When it comes to Congressional redistricting, state Sen. David Argall, R-Schuylkill, says that anyone who wants the whole loaf usually goes home hungry.

Argall made the comment Friday during an hourlong interview with Marie Albiges, Spotlight-Pa’s redistricting reporter, which was livestreamed to several dozen reporters and others across the state.

As chair of the Senate State Government Committee, it will be Argall’s mission to pull together legislation that rearranges the state’s Congressional map, a task that will be even more complicated by the fact that we are losing one representative once the 2020 decennial Census is certified.

Although we already know that the state will go from 18 to 17 members in the U.S. House of Representatives, those charged with the task of redrawing the map won’t have supporting population data from the Census Bureau until late-August or early-September. Delays, because of COVID-19 and other logistical snafus, set back the timing of getting the data to the states so they can begin the onerous task ahead of them.

Presently, the Pennsylvania Congressional delegation is evenly split with nine Republicans and nine Democrats.

It is not that Pennsylvania has lost population in the decade between 2010 and 2020, it’s just that the state has not grown as fast as some warm-weather states such as Florida and Arizona, which have both added representatives.

Argall’s goal is to keep municipalities and precincts whole rather than split into two districts the way some are now. He talked about keeping counties whole, too, but this would be impossible in larger counties because of population inequities.

Argall wants to take to heart the state Constitution’s direction that districts should be compact and contiguous with population equities. The goal is to try to adhere to the “one person, one vote” goal of near-equal representation.

Argall, however, said the final plan should not be so rigid in trying to maintain population equities that communities are split, with one representative being possibly hundreds of miles away.

“We should be glad that this is done only once every 10 years,” Argall observed.

In the Times News five-county area, just Monroe is split into two Congressional districts, with much of the southern half of the county in Democrat Susan Wild’s district that also includes Northampton and Lehigh counties, while the northern part of the county is grouped with other northeastern Pennsylvania counties represented by Democrat Matt Cartwright. All of Carbon and Schuylkill counties are represented by Republican Dan Meuser.

Argall said he is hopeful that the reapportionment committee can do better than had been done in previous efforts, acknowledging, however, that “we’re never going to agree” to a perfect plan. “Our goal is to have a bipartisan approach,” he said. Although Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf must approve of whatever plan is developed, there have been no conversations with him or his representatives, at least not yet, Argall said.

Argall said the committee has been busy as it has heard from various constituencies and plans to hold hearings in Philadelphia and, possibly, Erie.

Argall promised that the final document will not “just be dropped on legislators’ desks; there will be more transparency.” He also promised that the public will have input into the contents of the document.

He described the laborious process of one of compromise and accepting reality. “My goal is not to bring forward a bill that fails, so it will take longer to get one that has the necessary support,” Argall said.

There are still many things up in the air, Argall acknowledged. Among them are whether the primaries of 2022 will need to be postponed and the filing date for prospective candidates for next year’s elections will need to be adjusted in the event the committee does not get timely census data and has sufficient time to work on developing the new map with desired input from the public and others.