The group formed by the state legislature to oversee the redistricting process has launched a series of public hearings across the state. LATFOR, as it's known, will present a plan to the full legislature to redraw boundary lines to reflect changes in state population, shown in new census figures. YNN's Bill Carey was on hand for the first of those sessions, in Syracuse.

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SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- It's a group is search of respect. Vilified by the governor as too partisan. Criticized by protestors, outside their first public hearing as too beholden to the status quo.

"Unfortunately, they're only working for 239 people and those are the legislators and congressional representatives whose districts they'll be preserving and who they will be keeping in power," said Bill Mahoney of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

One co-chair of the panel challenged that claim, saying their job is not to produce competitive districts just for the sake of close races.

"Competitive, in its own right, produces two months of entertainment. What's important, more important, is that you have two years of governing and constituent services," said LATFOR Co-Chair Jack McEneny.

The pressure faced in redrawing lines is clear. There are regional concerns as New York sheds two congressional seats and cities like Syracuse fight to hold on to a congressional seat of their own.

"Partitioning of a region will result in fractured focus to the detriment of regional and metro economic potential," Deborah Warner of CenterState CEO said.

Even non-urban areas like the sprawling North Country worry about that partitioning.

"If that were to happen, our representation would be diluted and we would be relying on members who are unlikely to live or work in the North Country of New York," Assemblyman Ken Blankenbush said.

And there are other arguments. Upstate resistance to demands that state prison inmates to be counted as residents of their home districts, not the districts where their prison may be located.

"Unless we count incarcerated persons in their home communities, we deny our own citizens fair and equal representation," said Joan Mandle of Citizen Action of New York.

The timetable laid out by the panel calls for 12 of these public hearings before they produce a tentative list of boundary lines, sometime in November. Then there will be 12 more hearings before a final plan is ready to go before the full legislature.

With a primary, possibly due in June of next year, time will be tight. The final plan is due in February.

The group promises much.

"We want this task force to engage in a process that's the most open, the most transparent, the most public of any process for redistricting in our state's history," LATFOR Co-Chair Michael Nozzolio said.

Its work and its challenges, just beginning.

The public hearings continue Wednesday with a session in Rochester.