From the Daily Progress:

RICHMOND - A bipartisan redistricting bill designed to increase the numbers of competitive elections in Virginia picked up a head of steam Tuesday and shot out of a Senate committee on a unanimous vote.

The compromise measure sponsored by Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath County, includes features from bills sponsored by three other senators, two of them Republicans, and was endorsed by a host of civic and business leaders and leaders of both parties.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a Richmond Democrat, and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a Hanover County Republican, appeared at a news conference prior to the vote with Deeds and co-sponsor Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, R-Fairfax County.

Kaine said the new plan would improve diminishing voter participation by assuring more competitive elections in districts that could not be drawn to protect incumbents.

Also joining the coalition for the bipartisan remapping of legislative districts were former Gov. and U.S. Sen. George Allen, a Fairfax County Republican, and former Gov. Mark R. Warner, an Alexandria Democrat.

Allen issued a statement calling the bill “a good effort” that could use a few amendments and saying it would better assure fairness in redistricting.

“Having been the ‘target’ of creative cartography in partisan redistricting, I know how people in communities are unnecessarily divided, placed into far-flung communities which do not share similar interests, and elected incumbents are placed into the same district to knock out one without a vote of the people,” Allen said.

In 1991, Democrats then in control of the General Assembly placed Allen and then-Richmond congressman Tom Bliley into the same district. Allen left Congress and ran for governor and won in 1993.

“The people of Virginia deserve a better redistricting system than what we have experienced and endured for decades,” Allen wrote in his statement of support.

Deeds’ bill would create a seven-member redistricting commission to draw reapportionment plans for the House of Delegates, Virginia Senate and Congress and submit them to the General Assembly for action after each Census.

The advisory commission would draw the new maps of legislative districts using Iowa’s nonpartisan criteria that work well to create competitive districts by considering population and communities of interest but not parties, Deeds said.

Three members of the committee would be chosen by Democratic leaders and three members would be chosen by Republican leaders with an independent chairman to be chosen by the original six members.

The General Assembly would receive the committee’s redistricting plans, which would recognize communities of interest but not serve to protect incumbents, but would have the power to accept, amend or reject the plans.

Before its unanimous endorsement Tuesday by the full Privileges and Elections Committee, senators rolled into it bills offered by Republican Sens. Cuccinelli and Kenneth W. Stolle of Virginia Beach, said Sen. Janet D. Howell, D-Reston.

Howell, who chairs the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee, called its unanimous endorsement “a really historic moment.”

David Solimini, executive director of the Virginia Redistricting Coalition, said he did not know how the bill would fare in the House of Delegates but he has seen an increasing level of bipartisan support.

Deeds said the bill should pass the Senate by a wider margin than his proposed redistricting constitutional amendment did last year and by combining Republican and Democratic measures into one bill “it’s a better starting point than the one we had last year.”