CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The State of Texas announced Thursday and distributed a list of committee assignments to all 150 members of the Texas House of Representatives.
Texas Speaker of the House Dade Phelan named Coastal Bend Rep. Todd Hunter as Chairmen of the Redistricting Committee for Texas and the Texas House of Representatives.
Hunter broke the news via Twitter and said he was also appointed to the State Affairs Committee and the International Relations and Economic Development Committee.
This will be Rep. Hunter's second year serving on the Committee of State Affairs which deals with administration of state government and cybersecurity. The International Relations and Economic Development Committee focuses on the economy in the Coastal Bend.
Lawmakers are expected to take on the complicated and contentious process of redistricting — or redrawing district boundaries for the state's congressional delegation, the Texas House and Senate and the State Board of Education. It happens every 10 years based on the census figures.
As has been the case for the two redistricting cycles, Republicans will control that process in 2021.
Top Democrats in the state legislature strongly condemned the choice today, saying it would result in the Latino community being under represented.
Every 10 years, a US Census is conducted to count every resident in the country. After that -- state and local governments use the new population data to draw new congressional and state legislative maps.
The point is to draw roughly equally populated districts to reflect population growth and guarantee equal voter representation. But that hasn't been the case in the last two redistricting cycles.
The Texas Legislature has a fixed number of seats: 31 in the senate and 150 in the house. Texas has grown faster than most other states over the last decade, adding close to four million people since 2010.
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