December has been a wild month for the Albany County Legislature.

On a single day, Dec. 2, we and newsrooms across the county got releases from the Republican minority criticizing the Democratic leadership for trying “to push through a backroom deal” that would have settled a redistricting challenge without going to court. The plan also involved postponing the scheduled 2015 county elections until 2016.

The Republicans correctly maintained that this would have increased turnout in a presidential election year. It is generally Third World countries that can’t stick to their election schedules.

That same day, the Democratic county executive, Daniel McCoy, fired off a release stating he’d filed a suit in State Supreme Court, saying the county legislature lacks statutory authority to settle the redistricting lawsuit. The judge had ordered Shawn Morse, the county’s legislative chairman, and Frank Commisso, the Democratic majority leader, to appear in court to show cause.

Fortunately, the Democrats backed off. The 2014 election will be held as scheduled and the redistricting case will be heard in court in a few months.

The drama continues, however, as a public hearing will be held on Dec. 29 on the legislature’s Dec. 8 resolution to set up a commission to restructure the legislature from the current 39 to 29 members.

This is not a new idea. We’ve written about downsizing — or as its proponents call it, rightsizing — for a decade, since Guilderland’s Paul Laudato proposed reducing the number of legislators from 39 to 21.

On the face of it, the idea seems like a good one. Albany County has the best represented populace in the state, if you consider the ratio of representatives to residents. As the governor continues to beat the drum for consolidating or reducing governments, proponents point out, with the economic downturn, the time is right.

We once thought so, too. Albany County legislators are each paid more than $21,000 plus benefits, and counties across the state have been cutting representatives to cut costs.

But what if we look at the larger picture? The projected savings of $400,000 annually is less than a tenth of a percent of Albany County’s annual budget.

And what else is lost? The last redistricting affected our coverage area as well as the widely covered city dispute that will end up in court.

The county looks at its district lines every 10 years after the federal census figures are released. In 2010, the population of Albany County increased 3 percent over the decade before, to 304,204.

Some of the new lines drawn up for legislative districts made no sense. The village of Voorheesville, for example, was divided.

“Voorheesville was split in half, but some other places were split in fours,” Shawn Morse told us at the time, in 2011. “I lost 150 people who live right on my same street, and 17 members of my family can no longer vote for me because the census block changed — it is what it is,” he concluded.

He blamed the county’s computer program that records data and then maps out the district lines. “We have a $25,000 computer system that basically takes all of the information and does the work for you,” said Morse, “and you try to put the human element in it.”

The “human element” got into it when African-American city dwellers and rural Hilltowners crowded the legislative hall to voice their objections.

The Hilltowners argued that they should not be divided in their representation because they share a common heritage, common problems, and common interests.  The new lines stood for the election, however, and the village of Altamont no longer has its own representative voice in the county legislature as it once did.

Rather, a chunk of the Hilltowns was lumped together with the village and a Hilltowner won the race over the long-time incumbent who also serves on the village board. Mind you, we’re not lobbing complaints about the representative for the newly drawn territory; his family has lived in the Hilltowns for decades. It’s not his doing that he now must represent a village, with somewhat different interests, as well.

Those from the city neighborhoods are still fighting to keep five districts where the “minority” African-Americans held a majority.

This underscores the virtues of a larger legislative body. As more distinct neighborhoods are represented, more voices are heard.

The charter review commission that is recommending the reduction says it could make the legislature more efficient. With the many village, school, town, and county boards we cover, we often find the most “efficient” meetings —the ones that are quickly over with little give and take — are the least worthwhile.

Democracy, at its best, is messy. When representatives are attuned to their constituents’ needs — and they can know them best if they have fewer to serve — they can speak out for them in an informed and compelling way. Such dialogue may not be efficient, but it makes for a richer, more representative government.

It also makes for a more diverse government, where different factions can group and regroup as the issues demand. Strict party-line votes often don’t best serve constituents. More representatives with their varied views working to solve problems together might save or cost little money but would likely let the voices of smaller constituencies be heard more clearly.

—Melissa Hale-Spencer