Alaska Redistricting Board: Approves RFI for Board Legal Services and Procurement Procedures

 The Board met from 1:30pm to 1:55.  They approved the Request for Information (RFI) for legal services.  One Board member asked if they should disqualify firms that had challenged previous Board positions in court.  Other members said it's important to consider conflicts of interest, but that if we disqualified firms that had litigated redistricting issues in the past, there wouldn't be any qualified firms.  If they have a current conflict, they won't submit a proposal.

They approved the RFI.  It should be posted by Monday on the statewide (not just legislative) site and will be circulated via the Alaska Bar Association website.  It will be open until Jan 29.  Members believed those with expertise have been waiting for this and will be looking for it.  

The Board also added approving the Procurement Procedures to the agenda, and they noted minor changes and approved it.  One substantive change was to only allow those who bid on projects to object.  

[NOTE:  My very rough verbatim notes are below.  This is only my second meeting and I'm not yet really familiar with people's voices.  Some members were called on by name, or identified themselves (thank you!), but usually by first name.  So I've used first name just because I was typing as fast as I could.]

Redistricting Board Jan 8, 1:30pm

Members and staff present:

• Peter Torkelson as Executive Director 
• TJ Presley as Deputy Director. 
• John Binkley, Fairbanks, Chair of the Alaska Redistricting Board. 
• Melanie Bahnke of Nome, 
• Nicole Borromeo of Anchorage, 
• Bethany Marcum of Anchorage  
• Budd Simpson of Juneau.   

AGENDA:

State of Alaska Redistricting Board

January 8, 2021

1:30 pm

Teleconference:

Public Numbers: Anchorage 563-9085, Juneau 586-9085, Other 844-586-9085

Agenda

1. Call to order

2. Establish a quorum

3. Adoption of agenda

4. Discussion: Request for Information for Legal Services

a. Topic:Timeline for RFI closing

b. Topic: Routing of RFI related inquiries

5. Adoption o fRequest for Information for Legal Services 

6. Adjournment

MEETING NOTES:

1:30 roll call - all members here

John - short agenda

Adopt agenda

4.  Request for Info for Legal Services 

Peter - response by January 29, gives people three weeks to respond

Discussion:  Nicole - adequate;

Budd Simpson - adequate, certainly not shorter, compromise , get this thing moving and enough time.  

Melanie Marcum - probably small pool of bidders and are on the lookout for this.  Want people with experience

Routing - how will the RFI’s come to board and how we respond

Peter - should be careful respondents don’t have direct contact with board members.  Single contact - me - if technical I’ll answer.  If other I’ll contact Board.  

Questions for Peter or TJ?

Melanie - makes sense, I don’t want to be contacted.  Peter is good contact for me.

5.  Adoption of RF legal services

John:  Thanks Nicole and Budd for their work on this.  

Move to adopt by Bethany, seconded by???

Discussion?  

Melanie - I emailed yesterday with suggestion to add to quals, there shouldn’t be a conflict of interest if they are currently or previously engaged in litigation trying to affect outcome of prior Board’s decision.  I’m not an attorney.  You can’t represent two opposing clients at the same time.  Maybe not an issue.  

Budd:  Thanks.  I like that Melanie is concerned about conflicts of interest, but in something like this it’s critical to have legal experience with redistricting, so having been involved in the past with redistricting. [ Noise, please repeat.]  Good you thought about conflicts of interest and we should be aware.  But most critical thing is to have most qualified legal rep. and they get that from some kind of litigation on one side or another it doesn’t matter.  If we made a condition that they couldn’t represent one side or the other in the past, there wouldn’t be any one left with experience. 

We shouldn’t put it into RFI, but be aware and take that into consideration when reviewing proposal.  If we think they wouldn’t be objective and represent our interests, we don’t have to choose them.  But we should consider conflicts when we look at them.  

???:  Current conflicts would be important.  Good firms would have had previous experience.

Melanie - Just want the firm to have no conflicts.  

Budd:  If have a current conflict, they won’t apply.  Example:  If retained already by political party to represent them, they won’t apply.

Bethany? - Rules of Professional Conduct are clear and attorneys expected to comply.

John:  Any objection to motion?  If no objection, we can proceed.  [Adopted.]

All we have on the agenda.  Any comments?

Nicole - Peter and TJ did heavy lifting, though Budd and I willing to take credit, but they deserve it.  

John:  Then the two medals we were going to give you two will go to Peter and TJ.

Budd:  Draft on procurement procedures?

Peter:  Thanks.  Got feedback with some changes, I want to review those and I’ll bring that to board at final meeting.  Thought enough to do at this meeting. 

Melanie - I didn’t have issues.  I don’t need more time if others ready

???   - I’m prepared.

John - we could Amed the agenda to add approving procurement policy as presented by staff.  

Add item six:  approval of procurement code.

Budd:  Changes that staff made were largely ministerial and we discussed in last meeting in terms of what we want to see.  They provided the draft in advance so we had chance to look at.  We should thus go ahead and approve it so they can go on.

General State, the other was Legislative code.  Since we were thru the Legislative ??, so we deferred to Legislative and replaced the word “Legislative”  with the Board:

Peter:  one change of substance, “interested parties” people who could protest , limited to only those who had actually submitted a proposal.  

After the meeting I will publish the marked up pages.  That will be available for public as soon as possible.  

John:  Other discussion on motion to adopt?  Objections?  None, it is adopted.  

Other items board members want to bring up

Bethany - there’s another caller on the line ends with 19  - 

Someone from Juneau, member of public.

Peter:  One other item on RFI we will post this on full statewide public notice system.  Will put it up Monday morning (not just Leg site) and also through the Alaska Bar Association to make sure attorneys know.

John:  Motion to adjourn.  Talk about next meeting?  OK,  [they didn't talk about next meeting]

Melanie:  Move to adjourn.  Nicole, seconds

Objections?  Adjourned  1:55pm