible any serious challenges to entrenched incumbents.

They may be gussied up to promote “ethnic diversity,” but in fact they are meant to serve political machines — and their ability to hand-pick candidates.

Meanwhile, the Legislature still hasn’t created new congressional districts — an even bigger problem now, because of federal Judge Gary Sharpe’s ruling Friday imposing a June 26 primary for the House and Senate.

Sharpe stepped in with some justifiably tough words for the state’s political leaders.

“Having had ample opportunity to correct the problem, [they have] failed to find the political will to do so,” he charged, adding: “New York has left the court no choice. If federally guaranteed voting rights are to be protected, the court must act.”

And these are the lawmakers for whom Silver is demanding a fat pay hike.

In your dreams, Mr. Speaker.

Cuomo publicly has thus far steered clear of active involvement in the redistricting fight. Now he needs to make unequivocally clear that he will veto these legislative maps.

A little imaginative gerrymandering can go a long way toward creating a fully functioning government.

What’s on the table now is a prescription for 10 more years of the crass political advantage-taking that has shamed Albany for decades.