BOSTON – A member of the Legislature?s Special Joint Committee on Redistricting told The Daily Item that the panel could release its recommendation to eliminate a congressional district and redraw boundaries for the remaining nine as soon as this week, and that he?s confident the 6th Congressional District will remain largely intact.?Nothing is final until the governor signs off on it but, at this point, I am relatively confident the 6th has made a very strong case,” said state Rep. John D. Keenan, D-Salem. “It is my expectation that the draft maps will be presented this week or the very latest the following week.”The committee is also tasked with redrawing state representative and state senate district boundaries, based on the 2010 Federal Census.Once the panel makes its recommendation, Keenan said, there will be a final public comment period of likely five to seven days.?After the comment period we will finalize our maps, report out of committee and bring to the House floor for a vote. The goal is to get this done mid-to-late October the very latest, as there is a one-year residency requirement to run for a (state) House seat.”Meanwhile, two former congressmen for Massachusetts 6th District, Democrat Michael Harrington and Republican Peter Torkildsen, co-chairs of the North Shore Alliance for Economic Development, recently sent a letter to state Sen. Stanley Rosenberg, the senate chairman of the Joint Committee on Redistricting, outlining the Alliance?s recommendation for congressional district changes.The alliance?s plan would eliminate the 10th District with major changes to the 4th, 5th and 9th Districts, and would add Haverhill and Methuen to the 6th District. The 6th would lose Bedford and part of Burlington to the 5th District.The alliance?s recommendation, Harrington and Torkildsen wrote in the letter, would “grow the 6th Congressional District from the core communities of Lynn, Salem, Beverly and Peabody, just as the district has grown for close to 150 years, since the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War.”The former congressmen also point out that Haverhill had been part of the 6th District from 1873 to 2000, and it makes sense to return the city to the 6th.?Politically and historically that is the most sensible way to go,” Harrington said Friday. He said “there?s a reasonable shot we will get something close to” the Alliance?s recommendation.The 6th District seat has been heals by John Tierney, D-Salem, since 1994 who will be opposed by Bill Hudak, R-Boxford, in the 2012 election.