ALBANY — Democrats could get a boost in future battles for the state Legislature thanks to a little-noticed provision buried in the final budget bill, officials said yesterday.
The measure requires the Legislature to count prison inmates as residents of their communities of arrest while drawing up legislative district lines.
Historically, inmates have been counted as residents of towns where they’re imprisoned.
Critics have long complained the practice helped shift power from largely Democratic urban areas to the rural Republican communities where the prisons are located.