Sen. Liz Krueger was among the 20 Democrats to vote against the second passage of an amendment that would create a new entity to oversee the redistricting process.

The measure was opposed by most of the mainline Democratic conference, in part, because of the concern it was tilted heavily in favor of Republicans.

Under the plan, each legislative conference appoints two members, with the eight members agreeing on the final two commission members. Seven members of the 10-member commission would have to advance the redistricting plan.

Krueger, D-Manhattan, outlined her concerns over the amendment in an email to her constituent and pointed to a Times Union editorial that blasted the approach.

From her email:

While I wish the amendment before us represented real reform, it didn’t — the process this amendment would create is actually a step even further in the wrong direction. The editorial board of the Times Union, Albany’s daily newspaper, has done a great job explaining why — and has called for citizens to vote against the amendment, when it goes on the 2014 ballot for approval. I’ve included the full text of their editorial from today’s paper below.

I still look forward to a day when we pass a constitutional amendment establishing a truly independent redistricting process to get legislators out of the business of picking their own voters. Unfortunately, last Wednesday was not that day.

Updated: Here’s a statement from Senate GOP spokesman Scott Reif, noting the old chestnut that Democrats had two years to take up independent redistricting and chose not to.

“It’s preposterous that the Senate Democrats would continue to claim they support independent redistricting when the facts don’t bear it out. The Senate Democrats had two years to act on redistricting reform when they were in the majority yet never made it a priority. Last year, they walked out of the chamber and refused to vote on a constitutional amendment to change the process, and now most of them enthusiastically voted no when the measure was brought back to the floor on second passage. Senate Democrats are a lot of things, but reformers they are not.”

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