What Do I Know?

Redistricting Court Challenge: If I Were The Judge

2012-02-02T14:21:00.001-09:00

No, I'm not going to predict the decision, but if I were the judge I would release the decision next Monday, February 6. Here's why.

At the end of the trial he said he'd have it out by the first Monday in February. That's Monday, February 6. The Board's attorney requested a Friday release because the board needs to give 48 hours notice for a public meeting.

Since that day the Board has posted tentative daily meetings starting last Monday and going through Feb. 10. (And each meeting has been cancelled the day before.)

So it seems they have found a way around the 48 hour notice and the need for a Friday decision, even if the Judge were inclined to make one, is gone. (They've cancelled each of the tentative meetings including tomorrow's.)

So, if I were the judge, I'd take advantage of the weekend to review my decision and the mountain of evidence it's based on.

As a blogger, I generally check my posts multiple times before posting. If there are only pictures and just a few words I can do it faster. If it's a longer, more disputed topic, I'll take much longer. I do this for several basic reasons:

1. Just being typographically and grammatically correct is a way of letting my readers know that I'm careful and they might have more confidence in the content as well. Despite this goal, when I look back at old posts, I tend to be dismayed at how many errors slip through.

2. The more clearly I write, the more readers are likely to take from my words the meaning I intended. But people's mental filters are so varied that this is never 100% foolproof. (As I typed that word I wondered about the etymology. I don't mean to imply that if people can't understand what I write they're fools. I know that's not the case.)

3. If it's a particularly contentious topic, I want to be as objective and accurate as possible so as to keep the discussion on track and avoid unnecessary noise.

Judge McConahy, I assume, has staff to check on typos and even do research and possibly drafts of sections of his decision.

He knows that this is a decision that will be read carefully by both the plaintiffs and the defendants and most probably the Supreme Court.

The Board will definitely appeal if the ruling doesn't favor their position.
And since the Plaintiffs know that, they must be prepared to go to the Supreme Court as well. I would assume then that if they lose in Fairbanks, they too are prepared to appeal.

So, if I were Judge McConahy, I would hold this as long as I could. Whatever he writes will be carefully scrutinized. Even if I were done on Friday, I'd want the weekend to reread it, go back through the voluminous pre-trial submissions as well as the testimony in court. I'd be checking to see if I missed an important point that supported one argument or another. If there were inconsistencies in the testimony that I'd missed. If there were clues that would help me decide if witnesses were forthcoming or not. And if they were, whether their judgment could be trusted.

And since the Judge committed to getting his decision out by the first Monday of February, I'm guessing he will, unless he finds something so important at the last minute that requires he rethink the case.

So I'm guessing the decision will be released on Monday and that Monday afternoon Board will not cancel its Tuesday meeting.

There is some urgency here. There are less than five months between now and the June 1 filing deadline for candidates in the Alaska 2012 state primary election. If the judge's decision requires changes in the district maps and the Supreme Court agrees - those changes have to be made and approved before June 1, 2012. The clock is ticking.

A quick trial trivia note: The judge and both attorneys share the first name - Michael.

Birds Sing, Another Nice Day in LA

2012-02-02T09:48:00.000-09:00

Maybe one of my birder friends can tell me what this small chirping bird is in the agave like tree. Here's another view

There were several chirping from this Evergreen Pear tree (Pyrus kawakamii) below - my mom knew the name of the tree in her yard. She'd planted it. But they hide well in the tree.

And finally this one on the neighbors' old television antenna.

Alaska Redistricting for the Masses Part 3: The Trial - The Disputed Districts

2012-02-01T03:30:00.000-09:00

Gnashing of teeth, Tearing of hair. This post is hard. So many details. How to do an overview yet reflect the complications? And I'm only talking about the parts that I think I understand somewhat. I'm still leaving stuff out. And how to do this before the decision comes out, which the judge said he'd get done by the first Monday of February? The Board has announced meetings, tentatively, starting Monday, January 30, so they could have adequate public notice in order to meet as soon as the decision is in. And they cancelled Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday's meetings because the decision isn't out yet.

So, I've decided to break Post 3 down into more than one post. This one focuses on the districts that have been challenged as unconstitutional. There are six. Five directly connected to Fairbanks and one indirectly. [This post ended up only being about districts 1 and 2 and 37.]

The basic question to be decided by the judge is this:

Could the Board have created a redistricting plan that met BOTH the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the Alaska constitutional requirements?

The burden of proof rests with the Board.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has approved the plan as meeting the VRA requirements. Four of the districts challenged, were determined to NOT meet Alaska constitutional requirements - House Districts (HD) 1, 2, 37, and 38.

Districts 1 and 2

HD 1 and HD 2 - Double click to enlarge

[The numbers on the map refer to the house district and the letters refer to the senate district. Two house districts are combined to make a senate district.]

The key problem the Judge found in HD 1 was the "appendage" that goes into HB 4. (It's the brown finger that points left between the blue of 4 and the green (of 3). The judge's order that found districts 1, 2, and 37 NOT compact is here. This actually got settled before the trial began. The order reads, in part:

. . . the Plaintiffs argue that House District 1 contains a classical appendage on its western side, which protrudes west from the Steese Highway along the Slough. The far western tip of the appendage contains a small portion of Aurora area south of College Road and north of Noyes Slough.

It goes on to say that the Plaintiffs argue that it would be easy to switch a different portion of the map so that there is no appendage. In the trial, Leonard Lawson, who was a technical witness for the plaintiffs, and had drawn the maps for the Rights Coalition, demonstrated how this could be done, showing he could adjust the lines to get rid of the appendage without affecting the number of population in each district which is important in keeping all the districts close to the same size and ensuring one person - one vote.

The importance of this appendage is further spelled out as an example of alleged political gerrymandering. Again from the Judge's order:

The Fairbanks Districts were drawn by Board member Jim Holm. Jim Holm is the former Republican State Representative from West Fairbanks City. In 2004 and 2006, Mr. Holm ran for re-election against Democrat Scott Kawasaki, with Mr. Holm winning in 2004 and Mr. Kawasaki winning in 2006. Mr. Kawasaki is the current representative of West Fairbanks. The Plaintiffs argue that the 2006 race was close and hotly contested.

The Plantiffs allege that Mr. Holm drew the appendage in House District 1 in an effort to move Mr. Kawasaki from his current West Fairbanks District to East Fairbanks, where he would be forced to run for re-election in a district that was substantially different from his current district, and against a popular former City Mayor and Republican House Incumbent. who would be running in a district that would be substantially similar to his current district. The Plaintiffs argue that Mr. Holm believed that Mr. Kawaski lived in what is in actuality his sister's home. The Plaintiffs base this argument on the following: Ms. Kawasaki (Mr. Kawasaki's sister) indicated her address as 224 Spruce when she signed in to attend a Board Hearing; Ms. Kawasaki is often mistaken as Mr. Kawasaki's wife. Ms. Kawaski's home was located in the West Fairbanks City District under the Board Option Plans; and Ms. Kawasaki's home is now in the East Fairbanks City District under the Proclamation Plan when the district's western appendage was created.

The Plaintiffs also argue that after the Board's Proclamation Plan, Mr. Pruhs, the Republican Party District 10 Chair, filed a letter of intent to run for the legislature. Under the Board Option Plans Mr. Pruhs' home was in East Fairbanks City and under the Proclamation Plan, Mr. Pruhs' home is located in West Fairbanks. Under the Board Option Plans, Mr. Pruhs would have had to face the current incumbent for East Fairbanks City, Mr. Thompson, who is also Republican. Under the Proclamation Plan Mr. Pruhs will be running against Mr. Kawasaki. Also if Mr. Kawasaki lived where his sister's home is, Mr. Pruhs would be running in a district without an incumbent.

The Defense rebuttal to this was that their need to comply with the VRA forced them to make changes in the Fairbanks area - in the trial they talked about a ripple effect that made this appendage unavoidable. They also said that Mr. Holm was following natural boundaries and that this was simply a complete census block and that population was needed in HD 1. They also denied 'the conspiracy theory' saying that Mr. Holm knew where Mr. Kawasaki lived. You can read the details in the order.

My own observation is that when the Fairbanks draft plan was introduced to the Board, it happened too quickly and too vaguely for anyone to know how it affected incumbents before the board approved it. Board member Brody asked how it affected incumbents and member Holm replied: "I haven't made an incumbent analysis yet." But in the defense reply they said that Mr. Holm knew where Mr. Kawaski lived. In the trial, Mr. Holm was able to answer most questions posed by the Board's attorney, but when the Plaintiff's attorney asked him questions he, as I wrote in a previous post wrote, either didn't know, couldn't remember, or resented the implication.

Moving along to District 2, from the Judge's order again:

The Plaintiffs argue House District 2 is not compact under the Reock Test. The Plaintiffs also argue that House District 2 is one large corridor that connects three major population areas: Badger, North Pole, and Eilson/Salcha and at the same time divides these population areas among four districts (1, 2, 3, and 6). The Plaintiffs argue that this is an odd shape, which the Hickel Court held to be indicative of gerrymandering. The Plaintiffs additionally argue that narrow highway corridor districts are indicative of gerrymandering and that the Richardson Highway Corridor District runs for 40 miles and is about 1/35th the population. The Plaintiffs content there is no justification for this non-compactness.

Then the Judge cites the Board's response:

The Board contends that House District 2 was designed to accomplish the legitimate goals of redistricting - that of equal population distribution and socio-economic integration. The Board argues that the type of corridor districts Alaska courts are concerned with are corridors of land that extend to include a populated area but not the less populated area around it. The Board also argues that there is not a single shred of evidence that the configuration of House District 2 is partisan in nature.

The Board argues that House District 2 largely consists of North Pole and Eilson Air Force Base because "many of the people that live in North Pole are retired military" and "there's a real close tie between Eilson Air Force Base and North Pole, that's where the people that don't live on Base live." Mr. Holm did not include land that is farmland because he believed the farmers had more in common with the extensive population in House District 6 and it was not possible to stretch the boundary of House District 2 towards House District 4 because he needed the population for House District 4.

There are several issues here that came up again in the trial. Although Eilson and North Pole were put together because all the military have a common bond, Ft. Wainwright was left in District 1 and Ft. Wainwright's bombing range which has no population at all, was put into District 5. Without the bombing range, District 5 would not be contiguous to District 6 and they couldn't have been paired for a Senate District and then the two Democratic Senators in Fairbanks couldn't have been paired into a single district.

Second, Mr. Holm testified several times about his interest in keeping the farmers in the area together because they had common interests. But when the Plaintiff's attorney asked him how many farmers there were, he said he didn't know the actual numbers. Mr. Walleri (the attorney) suggested there might be as many as 6 farmers and Mr. Holm said nothing. So it appeared that the farmer issue was a total red herring.

A quick look at district 37.

Double Click to Enlarge - HD 37 is Green

District 37 is half the Aleutians. A Supreme Court decision on a previous redistricting plan (Hickel v. Southeast Conference) found:

Although the parties did not raise this issue, the separation of the Aleutian Islands is so plainly erroneous that we address the issue sua sponte. Thus, in exercise of our authority under article IV, section two of the Alaska Constitution, we hold that the separation of the Aleutian Islands into two districts violates article VI, section six of the Alaska Constitution.

The Judge found these three districts (plus 38 for other reasons) unconstitutional and left the burden of proof on the defense (the redistricting board) to prove they had to violate the constitution to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

And remember - some of the key concepts about the Voting Rights Act and the Constitutional requirements were covered in Post 1.

OK, these posts were supposed to be overviews, but I've fallen deep into the details. But the principles without the details mean nothing. I've got notes that outline the principles, but as I write, that seems less important in understanding what went on and on how the judge will determine whose arguments on principles were most persuasive. For now, I'll stop here because this is complicated and long enough. I'll add at least one and probably two more overview posts on the trial.

End of the Road? No One Wants To Pay For Maintenance of California Highway

2012-01-31T04:30:00.000-09:00

An LA Times article tells us that Highway 39 was built in the 1920's and goes from Azusa almost to the Angeles Crest Highway. Right now it ends about 27 miles up.

A landslide swept away the highest part of the road in 1978, cutting it off from Angeles Crest Highway. Since then, that last stretch of asphalt has been roamed by Nelson's bighorn sheep, creatures fully protected under state law. Caltrans concluded that it would be cost-prohibitive to re-engineer that 4.4-mile gap and legally risky to try because it cannot guarantee that the sheep would not be killed in the process.

About 500 people use the road to get to their homes and the story says about 3,000,000 people use the road each year and it costs Caltrans $1.5 million a year to maintain the road that is regularly damaged by landslides, falling rocks, flooding, and forest fires. (Presumably that doesn't include the last 4.4 miles.)

Caltrans is the State of California Transportation Department and as it is looking for ways to cut costs, it wants to give the maintenance to Los Angeles County or the US Forest Service.

L.A. County needs the highway to access three dams critical to flood control. . .

The Forest Service's interest is access to Angeles National Forest by the public and, at times, by firefighters. The agency spent $6 million improving a spacious campground at Crystal Lake, where the highway now ends after winding along the San Gabriel River past the Morris and San Gabriel reservoirs.

But neither is interested in taking over the job.

So Caltrans is talking about abandoning the road.

"According to the agreement, the only way we can extricate ourselves from it is to abandon the highway," he [Caltrans rep] said.

The Forest Service says it has a different interpretation, one that would cost Caltrans dearly. "The permit does say that if Caltrans abandons the highway, they have to remove their improvements — meaning the road — and return the area to the natural landscape," Bergeahl said.

All this seems to be some sort of brinksmanship, reporter Louis Sahagun. 3 million people a year is $.50 each to pay the repairs. But why should people on that road be required to pay when other roads get covered by the state?

I like thinking about roads going back to nature. I'm not advocating it, but the whole notion of roads and other human encroachments on the earth being reclaimed by nature gives hope and perspective.

A little context for Anchorage folks. A 2010 Dowl engineering report says that 50,000 vehicles a day travel one of Anchorage's busiest roads -Tudor Road between Bragaw Street and Lake Otis. That comes to 10,000,000 vehicles per year. California's 'remote' Highway 39 carries almost 1/3 that number.

The LA Times article says 'people' per year and the Alaska report says 'vehicles' per year so these numbers may not be comparable. Nevertheless, it should put our Alaskan traffic into a bigger context and the California traffic too.

My guess all this posturing will lead to some sort of splitting up of the costs among those jurisdictions that have a vested interest in the road.

Catching the Sunset at the Santa Monica Pier

2012-01-30T16:42:00.002-09:00

The Santa Monica Pier had a very different feel from out last visit in October 2009.

We shared the pier with a lot of people yesterday afternoon following J's mini reuntion with old friends. Lots of people here, lots of music. It was a warm January Sunday afternoon and close to sunset time.

Artists draw visitor portraits all over the world. Tomás, did you ever do portraits like this? It might be fun for a Sunday fair once.

There's a big display that touts the pier as the end of the famous Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica. Wikipedia says it ended where Santa Monica Blvd. hits the ocean is short ways north of the pier.

You can listen to Nat King Cole play and sing Route 66 here.

Here's the pier when it opened in 1909. Can you believe LA only had 102,000 people one hundred years ago?
The video has clips of some of the music and sounds of the pier. I tried to check names from artists' vendor permits, but I could only find Kent Axell online.

vvvv

Listening to live music as the sun sets over the Pacific.

While others are still enjoying the chilly water.

The sun was down as we set out to find the car parked way off near Pico and Lincoln. I didn't notice any yachts, by the way. I did see some folks fishing.

This (Monday) afternoon, there's been a definite weather shift and the dry desert wind is gone and the crisp damper ocean breeze has replaced it at my mom's place. Smells good.

Driving and Parking LA/Santa Monica

2012-01-29T19:34:00.000-09:00

We went to a 90th birthday party this morning in the Valley. That required a trip over the San Diego Freeway (the freeways were called by their names, not numbers, when we moved north 34 years ago.)

I took the above two pictures 5 minutes apart. There's a slight difference between the two shots only because I zoomed the camera slightly differently from one photo to the other. But we just sat there without moving. Once it started moving, we got to a point where one of the five lanes was blocked for 50 feet and there was a construction vehicle and a police car. After that point, traffic flowed easily.

On the way back we could see a police car blocking all five lanes North at the same spot.

While there is a lot on line about this project (the one that closed the freeway totally last July), I couldn't find anything explaining what happened today. There were closures the night of January 25, 2012, but I can't find anything about today.

Then J went to Santa Monica Place to meet four friends she'd gone to kindergarten through high school with. Only one lives in LA and the others were in from as far away as Italy. I dropped her off and then looked for a parking place. All the parking lots were full and there was nothing available on the streets nearby. Half hour later I find a spot about 3/4 of a mile away, parked, and hiked back to the Santa Monica Place.

On the way out, we did get a couple of reminders that of Alaska where traffic is a little easier.

Will New California Emission Standards Help Butterflies Survive?

2012-01-28T16:00:00.002-09:00

The Tropical Butterfly House at the Pacific Science Center on the site of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair was a great place to completely change our environment last Monday. From the low 40˚F outside into the mid 80˚F inside. More significant was the change into a tropical garden full of butterflies.

Most of these I can't name, so I'll just show more pictures I took. The butterflies were pretty obliging.

Owl butterfly

Everyday Green reports on the decline of the butterfly.

Many butterfly species are on the verge of becoming or have already become extinct. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated 23 species in the country as endangered or threatened.
The declining butterfly population is a more serious problem than many people realize. Butterflies are an important part of the ecosystem. Theyplay the critical role of pollinator in plant reproduction. Plus, theirextinction upsets the natural order of the food chain.The decrease in the global number of butterflies is also an indication of some much greater problems going on in the world today. Some of the factors contributing to the declining butterfly population include the destruction of their natural habitat due to real estate development (about 6,000 acres a day), deforestation, global warming, and the widespread use of pesticides (especially those used for genetically modified crops).

It's not all bad news. The Environmental News Network reports

Tropical Butterfly House from outside
"Some of Britain's most threatened butterflies are showing promising signs of recovery after decades of decline, according to a new study. The new data comes from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, which has been monitoring changes in butterfly populations across the United Kingdom since 1976. The biggest winner of 2010 was the wood white, which has suffered a 96% decline since the 1970s, but whose population increased six-fold last year. . .

. . . Although Britain's butterflies remain in long-term decline, the populations of three-quarters of threatened species increased in 2010. This change in fortunes has been put down to targeted conservation action, combined with better weather last year after a series of disastrously wet summers. Butterfly experts hope that if Britain experiences a similar summer this year, some of the country's most threatened species could continue to make a significant recovery. "

You can see the overall grim pattern with figures for different butterflies from a less optimistic British report released in December 2011 at Datablog.

Iowa appears to be losing one of their butterflies:

"The Poweshiek skipper is a small moth-like butterfly that was discovered in Iowa’s Poweshiek County in 1870. Now due to its plummeting population the Poweshiek skipper is a candidate for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Experts are unsure why the butterfly’s population is declining. Theories include climate change, pesticides and prairie burns."

The Florida Museum of Natural History has a long Q&A about butterflies. They tell us that butterflies belong to the familiy Lepidoptera which includes moths and means scaled wings. They also answer the question:

"Q: Are butterflies important?
A: Yes! They are important as plant pollinators, second only to the bees. They also are very sensitive to the environment and thus are good indicators in assessing how healthy or unhealthy conditions are. They also have their own important place in the ecosystem like all animals do."

And the Florida website tells you how many of the 265,000 species of Lepidoptera are butterflies and how many moths.

Given that global warming is listed as a contributor to the decline in butterfly populations, today's news in the LA Times, that California is imposing more stringent standards for auto emissions is probably good news for butterflies - at least those still in existence by the time the regs take effect:

"California, long a national leader in cutting auto pollution, pushed the envelope further Friday as state regulators approved rules to cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars and put significantly more pollution-free vehicles on the road in coming years.

The package of Air Resources Board regulations would require auto manufacturers to offer more zero- or very low-emission cars such as battery electric, hydrogen fuel cell and plug-in hybrid vehicles in California starting with model year 2018.

By 2025, one in seven new autos sold in California, or roughly 1.4 million, must be ultra-clean, moving what is now a driving novelty into the mainstream.

The board also strengthened future emission standards for all new cars, making them the toughest in the nation. The rules are intended by 2025 to slash smog-forming pollutants from new vehicles by 75 percent and reduce by a third their emissions that contribute to global warming." [The rest of the article is here.]

Artist Hype

2012-01-28T03:30:00.000-09:00

We saw The Artist tonight in Santa Monica. I'd been hearing it was good and intentionally avoided any details. I knew it was a silent movie and black and white.

From a Santa Monica parking garage

Last year Black Swan was a big disappointment. This year it's The Artist. There were a number of neat things about the movie, but the movie as a whole left me unengaged. I'm sure there was a lot of homage that went over my head, but the movie itself has to work. The lead actor did nothing for me. The lead actress I liked. The dog did tricks. There were neat old cars. But for me it didn't all come together as a good movie. I think the novelty of a silent, black and white movie in 2011 and good marketing have given this film more buzz than it warrants.

Not Quite Poetry at the Beach - And Some Redistricting Notes

2012-01-27T13:01:00.001-09:00

I ran down to the beach and got my feet wet.

Then I decided to check out a bit of the Venice Boardwalk.

Last year I ran into poet Jeffery Martin here, but now there were hula hoops. I knew he wouldn't be here - he should be back teaching.

But a little further down I found poetry of a sort for sale.

Then I ran back to my mom's to have breakfast. Felt really slow today, despite having run in Portland and Seattle. Oh well, I've got some time to get back into shape down here.

I promise to put up more than fluff photos soon. I'm trying to get Part 3 of the Redistricting Overview posts up soon. But it's complicated and I'm trying to get it more useful, but I'd like to get it up before the judge's decision comes out. The Redistricting Board sent an email Jan. 24 to people who signed up for email alerts saying that it could meet anytime starting Jan 31 to respond to the court decision, depending on when it came out. The meeting will be streamed but they say the meeting

"may involve periodic recesses to a time certain. Discussion of legal matters may require executive session."

Since they'll be meeting to talk about their response to whatever the Judge McConahy rules, I suspect there won't be too much on the record, except to announce what they decide in executive session.

I don't see anything on their website or FB page on this though. The email does say:

This meeting will be streamed at www.alaskalegislature.tv. In the event you can't listen on internet you may call 1-855-463-5009. This is a listen only meeting. Testimony will not be taken.

I have to say again that making the trial in Fairbanks accessible via phone was a big deal that I, for one, appreciated. I don't know how many, if any, Alaska trials have been open to the public this way. Judge McConahy probably had to approve that, so he gets a thank you as well as the Board.

Seattle to LA - Clouds, Snow, Sun, Olifactory Seeing, Clear LA

2012-01-26T21:08:00.000-09:00

One more trip to the airport. First we took the ferry into Seattle. It was raining this morning when we walked over to M's place. But by the time we were headed to the ferry the sun was out. We walked from the island into Seattle - around and around the ferry. But on the water and in the wind, we were reminded why a jacket was still a good idea.

I still hate the TSA charade, but as an older white male who doesn't yet have any metal parts, it was relatively painless. I guess I'm like the frog where the water temperature goes up slowly so you don't notice you're starting to boil. I don't deny there are fanatics out there who might like to blow up a plane, but the way they check for that person is overkill. We tolerate much higher death risks (autos, guns, no health insurance, etc.) with far less protection, but the symbolism of a plane coming down makes us spend way too much money and wastes way too much of our time. Of course if you're a 1 per center, you can just take a private jet and by-pass it all.

Soon we were in the clouds again, but on the sunny side.

We bought some yakisoba at the Waji's in SEATAC and I had Cutting to Stone with me. I'd bought it nearly a year ago, but had put it down for other reading. So it was just as we were passing over that I noticed we were right on top of Mt. St. Helens.

Crater Lake was glowing in the sun's reflection. But the photos weren't good enough to put up. But you could see the bowl holding the lake and an island.

Eventually we were in Southern California with the ocean mirroring the sun and wispy clouds gauzing the mountains.

The Channel Islands came into view. (Thanks nswfm for confirming this on an previous trip.) The picture is even more dramatic than the real thing. To keep the sun's reflection from washing everything out, the rest of the picture had to be darker than it really was. It was still pretty spectacular.

I figure getting to see the earth from the air is one of the benefits of flying. I understand that most people prefer the aisle, but that's a small benefit compared to this incredible view of the earth's geography.

It was about that time I read about Shiva and Genet and Marion were playing Blind Man's Bluff on the Missing Hospital grounds in Addis Ababa. Marion and Shiva discover their sense of smell.

I'm still amazed that I can be flying over the Western United States and be in Ethiopia at the same time.

As we made the slow turn into LA, Santa Catalina Island was relatively clear out in the distance. And below me was LA's south beach coastline.

We turned in over LA south of the airport and then looped back to the north and around south of downtown. It was an amazingly clear day.

Downtown Los Angeles

People often ask how we could move from LA to Anchorage and when I say there are similarities, they can't imagine what I'm talking about. But both have salt water on one side and mountains on the other.

If you click on this photo you can see the Hollywood sign on the closest mountains on the left. You can't quite read it, but it's the white horizontal line on the top of the hills. My little Canon Powerpoint surprises me when it gets pictures like this. But then LA surprises me when it offers a day like this. For those of you who don't know LA - we're looking north. Downtown's buildings are on the right. The first range of hills is the Hollywood Hills. The Griffith Park is there with the observatory and the zoo. Hollywood is at the foot of the hills. Between the hills and the next range is "The Valley." The ocean is off to the left. Pasadena is north and a bit east of downtown.

And then we were on the ground. This new construction made me think about how old this airport is. The basic structures were up in the 1960's. For high school graduation I went with a group of friends for dinner at the restaurant on the flying saucer like building in the center. [I like different music, but the current restaurant's website music fits a science fiction movie rather than a fancy restaurant.] And now, the long tiled tunnels to baggage seem pretty bare compared to the many airports that have been built since then. It looks like LA is now working on looking like all the other airports. This is when I realize I better look this up. Here's a bit of what I found on the LAX website:

Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) is in the midst of a multi-billion dollar development program for Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The centerpiece of the program is the Bradley West Project which includes new gate and concourse areas at the Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT). LAWA also recently completed a $737 million renovation of TBIT that upgraded the facility with a new in-line baggage screening system and interior improvements to enhance service and convenience to the passengers and tenants who use LAX's premier international terminal. The TBIT renovation incorporated sustainable design and construction guidelines developed by LAWA and the facility is more energy efficient and environmentally-friendly as a result. LAWA’s commitment to sustainable development and the environment was recognized by the U.S. Green Building Council which awarded its prestigious Silver LEED-EB (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – Existing Building) Certification which is the first-ever for a renovation project at a U.S. airport.

There was a tour for media about the construction on Tuesday. Here's the news release link.

Because I had to take a suit along for the wedding in Portland and we had some bulky gifts and because we flew enough last year to get MVP for this year - we decided to check in two pieces. On the up side, Alaska Airlines 20 minute baggage pledge meant the luggage was out after we took pit stops and checked on which bus to catch. The on the down side only one of our suitcases was there.

I saw one similar to J's but it was bigger and had pink yarn on the handle. The baggage person said everything was out. When she asked the color I pointed to the one that was like it. She got it. Looked up the passenger and said, "They had three bags." There wasn't much left, so the odds were that they had picked up the wrong suitcase, because one of theirs was still here. She found their cell phone number and within ten minutes we were exchanging suitcases at curbside.

Then we got on our bus and I snapped this sunset shot before getting to our stop. And soon we were having dinner with my mom.

Calder's Eagle and Friends at Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park

2012-01-26T03:30:00.000-09:00

Monday afternoon (when there was a day of sunshine) at Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park.

Tony Smith - Stinger

From ArchDaily:

Teresita Fernández - Seattle Cloud Cover

"As a “landscape for art”, the Olympic Sculpture Park defines a new experience for modern and contemporary art outside the museum walls. The topographically varied park provides diverse settings for sculpture of multiple scales. Deliberately open-ended, the design invites new interpretations of art and environmental engagement, reconnecting the fractured relationships of art, landscape, and urban life.pe, and urban life."

The Trust For Public Land writes:

di Suvero - Bunyan's Chess

"In 1998, TPL, in partnership with the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), stepped in to purchase the last undeveloped piece of downtown Seattle, a 7.3-acre former oil tank farm zoned for development as hotels and condominiums. TPL and SAM proposed a very different plan: redeveloping the site as a park that would showcase great art and outdoor conservation, and effectively double the amount of open space in Belltown, the city's densest and fastest-growing neighborhood."

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's Typewriter Ribbon, Scale X

Yes, the beach is part of the sculpture park.

Disposal of Sharps, Artsy Waxed Cloth, and Adams, St. Helens, and Goat - PDX (and beyond) Sights

2012-01-25T17:33:00.000-09:00

In the restroom past security at PDX (and other airports) they have needle exchange boxes. I was scratching my head over this one. Can you take hypodermic needles through security with your carry on? The person at the Alaska Airlines desk didn't know.

Drugwarfacts posts:

"(syringe exchange definition) "Syringe exchange programs (SEPs) provide sterile syringes in exchange for used syringes to reduce transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other bloodborne infections associated with reuse of contaminated syringes by injection-drug users (IDUs). . . . SEPs can help prevent bloodborne pathogen transmission by increasing access to sterile syringes among IDUs and enabling safe disposal of used syringes. Often, programs also provide other public health services, such as HIV testing, risk-reduction education, and referrals for substance-abuse treatment."

Our flight from Portland to Seattle on Monday left from Section A - where smaller regional planes fly from. On the way, we passed "Mechanics of Hither and Yon" created by Brenda Mallory. It covered two two-story walls and part of a third wall

Oregon Public Radio writes:

Mallory creates her multimedia sculptures with an unusual combination of welded steel, waxed cloth, and nuts and bolts. Inspired by the location, she calls this piece The Mechanics of Hither and Yon.

We quickly rose above the Portland clouds and as we crossed over the Columbia River into Washington the clouds disappeared and it was sunny and beautiful. (Well, it wasn't quite that abrupt.) And we saw these peaks out the window. First was, what I now think was Goat Mountain. Mt. St. Helens is much easier to tell because it blew up in 1980.


Mt Adams(12,276f- 3743m) , Mt. St. Helens (8337f -2541m), and, I think, Goat Mountain (4965f-1513m)

When we got to Seattle, I asked a TSA guy about the needle exchange and whether people could take syringes through security. He said you could. I looked on line to see what TSA actually says:

Notify the Security Officer that you have diabetes and are carrying your supplies with you. The following diabetes-related supplies and equipment are allowed through the checkpoint once they have been screened:
Insulin and insulin loaded dispensing products (vials or box of individual vials, jet injectors, biojectors, epipens, infusers, and preloaded syringes;
Unlimited number of unused syringes when accompanied by insulin or other injectable medication;
lancets, blood glucose meters, blood glucose meter test strips, alcohol swabs, meter-testing solutions;
Insulin pump and insulin pump supplies (cleaning agents, batteries, plastic tubing, infusion kit, catheter, and needle); Insulin pumps and supplies must be accompanied by insulin.
Glucagon emergency kit;
Urine ketone test strips;
Unlimited number of used syringes when transported in Sharps disposal container or other similar hard-surface container.
Sharps disposal containers or similar hard-surface disposal container for storing used syringes and test strips.
Insulin in any form or dispenser must be clearly identified.
If you are concerned or uncomfortable about going through the walk-through metal detector with your insulin pump, notify the Security Officer that you are wearing an insulin pump and would like a full-body pat-down and a visual inspection of your pump instead.
Advise the Security Officer that the insulin pump cannot be removed because it is inserted with a catheter (needle) under the skin.
Advise the Security Officer if you are experiencing low blood sugar and are in need of medical assistance.
You have the option of requesting a visual inspection of your insulin and diabetes associated supplies.

But needle exchanges are meant for drug addicts to prevent AIDS and hepatitis from needle sharing. So I looked back at the photo. It doesn't actually say needle exchange. Maybe it's just for disposal. King County (Seattle) has this on their website:

Safe and legal disposal of sharps

Disposal of syringes, needles and lancets is regulated. These items are called "sharps." They can carry hepatitis, HIV and other germs that cause disease. Tossing them into the trash or flushing them down the toilet can pose health risks for others. Regulations governing disposal of sharps protect garbage and other utility workers and the general public from needle sticks and illness.

There are different rules and disposal options for different circumstances. The main difference is between sharps that are used in a business and those that are used in the home for personal reasons. And, for home users, it makes a difference whether you live in the City of Seattle or if you live in an area of King County outside Seattle. The different regulations and disposal options are explained below. [Read the rest here.]

Spend a Free Night In Jail with Thoreau

2012-01-25T09:20:00.000-09:00

This is for Anchorage area readers. Here's a promo I got from Cyrano's this morning. I'm out of town, so someone out there has to take my seat. This should be thought provoking to say the least. The folks out keeping the occupy tents going and the rest of us who should be out there supporting them can surely gain some inspiration from this reading.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 FREE

From the email:

Cyrano's Theatre Company presents
a special staged reading of
The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail
by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee

Produced for CTC by Peter Porco and Jeff Aldrich
Directed by Bob Pond

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away." [Walden, 1854]

"Thoreau's famous essay Civil Disobedience was an extremely personal response to being imprisoned for breaking the law. Because he detested slavery (and the Mexican-American war) and because tax revenues contributed to their support, Thoreau decided to become a tax rebel. …Thoreau declined to pay the hated poll tax--a capital tax levied equally on all adults within a community. …So, in July 1846, he was arrested and jailed. He was supposed to remain in jail until a fine was paid, which he also declined to pay. Without his knowledge or consent, however, relatives settled the 'debt' and a disgruntled Thoreau was released after only one night. The incarceration may have been brief but it has had enduring effects through Civil Disobedience." [from Henry David Thoreau and Civil Disobedience by Wendy McElroy]

More at Cyrano's Facebook page.

Between the Woods and the Water and Much More in the Catacombs of Powell's

2012-01-24T22:05:00.000-09:00

The Catacombs of Powell's are filled with books. New and used. Chamber after chamber, up the stairs, down and around. Red room, blue room, purple room. They take up a whole city block in Northwest Portland. Powell's is functional. Concrete floor, basic bookshelves of books and books and books.

As I wandered from room to room I thought of this as the last bastion of books as Kindles and iPads and Nooks become gain a foothold. It's to Powell's people will come when all the other bookstores have long since closed. Surfing for books online isn't the same as losing oneself in this cavernous bookstore. Pulling books off the shelf, reading a few pages or more. Here are some I paged through Sunday.

Randomly seeing titles or covers that call out to you. What's that about? And being able to pull it off the shelf, flip through the pages, put it back and do the same with the one next to it.

Books, that last for decades, centuries even versus data magically digitized.

The one you can't read is The Fall of the House of Forbes

The back cover said, "Between the Woods and the Water" begins where its predecessor, A Time of Gifts, leaves off - in 1934, with the nineteen-year-old Patrick Leigh Fermor standing on a bridge crossing the Danube between Hungary and Slovakia. A trip downriver to Budapest follows, along with passage on horseback across the Great Hungarian Plain, and a crossing of the Romanian border into Transylvania. . .
Patrick Leigh Fermor is a writer of inexhaustible charm, learning, and verbal resource who possesses a breathtaking ability to sketch a landscape, limn a portrait, and bring the past to life. Between the Woods and the Water, part of an extraordinary work in progress that has already been acclaimed as a classic of English literature, is a triumph of his art. For this tale of youthful adventure is at the same time an exploration of the dream and reality of Europe, a book of wanderings that wends its way in and out of history and natural history, art and literature, with the tireless curiosity - and winning fecklessness - of its young protagonist, even as it opens haunting vistas into time and space."

Maybe Powell's will be able to figure out how to keep it live and online at the same time.

新年快樂 - Happy Year of the Dragon

2012-01-24T09:05:00.000-09:00

We made it to Seattle today - it was sunny and warm around noon when we arrived in Chinatown for lunch. Though there were snow patches here and there. When I saw this picture on wall, I remembered I needed to do a post of the Year of the Dragon.

[The characters in the heading come from Good Characters. You can hear it pronounced in Mandarin there too.]

From 2012Dragon.com:

The Dragon is in fact the major symbol of good fortune in Chinese Astrology. The Dragon constellation, for example, is accorded the honor of being the guardian of the Eastern sky. According to tradition the Dragon brings in the Four Blessings of the East: wealth, virtue, harmony and longevity.

Indeed, of the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac the Dragon is the most special, as it is a mystical being rather than an earthly animal. It is sometimes called a karmic sign. In this context that means we can expect grand things this year. Bigger than life is very much a Dragon thing. There will be spectacular successes as well as crash and burn failures.

To get an idea of the magnitude of events that might occur in 2012 it is helpful to look back on the last time the Water Dragon made an appearance, the year 1952. In February Elizabeth II became Queen of the United Kingdom, beginning a reign that still continues today. The UK was responsible for another amazing feat of longevity. In November Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap opened in London, eventually setting the record for the longest, continuously running production of a play in history. It is not really cause for celebration, but in 1952 the United States introduced two of the most destructive weapons in history, the hydrogen bomb and the B-52 bomber. On a more positive note, the field of medicine saw the first successful separation of Siamese twins at Mt Sinai hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. And, to make the point that significant bad things can also happen in a Dragon year, in December a killer fog descended on London, one result being the invention of the word smog.

Throughout history parents in China have hoped to have children during Dragon years. What famous people will be born in 2012, and how will they change the world? The year 1952 claims world leaders including Vladimir Putin and Lee Hsien Loong.

And then there was drumming and a pair of dragons:

Are you a dragon? Chinese astrology is on a 12 year cycle. Some the most recent Dragon years:

1916	1952	1988
1928	1964	2000
1940	1976	2012

HTML Tables
Remember these 'years' go from Jan/Feb of one year to the next

Paranormality offers these characteristics of Dragons:

People born under the year of the Dragon appear to have magical traits, they are strong and full of energy and forever on the go. Some of their more negative traits include: eccentricity, a tendency towards being arrogant and very trying. However they do have many fans and expect the same level of excellence from others that they expect from themselves. They are also full of pride. Other traits include: failing to practice what they preach, over confident, a tendency to intimidate others, feel themselves to be above the law, and can be illogical, domineering and obstinate. In many cases they fail to identify their foes. Although energetic they are liable to become obsessive. On the plus side they seldom hold grudges and are generally quick to forgive. Dragons are said to be able to accomplish great things and those born in this year are also said to represent the horns of destiny. Needing a cause for which to fight, Dragons will never merely stand back and accept their fate or what life brings.

Fengshuitoday had a long post on the Year of the Dragon last October. Here's a tiny bit:

To summarize further, the Yang Water Dragon year, with water on top and earth below, is a symbol of powerful energy and enthusiasm for progress and change. Such a powerful force of ocean water not only brings drive for social and political changes and reforms, but will also bring natural disasters such as flooding and earthquake. There will still be conflict and disharmony in international relationships and it may not be a peaceful year, but the international clashes are less violent than the last two years of metal over wood. Also there is some improvement on the environmental situation, but disease and epidemic will still prevail.

"The beacon fires were burning for three months" - Calligraphy at the Japanese Garden, Portland

2012-01-23T21:20:00.000-09:00

I asked a woman who turned out to be Judy the extent to which a person should be able to recognize the characters in the calligraphy. As you can see, the Chinese characters are on the description of the calligraphy. I tried finding some of the easier characters in the calligraphy, but it was really hard.

Judy said that was part of the art of calligraphy. The art should express the mood what is written.*

But in this one I can actually find some. If you look at the second row, left column of the Chinese characters in the description, you can see ⽕ (fire) and ㆔ (three) and ⽉ (moon or month). They are in the middle column of the calligraphy. Find the ㆔. The ⽉ is below it. The ⽕ is up two from it.

And you should be able to 'find them' in the English translation.

I can see a violet flower in the image of this character. (I hope it's the right one.)


Clouds - Christine Schulbach

As I understood it, the calligraphers were guided by Fujii Sensei who led a workshop. The website of the calligraphy organization - meitokai - has a brief bio:

"Master Calligrapher Yoshiyasu Fujii (b. 1963, Fukuoka, Japan) began calligraphy studies at the age of five, in his childhood home of Saga, Japan. He attended Daito Bunka University and studied under Master Calligrapher Shumpo Akashi, with whom he would continue to study until Akashi’s death in 1995. While studying with Akashi, Fujii studied sumie painting and pursued his interest in the history, not only of Japanese calligraphy, but of Chinese classical calligraphy in addition to all of the traditional calligraphy writing styles. Fujii is the recipient of many honors, including top award at Mainichi Calligraphy Competition, Japan’s oldest, largest, and most prestigious calligraphy competition, in 1990 and 1992. He has served as assistant judge at the Mainichi Calligraphy Competition and is the only calligraphy instructor in the U.S. licensed by the Japanese Ministry of Education."

He talked to us a bit about the exhibit and the calligraphy on the floor which he had done the other day in a demonstration. He's put some pictures of this exhibit on his website too.

The card with this calligraphy offers a haiku:

"Leaving Japan. Just as the Persimmons finally ripen.
(A Haiku by Judy's Mother)"

Judy told us that her mother wrote haiku for over 50 years and they have all been published. Judy is, I believe she said, an artist rather than a calligrapher. So her calligraphy reflects that artist's eye.

We got there not too long before closing - and watched them take photos before taking down the exhibit.

It seems I got a picture (not sharp enough to post though) of one card, but I seem to have forgotten to get the scroll with it. It's one of Fujii Sensei's work:

A person can claim to drink the first cup of liquor. But by the third cup, it's the liquor that swallows the person. I can't recall who said this to me, but I wrote it on my waist band as a warning.

I thought it a profoundly simple and universal truth.

*A website called Beyond Calligraphy has this on the deeper meaning of calligraphy:

The Art of Far Eastern (mainly Chinese and Japanese) calligraphy is a universe on its own, sewed with passion, soaked in love, painted in stunning beauty, sparked by raw emotions, and secluded under a translucent veil of ancient mystery. We find it as fascinating as the miracle of life itself. Our intention at beyondcalligraphy.com is to reveal and share secrets of this vast world by bringing it straight to your home.

The art of writing Chinese characters is often misunderstood for many reasons. One is that not many people realise that in calligraphy, kanji (漢字, i.e. Chinese characters) are to be felt long before they are being read. Another is that the word “calligraphy” in western understanding means nothing more than a craft of writing in a beautiful manner, whereas here in the East we refer to it as “way of writing” (Japanese: 書道, shodou) or “laws of writing” (Chinese: 書法, shufa), which is to be understood as a “chosen life path”, a sacred knowledge, far beyond the definition of “art”.

I'm not sure how much Japanese calligraphy I've seen. Mostly I've seen Chinese work. For those unfamiliar with Japanese writing, they use a combination of Chinese characters - Kanji - and two phonetic alphabets. One is for native Japanese words and the other for words borrowed from other languages and scientific terms. You can learn much more at linguanaut.

Portland's Japanese Garden 1

2012-01-23T03:00:00.000-09:00

Drops of water everywhere. Then inside to warm exhibit hall. Calligraphy post coming soon. Portland's Japanese Garden.

Good to Run, Even if Wet

2012-01-22T19:07:00.000-09:00

We're staying in NW Portland, not far from our apartment when I spent six months here on sabbatical. We're not in the section I ran most often. Today I got to go run. It's all familiar, but the details of which roads dead end into paths into the park are fuzzy.

It turned out to be uphill most of the time (coming back was much faster) and I knew there was a trail somewhere through the wooded park. This on the left is that trail, but going the wrong direction. I just couldn't find the trail connection on the other side of the road.

So I turned around and went back pretty much the same way I came, varying the streets a little. I haven't run for about three weeks, but shoveling snow has kept me reasonably fit, but it just doesn't compare.

On the right is a runner/biker by-pass for a tunnel.

I think we're headed for the Japanese Garden later. It was one of our favorite nearby destinations. I used to run by or through it regularly. It's beautiful rain or shine.

Portland Wedding - Kennedy School, All Saints Parish, Two Brothers, and Pearson Air Museum

2012-01-22T04:00:00.000-09:00

We're in Portland for a wedding. Wednesday I got a call asking if I would serve as the best man. I've known M for over 30 years and we're the kind of friends who may not talk often, but when we're together it's like we haven't been apart. We went to his first wedding in Anchorage many years ago. When I had sabbatical in Portland for 6 months in 2003-2004, we spent time with M and his wife who was seriously ill with cancer and needed dialysis.

We've had several other trips to the Portland area in the last five years and stayed at M's place. One time he banged on our door about 10am and said, Hey, Alaskans, get up and see what's on TV. It was McCain announcing Palin as his VP choice.

Jordan Room at the Kennedy School

So, when his original best man was unable to come at the last minute, I said yes. M said that the other guy had even written a speech. So I said to be sure to send it to me. (It served me well. Thanks Reb.) And M told us we should be at the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner Friday. Unfortunately, we weren't due in until 4:40 and the rehearsal was scheduled at 4 with the dinner at 6 at the Kennedy School. I just assumed the Kennedy School was a Catholic School that was big enough to have rooms where for events like this dinner.

Kennedy School Hallway

We got to Portland half-hour late. We checked in bags - something we almost never do, but we got so much mileage last year that we qualify for free bags and we'll be in LA a while and we had gifts to pack. Fortunately as I headed for the rental car J said, don't we have luggage to pick up? Well, the Kennedy School isn't far from the airport and we arrived at this jammed parking lot about 6:20pm. There was a parking attendant who said we could park in one section if we were staying at the hotel. Hotel? At a high school? We found a parking place and walked in. There was a bar near the entrance. What kind of school is this? We wandered the halls til we found the front desk and where we were supposed to be. The Jordan room. We passed some restaurants and other parties. We got to the Jordan room. There were only a few people there. The rehearsal had run late.

It turns out the Kennedy School is an old Portland Elementary School that had closed down and was bought and converted into an entertainment place, but as you can see, the blackboards are still up in the rooms. With chalk.

From the Kennedy school website:

Since its 1915 opening, this historic elementary school has been a beloved fixture of its Northeast Portland neighborhood. McMenamins renovated the once-abandoned scholastic gem and turned it into Portland's most unique hotel. Here you'll find 35 comfy guestrooms fashioned from former classrooms (complete with original chalkboards and cloakrooms, private baths and telephones), a restaurant, multiple small bars, a movie theater, soaking pool, gift shop and a brewery (just wait until the principal hears about this!). Extensive original artwork and historical photographs cover the walls, ceilings, doorways and hallways.

Fascinating example of recycling. I enjoyed having my brain teased like that.

Today we went to All Saints Parish for the wedding mass at 1:30. I wasn't the only one whose flights didn't get them to the rehearsal dinner and I'd had detailed instructions on what was going to happen and what I was supposed to do and it went off well. If I messed up, no one said anything to me about it. I didn't lose the rings. (The seven year old had one tied onto a pillow, but the priest said that children were less predictable than adults.)

And after the wedding was over, the sun even came out and brightened the stained glass windows.

The wedding had been at 1:30 and we hadn't had lunch so on the way home as we passed Two Brothers Grill - a Croatian restaurant - we decided this looked like a good place to eat. It was. And this being Portland, they even had a vegetarian section on the menu. J ordered some Turkish coffee along with her meal.

I had the vegetarian stuffed cabbage with corn meal.

And we had time to stop at the hotel and get ready for the party at the Pearson Air Museum in Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River. About ten minutes from our hotel in NW Portland.

The museum is in what we were told is the oldest still standing hangars in the US. I couldn't find that on the Fort Vancouver website, but there was this (and more):

"Vancouver's Pearson Field is one of the nation's oldest operating airfields. Aviation first came to Vancouver in 1905, when Lincoln Beachey flew from Portland in a lighter than air craft and landed on the polo field at the Vancouver Army Barracks. Continuous fixed wing aviation made its debut in 1911, and the facility, dedicated as Pearson Field in 1925, played host to a number of aviation milestones over the years. It remains to this day a busy general aviation airport. The Pearson Air Museum and its Murdock Aviation Center are part of Fort Vancouver National Site."

The reception was a lot of fun and the kids had plenty of space to run around and to make and fly paper airplanes. I met a lot of interesting people including a former Peace Corps volunteer (one of only a few groups in Yemen), a former special ed teacher, a former Attorney General of Oregon, and a Chinese calligrapher to name just a few.

And while I thought the cake looked like it was cardboard, it was a delicious combo of white and chocolate.

A long and eventful 24 hours. And the start of what I expect will be an interesting and happy marriage.

Spectacular Chugach Views on Flight from Anchorage to Portland

2012-01-20T23:11:00.000-09:00

The flight cancellations over the last couple of days due to snow in Seattle and some ice and heavy rain in Portland meant the flight was packed. But it was sunny and crystal clear in Anchorage - and -5˚F didn't matter.

So just lean back and enjoy the views.

Icy Cook Inlet

Foraker (l) and Denali 150 miles to the north

Glenn Highway North at Eagle River

Lots of Snow on the Chugach Mountains

This is about 12:30 pm. The sun is getting higher on the southern horizon, but still low enough to cast these long noontime shadows.

Remember, these are all taken through the not totally clear plastic windows of an Alaska Airlines plane, with a small Canon Powershot that I have to reset for distance for each shot. (I'm sure there's a way to make it stay.)

Fjords into Prince William Sound

The captain said we were flying over Cordova, otherwise I wouldn't have known. We went there by ferry last summer and it looked totally different.

If this one were near Anchorage, I would say it was the pattern of the waterways at low tide. But I'm not really sure. It's off shore. But is it low tide or just frozen solid? Here's another one below.

And soon after this we were flying over clouds until we got under them to land in Portland.

Why Kokayi Is Going To Lose A Lot Of Weight In Juneau

2012-01-20T03:30:00.000-09:00

A friend of mine has decided that kids going hungry here in Anchorage isn't right. He's working to End Child Hunger by 2015. He's been pushing a bill that would put $2million into feeding kids at school. The legislative website tells you this:

BILL: SB 3	SHORT TITLE: FUNDING FOR SCHOOL MEALS
BILL VERSION: CSSB 3(FIN)
CURRENT STATUS: (H) FIN	STATUS DATE: 03/07/11
SPONSOR(s): SENATOR(S) WIELECHOWSKI, ELLIS, DAVIS, EGAN, FRENCH, KOOKESH, MCGUIRE, MENARD, PASKVAN, THOMAS REPRESENTATIVE(S)Kawasaki, Petersen, Kerttula, Munoz

TITLE: "An Act providing for funding for school lunch and breakfast; and providing for an effective date."

See where it says "Current Status" above? The (H) means House (of Representatives) and FIN means Finance Committee. It passed the Senate last year pretty quickly. And then it went to the House Finance Committee on March 3, 2011. It's been there ever since.   Since the Legislature is on a two year cycle, and this is the second year, it's still there.

Note that the first sponsor is Wielechowski. He's an Anchorage Democrat who has also been a strong opponent of HB 110. That's the bill the Governor wants that will give the oil companies a $2 billion a year break on their taxes. Each year. In exchange for vague words about more jobs and investment. Words. Not even written down. No commitments.

Kokayi is planning to wait until Feb. 6 to see if the Finance Committee co-chairs will let the bill out on to the House floor for a vote. If they don't, he's pledged to fast until they do.

I'm betting he's going to lose a lot of weight.

HB 110 is the highest priority of the House Republicans and the Governor. Now that all the politicians that went to prison for corruption are out, it seems like things are getting back to how they were.

I'm guessing that as long as Wielechowski is going to fight to block HB100 in the Senate (and he's not alone on that - Republicans and Democrats defeated it last year) S3 isn't moving. That's how they play the game in Juneau. Wielechowski's bill to fund school breakfasts and lunches (we're one of the few states that doesn't provide state money for that even though most other states are in a financial pinch and we've got $2 billion a year to give back to the oil companies). I doubt that co-chairs Stolze (Chugiak/South Matsu) or Thomas (Haines) will move the bill until HB 110 is passed through the Senate. And even then chairs have been known to just let a bill die as a form of punishment. I don't know for sure that's what's happening. Maybe they just think $2 million to feed hungry kids is a waste of money as opposed to getting $2 billion back into the oil company coffers.

What are you going to do to help Kokayi End Child Hunger in Alaska by 2015? He's got links at his site to write a letter and to join the peanut butter drive.

Fire and Snow

2012-01-19T16:31:00.001-09:00

It's almost a month past the winter solstice. It's 4:20pm and an office building is catching the reflection of the setting sun through the snow covered trees. Official sunrise was 9:50am for a total of 6 hours and 41 minutes. That's a gain of 4 minutes and 28 seconds from yesterday.

The unrelenting snow storms we've had since Halloween have paused and we've had nearly a week of sunny, if cold, days. Even though this is winter, the increasing light brings hope of warmer and sunnier days. And J and I are getting ready to head south for several big events - a wedding and two 90th birthdays. Fortunately, the redistricting board trial ended Tuesday (they were ready to go through Friday) and so I've had time to catch up with my life and most things I wanted to do before we left are getting done. An important step - the house sitter is ready to move in as we move out.

UAA Provost Michael Driscoll - New Indiana University of Pennsylvannia Presdient

2012-01-19T08:30:00.003-09:00

Pennlive reports:

Driscoll - Image from Pennlive

University of Alaska provost and executive vice chancellor Michael Driscoll, 50, was hired by the system's board of governors to succeed David Werner, who has served as interim president since August 2010.
Driscoll will start on July 1 at a salary of $275,000, which will be the highest salary of the 14 presidents working at system schools.

I noticed this morning a lot of google searches for "Michael Driscoll University of Alaska" going to a post about the UAA Faculty Senate meeting with President Gamble in which Driscoll is mentioned. So I googled him myself to discover his new appointment which had been posted 45 minutes earlier at Pennlive. The story begins by saying that as proof that they did a nationwide search, they got their new president from as far away as Alaska.

“Corporations are NOT people! Money is NOT Speech!” Anchorage, Friday, 11-1

2012-01-19T08:10:00.001-09:00

January 21, 2012 is the two year anniversary of the Supreme Court decision Citizens United which essentially gave corporations the first amendment rights and removed spending limits for corporate political speech. In Alaska we saw the impact of this in last fall's write-in campaign by Lisa Murkowski.

Move To Amend is holding a rally at the

Anchorage Federal Courthouse

7th and C Streets

Friday January 20

11-2pm

This is part of a national drive to amend the US Constitution to say the bill of rights applies to human beings and not corporations. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has submitted one amendment and Alaska's Sen. Mark Begich was one of the first to sign on.

Voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina have already seen the changes this has caused in the caucuses and primaries, with millions of dollars of third party ads. Jack Gillum at Huffington Post writes:

Forget kissing babies on the campaign trail. The millions of dollars' worth of political advertisements airing before the early primary elections are turning out to be money well spent: The ads have affected primary results more than other forms of campaigning, including personal appearances by candidates, campaign speeches or town hall meetings, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

I was in Juneau in 2010 when the decision came out and I posted on the hearings in both state houses as both Republicans and Democrats worked to do damage control by adding disclosure requirements for any corporate donations. Alaska didn't have disclosure laws because corporate political contributions had been banned altogether.

I had a chance to talk to Curt Karns who is helping to coordinate the Anchorage event.

Applying Gingrich's Muslim Endorsement Statement to Christians

2012-01-18T15:50:00.001-09:00

Newt Gingrich was asked the other night if he would endorse a Muslim-American running for US president. He had a long response (video below), which ends with:

"A truly modern person who happened to worship Allah would not be a threat," Gingrich replied. "A person who belonged to any kind of belief in Sharia, any kind of effort to impose that on the rest of us, would be a mortal threat."

That's sort of how I feel about Christians (and Jews and others) running for President.

"A truly modern person who happened to be a Christian would not be a threat. A person who belonged to any kind of literal belief in Biblical Law, any kind of effort to impose that on the rest of us, would be a mortal threat."

There's a lot of worthy stuff in the bible, as there is in the Koran, but there's also a lot of 3000 year old tribal customs. I'm not ready for a Christian extremist who believes the earth is 6000 years old and wants that taught in schools. (Newt, do Christians have to be modern persons too?) I don't want someone who will cherry pick phrases from the bible to support his personal emotional issues to impose as law.

If a person believes the bible is literally true, and is the word of God, we're in serious trouble. They would have the same zeal and belief in their infallibility as suicide bombers and the extreme Jewish Orthodox settlers. Because they believe God is on their side, political opponents are seen as infidels and agents of Satan.

Currently phrases are lifted to justify crusades against gays and gay marriage:

If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. [from twopaths]

But supporting laws that require marriage be "between a man and a woman" ignores other references in the bible to men (kings even) having multiple wives. Seems pretty arbitrary to me. And they don't see the irony in their use of the slippery slope argument that gay marriage will lead to polygamy!

Gingrich voices concern in the video about how Muslims treat women as though women did well in the bible and as though there were no biblical laws that require the stoning of women (and men.) Who can predict which laws a Fundamentalist Christian might want to impose on us? There's a lot of strange stuff in Deuteronomy to choose from. Is this, for instance, the basis for those who oppose abortion even in the case of rape?

Deuteronomy 22:28-29
New International Version (NIV)
²⁸ If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, ²⁹ he shall pay her father fifty shekels^[a] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

It seems many fundamentalists pick obscure passages that raise funds and also passions against some marginal group, while ignoring more critical standards, such as the honoring the sabbath (the fourth of the Ten Commandments). Has anyone seen Fundamentalists picket in front of Walmart (or anywhere else where people worked) on Sunday lately?

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD your God: in it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. [from Catholic Version of Ten Commandments]

How many of you have manservants and maidservants? And what about the stranger within the gates? There is a lot in the bible about welcoming strangers, but it seems to me so called Christians are in the forefront to lock the borders and deport aliens, aka strangers.

So, no, I don't want Sharia law imposed on us. Nor do I want Christian or Judaic biblical law imposed on us either. I think the danger of Christian law being imposed is far greater than Sharia law. It's already happening. Maybe the questioner should have asked about imposing biblical law too.

Here's the Gingrich video from TPM.

One can ask how someone can rant against Muslims and not see the same danger in their own religion. Partly I think this stems from being so immersed in one's own religion that one sees it as the obvious, one, true religion. I also think there is a capacity in human beings to compartmentalize. Islam is in one compartment of the brain and Christianity is in another. They simply never see the two compared, side to side, except in a good-bad dichotomy. But who knows?

Alaska Redistricting for the Masses Part 2: The Board Process

2012-01-18T03:00:00.000-09:00

Part 1 looked at Why We Have Redistricting? Part 1 will help with understanding some of the legal requirements the board had to balance and key terms needed to understand the process and the court case.
Here in Part 2 I'm going to briefly go over what the board did.
Part 3 will look at the trial, which ended today.

Part 2: The Alaska Redistricting Board

The Board Members are appointed by different officials. The governor appoints two members, the Speaker of the House appoints one, and the Senate President appoints one. The last member is appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The first three positions above are held by Republicans and their appointees are all Republicans. The Supreme Court Chief Justice appointed a Democrat. The board consists of three white males, one white female, and one Native female. Four Republicans and one Democrat. Two are former legislators, two are realtors, and one is the CEO of a Native Corporation. They come from Kenai, Kodiak, Kotzebue, Fairbanks, and Juneau. (That’s right, no one from Anchorage.) Here's a list of the members with pictures and brief bios.

All the board members were appointed by September 2010 and met in December and also went to training on redistricting, the Voting Rights Act (VRA), and how to use the redistricting software.
Board staff was hired, offices secured, furniture, computers were secured.

The Census Data were received on March 13, 2011 and they had their first public meeting in Anchorage on March 15. The state constitution requires they have a draft plan ready in 30 days and a final plan ready in 90 days from receiving the census data.

There were three key outside groups that also submitted plans. Alaskans for Fair Redistricting (AFFR) was mainly union and native groups. Alaskans for Fair and Equitable Redistricting (AFFER) was basically the Alaska Republican Party, some native groups (Calista), and other unnamed funders. The Rights Coalition was the Democratic party and some other groups.

After the 2001 Plan, AFFR successfully sued and got significant changes in the plan.

All the Board meetings were open to the public. There was a website, Facebook and Twitter pages, There was a very ambitious public hearing project which had the board traveling all over the state, mostly in teams of two members.

The Voting Rights Act expert, Dr. Lisa Handley was hired on April 9 and met with the board twice by telephone and once in person. Her main job was to advise the board about the benchmark the Department of Justice would hold them to (That’s the 3-2-1 plus 3 senate mentioned in Part 1) based on the 2002 districts and the racial voting patterns of elections in the last ten years. She also advised them on the percentage of Natives that would be needed in the new districts to meet the VRA requirements on the new plan.

The board set up a strategy to first do the districts in Southeast Alaska, because they were going from five house districts to four and they had one Native house district and one Native Senate district in the benchmark (2002) plan. Because of the loss of population and because they are mostly separate from the rest of the state, they were going to be difficult. Next they wanted to do the rest of the Native districts to be sure they would meet the benchmark requirements. That left the urban areas for last. One Board member, Robert Brody from Kodiak, voiced concern about there not being enough time to do redistricting for over 70% of the population at the end.

PeggyAnn McConnochie took the lead for Southeast and that process was very open. McConnochie and Marie Green were the leads for the Native districts and that process was also pretty open. Board member Holm worked on Fairbanks, pretty much by himself and was approved without a lot of discussion by the Board. Most people were not familiar with Fairbanks or the implications of the maps drawn. Matsu was, in my recollection done mostly by staff. Chair Torgerson worked on various maps. Bob Brody also worked on various areas, as I recall, doing work on Matsu, Anchorage and Eagle River, Kenai in particular. He [Brody] was the one member who regularly challenged the Chair's approach to all this. [A reader emailed me that I had these last two sentences mixed up and it was misleading. Fixed now.]

The plan got done in time for the June 14 deadline. The VRA expert got a draft plan around that time and a final report explaining to the DOJ why she thought it met the requirements of the VRA in August. The plan was sent with lots of documentation to the Department of Justice. Board staff and two members - Torgerson and Green - went to DC to meet with DOJ officials during this time and notice of preclearance arrived in October.

There were 30 days after the plan was completed for anyone to challenge it in Court. The City of Petersburg, the City of Fairbanks, and two people (Riley and Dearborn) from Ester/Goldstream filed three separate suits. It was determined the trial would be in Fairbanks. Eventually, Petersburg and Fairbanks dropped out but the Ester/Goldstream suit stayed and that was the challenge before Judge McConahy.

I’ll end here for now and try to do an overview of what happened in the court case soon. That's harder because I had to listen in by phone and it just happened and I'm still processing what went on. But this and Part 1 are probably good background for understanding what happened in the Fairbanks courtroom.

Redistricting Trial is Over

2012-01-17T13:05:00.000-09:00

The Board's attorney Michael White has completed his closing argument, there were complimentary words by the judge at the end for all involved, discussion of housekeeping items, which I only partially grasped, and it's over.

White's closing seemed more efficient than Walleri's in terms of content per word. There was a bit of cliche court room hyperbole ("not a shred of evidence" is one example) but overall, it was more fact based, and more focused on a list of specific points. I wasn't sure about much of his argument - I simply don't know enough to judge. Right now I'm too fried, not to mention behind on other things I have to do, to write more on this now.

The judge did say he would like to get the decision out by the first Monday in February. Mr. White requested a Friday because of the expedited time line and the Board's need to give 48 hours notice of a meeting. The first Monday is Feb. 7, the first Friday is the 4th. He also said there is no time for motions of reconsideration and made mentions of appeals and the Supreme Court.

I have absolutely no idea how the judge is likely to rule. I need to go through the two closing arguments again and try to make sense of them. But even then, there are too many issues of law that I don't know or understand to be able to figure out how the judge might rule.

Redistricting Court Challenge: Plaintiff's Rambling Closing Statement

2012-01-17T11:28:00.000-09:00

At one point in this trial, the plaintiff's attorney said he was not very articulate. He's right. His closing argument wandered all over the place. He covered a number of valid points but also seemed to throw in a lot of irrelevant material. I'd almost call his comments on using race as a proxy for politics a rant. There are valid issues in there, but he had a really hard time honing in on them. Will the judge be put off by the all the unnecessary and even off point material, or will he just ignore that and focus on what was on point? They are getting back at 11:30 so I don't have much more to say now. I'll try to pull out the key points of both closing arguments later.

You can call in and listen to the Board's closing argument - it starts at 11:30.

Conference Number: 866-231-8327 (Limited to the first 150 participants)

Conference Code: 9074529311#

I am so glad this is almost over.

Redistricting Court Challenge: Judge Not Happy Getting Map First Day of Trial

2012-01-17T10:12:00.000-09:00

I got on the phone line at 8:31 and the judge was talking. It sounded like he wasn't happy about the plaintiffs showing up on the first day of court with a plan the defense hadn't seen yet. He was letting the plaintiff's lawyer, Michael Walleri, know that he wasn't pleased but he would let him proceed.

Walleri argued that the defense is claiming they produced a plan that couldn't help violating the Alaska Constitution because it had to meet the Voting Rights Act. Therefore it is important to show that such a plan could be drawn. At one point the Judge said something about that train having left the station.

Leonard Lawson was the key witness. He testified about the standards he'd used drawing the maps for the Rights Coalition were based on the best information they could get about the standards. First he relied on court documents from the 2002 redistricting. Then what was said in the redistricting process that was wrong. He never knew about the changed nomenclature and standards of 5 effective house districts (and 3 effective Senate seats) until December 2011. Thus he could try to make a map that worked until then. And that was why none of the third party maps turned in met the standard. But that it could be done and that's why he made this map late December/early January.

He also testified that the reason they hadn't turned in shape files or that they used total native population instead of Voting Age Population (VAP) was that there was no guidance saying what was needed. Once he learned what was needed he complied.

They are on a half hour break now - till 10:15 trying to work out with the clerk what evidence they agree on. I think that's what the Judge said. He also said something about scheduling closing arguments and there may be two more witnesses called.

Below are my notes. I'll put a page break here so they don't take so much room. Hit Read More to see the detailed notes if your browser even reads the page break coding. (mine doesn't.)

The rough notes, usual warnings apply. I typed these on the fly. There are gaps, omissions, typos, and errors. But they give you a sense of what was covered and if it's important you can check the court records when they come out. Maybe the Board is even taping this, I didn't ask.

8:31 Judge is talking: Evidence that these other plans may have passed. Not sure why the evidence, why the plan was posed on the first day of the trial
Mr. White, I understand you have a continuing objecting to the use of the this plan

White: We’ve had no chance to check this file

That’s why I didn’t allow this. Mr. Walleri I’ll be very interested.

Walleri: In terms of Dr. Arrington. He’s available at, excuse me. He’s there for the Texas litigation, and their trial goes to 6pm so he would be available at 2:30 today. About the court’s problem…

Judge: If he has this prior to Jan 9, he’d have to talk about it the way Dr. Hanley talked about it.

Walleri: Mr. Lawson came in and they met, he advised that he believes it passes the benchmark. He did go over the numbers presented by Mr. Lawson.

Judge; Purpose to say that this is another plan to say if it works, to show that here’s another one that meets the benchmark, I still thank that’s in dispute.

White: We just said, there is a process. No one gave us one. . .

Walleri: What plan does less violence to the constitution. That’s the only thing that . . . we go further, there were option that would do less violence

Judge: Didn’t that train leave the station a long time ago.

Walleri: There’s a problem here, I don’t know the intentions of Dr. Handley, , really has to do with the process. The board already has said they didn’t know the bm until, well they didn’t really find out the 5 effective districts until after the DOJ submission. There’s a lot of disagreement that it’s not just nomenclature.

Judge: Thats in the wayback machine.

Walleri: We didn’t know until Thanksgiving.

Judge: Why didn’t you give the shape files bak then.

Walleri: That was 30 days before trial.

Judge: Why didn’t you come up to the plan back then?

Walleri: If you know what the effective standards back then. We believe it was the fifth influence

Judge: Not how I read it, this was on the table a long time. Bringing a plan on the first day of trial. I don’t have control over what happened before the trial. I have little control over the trial. But I’m concerned about the sharing of data, but I’m concerned that the data hasn’t been shared.

If folks in this room think I’m going to be redrawing this, they are wrong. If some or all of it is remanded to the board, the board will have to redraw, consistent with the SC. The SC will say, we like. . .

Walleri: That is not the intention of what the court is about.

Judge: Trial court should say is it in harmony with Constitution and VRA. Good choice, bad choice. harmony not in legal case.

Walleri: Whole issue here not the burden on 3rd parties to come forward to show how the Board should have done it’s work. There is a system to engage the public and listen, the obligation, the burden of proof is on the board.

Judge: I got that

Walleri: I agree there were other plans available to the board. Issue really whether the plan that was drawn was necessary to violate the Constitution. We’re saying there were other ways to deal with the problem.

Judge: I agree that the burden doesn’t shift. But all parties must follow due process, and discovery. In this context I’ll allow you to use this in rebuttal. I’m not happy that a party is bringing this in on the first day of trial.

White: They have had…. Arrington had the plan since September. He said what the bm …???

Walleri: Leonard Lawson
What kind of VRA infor did you need to do plans.
Lawson: How many districts VRA required and what they needed to be effective districts.
Walleri: You needed to know how many effective and influence districts. Effectiveness standards.
You attended most of the board hearings in Anchorage.
Lawson: Kenai, Matsu and Fairbanks too
Walleri: Rights coalition was one of a number of third party plans. What assumptions were you working on when you made the draft.
Lawson: Working on assumptions from previous redistricting. Using Majority-minority terms. We had no information from Dr. Handley.
Walleri: Were you aware of criteria the board was using?
Lawson: There were legal standards, but I was unaware of VRA standards.
Walleri: How did you know?
Lawson: They were released by the board and we used then.
Walleri: Tried to use guidelines from ten years ago.
Lawson: We pulled the court records from ten years ago. We used that for influence districts which were around 35%
Walleri: How many opportunities did you have to convince the board?
Lawson: Prior to May 17 we requested another chance after we got Dr. Handley’s guidelines.
Walleri: In terms of formatting, did the board advise how to format, what kinds of data they wanted.
Lawson: Not to my knowledge.
Walleri: The first plan you submitted using total native population? Yes
Did standards change after may 17? Completely
What happened?
Lawson: Handley presented and said we were moving from majority-minority standards to effective. Said we have 4 effective state house districts and majority-minority might not be effective and used HD6 that was m-m but counted as influence.
Walleri: Did you understand effectiveness standard.   41.?% and one that was 49.?% and Aleutian district that could go down to 3?.?5
Walleri: Did you meet those standards?
Lawson: May 17 we were given one week to meet those standards.
We asked Michael White to review the standard, and he was kind enough to do that. He said, bm statewide was 41.7% number and explained differences in hd6 and 37.
Walleri: I understand you recorded this, why?
Lawson: I’m a very auditory learner. I can’t take notes.
Walleri: You provided that recording. Your Honor, may I play this?
Judge: For what purpose? Is there anything new?
Walleri:
White: I did say for the record, I don’t have any problem with the recording.
Judge: Did the Rights plan hire it’s own VRA expert?
Lawson: AFFR did some preliminary analysis.
Judge: I’ll accept the White characterization.
Lawson: We presented to Lisa Handley and thought we would get feedback, but was told we wouldn’t not get feedback, but might get questions. Either mr. White or Torgerson. It should be on tape somewhere.
Walleri: Did you submit plan on 24th? Yes And make presentation? yes
What was your guideline for the effectiveness standards and number of districts.
Lawson: All based on Dr. Handley’s presentation.
Walleri: Told to use any format?
Lawson: I don’t believe so.
Walleri: Did your plan include total Native or VAP?
Lawson: The May 24 was the first time we learned to use only VAP.
Walleri: Did May 24 change your understanding of number of districts needed or effectiveness standards needed? NO NO
When did you first learn about the five effective districts?
Lawson: Reading Dr. Arrington’s … in December really that I knew anything about needing five effective districts.
Judge: How many?
Lawson: I thought 4 effective and EO and influence.
Walleri: Alaska submission lists this
Walleri: Did you have und   ??? No.
Your understanding you needed influence districts? Yes
When did you learn you didn’t need influence districts? Arrington’s deposition
Walleri: Two demonstrations, relates to HD1. Can you go to your computer and pull up existing proclamation plan? What program are you using?
Lawson: Maptitude.
Walleri: You loaded proclamation plan into Maptitude system? Yes
Could you focus in on HD 1? A little closer, we’re focusing on this area and this area.

9:06 - This appendage coming out of 1. If you can start the process here of moving the census blocks in this appendage into d. 4.
Judge: What are you showing, that there are different ways to skin a cat?
Walleri: Bickford said the appendage was necessary for deviation and that is distinctly not the case.
Telling Lawson to move parts of the map around. You’ve highlighted. 433. About 21 more than in the appendage. Move those to HD1. What is the deviation from the ideal is in the resulting districts. 255 people or 1.4% deviation for 1. In 4 326 or 1.84%.

Thank you.

Walleri: I would say that is roughly the deviation as in in the proclamation plan. What were the original deviations in proclamation plan for hd 1 and 4?
Lawson: 347 1.59% and 236 1.33%
White: For the record, those numbers are different from what is on the record.
J41 - Board proclamation data p. 6034

Walleri: you were asked before the trial to see if you could do another plan. YES
Also asked to do a demonstration plan or modified rights plan and that was provided copies to both the Riley plaintiffs and Petersburg plaintiffs. When developed?

Lawson: Early October.
Walleri: What was you understanding of the standard at that time 4-2-1 plus 3 effective Sen. districts.
Does it surprise you that it doesn’t meet the five effective
Judge: What is the demonstration - Modified rights - OK
Walleri: You learned about the five effective in late November.
Lawson: I learned about it after I read Handley’s deposition because it said 5, but I didn’t understand that. It went from     and then in deposition I heard about 5. I didn’t know for sure until I read Arrington’s deposition when he agreed to the five effective districts.
When? December 21. I was flying back to see family and we had trip to dc and I had time in the car to go over it.
When back to Alaska? 28th What did you do?
Lawson: I think I spent a little time looking at the plan, close to NY a lot going on. Right after NY worked on the plan and worked on what is now being called the modified rights 2.
Walleri: Did you contact anyone about this?
Lawson: Not until I had a better idea if it would work. Then I contacted Michael Walleri - that was the friday before trial.
Walleri: What did you tell me?
Lawson: I thought I had a workable plan
Judge: How did you have Arrington’s deposition?
Asked for it
Judge: When did you start working for Mr. Walleri.
Lawson: Goes back a while, not really sure
Judge: Mr. Walleri, go ahed.
Lawson: AFter I met with you (W) I met with Arrington. AFter reviewing it he asked questions about overlap about some of the old and new districts. He said he saw no issue with the plan and thought it would pass DOJ.
9:21 Some similarities with between the plans, correct? Describe the similarities as you move south?
Lawson: District 40 virtually unchanged. Shishmereff in current district in now.
39 same kind as proclamation but different split on Delta region, but include same communities. ONly dif in how Delta in Proc 6, in mine, part of Delta’s moved to 39, but otherwise both followed the highway and same boundary lines.
N. boundary of 38 in Proc and 36 in mine.
Walleri: More consistent with Constitutional standards. Soicoeconomic Integration,
How many times break the FNSB borough? once
How many times Matsu boundary? not at all. matsu borough is 5.01 districts.
Had to take some population from one of the organized boroughs? yes. What district is that? 38. Where did you get population? from Kenai/
Homer, Seldovia, Nanwalak, Tyonek. Major places.
Walleri: Other than Homer those are Native villages.
Why Homer: It’s not a suburb. It’s its own community, not like Ester. Homer had connections outside of Kenai because of the flights there. People would go to Homer to go to wildlife. Kind of self contained and had connections outside the borough.

Judge: Did you talk to anyone from Homer about that?
Lawson: I don’t believe I did.
P. 2 produced by Dr. Arrington.
P. 3 is the breakdown? Yes, produced by me.

Judge: Mr. White?
White: Just briefly.
To be clear on a few points. You produced the two plans. You did it on his instructions, even though you didn’t see the need.
White: Produced it because Mr. Walleri asked you and provided it to Arrington. And Arrington says five effective house and 3 Sen.
Lawson: I don’t recall it in his report.
9:30am
White: Page 7 par. 13 in his report. Dr. Arrington says. There are 5 bm house and 3 bm Senate. Based on information you gave him.
Lawson: repeat?
White: the demonstration plan meets the 5 -3 bm.
Lawson: not very familiar with this report.
White: Say you attended most board meetings. But not all.
White: Were you there April 6, when we said there would be 9 districts.
At no point did Rights Coalition hire a VRA expert?
Lawson: that was cost prohibitive
White: The answer is no then.
White: Pop of Ak is 710,231, disagree? Why do you have pop of 710, 907.
Lawson: I don’t see that number.
White: At no time did you add up the numbers.
Lawson: The computer program does that.
White: Add up the number you have 600 plus people not counted by the census.
You also have 256 more natives than the census.
Lawson: not certain there’s an error, need to check the source.
White: You breached the Kenai borough 3 times?
Lawson: Same number as Proc.
White: You had to take urban population from Homer. You just moved from Fairbanks to Homer.
You understand that Dr. Handley said you need Democrats. yes
So it’s not different from Fairbanks.
Lawson: Different in other ways . . .
Judge: What do you want to do? Call Arrington? I think you know my thoughts on that.
Walleri: I don’t think it’s still necessary.
Judge: Then my plan would be to start off with you agree upon and make sure not only you agree and this young lady has you where you are happy. My expectation is that joint exhibits should all come in. A few that were touched on, and that is appropriate for this kind of litigation. Some offered and admitted without objection. One from plaintiff without objection.
How about I give you to 10:15 to make Madam Clerk happy. then we can schedule some closing arguments.
Walleri: something about Dr. Walkie Charles and Robert Dean. We would proffer that as evidence of the nature of what he would testify to.
Judge: I can handle that, but willing to hear White.
Dean: Ran for house against Mr. Foster in Dem in Nome. Dean is Yupik and Foster is Yupik. The upper and lower Yupik folks won’t support each other Lower Yupik wouldn’t support Upper Yupik and Mr. Foster won.
Judge: White?
White: No problem.
Judge: Secondary, maybe tertiary. At least legally I’m not seeing that as VRA level. I leave that to protect your record for that. We’ll be back at 10:15.

Alaska Redistricting for the Masses - Part 1

2012-01-17T03:00:00.000-09:00

The Redistricting Board trial going on in Fairbanks now. I blogged the process last March - June. The court is going over a lot of arcane details. I've been tyring to figure out how to blog about it so it makes sense to people.

So I'm going to attempt here to do three blog posts.

Part 1: An overview of why we have redistricting and what the rules are.
Part 2: An overview of what the Alaska Redistricting Board did.
Part 3: Making sense of what is going on in the courtroom in Fairbanks as I listen each day by phone.

First, let me thank the board, and I suspect particularly Taylor Bickford, for making the trial accessible by phone. I don’t know if other trials have been available that way in Alaska to the public before, but this has been great. (It’s also taking up a lot of my time!) Thank you.

I guess the biggest challenge is to see the whole puzzle instead of getting caught up in the individual pieces, and this trial has had a lot of very detailed technical pieces revolving around how to determine whether districts meet the Voting Rights Act (VRA) standards.

So, let me start with this post which gives an overview why we have redistricting.

Part 1: Background of Why Alaska is Redistricting

Census Year

Every ten years the Census is taken to determine how many representatives each state should have in Congress. Then states have to reallign the districts so that all districts have nearly the same number of people to insure one vote for each person.

States also revise their state legislative districts. Since Alaska only has one Congressional representative, the whole state is the district, so no redistricting has to be done on that level.

But this year’s census has shown a loss of population in rural Southeast Alaska and in the far western areas and growth in urban areas of Anchorage, Matsu, Fairbanks, and Kenai. So the districts set up after the 2000 Census are no longer equal in population and new districts must be drawn.

This was anticipated and rural legislators got a Constitutional Amendment passed in the 2010 legislative session that would have enlarged the legislature by 4 house seats and 2 senate seats. This would have made the current process easier and added new seats in the fastest growing areas rather than taking seats from the rural areas. But it was voted down by the public in November 2010.

Voting Rights Act (VRA)

The 1964 Voting Rights Act, as amended, makes sure that minorities are not discriminated against when it comes to voting. Particularly in the South, there were obstacles to Black voters participating. There was intimidation, there were poll taxes, and voting tests. And districts were drawn to minimize the ability of Black citizens to elect candidates of their choice. The Voting Rights Act (VRA) was passed to correct these problems.

States with a history of racial voter discrimination (about 16 in total, mostly in the South) are required to have their redistricting plans precleared by the Department of Justice to make sure they meet VRA requirements. Alaska is one of those states because of past court cases which found that the State’s districts discriminated againt Alaska Natives.

Retrogression

The key factor required by the VRA is that the state’s new districts may not be retrogressive. I understand that, broadly, to mean, the ability of Alaska Natives to elect the candidates of their choice may not be diminished. Specifically, the Department of Justice checks that Alaska has the same number of “Native Effective” Districts after the 2011 (we didn’t get the 2010 census data until March 13, 2011) redistricting as it had after the 2002 redistricting. A Native Effective district is one in which Alaska Natives are able to elect the candidate of their choice.

After the 2002 redistricting Alaska had, what Dr. Lisa Handley, the Board's Voting Rights Act expert, called three effective Native, two equal opportunity, and one influence state house districts plus three effective state senate districts, for a total of nine Native effective districts. (Be warned, that part of the current trial is about the nomenclature used for these different districts which has changed a few times since this process began in March and seems to be changing in the courtroom even.)

Other Key Federal Requirements

In addition to meeting the Voting Rights Act (VRA) requirements, the redistricting plan also had to meet other standards - some federal and some state.

One person, One vote
A critical federal (and state I believe) requirement is the one person, one vote standard. That means the districts must have as close as possible the same number of people. After the 2010 census that meant that the 40 Alaska state house districts should ideally have 17,755 people each. It doesn’t have to be exact, but there can’t be more than 10% deviance from the most to the least populated district. In urban areas it should be closer to 1% because they are more densely populated and it’s easier to do.

No Gerrymandering
No political or racial gerrymandering is allowed.

The Board’s attorney told me during the process that no redistricting plan since the VRA has been found to be in violation of the political gerrymandering prohibition. And in court, the plaintiff’s attorney has raised the idea that he - the Board's attorney - told the Board that they really didn’t need to worry about gerrymandering.
You can see the whole list of legal requirements that the Board posted on their website.

State Constitutional Requirements

There are three basic requirements:

Compactness - districts should be as small and geographically tight as possible. Because of Alaska’s large land mass and low population, this is a particular challenge in some rural areas.
Contiguity - All parts of a district must be touching. Water can count here, because we have lots of islands, but it has to make sense.
Socioeconomic integrity - Ideally, residents of a district would have as much in common as possible so that a representative can more easily represent all their interests.

It’s important to note that the Federal Constitution and laws must be met before the State Constitution and laws. This was an issue for the Board, and is an issue before the court now. The board’s plan meets the VRA standards and has received preclearance from the US Department of Justice. But the judge in the current court proceedings has ruled that four districts do NOT meet one or more of the three State Constitutional requirements. During the process, the Board’s legal counsel, Michael White, informed the board that if there was a conflict, they first had to meet the VRA requirments and the one person one vote requirement. A critical question before the court is whether the Board could have created a plan that met the VRA requirements AND met all the state constitutional requirements. At this point, the burden is on the defense (the Board) to prove it could not. Proving a negative is not easy. How high a standard will the judge hold them to?

Importance of Redistricting

Redistricting will have a major impact on the State of Alaska. It will determine how many members of each party will get elected to the legislature. Currently the state senate has ten Republicans and ten Democrats and is run by a bi-partisan coalition of 16. Four Republicans have not joined the coalition. The state senate has held up Governor Sean Parnell's bill - HB 110 - that would lower the taxes on oil companies by $2 billion per year. A change of one Democrat would allow for a Republican majority and a much greater likelihood that the bill would eventually pass. This is a point the plaintiff's attorney has made in the trial because two Democratic Senators in Fairbanks have been redistricted into one Senate seat, meaning one of them will not return. Meanwhile, adjacent to that Senate seat is an empty Senate seat. It would have been very easy to leave the two Democrats in roughly their old districts. The only other paired incumbents are in Southeast Alaska where they lost one house seat and one Senate seat. This looks to many like gerrymandering.

Redistricting Court Challenge: Voting Rights Expert Handley

2012-01-16T13:29:00.003-09:00

This is really hard to write about. I didn't post more from Friday though I started to. For now let me just say that Executive Director Taylor Bickford, under cross examination began to falter Friday. I think that he was probably thinking too much. My sense is that he's basically a good guy who was trying to do a good job under difficult conditions. But the plaintiff's attorney, Mike Walleri wanted to remind the court that Bickford was a partisan Republican. But Bickford wouldn't admit to anything that he thought might be used against him. It was like he was pausing and thinking, "What are the implications of this questions and my answer?" and then he would try to create a teflon answer.

He wasn't partisan, he just worked for Republicans. It was just a job. It had to be one party or the other, and just happened to be Republican. Even when he worked as the 2010 Republican Victory Director for State Republican Chair Randy Ruderich. He wouldn't even acknowledge that he knew Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan was a Republican. "I don't know that."

Given that most anyone in Anchorage who is at all politically aware knows that Sullivan is a Republican, when the Republican Victory Director claims not to know that, it raises questions about how honestly he's answering other questions. You could hear that his normal calm, that was evident when he was being questioned by the Board's attorney, was gone.

But I had lots of other things to do this weekend so I didn't feel I was ready to write about the substantive results of the testimony.

This morning, I was surprised - and plaintiff attorney Walleri objected - when witness Lisa Handley wasn't going to be the first witness as scheduled. Walleri learned last night that the Defense wanted to put Eric Sandberg on first. He promised the judge that it would only take 30 minutes (it took 40) and then Eric wouldn't have to wait around for Handley's much longer testimony. Eric was the GIS expert for the Board and his testimony was calm and forthcoming.

Then Dr. Handley came on. I really haven't had time to go over my notes, but here are a few things that come to mind.

One issue already raised, was that the terminology used when she advised the board - majority districts, equal opportunity districts and influence districts - had changed after the board completed the their plan. And there were also questions, because of this, whether the third party plans could have had the right number of districts because they were working on wrong assumptions about what the benchmark was because of the nomenclature. Were they required to have 4 effective (majority) districts and 2 Equal Opportunity and 1 influence, as Handley had said earlier, or were they required to have 5 Effective districts?

Much of the discussion was on the terms and what they meant and why they changed and when she found out and how she found out. She also was using a term I didn't recall from the meetings last spring - Protected districts. Was I missing something?

Toward the end of the morning, Walleri asked about this term and said it hadn't been in her report or deposition. It seems it comes out of the Texas redistricting case that she's working on and goes to court next week in DC.

There was also a long hypothetical about a district where the minority was unable to elect the candidate of their choice in the primary, but could in the general. Would this be an effective district? Handley gave lots of caveats and I don't recall ever said yes or no. But when the hypothetical became the proclamation district 38, and Goldstream and Ester were named as white Democratic districts with the highest primary turnout in the state and some of the Native districts with low primary turnout, I think she said this would still be effective, because they would get the candidate of their choice in the general, but I'm not sure. I was waiting for Walleri to ask, "If they got a suburban Fairbanks candidate elected in the primary instead of a Native area candidate (this is an 'effective native district") would it still be effective, even if a non-native was elected.

So what has been established is that Handley had used terminology lingering from the 2000 redistricting that allowed for a continuum of highly to less effective districts and now DOJ has said (it's not clear whether the person who told Handley this can be seen as speaking for the DOJ on this) a district is either effective or not. Though Handley said that within the "Yes - Effective" side, there was room for a continuum.

All this matters because it gets to whether the argument of the defense - that there were no third party plans that met the benchmark of 5 effective house districts and 3 senate districts, thus the Board couldn't be expected to both meet the VRA benchmark standard AND meet the Alaska Constitutional requirements for compactness and contiguity, etc. as well - because if the third parties weren't trying to meet the 5 house benchmark number because they were told 5-2-1 (effective-equal opportunity-influence), then it's not a fair comparison. Sorry I should revise that, except it's almost 1:30 and the court is coming back into session. This is just to give people some idea of what's happening.

I would also mention that Handley is also having trouble remembering some things. It seems to me if you are being paid to be an expert witness, you really ought to have your calendar with you so you can check the dates of when you did things. But what do I know?

This is going up without much correction because I don't have time. So you are getting currency but sacrificing detailed accuracy and style checking.

Darrell Dennis - Tales of an Urban Indian

2012-01-16T03:30:00.000-09:00

Gramma Susie was broad humor with a bite. In the Gramma Susie costume, Sharon Shorty could play the classic role of the king's fool and say things that normally wouldn't be tolerated.

Darrell Dennis' humor was there to cover the pain. First the universal pains of growing up and becoming a man. Second, the additional pain of growing up as a member of an outsider group - in this case as a North American Indian. Darrell's a charming, good looking man whose very presence on stage is in sharp contrast to the gritty story he tells of alcohol, sex, and drugs. The stories he tells are powerful and his performance magnifies their power. And the humor makes it possible to stay and listen.

I'm really glad friends got us out to see these two pieces at the Alaska Native Heritage Center Saturday night. I've already posted about Shorty. Now I offer you a short video to give you a sense of Darrell's performance. And yes, I did get his permission to post this too, though I did say it would be maybe 30 seconds, and it came out to 2 minutes.

Raven Clan's Gramma Susie Makes For Non-Stop Laughter

2012-01-15T12:58:00.000-09:00

Gramma Susie with 'grandson' Caleb

I wanted to put some catchy line in the title, but it was the performance of Sharon Shorty as Gramma Susie, not just the words, that had the audience laughing so hard last night at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

Her act was part of an eight day "alerNative Theatre Festival."

There was a second, one actor play - Tales of an Urban Indian - by Darrell Dennis which tapped into an edgier humor to bring underlying issues in Gramma Susie right up to the surface. I'll put up video of Darrell Dennis in the next post. In this post, I offer you some video from Gramma Susie.

Sharon Shorty after performance

As I edited the video, I laughed over and over again each time I saw the clips. It's not so much the jokes, but how she tells them. True genius. And she's been winning awards for her performances even though they don't quite fit into most standard categories.

"Sharon Shorty has been voted one of the TOP 10 YUKONERS to meet (Up Here Magazine, 1999) and is from the Tlingit, Northern Tutchone and Norwegian People. Sharon is from the Raven Clan and was raised with the storytelling tradition of her southern Yukon community."

Sharon is also an award winning actor (Aurora Award, 1997) and Storyteller (Aurora Award, 1998). She has received the Ross Charles Award (1999), the CTV Fellowship (1999) and The Yukon Filmmaker's Fund Award (1999). And more importantly, Sharon is an award-winning Bannock-Maker! (New Yukon Indian Days, 2003) She was also recently named "Best Comedian" and "Best way to dress as an Elder"."

She also performed at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Find out more at her website.

I edited the video a bit out of order so you could hear her dead-on raven call first (and last.) She's from the raven clan and when she introduces herself, she gives her lineage in English and Tlingit. There's a hint of the humor already, but it really starts after honoring her heritage. If you can use a smile, just watch the video. All of it.

By the way, I asked Sharon after the performance if I could post the video and she generously consented. And also said to credit 'grandson' Caleb who plays the drum in one clip. (He gave permission too.)

Clear Roof Snow Easily With Snow Chute

2012-01-14T06:32:00.000-09:00

[UPDATE Sat 3:53 pm: I couldn't remember my student's last name when I posted this. But I got an email from a reader who looked up the patent and asked if Leroy Groat was the man with the patent. Yes he is. And I've now left a message with his daughter's business and hope to find out soon if the snow chute is still available to buy. Or if you know how to get hold of Leroy, email me.]

A long time ago I was paired as a mentor for a student at the University. I've lost touch with her over the years, but I thought about her today as I went looking in the garage for my Snow Chute. This is a patented device her dad had invented. It's so obvious and simple and easy to use. So I bought one. I haven't used it for a long time, but this year with all the snow, and stories of roofs having trouble in Cordova, I decided it might be a good idea to get some snow off the roof. So today I decided to find it and experiment with the lower roof over our 'greenhouse.'

The device is a rectangle with a long plastic tail attached. You put the metal as close to the end of the roof as you can and then pull it up the roof. It neatly slices the snow and sends it down the plastic tail and off the roof. I know that's hard to imagine from that description, so I took my camera out with me and made a video.

The video shows how easy this is because I had to do it one handed to use the video. With two hands it's nothing at all to do. Brilliant in it's simplicity and effectiveness.

Does this mean those people were right about Palin too?

2012-01-12T19:26:00.000-09:00

The Alaska Dispatch is reporting that the Director of the Alaska Division of Wildlife Conservation was arrested on 12 counts of illegal hunting today.

A former predator control officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rossi is a longtime friend of Chuck and Sally Heath, Palin's parents. After Palin took office in 2007, Sally lobbied her daughter to have Rossi named commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The commissioner oversees all wildlife and fisheries management in the state. Sally Heath, in an email to Palin, noted that almost everyone would object to Rossi as unqualified, but added those "are the very same people who said the same thing about you."

So, does this mean those same people were right about Palin too?

Rossi did not get the commissioner's job, but a special job -- assistant commissioner for abundance management -- was created for him within state government. . .

. . . His qualifications have repeatedly been called into question. He lacks a college degree and his prime professional association with wildlife has involved killing rats and foxes in the Aleutian Islands.

You can read the whole article at the Dispatch.

Redistricting Court Challenge: Bickford Filling In Many Details

2012-01-12T15:12:00.001-09:00

Taylor Bickford has been testifying. I'm conflicted about how to report this. There's barely any time during the breaks to review my notes or say much at all. Basically, he's answering some of the issues raised by the plaintiff's yesterday, like why he and Mr. White said that Lisa Handley's numbers were wrong - because they'd sent her the third party plans without converting them to Native VAP* - and a few other things. He's coming across as he did throughout the process. Open, knowledgeable, and sincere. It's also somewhat strange to have Mr. White be the attorney here. Yes, he's the attorney for the Board, but because of that he was a key player and really should be a witness. It's emphasized here as Taylor keeps saying "You did this" and "You did that" to Mr. White when they are discussing what happened.

They are going into detail about why they couldn't use different plans and issues. I think this puts some things to rest in a broad sense. But it still doesn't deal with some of the micro changes to the Fairbanks districts that really weren't impacted that minutely by the Native districts. And while they emphasize how they needed to do SE and the Native districts first and then focus on the urban areas, they aren't mentioning how little time they had on the urban areas, so that members really didn't have a detailed understanding of how incumbents were impacted. Nor did the public. As Holm said earlier today, something like, "We did this on the last day." They come back on in three minutes.

If you want to listen in to get a flavor you can call

Conference Number: 866-231-8327 (Limited to the first 150 participants)

Conference Code: 9074529311#

It will continue to 4:30pm today and start again tomorrow at 8:30am.

*VAP is voting age population. And the third party plans had sent in data with total native population which would be higher than the VAP. So it would misrepresent the number of native voters in a district until converted to VAP.

Still More Snow

2012-01-12T13:32:00.000-09:00

Last night I had the top half of the driveway clear down to the pavement and the rest just needed some scraping of the hard packed down snow. Today there were nearly seven more inches. Well it depended where in the driveway I measured. The picture is up top near the house. I managed to get the driveway clear during the court's lunch break. Not much time left. Our neighbor cleared the sidewalk from their driveway to ours.

The garbage trucked inched along between the parked cars and the garbage cans.

Let's hope there isn't a fire. The fire trucks will also have a problem. There just isn't anywhere to park any more because the berms are so wide. I at least have kept my van's parking space cleared out.

I'll try and get some video up soon of our neighbor with his snow blower. But it's time for the court again.

Redistricting Court Challenge: On Critical Points, Holm Doesn't Know, Can't Remember, Or Resents the Implication

2012-01-12T11:17:00.000-09:00

Board Member Jim Holm, from Fairbanks, where the court challenges to the Redistricting Board's Proclamation plan are centered, was the witness this morning so far. There's a short break now, but whenever plaintiff's attorney Walleri got onto the issues of why incumbents were paired, or whether he knew where people lived, or whether the two Democratic Senators could have been paired if he hadn't stuck an unpopulated area into one district, his answers were repeatedly, I don't remember, I don't know, and a couple of times, I resent the implication. I have to go through my notes, but it does seem to me there were some inconsistencies or things he didn't know that he had to have known. Such as the fact that Sen Stedman is in the Senate bi-partisan coalition. First he just said he didn't know. Only after some more prompting did he know. There were other issues like that - had he spoken to people outside the process about redistricting. No he hadn't. The Walleri gave a list of Republicans that there was documentation he'd spoken to and he said he had talked to them.

This part of the testimony does need more scrutiny. And it's a real contrast to the questioning of Leonard Lawson the other day. While the Board's attorney White is pretty aggressive, Lawson answered all the question without hesitation and without getting upset. On the other hand, the plaintiff's attorney, Walleri is very low key and polite, yet Holm took offense and regularly couldn't remember things or didn't know.

They're coming back on so I have to quit. More details later.

Redistricting Court Challenge: Tedium Squared - But Some Interesting Developments

2012-01-12T00:22:00.000-09:00

It was really hard listening and typing today. There were some interesting points, especially in the afternoon when the plaintiff's attorney cross examined Board Chair Torgerson. I'm really trying to get up the energy to write about it. Since I attended most of the public meetings, I understood what they were talking about and I had my own opinions about some of the responses. But if I'm going to get up early enough tomorrow morning to listen in again, I just can't turn this out fast enough.

So, just to get something out, I'll put up a few of the things that caught my attention.
1. In the morning session, Torgerson talked about his career path from his time in Anchorage to the military and working for Louisiana Pacific, Union Oil, and getting into the legislature. (This was in the morning session and you won't find it in the notes below.)
2. His discussion of how he got onto the board - applied through the Boards and Commissions departments process, but also discussions with the heads of the Senate and House in case he didn't get appointed by the governor. All pretty standard, but we don't usually hear all this background stuff. We learned that Joe Balash was in on the talks and that Torgerson had beer with Balash around this time. But he didn't remember if they talked about getting on the board.
3. Hiring the Voting Rights Act (VRA) expert. I'd heard while blogging about the board, that they'd had trouble getting the VRA expert on board because in the previous redistricting process, the board had the power to hire. But this time, it had to go through the governor's office and they went by the book. But plaintiff's attorney Mike Walleri established that the staff attorney was hired in October while the VRA expert didn't come on board until April. So, the time between when all the board members had been appointed and they began doing things until the put out the Proclamation Plan was 9 months, and the VRA expert wasn't hired for seven of those months. Walleri asked questioned about when they first requested from the Governor's office that the VRA expert be hired. Torgerson couldn't remember. Then Walleri asked if they'd had to go through the Governor's office to hire the staff attorney. Yes. But he was on board in October and the VRA expert wasn't on board until April. Why the big difference? Torgerson didn't really answer this other than to blame the Governor's office and that the attorney was in-state and the VRA expert was out of state RFP. This becomes important because the Board worked off the old terminology and presumed benchmarks for native districts for their first draft plan. These were the standards they had to meet to get pre-clearance from the Department of Justice that they met the VRA standards. And the third party groups that also were coming up with alternative plans had to work from these standards. Once the expert got on board and checked the draft plans, she said the terminology and standards were different from last time.
Walleri wanted to know why they hadn't hired the VRA expert early on. She didn't need the new Census data to review the voting patterns for the last decade and she could have come up with the real target benchmark before the Census data came in. Then they wouldn't have wasted so much time with the wrong target benchmarks.

This is also an issue because, ultimately, the Board is claiming that none of the private groups that submitted plans met the benchmark standards, so this shows that it was too hard to meet AND meet all the Alaska Constitutional standards. But if the other groups didn't have the right benchmark information - it turns out the real numbers didn't come out until after all the plans were submitted - there was really no way they could have turned in acceptable plans. So if that holds, that would blow that argument for the defense.

3. Torgerson said that none of the 3rd party plans met benchmarks, but Walleri found places on the record where Handley said they did. But then the next day the staff attorney and the executive director both said, that actually Handley didn't have the right data and they really didn't meet the benchmarks. Walleri made a big deal about the fact that except when Handley spoke by phone or in person, all the board contact with her went through "the filters" of attorney White or executive director Bickford. Torgerson took issue with the word 'filter' but said White and Bickford were the ones who communicated with Handley.

I observed, last year at the board meetings, a lot of confusion over the terminology - it kept changing - and the number of required districts of each type (also changed several times), but that the Board and staff were trying really hard to pin down the numbers. There were several times during breaks where Mr. White and/or Mr. Bickford discussed at length with me and others the details of the terminology of effective district, majority-minority, influence, etc. I admit I'm not a political person. I may be interested in politics, but I'm much too open about what I think, so it is often hard for me to spot people who are the opposite. I take people at their word unless I catch them saying one thing here and something else there. Or what they are saying just doesn't match other information I have. But I certainly never had the impression that Bickford or White were plotting something on their own to hijack the Board. That doesn't mean I believed everything the board said, but I felt Bickford and White were pretty straightforward and eager to explain their positions and that they were feeling pressure from the Board at times to do things they weren't excited about. But it's possible I was fooled. But I would need more evidence.

Rough, very rough, notes warning:

Below are my running notes for the afternoon session where most of this was covered. Again, I had trouble either hearing or keeping up with (or both) for Michael White. He spoke very rapidly and was usually drifting from the mic. So don't take these notes as verbatim, but as a rough shot at what was actually said. I'll put a page break up - but as I checked yesterday, that only works on some browsers and not others. So if you want the afternoon notes, and you don't see them, look for the read more button. And again, I'm sorry this is so loose. Listening most of the day and trying to take notes fried my brain.

1:51

Walleri: Couple of questions. Service here on the board took about a year out of your life?
Torgerson : Not entirely, but takes time.
Walleri: Direct a lot about the process. some questions. Let me direct your attention. Do you still have ???
Torgerson : Yes
Walleri: This exhibit contains a report. Want to take you thru this to clarify the time line.
You were appointed on June 26, 2010 by the governor. (reading it now, yes). Last member to be appointed was Marie Green Aug. 24. Board was fully appointed by Sept. 1. But you had been aware of the process before that. Your application (yes) and had actually talked to the Sen Pres and Speaker of the House in 2009, I think. (I think in 2010) Early part of 2010 when they were still in session? (yes) In those conversations you were in Juneau. Why there during the session?
Torgerson : Don’t know the particulars. For the economic development commission.
Walleri: lobbying?
Torgerson: we had regular meetings there.
Walleri: You talked to the Sen pres and House speaker and applied to the board to be a member. Intent to speak to president and speaker, that was actually before you applied right? (Not sure) Do you know how long it was between the time you applied and were appointed?
Torgerson : Not sure. All that time
Walleri: Talked to Sen Wagoner right? (Yes) All these are Republicans right? (yes) Did you talk to any other senators about this when in Juneau. (Talked to presiding officers because they had the authority to appoint.)
So if gov didn’t appoint you, you were hoping to get one of the others to appoint you.
Did you think being a Republican former legislator helped? (maybe)
Because they were Republicans and you were you thought that would help. (can’t say)
Asked Sen Wagonner to put in good word for you? No
You knew Gov had been a lobbyist of Conoco - he was associated with law firm Patton Boggs, you were aware of that? Yeah, he was.
You were interviewed by Balash Yes, he was there. Balash was the governor’s point person for oil and gas. (I don’t know what he was when.)
He’s now the dept commission for oil and gas? (haven’t checked)
You are aware the Gov is working with the speaker of the house to push through the oil and gas bill (only second hand knowledge. that’s my understanding)
When you talked to, you had no reason to know why Mr Balash was there? He just showed up? (I have no idea)
He was there at the request of the Gov. ? I don’t know that
Well, this was for the Gov’s appointment, so the gov. had to have asked him to be there? I can’t answer. He could have been invited by Board and Commissioners.
While there, did you meet with Mr. Balash?
Torgerson : I’m might have had a beer with him, not a meeting?
Socialize with him? Not sure
While you were drinking beer with Mr. Balash you talked about your appointment to the board didn’t you? I might have, I don’t recall. Clearly that was my intent, but I don’t know if it came up?
I don’t know when it was (when they had beer together.)
Walleri: Board hired Mr. Miller on October ? , 2010. (Check record Oct sounds right)
Walleri: How long had ??? been going on.
Torgerson : Not sure, seems they had 3 or 4 meetings , but not sure how often planning meetings there were.
Walleri: who all was involved in appointing? Chief Justice did , Robert Wood? He was Chief Justice of Court system, someone from Dept of law. ???
Walleri - you were aware that Mr. Balash sat in on the Planning Meetings. ? No
Ron Miller was also there correct? Yes. Appointed by governor? I don’t know
Walleri - the commission started work somewhere around, after, first meeting in Sept. correct? I don’t know
Redistricting Board first meeting in Sept. Yes. Miller brought on in Oct. At that time the board started to work. (We did a few administrative functions) The same Ron Miller who was part of the planning group. (yes)
Everyone was aware at that time the VRA was going to be a big deal. Not sure at that time.
But there had been the constitutional amendment in the legislature.
Torgerson: I’m just not sure of time lines, you are trying to pin me down. I personally did a lot of reading. Was I personally aware? yes.
Wallri: aware that VRA would be important part of process? (yes) And Miller knew too because you talked to him about it right? (I don’t know, but I know he had two meetings in DC on this before the board was constituted, plus he was an attorney. I think he was aware.)
Walleri: So when they hired him in October they got someone pretty ???
He was a lawyer, had had one or two trainings, had worked with interim planning committee? right? We all know that at that point it would be critical ? yes
When Mr. Miller came on did he say we needed a VRA expert. Yes
One of the first thing you needed to do? Yes, but counsel first.
In terms of hiring VRA expert, didn’t happen until several months later.
Torgerson: Some month later,
Walleri: About April 13 sound about right?
Torgerson: Sounds about right
Walleri: The gap between getting started until the proclamation about 9 months.
Torgerson: Yeah
Walleri: But the, most of that time, leading from Sept to April, talking about 7 of the 9 months, there was no VRA expert? (yes)
As I understand your testimony, one of the first things done was getting laptop computers for the members. Everybody had Citygate program. (yes)
Never had to go, to manipulate the maps, to go to the board staff, because they were all trained.
Torgerson: I didn’t understand the question
Walleri: Everyone had trialing in MD and in Anchorage, so everyone knew how to use it.
Torgerson: We were all over the board, especially early in the process.
Walleri: As you understand the analysis Dr. Handley was doing, whether or not there had been racial block voting in the past decade, she really didn’t need the census date for that?
Torgerson: I wouldn’t know
Walleri: You know this looked back over the last decade. So prior to March release of census data, you were using DOL census data. Can you tell me why you didn’t hire the VRA expert before hand so she could have done the same thing?
Torgerson: All I know is the process took a lot longer than I expected.
Walleri: Do you know when the first to the VRA expert made?
Torgerson: I’m not sure, we had to do RFP, ….
In the govt. mode for expediting, this was expedited.
I don’t know when they started to hire Dr. Handley. The govs office might know that.
Walleri: Once you started the process and got it expedited?
Torgerson: If I don’t know the first date, and I don’t know the last date. Mr. Miller was working on it and the Gov’s office was, I just don’t know.
Walleri: The delay - as I understand your testimony, this 35% VAP to hae a district, but if Dr. Handley had been brought on board same time as Mr. White, the board would have had more accurate information on what the benchmark was.
Torgerson: I would guess, the sooner we had it the better it was.
Walleri: I assume the same process for Mr. White was the same?
Torgerson: All except the advertising - we advertised in state for attorney and national for VRA expert.
Walleri: So if you had started the process the same time as you hire Mr. Miller, you would hae gotten her much earlier.
Torgerson: Yes
Walleri: Hiring the VRA expert was crucial to the process? (Correct)
As preplan process moved to public hearing process, not only was the board under the undertanding that 35% was going to be the benchmark and third parties understood this too? (Correct)
When board produced its plan and heard from Dr. Handley on May 17 and found out the 35% wasn’t going to work. . .
Torgerson: that’s correct it was a different number.
Walleri: The board was surprised by that? (yes) And all the third parties were? (I’m sure they were.)
And so it wasn’t surprising that none of the third party plans met the benchmark?
Torgerson: No we weren’t
Walleri: You also knew you had to comply with Alaska requirements (yes)
Why is that that the board didn’t try to do a Constitutional plan while waiting for the VRA expert?
Objection. Overruled.
Torgerson: We did try that, we used the 35% we were practicing using the 35% and the Alaska Constitution. Did I follow the Alaska Constitution? Absolutely. Did the board adopt a plan that followed it? no
Walleri: While you were waiting, why didn’t you try to draft a plan that met the Alaska Constitution?
Torgerson: I don’t know. We really didn’t meet until we got the census data. There was no reason to do thi….????
Walleri; You had a number of executive sessions to discuss legal actions? yes, not a lot.
Walleri: So, early on, the board was already developing a litigation strategy before anyone was even suing?
Torgerson: I wouldn’t call it a litigation strategy. Idon’t know.

Pause

WEre you advised, prior to Dr. Handley being hired, that the VRA could excuse violations of the Alaska Constitution?
Torgerson: I don’t know the timeline. We were advised that in public session.
[Yes they were]
Walleri: by the time Dr. Handley came aboard, you wre aware that the VRA could excuse violations of the Alaska Constitution?
Torgerson: I was aware of it long before because I had read alot on this.
Walleri: IN attending those sessions, they have break up sessions. Republicans go to one session and Democrats to another.
Torgerson: I went to the Republican
Walleri: You were aware of national Republican strategies
Torgerson: Not sure what you mean? If you mean strategies for Alaska, no. They were talking about strategies for congressional districts, not states. I left early can’t give you much of a report.
Walleri: You recall April 13 Dr. Handley teleconference to board. Problem because she was in Afghanistan at the time.
Torgerson: Why she couldn’t sign.
Walleri: Were there any concerns because of her other obligations she might not be able to meet the Alaska deadlines?
Torgerson: I didn’t sign that it was done through administration.
Walleri: Dr. Handley never advised that a public plan was not retrogressive?
Torgerson: don’t understand
Walleri: In your direct I understood, you said none were non retrogressive?
Torgerson:
Walleri: I know I get confused on this all the time. You testified that Dr. Handley never advised the board that the third party plans met the benchmark.
Torgerson: The opposite. She testified they did not meet the benchmark.
Pause to find page
Walleri: start at 3919 - ok? This is...pause again … you may want to read to 3923 line 1-4, might be helpful (I guess they are reading, it’s quiet)
As I understand May 17 discussion. Dr. Handley discussing combination of Kodiak and Aleutian and Senate pairing proposed by rights coalition and AFFER. Dems were FR and the REpublicans were ER.
Torgerson: clarification of groups…
Walleri: It looks like it beats the bm of the ER and FR, no I’m sorry the adjusted AFFR plan and the Rights Plan all meet the benchmarks.
Torgersorn: That’s what it says.
Walleri: So it looks like these plans did meet the Benchmark.
Torgerson: That’s what it says.
Walleri: She’s saying they were not effective
Torgerson: A little confusing the way sentence written. reading… I think she’s referring to HD 6 not effective at 35%. In 2000 Census, the heaviest racial voting district we had. Walleri: go back to p. 40 she says 6 is now majority-minority, but I wouldn’t call it effective. If you take a look at 4101 - this is board record at 5/18, the following day - I understand that you said, on 17th when you met, oh thank you, after the board had teleconference with Dr. Handley you indicated you wanted to discuss what they had heard from her.
Torgerson: sounds right
Walleri: ON that day you asked Mr. Bickford to brief board on where they were.
Torgerson: Sounds reasonable, laugh I don’t know
Walleri: We have Mr. Bickford reporting saying that AFFR and AFFER and Rights Coalition plans were not retrogressive and I asked her if that was because 38 was influence and is influence now? And she said yes. Mr. White said. I think it’s because she got not the complete data. Mr. Bickford had informed the board that the plans were not retrogressive. But Mr. White stood up and said she did not get the right data.
Before that, I’m sure the rest of the board, they heard her saying that the plans were not retrotressive. And the third parties would also believe those plans were non-retrogressive?
Torgerson: Not sure I know what they were thinking?
Walleri: The only person saying they were not was Mr. White. Mr. Bickford was saying Handley said they weren’t retrogressive.
As I understand you were not talking to Handley except in the hearing?
Torgerson: Correct
Walleri: When Board members needed clarification they went through Mr. White or Mr. Bickford.
Torgerson: correct
Wallleri: So everything you said except for the days when she testified, everything you heard from Handley was filtered through White or Bickford?
Torgerson: I object to word filtered, but yes.
Walleri: simiar
Torgerosn: yep
Walleri: Mr. Bickford did a presentation - page 3999?? - 4004 - the day after Dr. Handley addressed the board. In terms of your understanding of what was happening, Mr. B was explaining to the board, that the plans were actually retrogressive.
2:50 Judge: OK 20 minute break then we’ll go to 4:30

3:12pm Judge: Clerk called about how she might State Appellate rule 260.5
Walleri: Day after Handley said third party plans non-retrogressive, asked about Mr. Bickford’s report, he said there were major problems were the plan and that certain districts did not meet the benchmarks. And this was different from what Dr. Handley said.
Torgerson: I think confused was a little harsh, but from the record, Handley said one thing and staff said something else. At the time I didn’t remember what the difference was, but perhaps that’s for a different part.
Walleri: After, the staff asked for Dr Handley’s notes from the presentation.
Torgerson: I don’t know, but it makes sense.
Walleri: Have you seen this before: Notes of the presentation of DR. Handley, from May 19. I just like, if you take a look, her advice at this point turn to page 2, identify as RSPRS 100 9865 . She’s talking about types of minority opportunity districts. Effective districts and influence and equal opportunity districts. I think you testified earlier, you had to have the correct number of effective districts and correct number of equal opportunity and influence districts?
Torgerson: I don’t think that’s exactly right, but we had to have 4 - 3 - 1
Walleri: At this time time, 4 effective and 2 equal opportunity districts.
Torgerson: I’d say that’s what it says here, but she may have said something different. I’ll agree she says that right here, but I don’t know how it relates to the rest of it.
Walleri: I’m trying to get to what people believed at the time and whether people were confused about what the benchmarks were. As I understand, the reason for getting the notes was to find out what the benchmarks were. And she say, it was 4 effective and 2 equal opportunity districts. Laughing. I guess we will play memory games, and I apologize. Do you recollect she was advising at the time there were 4 Effective and 2 eaual opportunity.
Torgerson: I remember in my mind 5-3- and 1. That was drilled in my mind.
Walleri: You can appreciate how the public may have had some confusion about what the benchmark really was.
Torgerson: The public in general? We had experts also working on this. I find it difficult to answer what the public might feel. We started with the 35 and ended with the 41. She didn’t have time at first to look at voting block analysis at first and when she got the data she changed it. And I understand that people were looking at different ???
Walleri: Whatever confusion, about a week later she came to Alaska.
Torgerson: 24th right.
Walleri: At that time she. Look at ref. 4206 Line 18-21 ??? - OK? A week after she advise before on the phone, she’s present this time. She’s saying her understanding is 4 effective house districts and 2 influence, confirming her understanding of benchmark is 4-2. She’s still not moving off to say effective districts.
Torgerson: that’s what it says.
Walleri: You’re testifying there’s a need for 5 effective districts. Who told you that?
Torgerson: I suspect Dr. Handley?
Walleri: But you never talked to her except at the meeting.
Torgerson: Through the staff.
Walleri: But she said 4-2.
Torgerson: That’s what it says on the page. I can’t tell you what I don’t remember.
Walleri: You testified that you needed to have Democrats, was that on 24th?
Torgerson: I think it was earlier.
Walleri: But that wouldn’t have been on the record.
Torgerson: Staff would have made reports and it would be on the record.
Walleri: I did a search. Do I have…?
We’re back to Mr. Bickford, Mr. White reporting to the Board. Mr. B reporting that partisanship is now an issue in creating VRA districts.
Torgerson: I only see “taken into account” means it’s an issue.
Walleri: Borderline district with white Republicans would make it harder to make an effective district, because Natives tend to vote overwhelmingly 80-85% democratic. 4337, line 8 and 9.
Torgerson: OK, gotcha.
Walleri: ?? missed it. In my review of he record, I haven’t found anywhere on the record where Handley said that Alaska Natives votes Democratic and that you have to add urban Democrats to make the districts effective. So what you were relying on was what Mr. White and Mr Bickford said Dr Handley said.
Torgerson: They talked to her.
Walleri: I believe its 4451, sorry this is voluminous record, Your Honor. At this point Ms. McConnochie talking about this, the following day. Line 8, not 12. What we did is took what somebody said before, what are the Democratic areas of Fairbanks. Mr. White responds. It’s likely most areas don’t have history of voting and that areas is 46% and ??? that’s what Dr. Handley said. So two days after Dr. Handley leaves, with nothing on the record, PeggyAnn McConnochie thinks she has to got to Fairbanks to get Democratic votes.
Torgerson: She doesn’t say the have to go to Fairbanks, but that is where there are Democratic votes.
Walleri: You can understand why members of the public might be confused when there is nothing on the record.
Torgerson: I don’t believe that it’s not on the record. I’d be happy to read all 20,000 pages if that helps. She did not give those instructions to me directly.
Nor to the Board.
Torgerson: I would guess not to the board.
Walleri: In drawing these plans, the question arises as to whether there’s anything in the record from Dr. Handley saying there are five effective districts prior to the adoption of the plan?
Torgerson: no
Walleri: You’ve seen her final report, and it says there that there are 4 effective and two influence districts.
When I look at the report, except when she’s talking about the proclamation plan itself. On the Senate she says on page 30. There are three effective districts.
Torgerson: At this point she says about the House plan on p. 29 says there are 5 majority Native population but only 3 VAP. What I’m trying to figure out. . . Well the board didn’t have the report when it made it’s plan so they couldn’t rely on this for the report. Aside from Mr. B and Mr. Bickford do you believe that there was a need for 4 effective districts?
White seems to be talking in the background.
Judge: I’ll overrule it. Mr. Torgerson is the head of the board, this is about using time wisely.
Torgerson: I’ve said several times I don’t remember dates. I can’t change that no matter how you ask.
Walleri: Mr. Bickfor will testify right? Dr. Handley, from what I can tell, didn’t know until she was involved with the Texas case, that the DOJ wouldn’t accept these kinds of districts.
Torgerson: I haven’t got a clue.
Walleri: Something about not having to protect incumbents.
Torgerson: I don’t remember the time, but we made the decision not to include protection of incumbents.
Walleri: Advice from counsel was it was something you could do, but could choose not to.
Torgerson: I recall we were advised that other bodies did that, not sure about boards, but we did know we had the option. We were aware of the decision.
Walleri: When making the decision, you were aware of the bi-partisan coalition in the Senate. You actually talked to Sen. Stevens about this and you knew he was prs of the senate. In making the decision to not protect incumbents. Implication, not necessarily going to protect members of the coalition.
Torgerson: Not necessarily, there were senators that weren’t part of the coalition.
Walleri: You knew you weren’t going to protect members of the coalition?
Torgerson: We weren’t going to protect anyone.
Walleri: You weren’t going to know addresses of incumbents.
Torgerson: correct.
Walleri: There is a way to get addresses of incumbents?
Torgerson: I don’t know.
Walleri: In your testimony you talked about little dots, do you remember?
Torgerson: I believe the AFFR plan had map with locations of incumbents.
Walleri: Were you aware that Mr. Bickford was the one who knew how to turn the addresses on?
Torgerson: Mr. B was the computer expert. I assume that what we paid for the software license included that.

Walleri: Isn’t it true that the board was all aware of where the legislators lived?
Torgerson: no
Walleri: You did say later on that the board started paying attention to where Native legilsators lived.
Torgerson: We were aware of where in general, but the exact location I don’t think they knew.
Walleri: But for Natives for VRA purposes you needed to know.
Torgerson: yes
Walleri: This is April 4, a board discussion, near the end of the process correct?
Torgerson: I don’t think so.
Walleri: Line 18 on that page. It says, Mr. Holm is talking. There is a problem, we have two incumbents Wilson and Coghill live too close to each other.
Torgerson: One is a Sen and one a representative, so it wouldn’t be pairing?
Walleri: That’s curious isn’t it?
Judge; Holm will be a witness too.
Walleri: Take a look at where the board is actually hearing from a Ms. Hall, she’s talking about that people have been working with incumbent layers. That’s what you’re talking about I think that people were showing us where incumbent live.
Torgerson: Not showing, but giving us maps. I know there were people working on incumbent protection.
Walleri: Were you aware that in one of the plans, I think the Right??? Plan that Sen Coghill was paired with Sen Thomas. There was something in the paper about a ?? around Sen Thoams’ house. Are you aware the issue came up at any time.
Torgerson: I don’t know where he lives and wasn’t aware. I don’t remember.
Walleri: Were you aware that Rep. Guttenberg was in that section that was moved into 38.
Torgerson: yes
Walleri: on ???? talked about Tammy Wilson and Bob Miller and Joe Thomas and Sen. Coghill being paired. In that same hearing people talking about in testimony the pitting of Joe Thomas against John Coghill. And then, take a look at another one. 2989, Transcript from a board meeting June 1, just before the adoption of the plan. Here we’re talking about, Mr. Holm is talking about, Mr. Kawasaki is about the same, ten is where is???; and this where Tammie Wilson and Joe Coghill. Would you agree that is what Board member Holm is doing?
Torgerson: yes
Walleri: I don’t see, I see concern about pairing Wilson and Coghill, but not about pairing Paskvan and Thomas. Why would he be concerned about pairing Wilson and Coghill, but no concern about pairing Paskvan and Thomas.
Torgerson: I don’t see an issue. Wilson is a rep and Coghill a Senator.
Walleri: Did you hear anything that Wilson was thinking about running for the Senate?
Torgerson: No, I don’t think I’ve ever met her.
Walleri: You testified that you lived in Fairbanks…
Torgerson: Not exactly, outside the city, but there was no borough then.
Walleri: My understanding that the way you described this process. The Fairbanks map pretty much drawn by Mr. Holm. And he volunteered the way Green and McConnochie volunteered for SE and Native.
Torgerson: I’m not sure, but …
Walleri: You said you weren’t sure why things were done, because Holm took the lead on this.
Torgerson: He lived there, he did the heavy lifting for Fairbanks.
Walleri: The reason we have the bombing range, the vacant area South of the city in 5C, that choice for including it was not something you were involved in.
Torgerson: Not at all.
Walleri: This little protrusion that comes out of District 1A - you don’t know why that’s there either?
Torgerson: Only that it was a function of census blocks or something. It should be on rcord because we questioned Mr. Holm on that. I think it’s a census block issue. When you click on it, it won’t let you divide it.
Walleri: In your understanding, you were aware that was in the option plan?
Torgerson: I was aware after the fact. Maybe reading your report.
Walleri: You were aware at the time this was actually changed, that this population was added to District 1 to 4 and took this population out of 4 to 1.
Torgerson: I can’t say I remember any part of that. I don’t want you to feel like I voted on this without making the inquiry. I take that very seriously. There were questions asked and answers givens, I’m just not that good at remembering.
Walleri: That’s fine, because we’ll hear from Mr. Holms. Why this occurred here was because of the 5000 people taken out of the borough and put into 38. Did you hear that from Mr. Holm? NO. Who did you hear that from? I can’t have my own opinion?
Torgerson: I believe the questions was about District 1 but not about protrusions.
Walleri: That helps. You were talking about general ripple effect because of the 5000, you weren’t talking about protrusions. There’s nothing in the VRA that requires that protrusion.
Torgerson: I understand that the Judge has ruled that ??? The whole of Fairbanks was affected by the ripple effect. I can’t tell you if the protrusion is a particular part of that except as it is related to census block. …. That’s a 4% deviation.
Walleri: Unless you take it out of 4.
Torgerson: If you move anything around, you’re gonna have a ripple effect on the rest of Fairbanks .
Walleri: I understand you believe that the Board made some specific findings about the need , certain aspects of the plan that violated the Alaska Constitution, and when you … the proclamaition, you were making . . . specifically referencing the configuration, second finding under that, finding that configuration of HD 37, 36, 38 and 39, necessary to avoid retrogression. To do that you needed to violate the Constitution.
Torgerson: Violate sounds bad. We couldn’t adhere to strict ??/ of constitution.
Walleri: All those districts that needed to be configured that way. Basically, they are listed in the proclamation. They had to be configured that way
Torgerson: That way?
Waleri: ???
Torgerson: OK
Walleri: You wren’t saying D 1 had to be configured that way to comply with VRA or HD 6? Wasn’t required by VRA?
Togerson: No, well we had to have a district 6. More one person one vote rule.
Walleri: I don’t see any Sen. districts on here, no findings that Sen districts had to be configured to comply with VRA.
Walleri: What’s wrong with HD 34. Why does it violate the Constitution?
Torgerson: Not really sure, but probably compactness. You could clearly draw a straighter line, by going from Haines to Metlakatla.
Walleri: You actually complained about that in a tv interview. So that could be better if strictly following Constitution. And 36 whats wrong with that?
Torgerson: Compactness rule? Don’t know anything else.
Walleri: 37 that you already talked about. 38 that’s this one. I think you testified.
Torgerson: Probably compactness too, but other issues too.
Walleri: 39, why does that violate the constitution.
Torgerson: Compactness. One person one Vote. 39 and 40 are larger than the State of Texas. Clearly not compact.
Walleri: It wraps around Fairbanks. The old HD 6 did that too.
Torgerson: Correct. yes.
Judge: Mr. White, time to break. Any more questions for this young man.
There was very wide latitude going through the record with the Chair. No one else will have that kind of latitude. Maybe Mr. Bickford. Holm and Handley need to be much more focused.
Tomorrow bright and early. Also need to decide about Martin Luther King Day. We should T up for golf.

Redistricting Court Challenge: Twitter and Other Coverage

2012-01-11T13:21:00.001-09:00

This morning, Alaska Redistricting Board Chair John Torgerson was the witness basically establishing what the Board actually did and how they did it. I took notes, but had to be away for an hour, so I'll got through my notes and try to summarize highlights.

But first a couple minor points.

1. The Board is Tweeting about when the court is in session. You can check at #akredistricting on Twitter. There's not much news there, but it's useful for people trying to figure out when things are going to start. It would help if they added who the witnesses were too. [UPDATE 1:23: I got a new tweet and it says the witness' name and so do some earlier ones. I was wrong here. Thanks Taylor.] Fairbanks News Miner reporter Matt Buxton is also tweeting on this. So far there isn't much in depth there.

2. The Anchorage Daily News had an AP article today on the opening arguments Monday. That was the part we couldn't hear over the phone line because they hadn't figured out yet how to keep the phone in the court room from beeping every time someone got on or off the line.

It's interesting listening to the witnesses accounts since I attended most of the meetings. For the most part I don't disagree with most of what's been said, though I have a few quibbles here and there. I'm trying to think about how it sounds to someone who wasn't there. Like the judge. That's one reason I kept a record here on the blog, so that anyone could go back and see what was happening and what was being said on any given day. Unfortunately, the time spent listening in and tracking the court is making it hard to do specific checking on items. But I don't think there are any serious errors. There are, certainly different interpretations.

More later.

Redistricting Court Challenge: Hardenbrook "Looking at Process or Payback?"

2012-01-11T03:22:00.002-09:00

The second witness Tuesday was Sen. Joe Thomas' staffer Joe Hardenbrook. His testimony seemed aimed mostly at showing that Fairbanks districts, Senate districts particularly, were put together in a way that was not socioeconomically integrated, and that this was done for political reasons. He was a very strong and knowledgeable witness, though I'm not sure how important his testimony is.

As I understand it, it is already acknowledged by the court that these districts do not meet the Alaska constitutional requirements. What needs to be demonstrated is that Voting Rights Act compliance could have been achieved without violating the state requirements.

Another issue raised here (and in testimony Monday) was the issue of political gerrymandering to break the Senate working coalition and give power to the Republicans, particularly to get Governor Parnell's cutting of the taxes to the oil companies. There was a lot of persuasive discussion of how pairing the two urban Fairbanks districts with the more rural districts hurts the constituents by forcing representatives and Senators to have conflicting constituents.

There was also mention of a conversation Hardenbrook had in a Juneau bar with Board Chair John Torgerson about whether the Board would work.

I asked him, "Looking at process or looking at payback?" I can’t remember his exact words, but it was defintely the latter. [from my notes of the testimony, not exactly verbatim

My observations of how the Board created the Fairbanks districts, the board member who took the lead, and other information, some of which is showing up in the testimony about how representatives' and Senators' homes were targeted, causes me to believe that there was very clear intent to mess with the Fairbanks districts so that the coalition would be broken in Juneau. And probably also as revenge. But when I talked with Board attorney White after a board meeting last year, he said that since (I think the Voting Rights Act) no challenge based on political gerrymandering had ever been won. If that's true, that makes for a serious obstacle here.

Wednesday, I think I heard them say that Jim Holm would be the witness. He's the Fairbanks Board member who took the lead on redoing the Fairbanks districts. None of the other Board members was from Fairbanks. One advantage to the court case being in Fairbanks is that the Judge will understand the implications of how the lines were drawn and whether they make sense for Fairbanks or not. But he has to have legal grounds from invalidating the plan. There are many different ways to do this. The Board had the authority to do it. So unless they didn't perform their duty or there is clear evidence of wrong doing, it won't get changed. But the burden of proof is on the Board to show that they couldn't meet the Voting Rights Requirements AND the state constitutional requirements.

Below are my running notes from the last witness of the proceeding. (They adjourned early, just before 1pm.) Usual caveats - these are VERY ROUGH notes, there are gaps, typos, errors, places I couldn't hear well, places I just quit and got something to eat. But it gives some idea of what went on. I'll put a break here, if you want the detailed notes - and your browser recognizes the break - you can click where it says Read More.

11:41 Back from recess

Attorneys talking about ending today. Lunch break
Judge: We have finite number of days and hours. Shrinking available time for everybody. When people time out, come next Friday. It will be over.

New witness: Joseph Garrett Hardenbrook

Walleri: Mr. Hardenbrook describe deduation
Hardenbrook: BA pol sci at UAF, registered Democrat in Alaska. Currently employed Chief of Staff to Sen. Joe Thomas.
Hardenbrook: I spent time either as a U or N and prior to that I was a Republican.
Come from pol. family, father on State committee for Idaho and worked with Idaho Republicans. Active in pol. campaigns in Idaho and here in AK, second vp of college Republicans in AK. Volunteer on Sen. Gary Wilkins campaign 2000, Jim Whitikers campaigns. for Joe Thomas 2006, 2010, Ethan Berkowitz, 2 weeks AK State director ofor Obama.
Before 2006 either Republican or non-partisan local campaigns.
During … 2000 leg. session I was govt. relations director for Student government at UAF, registered lobbyist, representing U budget in leg. Summer 2001 was student member on Board of REgents.
Walleri: employment prior to cheif of staff
Hardenbrook: After graduation, contract job in Madison Wisc in Wisconsin state leg. then wrote grant for 50th anniversay for State of Alaska. Karen Perdue and Dr. Cole UAF. University hosted constitutional convention and there were a number of event related. Film, oral histories. I was responsible for researching and website.
Walleri: currently Sen finace committee aide.
Hardenbrook: SEn Fiinance comittee 7 members, all bi-partisan coalition members, considered most powerful committee, all the members considered members of Sen leadership. function to draft Gov’s budget and review and propose amendments and pass the state budgets to the floor for passage. Committee of last referral for any bill that spends money. majority of bills filed ultimately go to Committee.

Current charis: Lyman Hoffman, D Bethel, and Bert Stedman, R Sitka
30,000 foot overveiw Stedman- capital budget   Hoffman- operating budget and supplemental    Hoffman is member of Yupik community.

Familiar with local Fairbanks govt. Creating Alaska purpose learned about founders what purpose of local government, budget committee learn a lot about local government, and local campaigns.

Fairbanks borough local area: Sen Thomas has one borough in entirity - Denali borough and good chunk of FNSborough outside of Fairbanks and North Pole.
And there’s city of Anderson.

Local govt. structure relates to funding activity of Finance Committee: AK constitution three forms of local govt. Borough, types of cities, and service areas. City of F offers different realm of services. F has police and road powers. Curbside garbage service, Fire Dept.
Borough has 107 road service areas. Outside serive areas maintain dirt roads. No rural police force - just state troopers. Volunteer fire dept. non-profits.
FNSB only a few neighborhoods have garbage service curbside. Most utlize transfer stations or the dump.

Walleri: Relate to Finance Committee, whrere does state money come from.
Hardenbrook: 1. State unrestricted funds, 90% from oil   2. Federal funds, mostly pass through, state must authorize fed money. Without strings attached is oil revenue.
Walleri: reaollocation to local communities.
Hardenbrook: Interior delegation meet with local groups before going to Juneau, get the wish lists from the groups, members review them, enter into online system and backup materials how money to be used, who will maintain, etc. Members of Leg. rank priorities and put into memo to co-chair of Finance.
Walleri: does it matter if Sen is on the Finance commiteee for appropriaions?
Hardenbrook: Steadman said: As co-chair of Sen Finance, my district won’t get the most money, but won’t get the least either.”
Walleri: ideas how new plan might impact larger area of F.
Hardenbrook: Leaves open possibility for the first time in State or Territorial hisoty, leaves open the possibility a Sen from outside the city of Fairbanks. Both candidates we know of now, are both from without the city.
Pairing HD 5&6 into Sen C takes University and put those areas - green area here, connected by unpopulated military training range to this district here - Salcha Delta Junction taking half of Matsu Susitna. If you live in University West you could have Sen rep you from Valdez or Delta Junction. Best served if people share their interests. Not in this plan. People in downtown Fairbanks will be paired with Two Rivers.   See folks who come to expect by establishment of local government and authorized through charters have different ideas put into same pol subdivision.
Walleri: Impacts of fire service?
Hardenbrook: Did analysis of amount of funding received by vol fire in Faribanks area. In current D8 - Guttenbergs - 8 vol fire depts. Looked when Thomas and SEekins represented. How much money invested. Impossible to predict future budgets, so dependent on internationally traded commodity. Easiest way is to look back. Average state investment in those vol fire depts. came out to - in new district 38 there will be 31 fire districts. If you take the same amount of money and divide by 31, you’ll see see a financial impact to Ester and Goldstream to be $1million over time??
If plan goes into effect and funding spread out all those districts, they will either have to have cuts or increases in property taxes. Ester and Goldstream - $1million over ten years.
Road service - very popular - transportation, education, public safety. Invest in state road system or allocate to boroughs for roads. This year $5million grant fund for borough roads. Sen representing say District 38 and 37, just 38 so manymore communities, pie would have to be split more and more. If leg looking at whether to give $500K on Murphy Road potholes or small village with wahsed out road to airport - latter wil get it. …..
Ester fire with 30 year old truck and Anvik with no fire truck, Ester would lose.

Fairbanks grew, next to Matsu, Fairbanks fastest growing area. Fairbanks grew, didn’t need to be split. Informal conversation with Sen Torgerson and phone with late Mr. Miller and Mr. Bickford.
Walleri: How do you know Torgerson?
Hardenbrook: I was lobbying for the University. Torgerson was on finance committee. My younger brother was a legislative staffer when he was there. When I went down I’d stay with my borther. Brother worked for Republican of Fairbanks Jim Whittaker and Bud Fate. We spent a night at the ??? with Sen. Torgerson.

Walleri: Contact both as lobbyist and socially with borther?
Hardenbrook: Don’t think I had face to face meeting for University, but did socialize a few times in Juneau. I spoke with him in establishment in downtown Juneau. Think I ran into him in Capital but didn’t discuss. At receptions in Juneau. Lots of events.

Walleri: Conversations with Torgerson, he was chair of redistricting board.
Hardenbrook: In the Triangle - establishment. Saw he was there. In deposition I thought it happened in March, but now I think before that, before intitial plans released. Asked him what was going on with redistricting plan.
Walleri: Why ask him?
Hardenbrook: Brother came back to FBs and said he knew Torgerson. He could focus on best plan possible or most Republicans possibles. So I asked T. what it would be.
Walleri: What was his repsonse, what was he doing when you talked to him.
Hardenbrook: U shaped bar, spoke informally for a minute or two. Joked, can’t draw cushy district for yourself, have plans to run for mayor aain. He didn’t think it amusing. I asked him Looking at process or looking at payback? I can’t remember his exact words, but it was defintely the latter. then he asked about my sister in law.
Walleri: Why ask about sister in law?
Hardenbrook: My borther and I look a lot alike. Parents confuse us. I think he thought I was my brother. There were some hard feelings about Fairbanks. I think he had that in mind.
Judge: what did sister in law have to do with it.
Hardenbrook: I think he thought he was talking to my brother Jay.
Walleri: Do you agree with assessment that 2002 redistricting hard on Republicans?
Hardenbrook: No, drawn to respect local govt.s Before I lived near the University. My rep was Gene Therriault of North Pole. Wagon wheel district. 7 reps, 4 from Fairbanks and 3 from NPole. ⅓ the size of Fairbanks.
Walleri: Pairing Sens. Is it 1990s situation replicated/
Hardenbrook: Someone living in college side could have been represented from Valdez or Delta Junction in the previous (1990) plan.
Walleri: Did 2002 impact on partisan rep in Fairbanks.
Hardenbrook: Empirical evidence says they were bad. Lost 50% of Dems. First time only had one Fairbanks Dem - Guttenberg. Wasn’t until 2006 when Corrupt Bastards Club and bribery trials when turned away from Rep.
…..break …..
Thomas bump - talked to Mr. Miller about that.
Walleri
Hardenbrook: I asked if way to see where current incumbents live. He said yes, it could be turned on, but no one requested it. He said Mr. Bickford could turn it on or off. AT that time he was deptuy executive director.
Walleri: Did Mr. Miller have that ability.
Hardenbrook: I don’t believe so.
Walleri: Any resolution in conversation?
Hardenbrook: He stated that line was probably drawn that way due to census blocks. Software made it hard to split census blocks. Videy way shoots off to West off Senate Loop and that Senate Loop was the boundary of draft plan. Mr. Miller thought it was probably a Senate block. It changed under the final plan. In the draft plan he was initially paired with Sen. Coghill.
Walleri: This is not a bad place to stop.
Judge: I thought we’d buckled up to just go through.
Walleri: Did you talk to Bickford?
Hardenbrook: After I returned to Juneau for special session and came back and had converstaion with mr. Bickford and asked:
1. looking at residences of incumbent legsilators come from several ways to get spirit as well as letter.
a. has any member asked you for resident locations of incumbents?
b. could they get it without your knowledge from the software without your knowledge?
c. what about from a third party? I don’t remember his answer. I think I exasperated him and he asked if I was calling him a liar.
2. I asked about call records of people calling the board. Had a conversation with lobbyist John Bitney. Obection sustained.
Converstation on call records? Curious about members of administration or Republican Party. I think his answer was “In some cases, but not all” He followed up with an email that I could file freedom of information request.

Walleri: Did you ever get indication of Mr. Bickford turned on the addresslocator?
Hardenbrook: My understanding was he didn’t.
Walleri: Campaign experience. Different areas in Fairbanks and how they politically tilt. North Pole to start.
Hardenbrook: Strongly conservative. First campaign 2006, we had a retired principal of NP high school or middle and ran against Coghill lost 70-30. Last time Tom Rice against Tammy Wilson, cordial relationship. He lost 70-30 as well.
Walleri: partisanship?
Hardenbrook: I can’t tell you registration, but highly partisan. I think you’ll see Joe Miller carreid the area handily.
Walleri: Farmers Loo area?
Hardenbrook Farmers Loop has high turnout and recently has trended dem. Steese east and west tend to vote Republican. In ??? Thomas carrie every area, Steese by only two or three votes. One place lost ??
Walleri? West tend dem?
Hardenbrook: Goldstream Dems tend to do well.
Walleri: In 38 now?
Hardenbrook: Ester high voter turnout and Dems good. Goldstream 2 also high turnout and for Dems.
Walleri: Have you looked at proclamation 38?
Hardenbrook: 2010 primary election and voter turnout in Dist. 6, currently rep. by Dick, 7 by Miller and 8 by Gutten berg. 20% in 6 primary turnout in 2010 primary 40% in 7 and 8. Much more turnout in urban than rural areas.
Walleri: Voter turnout in primary higher in Ester/Goldstream than rest of district i the primary?
Hardenbrook: Farmers Loop was the highest tunrou in 7. in 8 Goldsream 2 and Ester in primary.
Walleri: What about the rest of 38. Turnout in rural areas?
White?? What is the point?
Walleri: Finance staffer and heavily involved in campaings. Relevance about primary turnout is higher or lower.
Judge: native turnout in 38 higher or lower than urgan areas?
Hardenbrook: Can’t break out by ethnicity. In 2010 higher turnout in general election in District 6 than in previous elections because of the push for Murkowski.
Ester and Goldstream were higher. Clarify Goldstream 2, Golstream 1 3rd highest.
Walleri: in 38 can you tell us where the current rep from that area, is he in 38 or 3.
Hardenbrook: there are two current reps. Guttenberg lives in Goldstream. And Rep. Dick, Dist. 6, lives in Stoney River, but has now moved to Nenana?? Distr. 6 now in 38.
Walleri: Where does Mayor of FNSB -
Hardenbrook: put in district that is outside the FNSB. McKinley, 87% went to Guttenberg, Cantwell close, rest of the borough conservative. Denali borough is in 38 now.

White; chief of staff and wife works fro Paskvan. So one of you will lose a job under current plan?
Hardenbrook: yes,
White: worked for Walleri’s election and Walleri has held fundraiser for Sen Thomas. Do you consider yourself a Dem partisan.
Hardenbrook: Yes, but I think people would regard me as Fairbanks partisan more than Dem partisan.
White:
Hardenbrook: 1992 big sea change lost a lot of Democrats, Republicans came in.
White: Matsu all Republlicans. Kodiak.
[Establishing strong Republicans around the state.]

Judge: Thank you. You have five minutes.

Walleri: Boards attorney asked about other areas. ARe there other areas of Democratic voters outside of Goldstream?
Hardenbrook: North Slope of Alaska/
Walleri: I’m talking about urban areas.
Hardenbrook: Juneau, especially downtown. Palmer, Dems always try to be competitive, but Rep. Gatto wins 70-30. McKinley Park and Cantwell in Denali Borough.
Walleri: What about Talkeetna?
Hardenbrook: Environmentalist there.

12:53 - Back here tomorrow at 8:30.

Jim Holm was supposed to be a witness Wednesday. He's the former Fairbanks legislator who lost to Scott Kawazaki and who did most of the Fairbanks mapping for the board. He was the only Fairbanks based member on the board so they essentially deferred to him.

Redistricting Court Challenge; Some Thoughts and Arrington Part 2

2012-01-10T22:58:00.003-09:00

Let's see if I can pull back and give a sense of what's happened these first two days. As I've mentioned, there have already been summary judgments that four districts - 1, 4, 37, and 38 - do not meet Alaska Constitutional requirements. So it's up to the Board that devised the plan to make the case that there was no way to draw the lines AND meet the requirements of the federal Voting Rights Act without fudging with the state requirements.

One line of argument they've made is that none of the private parties that have submitted plans were able to meet both the state requirements and the Voting Rights requirements either, so that shows it couldn't be done.

The plaintiffs seem to be trying to make a number of points leading that would eventually prove that, in fact, both the Voting Rights Act AND the Alaska Constitutional requirements could have been met.

1. Packing Districts
Arrington defined packing:

One of DOJ’s criteria is packing. Is there a higher concentration of natives than is necessary for them to elect the candidate of their choice.

Two definitions
1. evil, done on purpose
2. just higher than they need to be

2. Changing Terminology and numbers needed to meet the benchmark
They presented evidence to show that everyone began using the 2002 redistricting terminology. Then changed the terminology for the kinds and numbers of districts when she met with the Board in Anchorage. And then had yet new terminology in her Report in August. And then there were different numbers for how many districts had to be 'effective' even later.

3. There were other issues such as distinguishing among different Native groups and whether they could all be assumed to vote the same way. Reference was made to Florida where Puerto Ricans and Cubans are both lumped in as Hispanics, but vote differently.

The first two points seemed to be setting the stage for saying that YES, districts could have been created that would have met both the VRA requirements AND the state requirements.
1.   None of the other groups presented plans that met both requirements because the final benchmark had been changed and changed again, long after their plans had been submitted. So the plans the board got were aimed at different criteria. Had they known the actual final benchmark requirements, they would have been able to meet them.
2. One example of this was packing. There were districts that had much larger percentages of Natives than necessary to be effective. Better use of these 'extra' Natives would have meant that different lines could have been drawn to make more compact districts and certainly Fairbanks wouldn't have had to have been cut up the ways it was. The counter to this is that the Natives live in very concentrated areas that are sparsely populated so it's hard not to pack them.

There are other issues as well, but those were some. There's also the issue of political gerrymandering in Fairbanks. This came up yesterday in the testimony of the two Fairbanks area State Senators and today's testimony by Joe Hardenbrook. But I'll hold off that discussion to a later post.

Observations of Testimony of Leonard Lawson (Monday)

Yesterday's testimony from Leonard Lawson tried to say that if the Board could have drawn the lines differently, particularly in Fairbanks itself, it would have been easy to keep the City of Fairbanks mostly within one Senate district. Defense had challenged Lawson's credentials to be an expert witness. Lawson had been the technical guy who did the mapping for the Rights Coalition which submitted alternative plans. So he knew a lot about how the Maptitude software works and he knew quite intimately all the districts of Alaska because he'd spent many months this year trying to make the districts work. Even yesterday White challenged Lawson's right to stray over from technical comments to policy comments. He also seemed to be trying to raise questions about his credibility because he works for the Democratic Party. My sense was that White came across as pretty hostile to Lawson, and Lawson stayed totally calm and answered the question as though he didn't even notice White's hostility. He knew details and was able to translate fairly complex material into understandable English. (Or maybe it's just that I went to enough Board meetings that I understood the context.)

Observations of Testimony by Dr. Ted Arrington (Tuesday)

Today's first witness, Dr. Ted Arrington, spoke about the kinds of analysis done to determine if the Voting Rights Act (VRA) requirements were met. How do you determine if a district is effective? Effective means that the minority group - in our case Alaska Natives - has the ability to elect the candidate of its choice. It involves things like block voting by Alaska natives, whether the whites in the district cross over and vote for the Native preferred candidate or whether they are polarized, meaning they vote for the other candidate. There's lots of analysis of voting by precincts and extrapolating how much of the Voting Age Population (VAP) is Alaska Native and how they vote and how the non-Natives in the district vote to figure out a minimum percentage VAP Natives in the district needed for it to be an Effective District.
A lot of White's cross examination aimed at getting Arrington to say he agreed with most of what the Board's expert, Lisa Handley, had done. And he did. (They are both working for the Department of Justice on the lawsuit over voting rights issues from Texas.) But Arrington also said he had problems with the terminology Handley used to describe different categories of districts needed by the state to meet the VRA requirements. He also took issue with her statements about the benchmark that Alaska had to meet. The benchmark comes from the last redistricting and is essentially the number of districts that have to have Native effectiveness, as described above. Early on Handley had talked about effective districts, equal opportunity districts, and Native influence districts. This terminology came after initial draft plans had been submitted where people used different terminology from the previous redistricting in 2001-2. Later, when Handley submitted her report, she said there had been even more changes and now there was new terminology. Basically Arrignton testified that the terminology was changed and the number of benchmark districts was changed.

There was also discussion of whether there was packing of districts.

Rough Notes: Normal precautions to take these as imperfect notes as fast as my fingers could go. I did have time to do some spell checking. Again there are different levels here. The Plaintiff's attorney, Michael Walleri speaks very slowly and in disjointed sentences. He starts, then changes his mind midsentence and tries to say the same thing a different way. Lots of pauses. And he stays close to he mic. This makes taking notes much easier.
The Redistricting Board's attorney, Michael White, talks very fast and is often not talking into the mic, so it's much harder to capture his questions accurately.

January 10, 2011 Redistricting Board Court Challenge Fairbanks
Judge Michael P. McConahy, Superior Court

[I haven't been too successful with the Read More After the Break Feature, but there is so much here, this seems like a good place to try to put it. Hit the Read More button - if this works - to see my notes of the testimony.][Update: It works for me on Safari, but not in Firefox.]

Part 2 - 10:06

White: Objection, he hasn’t done the analysis.
Walleri: We haven’t had a chance to ask the question. He hasn’t done the analysis, We’ve asked in the nature of a hypothetical.
Judge: What question want to ask?
Walleri: Other factors that affect cohesion.
Judge: Other factors, if so what are they?
Arrington: Remember that the numbers are based on the averages of elections in last decade over the state. In new districts are there other factors, that would indicate that the statewide numbers do or would overstate cohesion or understate or overstate turnout. Suppose you have native within a district who are diametrically opposed, like in Florida with Cubans and Puerto Ricans. Or turnout of Natives in one district might be less than the statewide averages. A particular district might not be average.
Walleri: You didn’t look at things like language barrier an their ability to elect (no) nor did you look at possible political differences among natives that would affect cohesion or ability o elect? (no) Nor did Dr. Handley? (She didn’t report it if she did)
With Cubans and Puerto Ricans, both are Hispanics, it doesn’t show.
Judge: I’ll let them talk about Florida, some little states below, if a hypothetical go ahead.
Arrington: someone should look at that to see if it is effective.
Walleri: away from mic, not as clear.
Arrington: We have talked about that at great length, but in professional testimony I have nothing to say.
Walleri: And Dr Handley hasn’t looked at different native groups or languages?
Arrington: If she did, not in her report.
Walleri: What is table 12, and 13?
Arrington: 12 plans with strongest negative concentration.
Walleri: In her report she talks about unpacking, Table 12. 82% Native. Are those packing numbers.
Arrington: Two definitions
1. evil, done on purpose
2. just higher than they need to be
Yes, they are at least in (2)
White: No expert on packing
Overruled
Arrington: One of DOJ’s criteria is packing. Is there a higher concentration of natives than is necessary for them to elect the candidate of their choice.
Walleri: Her analysis says all they need is 42% is that correct? Yes
Page 31 where she does analysis. Table 17?
Arrington: Native concentration in 6 most concentrated native regions in Proclamation Plan.
Walleri: In HD 34 there is ?? is this effective?
Arrington: She also says there the voting is unusually???? polarized. That’s what I mean by political rather than legal.
Walleri: Do we consider equal opportunity districts? NO. Based on your DOJ experience. So we are basically looking at effective districts. We can.
She identified …..   HD 36 - area in Bristol Bay and Part of Alaska Pen. and Eastern Aleutian. What VAP needed here? (something less than 39.8.) In the plan we have 71.5, so the VAP is more than is need? Yes.
37 - Western Aleutians. What VAP needed here?
41.8 - area far west is not most of the population. The other area is critical and no reason to believe not polarized.
38 - What VAP needed here. 41.8 is about where you want. Some overlap from HD6, but not many whites. This is unique by combining urban area with rural Native area. But in terms of numbers over 41.8 should work.
Walleri: Definitely enfranchising Native people here by the numbers (yes) Interns of urban white areas in Ester, are we not saying the white vote would not be effective?
Arrington: laugh, we don’t normally say that. In every district there will be people who vote for people who won’t win. But in general principles joining a rural and urban area should be avoided.
Walleri: In this area? ??   This is 67.9 is this more than needed? [39?]
District 40 - what VAP?   (42%) but it’s 62.2 - is that more than needed to be effective? (yes)

Walleri: That’s all I have
Judge: BEfore White asks, when you spoke about PR and Cuban Hispanics, is there any DOJ requirement to deeper analysis? I understand it may be appropriate, but
Arrington: In The past they’ve hired me whether they should pre clear a plan. it depends on their analysis of state plan. If they say, we suspect there is something deeper here. or someone objected to pre clearance and drew their attention. Sometimes just look at numbers and have no reason to believe, they don’t push. All they ever say is we don’t object.
Judge: In Alaska’s pre clearance was this brought up?
Arrington: I don’t believe so.
White: ???
Judge: Not bringing up new points.

White: Email from head of Alaska Dem Party, if you look at this document (hard to hear) in this letter, object because of the language issue. . .
Arrington: Never saw it before, but see it here.
White: You understand the plan cleared. You would agree that Dr. H is an expert and competent (yes) and in your work, you use her work, and based on those things, that formed your analysis (yes).
Look at your report, p. 55, par. 2 go on and offer your opinion, par. 19, p. 7 of your report, 5 benchmarks House and 3 Senate districts - here you are saying benchmark is 5-3, based on your review of Lisa Handley’s report. (correct) Last sentence par. 10 - based on your opinion Dr. H. based on ability to elect, you were able to get to conclusion that benchmark must be judged by ability to elect. (correct)
Arrington: No, that’s what I say where I came out, but I was confused along the way. Her conclusion that HD6 was 50/50 which it is not.
White: came from testimony, not her report.
Arrington: doesn’t matter where it comes from
White: benchmark 5-3
Arrington: Correct
10:32
White: You relied on her analysis (correct) standard procedure to rely on analysis of other experts.   I want to understand. I like language ability to elect from Texas. DOJ now considers either thumbs up or down. Correct? (yes) In the end concluded HD 38 was an effective district, has ability to elect.
Arrington: based on the numbers we generally use, yes. Determine from reconstructed analysis wasn’t a very good district, but gave it thumbs up.
White: ..
break for me here
He’s basically getting Arrington to say that all of Dr. H’s analysis about benchmark districts being effective are correct. And that he didn’t do any other analysis besides the numbers even though Arrington says “According to the numbers it’s effective.”
10:37 You didn’t know that there was a number that provided a threshold ?
Arrington: Not usually racially polarized.
White: Difference between degree or racial polarization. Are times when it is.
Arrington: That’s not a quibble. Dif. between section 2 and 5. Agree we’re talking about degree, but not a quibble. Overlap…
White: All the on the record statements
Arrington: Read them but don’t claim all in my head.
…
…
10:41 Once you start making changes to a district, this is 37, in the past decade regularly performed with 37% but if you make changes you get into area where you are saying you can’t make …
Arrington: but can still use state average, but if it is normally not polarized, you can go below the average, but defining mathematically hard, less that 41.8 is ok.
[…. I just can’t keep up ]

White: page 29 ????
Arrington: Is that a map? Oh, 29, I can’t see it.
White: ….. HD 36 combines with 35 and combine those and come up with Native VAp of 4?% but unless you get another district, you won’t have enough.
Arrington: can you make another district that has it . . . I don’t have the knowledge of the political geography of Alaska to look at the maps.
White: Map combined different areas to raise the Native VAP
Arrington: I don’t have all the plans in the top of my head
White: You’re aware that one person one vote trumps all other law?   In order to do that yo have to have ???? Walleri ask you about 39 and 40 and their Native population. If deviation in 39 is 4.6?? so you can’t take out more people there?
Arrington: The way that plan is drawn. ARe we dealing just with Federal standard? Or are there state standards? You could go below 4% as long as highest wasn’t more than 6%.
White: Alaska is unique. We have to account for ethnic makeup of people there. Just because there is a high VAP, it could be just the geography.
Arrington: You have to ask if there are alternative plans that do it differently?
[This seems to be getting at the crux of the case - whether a different plan could meet the voting rights act requirements AND be consistent with the Alaska constitution]
White: Mostly, if we want to improve effectiveness, if you add whites, you want to add Democrats?
Arrington: I agree, that’s generally true, but there are elections where natives vote republicans. Even Native Republicans are sometimes not candidate of choice for natives.
White: Basically need to add Democrats if add whites? Yes
….
Trying to keep native candidates in districts they can win? (yes)
White: You remember you ….??? because overlap … if not sure about district, you’d advise client to
Arrington: But DOJ instructions warn against packing.
White: You have no expert opinion in your report about packing? (no)
You agreed with me that the analysis is more an art than a science.
Arrington: more engineering than art.
White: Supreme Court came out …???   Not clear what standard DOJ was going to do with all these changes in the law? Your opinion involved … texas case as well. There was some nomenclature in your report that you wouldn’t agree with now, based on your studies and talking to people in DOJ.
Arrington: yes and work in New Mexico….

Walleri: A couple of questions. Take a look at ??? hard to hear -
Report by Dr. Handley to board in May. Direct your attention to page 2, talks about effective districts. Item 2. Roman Numeral II. Two types of districts there. Do you agree that for determining retrogression you consider effective, equal opportunity, and opportunity districts. Do you agree now with what she said in May?
Arrington: No, As I understand new provisions in law that overturned Ashcroft v. Georgia. The only thing that counts is effective, 50/50 isn’t enough. As a political scientist, I think that’s a good thing. You can’t measure potential based on proportion of minority. Minority at 10% in tight race, they will be important. But a larger percent in a strong Republican district, they won’t be important January 10, 2011 Redistricting Board Court Challenge Fairbanks
Judge Michael P. McConahy, Superior Court

Part 2 - 10:06

White: Objection, he hasn’t done the analysis.
Walleri: We haven’t had a chance to ask the question. He hasn’t done the analysis, We’ve asked in the nature of a hypothetical.
Judge: What question want to ask?
Walleri: Other factors that affect cohesion.
Judge: Other factors, if so what are they?
Arrington: Remember that the numbers are based on the averages of elections in last decade over the state. In new districts are there other factors, that would indicate that the statewide numbers do or would overstate cohesion or understate or overstate turnout. Suppose you have native within a district who are diametrically opposed, like in Florida with Cubans and Puerto Ricans. Or turnout of Natives in one district might be less than the statewide averages. A particular district might not be average.
Walleri: You didn’t look at things like language barrier an their ability to elect (no) nor did you look at possible political differences among natives that would affect cohesion or ability o elect? (no) Nor did Dr. Handley? (She didn’t report it if she did)
With Cubans and Puerto Ricans, both are Hispanics, it doesn’t show.
Judge: I’ll let them talk about Florida, some little states below, if a hypothetical go ahead.
Arrington: someone should look at that to see if it is effective.
Walleri: away from mic, not as clear.
Arrington: We have talked about that at great length, but in professional testimony I have nothing to say.
Walleri: And Dr Handley hasn’t looked at different native groups or languages?
Arrington: If she did, not in her report.
Walleri: What is table 12, and 13?
Arrington: 12 plans with strongest negative concentration.
Walleri: In her report she talks about unpacking, Table 12. 82% Native. Are those packing numbers.
Arrington: Two definitions
1. evil, done on purpose
2. just higher than they need to be
Yes, they are at least in (2)
White: No expert on packing
Overruled
Arrington: One of DOJ’s criteria is packing. Is there a higher concentration of natives than is necessary for them to elect the candidate of their choice.
Walleri: Her analysis says all they need is 42% is that correct? Yes
Page 31 where she does analysis. Table 17?
Arrington: Native concentration in 6 most concentrated native regions in Proclamation Plan.
Walleri: In HD 34 there is ?? is this effective?
Arrington: She also says there the voting is unusually???? polarized. That’s what I mean by political rather than legal.
Walleri: Do we consider equal opportunity districts? NO. Based on your DOJ experience. So we are basically looking at effective districts. We can.
She identified …..   HD 36 - area in Bristol Bay and Part of Alaska Pen. and Eastern Aleutian. What VAP needed here? (something less than 39.8.) In the plan we have 71.5, so the VAP is more than is need? Yes.
37 - Western Aleutians. What VAP needed here?
41.8 - area far west is not most of the population. The other area is critical and no reason to believe not polarized.
38 - What VAP needed here. 41.8 is about where you want. Some overlap from HD6, but not many whites. This is unique by combining urban area with rural Native area. But in terms of numbers over 41.8 should work.
Walleri: Definitely enfranchising Native people here by the numbers (yes) Interns of urban white areas in Ester, are we not saying the white vote would not be effective?
Arrington: laugh, we don’t normally say that. In every district there will be people who vote for people who won’t win. But in general principles joining a rural and urban area should be avoided.
Walleri: In this area? ??   This is 67.9 is this more than needed? [39?]
District 40 - what VAP?   (42%) but it’s 62.2 - is that more than needed to be effective? (yes)

Walleri: That’s all I have
Judge: BEfore White asks, when you spoke about PR and Cuban Hispanics, is there any DOJ requirement to deeper analysis? I understand it may be appropriate, but
Arrington: In The past they’ve hired me whether they should pre clear a plan. it depends on their analysis of state plan. If they say, we suspect there is something deeper here. or someone objected to pre clearance and drew their attention. Sometimes just look at numbers and have no reason to believe, they don’t push. All they ever say is we don’t object.
Judge: In Alaska’s pre clearance was this brought up?
Arrington: I don’t believe so.
White: ???
Judge: Not bringing up new points.

White: Email from head of Alaska Dem Party, if you look at this document (hard to hear) in this letter, object because of the language issue. . .
Arrington: Never saw it before, but see it here.
White: You understand the plan cleared. You would agree that Dr. H is an expert and competent (yes) and in your work, you use her work, and based on those things, that formed your analysis (yes).
Look at your report, p. 55, par. 2 go on and offer your opinion, par. 19, p. 7 of your report, 5 benchmarks House and 3 Senate districts - here you are saying benchmark is 5-3, based on your review of Lisa Handley’s report. (correct) Last sentence par. 10 - based on your opinion Dr. H. based on ability to elect, you were able to get to conclusion that benchmark must be judged by ability to elect. (correct)
Arrington: No, that’s what I say where I came out, but I was confused along the way. Her conclusion that HD6 was 50/50 which it is not.
White: came from testimony, not her report.
Arrington: doesn’t matter where it comes from
White: benchmark 5-3
Arrington: Correct
10:32
White: You relied on her analysis (correct) standard procedure to rely on analysis of other experts.   I want to understand. I like language ability to elect from Texas. DOJ now considers either thumbs up or down. Correct? (yes) In the end concluded HD 38 was an effective district, has ability to elect.
Arrington: based on the numbers we generally use, yes. Determine from reconstructed analysis wasn’t a very good district, but gave it thumbs up.
White: ..
break for me here
He’s basically getting Arrington to say that all of Dr. H’s analysis about benchmark districts being effective are correct. And that he didn’t do any other analysis besides the numbers even though Arrington says “According to the numbers it’s effective.”
10:37 You didn’t know that there was a number that provided a threshold ?
Arrington: Not usually racially polarized.
White: Difference between degree or racial polarization. Are times when it is.
Arrington: That’s not a quibble. Dif. between section 2 and 5. Agree we’re talking about degree, but not a quibble. Overlap…
White: All the on the record statements
Arrington: Read them but don’t claim all in my head.
…
…
10:41 Once you start making changes to a district, this is 37, in the past decade regularly performed with 37% but if you make changes you get into area where you are saying you can’t make …
Arrington: but can still use state average, but if it is normally not polarized, you can go below the average, but defining mathematically hard, less that 41.8 is ok.
[…. I just can’t keep up ]

White: page 29 ????
Arrington: Is that a map? Oh, 29, I can’t see it.
White: ….. HD 36 combines with 35 and combine those and come up with Native VAp of 4?% but unless you get another district, you won’t have enough.
Arrington: can you make another district that has it . . . I don’t have the knowledge of the political geography of Alaska to look at the maps.
White: Map combined different areas to raise the Native VAP
Arrington: I don’t have all the plans in the top of my head
White: You’re aware that one person one vote trumps all other law?   In order to do that yo have to have ???? Walleri ask you about 39 and 40 and their Native population. If deviation in 39 is 4.6?? so you can’t take out more people there?
Arrington: The way that plan is drawn. ARe we dealing just with Federal standard? Or are there state standards? You could go below 4% as long as highest wasn’t more than 6%.
White: Alaska is unique. We have to account for ethnic makeup of people there. Just because there is a high VAP, it could be just the geography.
Arrington: You have to ask if there are alternative plans that do it differently?
[This seems to be getting at the crux of the case - whether a different plan could meet the voting rights act requirements AND be consistent with the Alaska constitution]
White: Mostly, if we want to improve effectiveness, if you add whites, you want to add Democrats?
Arrington: I agree, that’s generally true, but there are elections where natives vote republicans. Even Native Republicans are sometimes not candidate of choice for natives.
White: Basically need to add Democrats if add whites? Yes
….
Trying to keep native candidates in districts they can win? (yes)
White: You remember you ….??? because overlap … if not sure about district, you’d advise client to
Arrington: But DOJ instructions warn against packing.
White: You have no expert opinion in your report about packing? (no)
You agreed with me that the analysis is more an art than a science.
Arrington: more engineering than art.
White: Supreme Court came out …???   Not clear what standard DOJ was going to do with all these changes in the law? Your opinion involved … texas case as well. There was some nomenclature in your report that you wouldn’t agree with now, based on your studies and talking to people in DOJ.
Arrington: yes and work in New Mexico….

Walleri: A couple of questions. Take a look at ??? hard to hear -
Report by Dr. Handley to board in May. Direct your attention to page 2, talks about effective districts. Item 2. Roman Numeral II. Two types of districts there. Do you agree that for determining retrogression you consider effective, equal opportunity, and opportunity districts. Do you agree now with what she said in May?
Arrington: No, As I understand new provisions in law that overturned Ashcroft v. Georgia. The only thing that counts is effective, 50/50 isn’t enough. As a political scientist, I think that’s a good thing. You can’t measure potential based on proportion of minority. Minority at 10% in tight race, they will be important. But a larger percent in a strong Republican district, they won’t be important. I never thought influence districts were a good idea. But I don’t know I’d know that in May. But I new opportunity districts weren’t good in May.
Walleri: What she was telling the Board back in May was basically wrong.
Arrington: yes
Walleri: next page, she’s talking about what a benchmark is. Particularly - benchmark, page 2 bottom, telling board what bench mark is: 4 effective, 2 influence or equal opportunity districts. You agree?
Arrington: No, that was language from her that confused me.
Walleri: It was confusing you when you did your report. (yes) Look at your report on page 7, par 19. you say, there are five house benchmark districts and 3 Sen benchmark districts. ARe you aware, before that if there is any place where Handley said five bench mark districts. (Taxing my brain, can’t say) May 24 she said 4 effective and 2 influence - would she have been wrong then? (yes)
June 4 you said you were confused about what the benchmark was?
Arrington: No, I said I was confused about what she said the bm was.
Walleri: She never said what the bm was and there were 5 effective districts.
White: leading the wittiness?
Walleri: Do you know any place in the report where she says what the bm is?
Arrington: I was confused about that, I don’t recall.
Walleri: In her rebuttal report is there anywhere she says how many benchmarks?
Arrington: Sorry I don’t remember.
Walleri: On direct exam you talk about HD 39 and 40 - North slope and - they were over the population needed to elect. (correct) In report did you look at the Sen. districts.
Arrington: Sen T as taxi?
Walleri: you said needed 42% to be effective. In Sen the same or different.
Arrington: When you combine the two, amount of VAP needed is 42%-50% but in plan she set it at 72.4
Walleri: page 22, needed for proclamation, more than needed? (yes)
Walleri: talking about Native candidate who is not ‘preferred’ candidate
Arrington: Doesn’t count. protecting voters, not the candidates. . .
Walleri: in SE, talking about native Sen. Kookesh paired with non-Native Sen Stedman.
Arrington: Is he the preferred candidate? yes Then I’d be concerned.
Walleri: You have Native candidate who sometimes is preferred and sometimes not
Arrington: I would report to my client the situation and they would determine if that was a legal problem - difference between the politics or law. I give the facts and you figure the law.
Walleri: If you have opportunity to protect native preferred incumbent or native candidate who is sometimes preferred and sometimes not.
Arrington. The former - the consistently Native preferred.
Walleri: complete

White: even back in May Handley is saying it’s really ability to elect, despite the language (I don’t know what she said) But you said ….
Arrington: But I made that judgment based on her numbers not her nomenclature. Numbers can also be confusing, but not in this case.

White: footnote 5...effective commonly used . . .(yes I often do same thing. ) page 4 of her report footnote 7, in there she takes about “...protected by voting rights act, equal opportunity district. . .3/4 …. (correct, also confusing for me. clear from work we’re doing in Texas - candidate regularly elected but lost in 2010 when Dems lost big . . .)
Walleri objection: ??/
White: No doubt in your mind benchmark …. and plan meets benchmark… (by the numbers it meets the benchmark) and no other plan met the bm (No other plan presented to the board did not meet bm.)

Judge: Good time to take a break. Dr. Arrington be excused. Tell everyone no mosquitoes in Alaska.
11:25 now, come back at 11:40, Walleri has time for next witness.. I never thought influence districts were a good idea. But I don’t know I’d know that in May. But I new opportunity districts weren’t good in May.

Redistricting Court Challenge: Dr. Arrington's Voting Rights Analysis Primer

2012-01-10T09:55:00.000-09:00

This is a good way to learn some of the terminology of the Voting Rights Act analytic techniques. Dr. Theodore Arrington explains many of the terms.

These are rough notes from this morning. There is a short break until 10:15. The phone connection didn't kick in until 8:43.

Basically Mr. Walleri has been questioning Voting Rights Act Expert Dr. Arrington, who was originally hired by the Fairbanks North Star Borough to look at Dr. Handley's analysis. He and Dr. Handley have been working together for the Department of Justice on Voting Rights cases from Texas. The morning was focused on how voting rights experts do their analysis of the data.

The notes are as fast as I can type, which isn't fast enough. But it will give you a sense. There are times where I include answers in the questions and other times where I include the question in the answer - that is I don't clearly identify what part the attorney said, or what part the witness said - but you get the gist of the testimony. There are gaps where I couldn't keep up. I try to put question marks or three dots . . . to indicate if I'm not sure what was said or there's a gap.

January 10, 2011 Redistricting Board Court Challenge Fairbanks
Judge Michael P. McConahy, Superior Court

Dr. Arrington
8:43 begins mid sentence
Walleri: questioning about expertise on voting rights and how many cases he’s worked on and working for DOJ - about a dozen times - and size of the VRA experts pool - about 20.

You’re familiar with Dr. Handley? You’ve worked with her before?
Arrington: Yes, on the Texas case. Next week I’ll be in DC with Texas case where DOJ is suing TExas, actually it’s Texas suing DOJ. Four different courts involved in the Texas litigation.
Walleri: both you and Dr. Handley are working for DOJ on that? Your role?
Arrington: My role is to determine if state intended to discriminate against Hispanics. Handley’s role is to determine if they actually did discriminate. Intent v. Effect
Walleri: Law degree?
Arrington: No, political science.
Walleri: Handley, lawyer? But has PHD in poli sci.
Retrogression is legal term defined in the statutes. I’m not a lawyer, so I perform analysis and let the judges determine. Suppose you had a plan in which there were five districts where natives ha ability to elect candidate of choice. and one more where there isn’t a contest because whites vote the same.
If you hae a new plan and also five districts can elect candidate of their choice, but doesn’t have the extra non-polarized district. I can’t tell if that is regressive. Court has to do that.
Walleri: Been using effective and influence terms do they make sense to you?
We’ll be talking about a lot of stats, as I understand what you;re saying: You can tell us voting patterns, but the legal implications is someothing different?
Arrington: Yes
Walleri: In terms of statistical analysis you and Dr. Handley use - therea re different types of analysis?
Arrington: Standard ecological regression, inference, and extreme precinct analysis, Handley calls homogeneous precinct analysis.   We can do estimates from precinct data and have to do iestimate nference from that? “Average trunout of Natives in last decade has been X% and whites, and Natives are cohesive at Y%. Y% for athe same candidate. Crossover whites - whites who voted for the Native preferred candidte. Those are all % not tied to individuals, estimates based on precinct analysis.
Walleri question:
Can I draw it on a chart? Easier.
    is % Native in each precinct. So a precinct here would be a lot of natives, and on the left
vertical access you have vote for candidate.
On this chart you place a dot on each precinct here upper right a lot of natives and a lot of votes for that candidate.   Scattered plot of this sort, it might look like this. Putting in lot of dots. Regression technique says, maybe there is a few outside this. What is the straight line that is the best estimate of
Where does that regressive line cross 100% on the horizontal. That’s the point where all the natives vote for that candidate. On the other hand, where does it cross the zero access, that’s the best guess of the white vote for that candidate. More complicated because you have one for each candidate. That’s what was used in the S? case, and hundreds of section 2 cases.
Judge: For every year?
Arrington: For every election for every year…
Walleri: Basic issues in regression analysis. All Alaska Natives have common voting pattern.
Arrington: No, the average, her figures are the average figures, but natives might differ from the average in different places.   It picks this up by having lower cohesion level.
Walleri: Can you tell the cohesion level?
Arrington: What it can do and what Dr. Handley has done is determine the cohesion level for each election and then the average of those.
Walleri: Does it also … a uniform spread of native. Assuming that there are different types of native people or have different political preferences. In one area there’s a concentration of Native people that have one type, this way. Aware we have different types f antive poeple (Aware, but not studied) XEskimo people and Native people Differen in concentration in this district. And the vote differently. Would this analysis pick up this difference
Whte???
Overruled.
Walleri: Indian people, your precinct, 100%, are Indians, and the 40 and 50% precincts are Eskimo and they vote differently. How would this affect your analysis?
Arrington: It would lower the cohesion, but it wouldn’t pick it up. It would lower the cohesion numbers, but you wouldn’t pick up why. The Census date only identifies Native.   In doing analysis experts sometimes have to go beyond that. In Florida, Census only talks about Hispanics, but Cuban or other makes a big difference, so the experts have to go further. In New Yourk we had to identify where the Puerta Ricans, Dominicans, and ?? are.
It can pick it up, but cohesion level is lower. For each election using three methods, we can determine:
1. % of Natives voting for the same candidate - high about 70%, Jingles? case sets bar at 60%, I like 67%.
Walleri: Endogenous and Exogenous - can you explan these types of analysis
Arrington: Endogenous means elections of interest to the cawe, Exoencous means other elections.
All in the last decade.
Ecological inference is much more complicated analysis. Based on the regression, but goes much further. Math far beyon me, just as a lawyer can use Lexus Nexus
Extreme ecological analysis - where more than 90% Native??????
Walleri: Those types of analysis will be used over tha last decade?
Arrington: Yes, because that’s whats relevant. Longer is interesting, but it’s history not political science.
Endogenous most probative. Problem is testing the new plan, there aren’t any endogenous elections to analyze because new district haven’t been used yet. So you have to use exgoneous and apply data from old elections to new districts. Hard to do, but that’s what we’re paid to do.
Turnout, Cohesion, Crossover are the three key factors. Tells you whether racial block voting is happening and the level.
???
In statewide elections, problem when you look forward to the new plan. You’ve been involved where there are only slight changes to a district.
Arrington: I’d hae to check, usually they get to court if they changed a lot.   If I’m trying to predict if a newv district will perform, is effective, I look to see if it’s like an old district in terms of geography. If about the same geography, probably going to vote the same way. But if very much changed, you can’t use the geography to see if it will perform. Some of these districts are very different geographically, so it’s harder to predict.
Walleri: harder to hear - Exhibits ?? and J5 the benchmark plan. Can you tell us what you’re looking at when you say different
Arrington: Redistricting board plan, 38, there’s nothing on the old plan which resembles that. Starting here inf Fairbanks and going to the coast. Part of 6, 8, old 38, very different geography. No old district we can say would behave like the new one. Have to use other procedures, there are other procedures, but that one can’t be used here.
Walleri: There are other districts that are similar.
Arrington: Find 40 for me. This is a good example of a district you cans ee. That’s similar geography. On that basis alone, we can predict it will behave in the next decade as it has in the past.
Walleri: District 36 some similarities but not all?
Arrington: Unless similarity pretty close, have to rely on the numers. You can look to see where the people are, not just the land. if the people are in the same place, but just the physical geography is different, then you could say, it would be the same. Can’t just rely on the geography.
Walleri: Doing this racial block voting, trying to predict (yes) and doing that you said, here benchmark would performt he same, but something like 39 or 38 how do you predict how these would do
Arrington: Typically, we do what Dr H has done. Econological regression or inference, determine average across the state, turnoutout for whites and natives, cohesion for natives, and crossover for whites, and then determine who would be the ??? to determine if effective.
Walleri: measures of reliability of these?
Arrington: Not really. No statistically significant test for this. There is a test in ecological inference but not usually applied. Because the court itself has to make a ruling. These techniques gives you the best estimate. If Dr. H says 41*% is the best estimate. That’s fine. There may be things behind our numbers which we didn’t anticipate which causes us to make a bad call. Type 1 or Type 2 errors. I could say it was not effective and in ten years it turns out I was wrong, or that it is effective.
If geography the same no problem.
Walleri: has that ever happened?
Arrington: in my case? no.
Walleri: Have people ever found that with similar geography that it didn’t work out?
Arrington: No, but after the case is over, I don’t look back.
Type 1 and 2 - predict it will be effective an isn’t, or predict isn’t but it is.
Walleri: VRA regulations. Part 5157-5159 Federal Reg.   page 21249, how does statistical analysis relates to these factors, how the DOJ looks at redistricting plans. Is the analysis you’re doing, extent to malaportioned districts right to vote for majority?? Is this what you’re looking at? SURE …. Extent of fragmentation, overconcentrated, alternative plans satisfy legit government interest NO Departs from objective redistricting criteria deviates from ???   Not what we’re talking about.
Walleri: compactness and contiguity are not addressed in these statistical analysis?
Arrington: yes
Walleri: fair to say, considers some of the DOJ factors but not all?
Arrington: yes
Walleri: We have racial block analysis, including cohesion analysis. What is benchmark analysis?
Arrington: How many districts in the old plan did natives have an ability to elect the candidate of their choice, even if the choice was a native.
Wallerite: We’ve been using the term native. When court in Texas, they used ability district.
Arrington: that reflects legislative language.
Wllerie: are we saying the same thing?
Arrington: I am. Effective isn’t my normal language. An ability district has to be more than a chance, but not a certainty. There are no certainties in politics.
Walleri: Using terms, does everyone using effectiveness mean the same thing as abilities?
Arrington? I don’t know. Have to ask. In Texas court said opportunity is different from ability. I think a legal distinction. You have to ask.
Walleri: Texas court looking analysis of certain districts giving Hispanics or Blacks an opportunity to elect and DOJ was looking at ability to elect.
Arrington: if the district might in the future offer the ability to elect because the Hispanic population is growing, Court says we have to know if they can now, not in the future.
Walleri: Who hired you in this case?
Arrington: FNSB - asked me to review Dr Handley’s report and testimony. I did.
Walleri: Did you independent analysis?
Arrington: Eventually I did because asked to review the demonstration plan and compare it to the proclamation and benchmark. We have the new precincts proposed by the proclamation plan, so we can take statewide elections to see what the results were in the new districts. Handley used that well in Texas to see how new districts would behave. Reconstructive data analysis.
Walleri: Looking at statewide office elections - exogenous elections - not the actual rep and senate analysis. It can give different insights in how the districts would behave
You don’t disagree with her racial block voting analysis. Correct. Or measurement of cohesion? Don’t disagree.
What do you understand the benchmark in the old plan
Arrington: 5 effective in house and 3 in the Senate

Three answers: most of state 41.8% but two exceptions
1. Substantial overlap in benchmark district 6, might need more. In HD6 in benchmark, much more racially polarized than rest of the state. White crossover is lover. So if big overlap between new district and HD6 benchmark of whites, then higher.
2. In Aleutian Islands and SE where voting is not usually not racially polarize according to Handley’s analysis, we can have an effective district with lower %.

Walleri: In these areas the Native effective, lowest, we can go to still have effective?
Arrington: I think there is no lower limit. I can describe a district that doesn’t have polarized voting, but don’t know how to explain that in l???. If no polarization, then Natives will be able to elect candidate of their choice,

Walleri: You talked about significant levels of white population into the new district. How do you know if a portion of 6 in the new district. How do you know which part of HD6 has the polarization?
Arrington: Using the census, we can determine how many whites in that district that were also in old district. We have to determine how many whites ????
Ne has 1000 whites who lived in old 6, then 48.6 is not enough. If 100 whites from old 6, especially if a lot of natives from old 6, 48.6 would be fine.
I need to know concentration of natives plus overlap with HD6, whether have white districts, and polarized?????

Walleri: Old HD6 has to be 49 ok half, to be effective. We don’t exactly know in Bristol Bay what the lowest number is. In rest of state, round to 42 or above. In terms of looking at the new districts, which standards, we have to figure out critical HD6’s white population is going into the new district. Does it matter if large portions of natives going into the new district.
Arrington: irrelevant. they have high cohesion. It’s the whites that matter.
Walleri: Yo agree, I think, that 6 was an effective district. What about new plan 38?
Arrington: By the numbers, the analysis I do, the answer is yes.
Walllerie: I understand from your deposition you said it was iffy. Not ideal. How confident just on the numbers it’s effective.
Arrington: very confident.
Wallerei: But using other factors?
White objection: didn’t do any analysis of this.

time for morning break, back at 10:05

Redistricting Court Challenge: Leonard Lawson - Were There Other Ways to Draw the Districts and Meet VRA Requirements?

2012-01-09T15:41:00.001-09:00

OK, there's a break now. They are questioning Leonard Lawson who was the computer person for the Rights Coalition (which was one of the groups that submitted alternative maps to the Board). He's also an employee of the Democratic Party. I got to know him because he came to just about every redistricting board meeting and was a person I could get answers to technical and mapping issues.

Some key points that I'm trying to pull out without much time to think and before they come back into court:

I didn't make it. They're back. So here are the rough notes and I'll try to do an overview later. These are very rough notes.

2:15 - Leonard Lawson - Mathematics and Physics major from ?? College. I work for the Alaska Democratic Party. Their primary data base manager. I keep track of voter data bases, that's the biggest part of the job. When elected officials want to know about a district.
Wallerie: When you were deposed it was pointed out that you were listed as a political director for the Alaska Party. Was that a surprise to you?

Lawson: No, I give information. My boss is Kay Brown, ED of Democratic Party Alaska. Before that it was Deborah Williams.
Wallerie: Poltical background before with Dems.
Lawson: New Hampshire Democrats.
Wallerie: Gilford County?
Lawson: Center of North Carolina, volunteer for Al Gore?
Wallerie: Coming from NC, you've had some experience with redistricting?
Lawson: Laughter. I went to National Conference on STate Legislators conerence on redistricting. I think 4 day conference. I saw John Ferguson and I I think Michael White.
Cover a wide variety of topics, but redistricting was big topic this year.
Other training: Software, trained by company that makes map software. To help understand better how to use the software. Already had a lot of experience, but wanted more.
Other: Also took GIS class at UAA, but as it was starting I had to leave because redistricting was starting. GIS is Geographic Information System. Anything with geographic component - merges numbers and maps.
How does GIS relate to these maps: It's what's use for most of these maps. I think they were all made with GIS software. Allows you to use Census data and realte the to maps. Includes ethnicity, over and under 18, etc. and can be displayed visually.
What a census block is: Small geographic area, created by the Bureau of, Is Census part of Commerce? divides the us into georgraphic subunits so they can count the population.
How does that relate to Tiger files and shape files? Tiger files are essentially US Census bureau's shape file. Shape files are privately owned files - company owns about 65% - just a brand name like Microsoft word. Other software can read shape files. I use maptitude which can read shape files.
Can you imagine doing this with paper and pen? No. laughing. But I can't imagine doing a lot of things wihtout computers.
Two different programs - White saying something in bakground. Other type Arcview software. Board is using Arcview and Div. of elections is using maptitude.
Wallerie: Let's fire up the computer to see what you're talking about.
Lawson: looking at different plans - this is hard to follow just the oral
This is the proclamation plan the only thing I moved out is the southern range connected to Ft. Wainright.
W: Can you show us what a census block looks like?
Lawson: They're really small, hold on. OK each one of these is a census block. I'll highlight one.
BASICALLY - Lawson is showing how to use the software. Some of these blocks are only 19 people, or there could be only one or none. the other thing that maptitude does well is to show me what happens when I make changes - it shows me that if I take this block out I will take out 24, it shows me the ideal size 17,755, and what the deviation is from the ideal size. We can see here if the census block doesn't distinction between Native and Indian so IND represents both. Here no one identified self as black or Indian, but in this district there are some. You can also see whether over 18. If we move this block out we'd take away 18 voting age people from the district.

I've only added Indian and Native, but there are lots of different potential breakdowns. They are really numerous. Other states would have % as non-hispanic black and hispanic black.
Wallerie: For Natives what does VAP stand for.
Lawson: Voting Age Population. Any percent Native - White Native Hawaian, and Other - that person could be counted in Native.
Native +one = full blooded native or Native + White in the past. We were reasonably sure from the past that Native+one (either full blooded or Native+1 other). But later the board said any combination with Native would count.
Wallerie: What other attributes can you key in on the map?
Lawson: You can see, this is airport - I don't have street names turned on because there would be so many of them - Outline of city limits of Fairbanks. Generally follow city limits. You can cut smaller than census blocks because you wouldn't know how many people there are. Most are inside the city boundaries. There are a couple places because there was an annexation after the Census bureau drew their maps. So it doesn't really match because annexation after the shape files drawn.

This pink are is downtown Fairbanks.
Wallerie: Border of 5 and 4.
Lawson: I can move the annexed area back into the city, I can figure out how far I want to go - census blocks, voting districts, or the whole county - depending on purpose or need.
Wallerie: Demonstration for the court.
Lawson: I'm going to select these three census blocks. Even before I move them in, I can check what the changes would do. I would be moving 253 people from D5 to D4 - that would affect the deviation to 5.065% - you can see in real time without having to make guesses.
Wallerie: kill two birds with one stone. With this district, if you just wan t to move this annexed area.
Lawson: Not matching with the local boundary because annexed after the map made. The total people in the block is change of 111 people - 94 white 2 American Indian, one mix of white and Indian. I cannot break the census block. With technology you could, but not allowed to unless a zero census block. You'd have to guess what the results were which is why you can't do it.
Wallerie: Sometimes you have to move Census blocks even if you don't want to.
Lawson: Yes. I'll move a census block and you leave areas not connected with the rest of the districts. It will pull up area I as two different areas - something is 3/100 of a square mile. Some are islands. In district 5 you know there's no islands, so you know something is wrong. this is how to correct the non-contiguous, so go back and correct them
Wallerie: You actually have three separate blocsk.
Lawson: I'm moving them now by clicking on individual census blocks. It didn't highlight these because they are already in district 4. Anything touching the circle gets listed. Circle touched various census blocks.
Wallerie: How, if we go to Tanana Flats area.
White questions. Judge says: You're just trying to demonstrate the software so I understand how it works. Not working on the plan?
Lawson: No, and not sure we'll get to the plan today. Magnifying glass means the elements and features will zoom in. These are large blocks because there are no people here. How many people? No one.
Wallerie: did you have any questions about how program works?
You can actually go pretty small. Here there are lots of empty precincts south of the river.
Wallerie: These islands here?
2:49pm Lawson: Each island is its own census block, each lake too. Not sure why, but they are.
Wallerie: OK, I'll close that down. Wait, how does this show you if a district is compact.
Lawson: We can go to reports, and one is measure of compactness. Which report to run or all of them. The top one is accepted.
Wallerie: Can you do a compactness test on one of he districts?
Lawson: You can look at a particular district but it's designed to look at the plan as a whole.
Wallerie: You can shut down the computer and then retake the stand. How are you familiar with the redistricting process?
Lawson: I went to most of the board meetings. Missed the first couple and the ones out of town. I also worked on the plans for the Rights Coalition. Getting more community input it would be better. Leadership included: Jake Metcalfe, attorney Myra Munson, ??? had traveled the state. I'm not sure I can name them all.
Wallerie: Most were Democrats?
Lawson: Not sure, probably a lot were. I don't know all of them. A couple were non-partisan, I know because I had to ask them questions about SWest region. Someone who worked in fish politics said people had ompeting interests adn I should look out for them.
Wallerie: So not just computer based plans, I guess you were interviewing people?
Lawson: I guess that's a good way to talk about it. I called people around the state. Asked them about things. Sometimes someone would say, "You can't do that. . ."
Wallerie: Other groups. Who led AFFR?
Lawson: Kay Brown.
Wallerie: She's your current boss? Were there differences among Democrats?
Lawson: We're a big tent group, lots of different issues.
Wallerie: What about AFFER?
Lawson: I understand - White Objects, sustained.
Wallerie: You loaded board plan on your computer too?
Lawson: Requested them from the Board and some were on their websites. The shape files.
Wallerie: This is a report you did on compactness. Move for admission.
White: I think all joint exhibits are already ...Judge yes.
Wallerie: This is two different reports, correct?
Lawson: One I did and one generated by the computer software.
Wallerie:
Lawson: Two reports computer shoots out. One on the proclaamation plan and one on the modified rights plan. Proclamition was final plan the board released.
Wallerie: This report would tell us what the compactness of Dsitrict 5.
Lawson: In this one I ran all 8 tests in the Maptitude software including the ??? test. I honestly don't know if areas of Fairbanks have enough population to actually test.
White: Protest about his areas of expertise - not on political analysis.
Judge and White talking hard to hear White. He can talk about data on Reod??
Wallerie: In terms of District 5 you mention the popualation test and the accuracy.
White object and Judge overrules.
Lawson: not accuracy of test but how it's applied. Software says test draws a convex polygon around the district and looks at population in the polygon that is not in the district. Each test is good for somethings and not others. What would this test miss. I cannot say whether or not you should apply that test when applying to Anchorage. I'd be more comfortable applying it in Anchorage area.
Wallerie: can you tell whree parts of the population concentrated and other's not? For example here in these areas ????
Lawson: pause. Not that specific thing. I could look at it, and I know from having drawn the maps so I know where the population is, but I don't think the software could. I was looking at how the REod test affected by having that area of non-population in it.
White: now he is doing analysis of politics of this. Judge: I'll over rule. I'm the one who will be judging ompactness. He can draw maps and talk about what he's doing and how he did it.
Lawson: To explain the Reod test - the perfect score is one. Zeor is worst. Draws the smallest circle it can around the district and looks at how much of the area in the circle was out of the district.
Wallerie: What wold the .39 mean?
Lawson: The mean of the scores for the districts was .37, so this is better than than mean. Higher mean and lower standard deviation.
Wallerie: What happens when you take the unpopulated area out?
Lawson: Score drops from .39 to .25 (?) beyond standard deviation. Less compact by significant level, right on the border of standard deviation. Judge asking questions - two measures. I was supposed to know this was modified rights plan? The MRP is actually less compact than the boards?
Lawson: No, because the districts aren't numbered the same.
Judge: OK, fair enough.
3:12 Wallerie:
Lawson: Indicates it's part of military ground. .... Also a military base. Two different bases - testing range for Wainright and test firing range for Eilson.
Wallerie: playing aorund with this area. Does it make any difference in SEnate pairings where you ???
Lawson: you could go with 38, 1,2, 5, 6.??? I'm familiare to know which districts they are in, but not what their street addresses.
Wallerie: What happens if you move this around?
Lawson: Affects District 5 because only connected by the military range. District 5 could only be paired with District 3 or 4.
Judge: You have to put the empty area somewhere.
Lawson: Where you put the empty area affects the pairing. If that empty area is not in 5 it changes everything and two senators wouldn't be paired. If empty area were in 38, you'd 3:16 have to pair 5 with 4 or 6 (I think that's what he said.)
Judge: how does a 3rd party not connected to the board understand. How does anyone know what the benchmark is without .... no one knew what the benchmark was until very late and in fact when the benchmark came down finally was after when the board finished their plan was Thanksgiving. How did people know what the benchmark was - the rest of the population had to come in with plans that met the benchmark, but people didn't know what the benchmark was. Dr. Arrington agreed .....?? in the records of the Baord meeting on May 17 Dr. Handley ..
Judge goes back to to Lawson.
White, modified benchmarks ... can't quite hear.
Wallerie, it's a very clear issue. Judge: you can use your time wisely, but I'm looking for the connection.
Wallerie: When did you first submit plan to the board.
Lawson: Late March. then guessing on benchmark based on previous redistricting. Looking at Majority and minority disticts. In May Lsia Handly made presentation to board and said drop Majority and Minority districts and start using effectiveness.
May 17 teleconference? I think we needed 4 3ffective house districts and 3 and Senate districts and given a week to change that.
Judge 4 effective house and 3 ffective Senate districts. How did you know what was effective district?
Lawson: 4.17 VAP except fo district 6 which neeeed just under 50% 49,something and 39 that could be much lower about 39%.
Wallerie: When did you learn that Dr. Handley was not using that standard of 4 and now was using 5.
White: I'm confused.
When did you learn benchmark was now 5?
Lawson: Maybe in late November.
Wallerie: whole idea of influence districts, you undertand benchmark included influence districts and mapping on that assumption from the board? Yes.
Five wasn't until final plans submitted?
Not until December of 2011 when I read Arrington's report and I saw the board was saying five was the number needed.

Wallerie: What were you trying to do with the Rights plan.
Lawson: Respect for local boundaries. Should break local boundaries only if you had to. We wante to show you could meet the VRA without breaking the city and borough boundaries.

Wallerie: For senate pair - what's the population needed?
Lawson: 33,000 and some was the number for Fairbanks. We tried to build one that was just the city of Fairbanks. We tried to draw what was left of the city in a single district and pair that with the city house district into a Senate district.
Wallerie: How many house seats can you fit in FB borough?
Lawson: 5.5
Wallerie: How many in Matsu ?
White - object, Judge, where are you going?
Wallerie: How things different in different parts ????
Judge - ten minute break, back at 3:40 and done at 4:30 on the dot.

Redistricting Court Challenge: Sen Thomas Continues

2012-01-09T14:10:00.001-09:00

They are finished with Sen. Thomas now and there's a 15 minute break until the next witness who wasn't named yet. I didn't catch anything particularly new in this last portion. It continued to go along the lines that the districts in Fairbanks were politically motivated to get rid of one Democratic Senator and thus bust the Senate's bi-partisan coalition.

By the way. Mr. Wallerie, if you haven't figured it out, is the attorney for the plaintiffs, Riley and Dearborn, one a resident of Ester and the other of Goldstream, as I understand it. Those two communities were put into District 38 which includes Bethel. Click here see a map of the Fairbanks districts. You'll get a much bigger one than I can put in here and you can see what the issue is. Districts 1 and 3 which represent the east and west sides of the City of Fairbanks are NOT paired. Rather each is paired with a much larger and more rural district. And even on this map you can only see parts of districts 38 and 3, 5, and 6.

Here are my very rough notes. Think of them as just giving you the sense of the questioning and don't rely on them for all the details to be totally accurate. Attorney White was easier to hear this time round.

1:30 Continue
Wallerie: Have you ever seen that article before?
Sen T: I've seen some, Sean Cockerham, yes, I've seen this.
We get the papers in Juneau and we read them.
Wallerie: In the article it reports that Randy = Who's Randy Ruderich?
Sen. T: He's the head of the Democratic Party
Wallerie: Democratic Party?
Sen. T: No, Republican
Wallerie: He says Fairbanks is the best chance to gain seats.
Sen. T: An indication of what others believe about what redistricting can do.
Wallerie: Asking for your opinion. the plan would allow the Republcians to make gains based on the redistricting.
Sen. T: You gain one district by putting two Democratic Senators together.
Wallerie: If they pair two members of the Coalition - you and Paskvan and Kookesh and Stedman, that takes out two, ten percent of the senate. How do you think the effect will change the organization of the Senate.
Sen. T: You get the numbers down, lack of funding help among Republicans for those in Coalition now, and that gets them back in line.
Wallerie: Fractures in party now?
Sen. T: Yes, they aren't paying attention to party lines, same numbers and different people. lasted long enough to frustrate Republican party - they can't control their troops.
Wallerie: Any Republicans expressed this to you?
Objection - sustained.
Wallerie: Republicans say the 1992 redistricting favored the Democrats, your opinion?
Sen. T: Not in Fairbanks. A Democratic representative lost immediately. It wasn't until the corruption trials began and people changed. That's when I won, Paskvan won, Bob Miller won. Independents changed. Not result of redistricting. Right after, Dems lost seast and Republicans gained seats. It wasn't until the corruption that things changed.
Wallerie: Look at the infamous Tanana Flats. Show where the Tanana Flats would be.
Sen. T: hard to show, Just south of Fairbanks.
Wallerie: In current configuration, that's now part of Denali borough district. You know what that area is, right?
Sen. T: A big vacant area all the way to Denali National Park.
Wallerie: Why is the bridge going in there?
Sen. T: We're hoping it will help retain the military in the interior. They are about 40?% of economics of the Interior, want to keep them.
Wallerie: You're familiar with Creamer Field, right?
Sen T: We wouldn't have District B. Before things ran east and west and now they run north and south.
Wallerie: Without that connection there wouldn't be the conflict between you and Paskvan's districts.
Sen. T: yes.

White: A few questions. You have a personal stake?
Sen. T: I'd say more of a community stake, but sure I have a personal stake.
White: You have already decided to run. You have no right to be drawn into any particular districts.
Sen. T: Yes, I don't.
White: Would you say that two senators would be mroe effective than one representing Fairbanks.
Sen. T: Depends on what the house districts look like and how those people would represent.
White: Comments from your deposition? ?? Page 72 of deposition. Line , I apologize for not having the exact . . .
Sen T: that's true
White: If you are elected you could effectively represent that district can't you?
Sen. T: Yes.
White: Agree that city is entirely in the borough of FNS?
Sen. T: Yes.
White: You had not contact with the redistricting board?
Sen. T: No I didn't.
White: You would agree it's important to protect the Alaska Native voice in the legislture?
Sen. T: Yes
White: You are aware, you are aware.....about Alaska Native bill . . .That Alaska Natives usually vote Democratic?
Sen. T: Not the case in the last election - Sen. Murkowski.
White: That's unique. Article on Ruderich. True that Demcrats said that Ruderich's words are fantasy? As I understand it . . . aware of political make up of ....????
Sen. T: Either I told you that or my staff member did.

Wallerie: White ask if two was better than one. Some qualifications?
Sen. T: When you stretch the districts as they are, you could theoretically do whatever you want. We're working to get one Democrat out of the picture. Just talking about numbers. But if you're talking about being in the minority, it doesn't matter. Two isn't necessarily better than one. Or if your house district stretches down to Palmer, then there is an extreme dilution of the power and where the money has to go. In District 28 there are some 30 fire districts, where there were only 8 in the old district.
Wallerie: Wouldn't the inclusion of 38 would bring us up to 3 Senators from Fairbanks?
Sen. T: I don't see that Senator spending much time in Fairbanks?
Wallerie: That is an effective native district, so do you think anyone in Ester or Goldstream could ever be elected in that ditrict.
Sen. T: The population extracted and put into that district is not a native population.
Wallerie: White asked if the political tendancy of Goldstream/Ester area tends to be deomocratic?
Sen. T: Yes, those were democratic leaning parts of the old District 8. Putting all the Democrats into one district is something that's done in South American states or in the old south?
White: You're not saying that Lyman Hoffman would ignore Fairbanks?
Sen. T: I don't know how much time he's going to spend in Fairbanks. He's got big majorities in the loal areas. Not sure which are Yupiks, Athabascans, etc. Just as there was concern about how much time Kookesh was going to spend up here. Yes, I understand that's part of the sparse population in some areas of Alaska.

Done with Senator Thomas. 15 minute break until 2:15.

Redistricting Court Challenge: Plaintiffs Trying To Show Political Gerrymandering

2012-01-09T13:18:00.000-09:00

In this portion Senator Paskvan was cross-examined by defense attorney Michael White who was pretty aggressive and with a clear antagonistic tone. "Are you aware..." is how he started most questions, though he seemed to have been moving around because sometimes he was audible and other times it seemed like he had strayed from the mike. He was going after Paskvan's characterization of a great difference between representing the City of Fairbanks and the Fairbanks North Star Borough. When White asked Paskvan if he was aware that the City was actually in the Borough and that Paskvan was, in fact, a resident of the Borough as well as the City, Paskvan sounded genuinely surprised at this idea and said, he'd never considered that, because he always thought of himself as a city boy. I'd say that while White was emphasizing legal distinctions, Paskvan clearly represented the mental maps that people really have about their identity.

Then Senator Joe Stevens took the stand and the questioning has been along the same lines.

With both Senators (Paskvan earlier, covered in the previous post) there were questions about how the maps were drawn which raised questions about gerrymandering. Paskvan pointed to the

the splitting up of the City of Fairbanks into two different Senate districts even though there are two adjacent house districts that pretty much make up the city of Fairbanks. Instead each of those districts (1 and 4) are paired with districts that are mainly outside of the City. Much of his testimony was about why the city and borough have many competing interests in the legislature and how this splits the loyalty of the representative

Click to enlarge - red circle shows were districts 3&4 touch

how the final map has the two house districts in Senate District B contiguous by what he described as a matter of feet, while the two City districts (1 and 4) were contiguous for miles.
The fact that two Democratic Senators were paired even though this left an open seat with no incumbents adjacent to them.
That getting rid of just one Democrat would tip the balance of 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans in the state Senate which would result in a Republican majority that would be much more likely to reduce oil taxes - the key issue for the governor.

Sen. Thomas' testimony was pretty much along the same lines, though he added the fact that in the original proposed redistricting plan, there appeared to be an attempt to move just his house on Summit Drive (I think) out of the district leaving all the other houses in-tact. He explained that this couldn't have been an accident because his house was the only 800 numbered house in a block of 900s and all the other 800s were somewhere else.

Below are my rough, running notes as I could catch things off the phone. The Board's attorney, Michael White was hard to hear as he seemed to move in and out of mic range and he also spoke very quickly.

11:40am
White (attorney for the Board): You know that the maps that showed where Fairbanks was came from the Census data and not the Board? [Paskvan had mentioned that part of the City of Fairbanks had been misidentified on the maps.]

Sen. P: Yes, but I would have assumed that the Board representative from Fairbanks would have caught this.

White: You are aware that Marie Greene was on the board and is a Democrat? And she voted for this.

Sen. P: I was not aware.

Do you think Brody was scheming againt you? [Missed stuff here, not sure what his point was, Brody is a Republican as I understand it.]

Would you agree - hard to understand, not close enough to the mike?

Sen. P: Not my job to judge.

White: Would you agree that the city of FB is entirely in the NSFB borough? Yes
And all residents of FB are also residents of NSRB? I guess, never thought of that. Think of myself as a Fairbanks boy?
Aware there is no socioeconomic distinction? A: There must be consideration of government boundaries. To the extent that it fractures the city of Fairbanks, it fractures the socioeconomic integration of the city.
White: You are aware? that the Borough by law ???
Sen P: I believe that when people vote to belong as something, they have common beliefs When the people in NSB voted to create themselves they were identifying as a group.
White: ARe you aware that by law . . . A: People voted [for political subdivision] to say that they were similar.
White: Mentioned, Paskvans have long illustrious history, you'd agree that Fairbanks is hub for rural Alaskans? Certainly.
Fairbanks are connected to people around the state? Yes.
Aware of a bill - you voted for it? Yes to preserve rural native vote statewide

White seems to be moving around so that he gets away from the mike and it's hard to hear. Judge jsut asked him to take the Diana Ross microphone. Still hard.

He's talking in a very aggressive and hostile style.
Sen P: Concerned that native voice would be drowned out.
White: Alaska Native community tends to vote Democratic? Yes.
You have not filed for reelction? Correct.
You don't intend to file? Not, I haven't made up my mind.
White: ???? A: We've been targeted.
White: You mentioned Kookesh, Stevens, Stedman. ARe you aware. . .
Sen P: I understand that because of population loss in SE Alaska, there would be a need to adjust both Kookesh and Stedman's districts, so the questions discussed was whether that would be a pairing. Both are in the bi-partisan working group.
White: Are you aware . . ..??
Sen P: I don't know, Don't pay attention to those kind of details?
White: Have you seen the ??plan the plaintiffs are offering? No
White: Should you run in district B, you would be able to represent your constituents? You won't ignore constituents because theya re in the city or borough.
Sen P: It comes up with issues like annexation when there is a conflict between the City and Borough's interests. I don't like to use the term ignore, but it raises issues that are conflicted in the ability to represent two conflicting interests fairly Trying to be allegiant to two entities at the same time.
White: ????
Sen P: I said I try to do the best that I could do, but it creates conflicts with how one represents the City's interests while also trying to represent the Borough's interests, where the conclusion one would reach are incompatible.
White: ????
Sen. P: My testimony, is that it's wrong to put any Sen into a position, that the integrity of the FB city limits should be maintained,
White:??? lots of fast talk, but can't undertand.
Sen P: Talking about FB my home town. That's my district.
White: Kookesh has bigger district and has to balance different interests right?
Sen P: I assume Sen. Kookesh does what he can do. I believe he works hard.
White: As one of 20 Senators in the state, rep your district and ??
Sen P: yes.
White: Inerior delegats work together right for best representation, right?
Sen P: We hear from groups at the same time about the interest of those groups - 7am every other groups, social groups and chamber of commerce, get updates from Interior delegation, as a cohesive entity.
White: ???
Sen P: FMATS are capital dollars used on road projects. There are dollars used outside the city limits of FB as I said earlier.
White: ???
Sen P: The logic is there.
White: One more question. You agree the areas Ester and Goldstream are Democratic areas of Borough?
Sen P: Yes.

Wallerie followup? No

12:04pm Sen. Excused.

Another witness. Man with a camera, who are you with? ????

Joseph James Thomas the 2nd.
Wallerie (attorney for plaintiffs) What is your district?
Sen Thomas: District B
Wallerie ??
Sen T: This yellow area here
Wallerie: Different districts? This area here that runs off the map to Cantwell.
How long in legislature? Elected 2006 and took office in 2007.
Wallerie: Municipal govts in your district?
Sen T: No. FNSB. In district 8 Healy and Cantwell and Anderson. Denali Borough
Communities - Two Rivers, Fox, Ester, Goldstream, areas that have a definition.
Wallerie: What languages spoken?
Sen. T: Predominantly English.
Judge - we're doing things here that have nothing to do with you, just answer.
Wallerie: How is the Sen. organized?
Sen T: You mean the bi-partisan coalition? Six Republicans and ten Democrats. Need a certain number to have a majority, people who more or less see eye to eye.
Wallerie: We'll move along and refere to Sen Paskvan's testimony.
Does it make a difference if you are in the majority or not?
SEn. P: Refere to a member who is not in the majority talks about me and Paskvan: These are the guys you need to talk to if you want to get anything done.
Wallerie? Does it affect committee assginments?
Sen. T: Absolutely.
Wallerie: Whats the Bush Caucus?
Sen. T: Members from the Bush who talk about their issues?
Wallerie: ARe you a member? no Are they all native? No
Are there issues that might divide the Bush Caucus from the Interior Caucus? Yes, But they also work together? Yes
Wallerie: Aware of opposition to Sen Coalition?
Sen. T: Yes. Mainly related to the oil taxation. The house passed a bill last session in a few short meetings. But the senate slowed that down. We aren't giving back $2 billion without some discussion. Chamber of Commerce graded us on the oil issue. Low grades to the Sen. majority and high grades to the minority which has no power and accomplished nothing. Leaders - Stevens and Stedman - given F's and removed from the Republican party website. I skated by, somehow, with a C. Major motivation to changing redistricting that is taking place.
Wallerie: Here's a map of Fairbanks.
Sen. T: As relates to me. The inclusion of this area Chena Hot Springs Road to CH - this was in a different district. District 7. Changed drmatically. 38 all the way from the coast all the way to this area. HD 7 and 8 now ... changed dramatically. Now running because of a connection here connecting 3B and 4B and pitting two Democratic Senators pitted against each other. Good opportunity to eliminate one.
White: Objections -
Judge: All your objections raised work here too.
Wallerie: How many in current senate structure how many Dems (10) and REp(10).
So you couldn't voe on party lines because no majority.
So pairing of senators who happen to be members of the bi-partisan working group. Get ride of two Dems, then it would be 12-8 and I'm sure the Republicans could organize, and they would pick up a few Democrats from the rural committee. Have to get to 16 to keep the minority totally out.
Wallerie: In terms of other Senators in this plan. The pairing of Kookesh and Stedman. They are also both in the majority. Aware of proposal that would have put Stevens and Hoffman together?
Sen. T: All are indications of what could possibly happen. SE a potential one more Democrat losing which would tip things.
Wallerie: Aware of earlier board proposals that would affect your seat?
Sen. T: Yes. Went up Summit Drive and around ?? Loop where my house was. No other parts of Summit Drive included.
Wallerie: How were you aware?
Sen. T: It was in the newspaper.
Wallerie: When you saw this article, ...this isn't the current plan? NO. What was it about this article that made you concerned about redistricting process.
Sen. T: The way that people said they didn't know where the incumbants lived, but you would have had to know where I lived. I'm at 879, the only 800 number on the street. Apparent done for a particular purpose. The other houses on Summit Drive were excluded.
Wallerie: When you heard about this. Saw the map went to where your house should have been where all the other 800 houses were, the line would have gone straight. But it had to go this way. It would have put me in the other district.
What did you do? What can you do? I merely laughed and it was more evidence they were trying to change to coalition?
Wallerie: Were you aware people complained? And the eleimianted this bump?
Currently where is your house?
Sen. T: In this area here.
Wallerie: Connection between house district 3 and 4. Does that give you any impressions?
Sen. T: Not sure what you mean. Now connected city house district with a suburban district? Competing interests for funding. City very different. Competing interests in 106 road districts already among themselves, and they compete with the city. Different dynamic in terms of types of money you are looking for.
Wallerie: Fire districts in the borough?
Sen. T: In mine at least 8. Ivovled with them? Oh yeah. Always checking on what they need.
Wallerie: How do you work with 106 road districts.?
Sen T: No way to please all. Try to get chunk of money for the borough and let them dole it out.
Judge: 12:30 Lunch break, back promptly at 1:30.

Redistricting Court Challenge: Paskvan Testifies

2012-01-09T11:43:00.002-09:00

11:30 - they are on break. Sen. Paskvan has been testifying, basically that he thinks there was political gerrymandering to match himself and fellow Democratic Senator Thomas. He discussed the differences between the city and the borough areas - police powers, garbage collection, fire, building codes - and showed how now they have split up the two halves of the city of Fairbanks into two different Sen. Districts which will also represent large chunks outside the city. He also pointed to the fact that House Districts 3 and 4 are barely connected, really only a matter of feet, to be joined as one Sen. District, while 1 and 2 (the two main City of Fairbanks house districts) are connected by miles of common boundary, but are not connected as was the old Senate district. On the map, House District 4 (Sen seat B) is blue, the green is District 3. The red circle shows where they are connected.

Below are my notes. They are starting again. I'll clean up the notes later, but for those who want them now. These are NOT official transcripts by any means. They're just to give you a sense of the proceedings.

10:21 It's working.

Sen. Joe Paskvan -
Attorney: Current district?
Sen P: Sen District E
Attorney: Where on this map is it located? Describe district.
Sen. P: Fairbanks and Ft Wainwright basically.
Attorney: Exhibit J11 - Red outline is City Boundary, Roughly your dustruct?
What did you do before politics?
Sen P: attorney. Born and raised here. My grandfather came in 1909 then during 10's 20's and 30's traveled back and forth to Minnesota. Permanently stayed in interior AK in 30s. Dad went to UA in WWII and joined army. Opened business in FB after WWII. 25 cousins in family born here after the war.
Attorney: Good working knowledge of Fairbanks? Yes. Seen Maps of redistricting? Yes.
Current proclamation did you see problems with the maps?

Sen P - where the 4p to the west, there's a part omitted from City of Fairbanks. Annexation in 2008, city limits as changed by annexation not reflected in the redistricting map. Here and here. (I can't see it either). This area wasn't contested, but this area was and was focus of a lot of legislative discussion two years ago in Juneau. I live right here and I drive this street every day. This used to be outside of Fairbanks, but in 2010 all came in. Subject to main debate, south of Airport Road and West of Fred Meyer area. Political debate I was forefront in.
Attorney: Annexation. How did it end in legislature?
Sen. P: Apparently legislature can throw out annexation approved by planning board.
Attorney: Some resistance to annexation? YES Who resisted? Before got to legislature the FBNS borough resisiting and City of Fairbanks advancing. I was a resident of Fairbanks. When in legislature, FBNS borough passed resolution against. Rep. Wilson of North was spearhead to crush the annexation and I was spearhead to keep it. Primarily the debate played out in Rep. Bob Heron's committee and when I testified, Rep. Wilson was presenting hostile testimony. I was happy my side prevailed.
Attorney: Why did they oppose annexation?
Sen P: 3/4 million dollars in property and sales taxes from Fred Meyer west facility and some residents and also, ambulance response times from UA compared to downtown fire department from City of Fairbanks.
Attorney: Why an issue?
Sen P: I think borough made it more of an issue than necessary.
Attorney: Has to do with tax base? Correct. Service to people?
Sen P: For annexation to work, City had to show it could provide services, which it did.
Attorney: Why were you advocating for the annexation?
Sen P: Important to recognize that city of fairbanks has continuously expanded throughout my life time. Dad would say Fairbanks grows despite itself. This is aprt of the growth of the city of Fairbanks. As the elected Sen. for city of Fairbanks, my duty to represent interests of the City rather than the borough.
Attorney: Future annexations coming?
Sen P: Yes, and annexation south of airport road, will continue toward the airport and businsses and homes south of Chena River and north of Tananana and Johanson expressway, NE Fairbanks, all within the city of Fairbanks.
Attorney: Would you expect opposition on those expansions too?
Sen P: I would expect opposition, but as part of the natural growth of city limits over the decades, the annexation will eventually occur.
Attorney: What type of services offered by the city.
Sen. P: Incorporated in 1903, First Class city, has police powers including professional police, fire, garbage curbside pickup, city street maintenance, building codes going back many, many years. Less potential to burn down. City engineering makes sure codes complied with. More like a true city. I remember statehood and mid-60s and NSBorough incorporated, B residents always had significant problem with police powers, but people in Fairbanks used to police powers and two different states of mind. Borough relies on state troopers.
Attorney: How does fire protection compare.
Sen P: B. has volunteer fire connected to service districts.
A: Garbage?
Sen P: City has weekly curbside pickup and they take it to the dump. Borough has dumpster stations where people can deposti their garbage.
A: In Juneau, do these differences make a difference in representation in legislature?
Sen P: Certainly beyond the annexation battles, every year negotiations on capital budgets, allegations to FMATS which can service City and Borough and distinct from that capital budget appropirations solely to the city. As Fairbanks Sen. I want to focus on funding for the city of Fairbanks. Last year Sen. Thomas and I worked together on FMATS capital budget and a chunk of that wne to Fairbanks, since FB is the hub. If people in the are want to move, they have to go through Fairbanks.
. . .
Air quality is an issue that's different between the two. City has been able to ban the hydronic ?? boilers.
A: Controversial?
Sen P: Not in city, but concern in the borough if there would be boiler police and hotly contested.
Attorney: would being from the city affect how you work in Juneau?
Sen P: pause, not sure how to answer. We are trying to bring natural gas to lessen the whole issue. 1100 businesses and residents on natural gas - in the city.
[Clearly they are tyring to establsih that there is a different set of interests between the city and borough to justify having different legislators for each rather than merging them]

A: When you were deposed, there was a discussion on fracturing. What do you mean?
Sen P: Troubled me when the boundaries between 4 and 1, I live in here in the city and parts are to the east, but on this north south basis generally is where one part of the city is split from another part. That exists in my current Sen district, but kept east part of FB with the west Part.
10:50 - Currently using Steese Highway n/s - connects with Richardson Highway by Ft. Wainright gate. Learned the pairings split the east and west part of Fairbanks, term came to mind of fracturing the city. Puts FB at risk, maintaining the integrity of everything I've known all my life of what FB has been. Not just fractured to the east, where not paired with the one district, but also to the West where they didn't considere the annexation. The Board didn't care about at all the actual city boundary of FB. Thought the city should be a cohesive political voice because we do have differences from the area around.
Fractured to the west - 100s of voters - and to the east - 1000's of voters.
There is a risk to potential future annexation issues. Someone not a resident of city of Fairbanks and allegiance not to the city, you risk stifling the natural progression of the expansion of Fairbanks over the decades. As to capital projects within the city. There are capital projects different int he City limits different from Chena Hot Springs Road - just unique entities.
. . .
10:55 - A: Other cities in borough?
Sen. P: North Pole about 2,000, city of Fairbanks something north of 30,000 people. There's been talk of consolidation between Fairbanks, the borough, North Pole, and Ester, but haven't. Anchorage has. For us Police power is forefront in all this. The B population is extremely hostile to police powers for as long as I can remember, back to the late 70s - alcohol tax on area wide basis. Hotly contested as creation of police power in FNSB.
Also bar hours. I was born and raised in the bar business = owned Tommies - since the 30s til now. Bar hours issue, goes back to when city limits different from now. Bars open just outside city limits, mad dash to outside the city limits after city bars closed.

A:In terms of Sen. pairings, what are your thoughts on discriminatory impacts?

Sen P: getting away from fracturing discussion on east and west. When I became aware the pairings not east and west of Fairbanks, but with massive area north of Fairbanks - blip where 4B touches 3B what came to mind was gerrymandering. Infuriating.
Protest, overruled.
Sen. P will be leaving for Juneau this weekend.
Saw that two districts connected by area stretching for feet whereas 1 and 2 connected by miles. Clearly saw it as a way to get two Democratic Sen against each other.

I'm a Democrat. Joe Thomas is also a Dem. Sen. Q: What is Bi partisan working group?
Sen P: coalition in the Sen. hoping to address the issues of Alaska without getting bogged down in the extremes of either party. I've been a member since day 1. Set up in Dec. 2008 and I was sworn in Jan. 2009. Is Sen. Thomas also a member? Yes.
A:Who are the Republican members?
Sen P: Stedman, Stevens, Meyers, McGuire, Wagoner, and
A: What is Stevens position? Pres.
A: Kukesh? Democrat
A: Stedman: Co-cahir of finance, and sits on resource committee which I chair.
A: Other finance chair? Sen. Hofman - Democrat.
A: When you heard about the pairings in your district, did you know that you were the only Sen. pairings.
Sen. P: We were wondering where it was going to came at us from. I never figured it would be us. Concern was Kookesh and Stedman and Stevens and Hoffman. Both of those Republicans are less favored than others.
A: You never testified did you? No.
A: Were you aware of other proposals to pair Senators, other than those who were members of the bipartisan working group?
Objection, hearsay.
Sen. P: No.
A: What were you saying about other Republican Senators.
Sen P: Talking about decoupling of tax structure for oil and gas. May 2010 change for tax under AGIA pipeline. Sen. Stedman and I led the drive to decouple natural gas from the oil tax. With shale gas going on, we saw the drop of natural gas prices, BTU equivalency in pricing was basis of tax, but natural gas price dropping so not equivalent. We would have lost a lot of revenue. Passed the Sen. Failed in house, then passed in house, then vetoed by the governor. First time Stedman and I worked on keeping highest possible tax for Alaskans, as required by the constitution. Current hot issue is production tax. Stedman and I have been leading this issue - HB 110. We both have strong thoughts that we have to maintain revenues to State from our oil, especially given the credit structure. This makes Sen. Stedman to some extent a disfavored Republican. Neither Stedman nor Stevens pictures were on the Republican website.
Resource Development Council, the Alliance have given us report cards - I got a D, Stevens and STedman got F's, minority in Senate all got A's. All because of the bi-partisan working group trying to address these important issues. The majority favoring giving billions of dollars away are receiving A's.
A: Are you aware the plan actually opened a vacancy that doesn't have an incumbency?
Sen P: Yes, forcing two Dems to run against each other, and then creating an open seat to allow someone else to run. First Seekins and and then Higgins, both of whom were defeated by Thomas.
A: How do ??? vote? Mainly Democratic.
A: How about North Pole? Mainly Republican.
A: Military voting patterns?
Sen. P: When I was campaigning in 2010 presidential year, I came to learn the military has a low voter turnout even in election year.
A: Putting the tow military basis together how does this affect political party? (hard to hear)
Sen. P: much lower political voice can dominate because of low political turnout.
A: This part here?
Sen P: Ft. Wainright training grounds. When we got capital budget for bridge across the Tanana, to get strikers across the river for their training.
A: away from mike
Sen. P: More registered Republicans than Dems, but even more undeclared. Like me - I was undeclared until just before I decided to run. 1.4 - 1 R to D district.

A: How did you get elected as a Democrat in this district?
Sen. P: MY qualis, born here, raised here, family for generations, not interested in short term, but long run, and strong business background, many Republicans find me to be an attractive candidate. I am a capitalist, but have social issues some may disagree with.
A: In terms of the Sen. plan. Aware of any legitimate reason for breaking apart the city?
Sen. P: I can think of no legitimate reason for fracturing FB. A great deal of harm in moving people to the east and west. Now divided among three different house districts. Only rational contiguous boundary is to conect the east and west parts of Fairbanks so they hae a singular unified voice.

11:30 Judge - ten minute break, then we'll go to 11:40.