Campbell Creek Yesterday And Last Year - Big Difference

 Weather, from one year to another, in one particular location, doesn't tell us anything about climate change.  For that you need data over many years and many locations.  

But, for whatever reasons - more snow, lower spring temperatures, etc. - Campbell Creek - from the bridge at Lake Otis - was almost completely iced over on April 15, 2021.  

But yesterday (March 30, 2022), I took the bike out for the first time to check out conditions and here's what Campbell Creek looked like.

Whatever the reasons, we are way ahead of last year.  

Cell phones let us quickly retrieve old photos to be able to do a comparative post like this.  

Redistricting Board Meets Saturday 2pm To Respond to SC Ruling

 It was scheduled for the morning, but they just changed it.  From the email:

Good evening subscribers,

To allow those following redistricting to also attend the memorial service for Representative Don Young, the Board meeting previously scheduled for 10am on Saturday, April 2 has been moved back to a 2:00pm start. 

The public notice has been updated with the new start time.  The updated notice also includes PDF files of draft minutes of the Board's Feb 16 meeting and the Alaska Supreme Court Order of March 25.

See: http://notice.alaska.gov/206009

Have a great evening!

Peter Torkelson
Executive Director
Alaska Redistricting Board

And from the public notice on State website:

The public is invited to join the Zoom conference or attend in-person at the Anchorage Legislative Information office.  Public testimony will be taken in-person or via teleconference using the phone numbers below.

The public may listen or testify via the Legislative Teleconference System by dialing: 

 - Anchorage 563-9085

 - Juneau 586-9085

 - Other 844-586-9085

To be clear.  If you Zoom, you just watch/listen.

If you want to testify

-go in person, or

-use one of the phone numbers

We Go To Alaska For The Afternoon

 We drove south to McHugh Creek where the spring tends to come a little sooner than in Anchorage.  It's good to just get out where there are just trees and mountains and water.  

The trail was sometimes snow, often ice (soft ice because it was well above freezing), dirt, wooden boardwalk, mud, and frozen mud. 

We heard ravens and this was our only sign of moose or bear.

We stopped at Potter Marsh on the way back.  Snow is gone, Water is still mostly ice.  Saw a few gulls.

Good day.  

Apocalyptic Beliefs Go Back A Long Ways

"Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted some of America’s most prominent evangelical leaders to raise a provocative question — asking if the world is now in the biblically prophesied “end of days” that might culminate with the apocalypse and the second coming of Christ."  (The Times of Israel)

Christianity.com tells us:

"Ever since Jesus predicted the end, even before Revelation was written, Christians have worried and/or believed that the apocalypse was upon them. Several events were widely thought to herald the end of the world and were offered supposed biblical backing, but ultimately did not result in the apocalypse."

They they go on to list various times that many people expected the Apocalypse to happen.  But it didn't.  But they aren't debunking that it will happen.  Only that we can't predict it.

"We can’t control when the end comes. We can’t even predict it. However, there is one thing we can do: Be faithful followers of Christ regardless of the situation. And that is what we have been called to do."

These ideas were in my mind when I read   "Reindeer at the End of the World"  by Bathsheba Demuth.  How did I find that article?

My book club book this month is The Best American Travel Writing 2021.    The title didn't excite me. How could they already have a book out (back in January)?  2021 was only just over.  How did they evaluate stuff published in December?  (I think, now, it is the date the book is published, not when the original articles were published.)

Besides, I wanted a book that would take me to another world, to new ideas, with words that would excite me and make me smile.  A great novel of inspired biography maybe.  Not some travel industry hype.

Well, an advantage of a book club is that you read things you never would have picked on your own.  

Despite the fact that B picked this book as a substitute for the cancelled cruises he missed over the last couple of pandemic years, the book is much better than I expected.  I am way behind - but I've only got about 150 pages to read by Monday night, so I could make it.  

So far, my favorite chapter was "Good Bread" about a guy who takes his family to Lyon, France so he can learn to cook at a great restaurant there.  He ends up working in a bakery that only uses fresh local flour from small family farms.  As the bread baker in our household, I found lots to appreciate in the chapter.  

But this is about the Apocalypse and also Russia.   

 In "Reindeer at the End of the World"  Bathsheba Demuth writes about a trip that takes place on the Chukchi Peninsula in the Russian far east.  

While looking for reindeer, the author stumbles across Karl Yanovich Luks in the archives in Vladivostok.   He came to the far east in the 1920s to revolutionize the lives of the local folks and modernize the fox hunting and reindeer herding enterprises.  (It didn't turn out well.)

Karl was born in 1888 and grew up very poor and became a deckhand as a teen.  It was the last decades of the Czar Nicholas II, who 

"heir to four centuries of autocratic rule, sheltered in his palaces, spent lavishly , and hired more police.  The people Karl met outside these aristocratic walls found their present so unjust, so sickly, so impossible, their question was not would it end, but how.  Karl heard the Baptists preaching hellfire, Orthodox priests involving the salvation of saints, and a dozen other sects calling down the final judgment.  

As the historian Yuri Slezkine explains, these visions all shared a plot:  first the apocalypse, then a reign of harmony and perfection.  An old story, passed from the Middle East to Europe, from Jewish cosmologies into Christin traditions, going back almost 3,000 years to the prophecies of Zoroaster, who foretold a cataclysmic battle between light and dark.  The triumph of light would give the righteous a new life, one without suffering or toil, one where time is meted out in cycles of birth and death ended in a linear, immortal world."

As she tells the story of her visits with the indigenous reindeer herders, she keeps coming back to this theme.  

"Karl did not become a Baptist or worship saints.  He joined a socialist reading circle.  In Slezkine's masterful reading of the Russian socialist condition, the plot Karl learned also came from Zoroaster's lineage.  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels foretold how the darkness of capitalist exploitation would become the light of communist utopia.  Between these poles was a kind of earthly revelation:  what socialists called revolution.  A word, Slezkine reminds us, promising 'the end of the old world and the beginning of a new, just one."

 "Another appeal of the apocalypse:  proclaiming it is not an act of supplication, but of certainty."

"The core of apocalyptic thinking is nihilism:  this world is too despoiled to continue.  The seduction of such stories is how certain they make the tellers feel.  An apocalyptic narrative is like looking at a horizon with no clouds or hills:  the way forward is terribly assured.  To walk it, there is no need to mind the lives of others, rendered invisible by the power of imagining they are already gone.  

"Apocalyptic prophecy is also an escape from contemplating- catstrophe."

The apocalypse was not a part of my upbringing.  It scares me that so many people accept it so easily.  My upbringing says we should do everything we can to make the world a better place.  Accepting the apocalypse as inevitable says, the world is a terrible place and there is nothing you can do about it, but not to worry, God will fix it for you if you follow his commandments.   

Even though the end of times has been predicted so many times in the past and yet failed to appear.  This may not be the most enlightening discussion of it, but getting bits and pieces from here and there helps me think about such things.  Gives me questions to raise when I meet people who truly believe.  

Great Anchorage Student Art At Museum

 This was the 50th year of the Anchorage Student Art Exhibit in the Anchorage Museum.  These exhibits are always a delight.  So much talent and originality.  I snapped pictures here and there that called out to me - but there was so much more than this.  Enjoy.  Go see these and more in person at the museum.   These are in no particular order.  They are higher resolution than normal so you should be able to click on them to enlarge.  

Anna McIllece "Peggy"  Grade 12

Anna Skaggs "Jeffery Heath" Grade 8

Brooke Harkleroad Grade 10  (Photo)

Collin Keith "Camouflaged" Grade 6

Jennie Becker  "Dog Collage"  Grade 8

Madison Griffin "Dragon" Grade 12

Majo Hernandez Zamora "Grasshopper"  Grade 4

Samantha Farren  (Acrylic) Grade 10

Sophia Fenoseff  "My Most Important People"
Grade 10

Claire O'Leary "Skyscraper with a Can" Grade 11

Gabriella Garcia "Sad Bubbles"  Grade 11

Gracelynn McCotter "Soul Seeker"  Grade 6

Kiana Reed "Girl at Midnight" Grade 6

Lauren Gaskill  "Wallflowers" (ceramic) Grade 11

Melody Lankford "Self Portrait"  (oil) Grade 10

Mercedi Lee "Nature's Rain" Grade 10

Michelle Harris "The Honey Gears" Grade 12

Naly Yang "Shiny" (oil pastel) Grade 12

Noelle Larsen "Covid" Grade 6

Sawyer Brock  "Dragon" (Collage) Grade 4

Sophia James "Wonderland Bus"  Grade 7

Thanks to all the students who shared their imaginations with everyone and to the Museum for giving them a place to do it.  If anyone does NOT want their picture up, email me (address upper right column).  

Alaska Supreme Court Ruling On Redistricting In: Eagle River Pairing and Cantwell Cutout Need Fixing

 Considering some of the lengthy decisions in past Redistricting cases, this one is just eight pages.

The Court ruled:

• Senate District K (Eagle River/South Muldoon pairing) - unconstitutional gerrymandering remanded to be fixed by Board
• House Districts 29,30, 36 (Mat-Su - Valdez pairing) basically left intact EXCEPT the Cantwell cutout must be repaired by the Board
• Skagway/Mendenhall Valley House Pairing - not unconstitutional, left intact.  

The Court did not address the issue of the importance the Board must give to public testimony - other than rejecting trial court's conclusion on Skagway.

The Court also did not directly address the issue of whether ANCSA boundaries can be used in redistricting maps, but the left the intact Districts 27, 38, 39, and 40 (some of which used ANCSA boundaries) and they did not except taking Cantwell out of the Denali Borough to be with other AHTNA villages.  Though that was based on other issues.  

You can read the full decision below.  

AK Supreme Court Redistrict... by Steve

The Legal Equivalent Of Mansplaining

[Note, I was having trouble getting the video segments to start and stop where I wanted, so while I'm leaving this up, I'm also making some changes.  LATER:  I think I've straightened it out.  But I'll be revising through tomorrow if necessary.] 

My last post organized my thoughts about the Supreme Court hearing for the redistricting board cases into three categories:  

1.  PRACTICAL/POLITICAL:  WHAT WILL THE LEGISLATIVE MAP OF ALASKA LOOK LIKE FOR THE NEXT TEN YEARS?

2.  LEGAL:  WHAT LEGAL PRINCIPLES ARE THE ATTORNEYS AND JUDGES DEBATING/WEIGHING AND HOW DO THEY IMPACT #1 AND FUTURE BOARDS?

3.  PERSONAL:  HOW DO THE SKILLS, STYLES, MOTIVATIONS, AND EXPERIENCES OF THE ATTORNEYS (AND TO SOME DEGREE, THE JUDGES) IMPACT THE DECISION MAKING?  

I've realized a couple of things as I struggle to write the follow up posts:

• While I've separated the three categories for clarity of discussion, they are very closely interwoven.  You can't talk about one without the other two.
• There are almost four hours of video tape to repeatedly review to start to get all the points
• There's way too much content here for even hard core redistricting nerds to read and for this blogger to cover
• What I really want to write about most is how the Board's attorney, Matt Singer, presented his case

Writing blog posts - on my own, without compensation - allows me to follow my personal interest and curiosity - the angle of the story that most calls out to me.  No editor assigning stories (or correcting my typos) and no deadlines, except natural ones.  Like getting comments on the trial out before the Supreme Court issues its decision.  If I pair my passion with reason, you - the reader -  get the best posts.  My gut is telling me that the most interesting part of this case, the one that tells us the most, is the Board's attorney, Matt Singer.

Matt Singer is at the heart of this case.  He has been the Board's attorney since early March 2021 when his firm was hired to represent the Board and he has since advised them on the law - constitutional, statutory, and case law.  The Board used his advice to draw the maps, to guide them in and out of executive sessions, and on how to pair the Eagle River house districts into Senate districts.  

And he's the attorney who has been in the spotlight in the Redistricting trials - being the face of the Board as he had to defend it against five different law suits, all with another attorney or more, in one combined case.  

And he doesn't seem to be doing too well.  I say this based on Judge Thomas Matthews' ruling on the case at the Superior Court level.  And I say this based on the questions the Supreme Court justices asked him at the hearing there on Friday, March 18, 2022.  

Law-splaining

I've been closely watching the Alaska Redistricting Board for about 15 months now.  But it wasn't until after the trial, that it finally came to me that Matt Singer spends a lot of time "law-splaining."  This is the legal variation of 'mansplaining.'

So, let's look at a definition of 'mansplaining' from SHRM:  

"Mansplaining—when a man talks condescendingly to someone (especially a woman) about something he has incomplete knowledge of, with the mistaken assumption that he knows more about it than the person he's talking to does."

Those key points again:

1. condescendingly
2. about something he has incomplete knowledge of
3. with the mistaken assumption he knows more about it than the person he's talking to

All three of these apply to Singer's performances in the trials.  I didn't quite pin it down during the trial, though I did comment in a post after his colleague Lee Baxter represented the Board on a couple of occasions.  I wrote: 

"I finally figured out why it's so tedious to listen to him at trial.  There's a smugness in his voice.  Disdain.  He knows the truth and he sounds like he's tired of having to correct all the plaintiffs' errors.  That this all is a waste of his time. (A lucrative waste.) I didn't figure this out until the Calista case today when Lee Baxter took the role of the Board's lawyer.  In contrast, he sounds respectful and sincere as he tries to counter the plaintiff's arguments."  

 So, at least, the condescending part was pretty clear then. [I'm having trouble embedding the part of the video I want.  But it starts at the beginning, so you should listen until he gets to calling Judge Matthews decision absurd.  Then stop and read.  After that you can then play the next few minutes as the judges ask Singer questions.] [I now seem to have got it right and it should stop there on its own and the second section of the video is below.] 

He begins by talking about the court's 'usurpation of the power of the board.'

Then he tells us

 "The first error the trial court made"    was in recasting the core role and purpose of the Board.  In Judge Matthews' interpretation, the Board has no special expertise to make redistricting decisions because its members need only be Alaska residents for one year.  Based primarily  on the absence of a longer residency requirement the trial court opined that the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution compels the Board to adopt  a number of equally constitutional plans and then let the public have a say after which the Board must follow the public's bidding unless doing so would be illegal.  This court has repeatedly said over decades that it will not substitute its judgment for that of the Board.  It's said that its role is to evaluate the plan adopted by the Board, not plans that were possible or preferred.  Implicit in that standard of review is a recognition that the Board and its members have judgement.  They get to exercise judgment.  The trial court's reasoning that it should not exercise its own judgment because the Constitution does not require a longer residency is also factually absurd.

Then he goes on to discuss how the Board appointments are made.  And describes the members as having 200 years of collective experience in Alaska.

So, let's first look at the parts marked in red.  This is just the beginning of Mr. Singer's morning before the court.  He starts out talking about "the first error the trial court made."  OK, this doesn't sound too bad, but he is unequivocally telling the Supreme Court justices that one of their brethren judges has made a number of errors (he'll enumerate others down the line.) and ends this opening by saying the trial court's conclusion is 'absurd.'    The parts in red deal with the "condescendingly" part of mansplaining.  

I get that it's the attorney's job to point out errors in his opponent's argument.  But it helps 

• if you focus on the argument, not the person,  
• if you do it with a little more grace and respect.  
• if the person you complain about actually did what you said he did.  

Singer does none of these.  Absurd is a strong word.  Dictionary.com defines it this way:

"utterly or obviously senseless, illogical, or untrue; contrary to all reason or common sense; laughably foolish or false"

He's saying that Judge Thomas Matthews was utterly senseless, illogical, contrary to all reason or common sense, laughably foolish!    

 There are times when 'absurd' is appropriate.  This is not one of them.  Mainly because the judge never said what Singer alleges.  He never said, "The Board must do the public's bidding."  

And he's saying this to the judge's judicial brethren.  It's like bad-mouthing your former employer in a job interview with your potential new employer.  It can't make a good impression.  

Moving to the blue now.  Judge Matthews did say that the Constitution assumes that the Board members don't have special expertise because they're only required to have one year's residency.  But he didn't say that this Board has no expertise.  He didn't say the board 'has to do the public's bidding' because of the one year residency requirement.  

In fact, Mr. Singer cherry picks one idea and takes it out of context to reach conclusions that grossly mischaracterize what trial court Judge Matthews actually wrote.  

Judge Matthews spent a lot of time discussing the role of public testimony and how the Board is to consider it.  He never says that the Board should simply adopt the majority opinion of the public testimony.  Rather, he concludes the Board shouldn't substitute its own personal preferences when they are contrary to the overwhelming majority of public testimony.  Rather than using personal preferences, the judge wants to hear how the facts of each district fit the criteria.   And if the Board feels it must override the overwhelming public testimony, they need to document why.  In this case, the board didn't do that.   

In this section of his ruling, he reviews the minutes of the Constitutional Convention, Judge Matthews quotes Delegate Hellenthal  (I've only copied part of Hellenthal's statement below):

click to enlarge and focus

I doubt Mr. Singer has been asking himself Delegate Hellenthal's question:  "What can I do to help the greater good of the State?"  Rather, it seems he's been asking, "How can I win this case?"  And that is his job in court.  But I don't think he was thinking about the greater good of the State when he was advising the Board either.  

Then he reviews how past Supreme Court cases discussed the role of public testimony:  

And I know this is more than most of you want to know, but I want to emphasize that Judge Thomas Matthews worked hard to find guidance in making his decision.  This isn't just Judge Matthews' perception of how it should.  He's based his conclusions on what the writers of the Constitution discussed at the Constitutional Convention, what the final and amended versions of the Constitution say, and what the Alaska Supreme Court has said over the decades.  He continues.  

Finally, he apples all this to this case.

The blue parts here show the other two aspects of mansplaining - "about something he has incomplete knowledge of" and "with the mistaken assumption he knows more about it than the person he's talking to"

So, what Singer calls 'absurd' is really based on an allegation that Singer himself makes up (known in logic circles as 'a straw man') and is not to be found in Judge Thomas Matthews' ruling.  

Now, moving along to the next part of this video - and this is just about six minutes of the almost four hour session, of which Singer was on almost half the time - I'll let you watch as the judges themselves question Singer's assertions.  

There is one point I would make.  Throughout the redistricting process, Singer has told the Board that the  Courts had found that anywhere within a Borough boundary was socio-economically integrated with any other place within the Borough.  That was his mantra throughout the the process.  Board members - particularly Bethany Marcum - have repeated it as gospel.  

During the trial, after hearing Valdez and Skagway attorney Robin Brena citing the old cases, I had to go back and look at them carefully and realized they were not nearly as blunt as Singer represented to the Board.  There was much more nuanced discussion about the needs of having people's interests represented in the legislature.  I posted what I found here and here.

The justices question Singer over these points. For example:   Does that (all parts of a Borough are socio-economically integrated) mean that the court can't consider gerrymandering within Anchorage?  

I'd also mention that in this section of the video, Singer claims that the South Muldoon district wasn't hurt by pairing it with Eagle River because it's 57% white and it votes Republican two-thirds of the time.  The judges don't address that, so I would point out here:

• 57% white in South Muldoon is very different from the Eagle River districts which are among the whitest districts in Alaska - in the 90% range.  
• Voting Republican two-thirds of the time means they vote Democratic one-third of the time, while the Eagle River districts NEVER vote Democratic.
• There are different types of Republicans.  Eagle River elects Republicans like like Lora Reinbold and Jamie Allard - both extreme Right anti-maskers who are cozy with White Nationalists.  And in comparison to Allard, one of Eagle River's Anchorage Assembly members, East Anchorage is represented in the Assembly by Forrest Dunbar and Pete Peterson, both Democrats, both former Peace Corps volunteers, and strong advocates for masking and LGBTQ rights and other progressive values.  
• When the 2011 Board paired an East Anchorage seat with Eagle River, it effectively ended the state Senate career of Alaska's (then) only black Senator, Bettye Davis, who was beaten soundly by Eagle River voters

Again, Singer is totally mischaracterizing the situation and it sounds like the Justices aren't buying it. 

I think I've made my point here.  I could challenge Singer's comments throughout the hearing like this.  But I'd never finish this post.  But he continues throughout the hearing to mischaracterize what Judge Matthews actually said.

You can find the three videos of the trial (one for each challenge) here.

I'd note (in relation to mansplaining point 3 - 'mistaken assumption he knows more than the person he's talking to -  that Singer (and all the other attorneys last Friday) are citing court cases to three of the judges who helped to write those cases.  Judge Warren Matthews - not to be confused with trial Judge Thomas Matthews - was appointed to the Alaska Supreme Court in 1977 and has heard all the  redistricting board cases  since the 1983 case ,  including the 1992 (Hickel) case, the  2002 case, the  2012 case and the current 2022 case.  Judge Robert Eastaugh was appointed in 1984 and served on the redistricting cases in, 2002 and the current case.  And Judge Daniel Winfree served on the 2011 case as well as the current one. 

I think if I were an attorney, I would let the judges know how intimidating it was to be citing the law that they - particularly Justice Matthews - had been writing and interpreting for 40 years.    

I'd also note that Justices Matthews and Eastaugh are no longer on the Supreme Court and are serving as Senior Justices replacing  two judges who recused themselves.  

I'd make one more observation about how Singer is different from some of the key attorneys of the plaintiffs.  

Singer appears to be less about upholding "the greater good of the State" than he is about winning his case.  He's had the Board in lengthy Executive Sessions that seemed to me - and to plaintiffs and the judge - to violate the open meetings act.  He even gave them their initial overview of the state law and court cases on redistricting in a closed meeting.  (The previous redistricting board attorney did that in public.)

His most successful strategies in the court case, haven't been based on theories of law, but have been ways to block access to documents that plaintiffs wanted.  Even transcripts from the Board's meetings in early November 2021 weren't available until late January or early February 2022, right before the trial started.  (Even though during the trial transcripts were available right after the day's session.)  Yes, the Board's staff got the video of the meetings up by the next day for most meetings.  But going through a video takes much more time than going through a transcript.    And that was due to Executive Director Peter Torkelson's vision and hard work to make sure the public got as much information as was possible.

The email and text communications among Board members were not available until the day before trial.  That made it hard for them to be used in trial.

He also had Board members refuse to respond in depositions and he didn't call the Board's Voting Rights Act expert to be a witness, depriving the plaintiffs the opportunity to cross examine him - which was critical in the East Anchorage case.  

So, blocking the plaintiffs from getting information they needed for their cases was his most successful action as an attorney.  But I also have to acknowledge that this trial made him sort of like a chess player playing five opponents simultaneously.  And perhaps he knows his case is weak and that's why he's doing what he's doing.  

But, if his case is weak, in part that's due to the advice he gave his client.  At least two of the Board members strongly and publicly objected to the Board's final decision on the Eagle River pairings, so maybe the Board didn't listen to his advice there.   Singer's advice to the Board about socio-economic integration and Boroughs, though, was fairly simplistic and in part is why we're in court now.  

However, I'm not going to guess what the outcome of the this case will be. I'm not a regular Alaska Supreme Court observer and I don't know how  judicial questioning of attorneys correlates with their ultimate decisions.  

I'll try to get another post up about the legal concepts and how they could affect future cases.  

I would note that if the Court remands the Skagway and Anchorage decisions back to the Board, and the Board dilly-dallies long enough, the current 2021 proclamation map would be used in the November election - including the Eagle River Senate Pairings and Skagway-Juneau House districts that Judge Thomas Matthews has told the Board to redo.  [Aug 1, 2022 - this turns out not to be true as a wrote in a later post.  The Court can order changes to an interim plan if it chooses. It did that in 2012.]

And there could still be more lawsuits when the Board finalizes that map.  

[March 26, 2022:  The Supreme Court rendered its ruling yesterday.  You can see it on this post.  While Singer lost the fight over the Eagle River Senate pairings, he won the Skagway case. Another change the Supreme Court is requiring (though the trial court didn't) is putting Cantwell back into the Denali Borough.]

Ways To Make Sense Of The Redistricting Supreme Court Hearing

There is one indisputable fact that came out of the hearing on Friday, March 18, 2022.  The Chief Justice told everyone that they will have a decision by April 1, 2022.  I'm guessing it will be made before that because it's generally a good idea not to announce significant decisions on April Fool's Day.  So I have about ten days to offer my thoughts on what happened in trial prior to the decision.  

In this post I'm going to outline how I'm organizing my comments.  (It took a while to even get to this point.)

In the meantime, go look at James Brooks' overview in today's Anchorage Daily News.  With the benefit of a deadline and an editor, he's been able to write on what the trial was about.   And it's a good starting point.  I've got several false starts for posts and I'm trying to figure out where to grab hold of this story.  

Alaska Supreme Court Judges Walking Into the Chamber

Basically there are several stories.  

1.  PRACTICAL/POLITICAL:  WHAT WILL THE LEGISLATIVE MAP OF ALASKA LOOK LIKE FOR THE NEXT TEN YEARS?

There are 40 house districts and 20 senate districts (made up of two house districts each).  There were five law suits challenging the board's maps.  

• The 'East-Anchorage' plaintiffs challenged the pairing of the South Muldoon district with an Eagle River district into one Anchorage Senate seat,  arguing the were paired this way by the Board to give conservatives in Eagle River an extra Senate seat at the expense of a district being called 'south Muldoon.'  Changing that pairing will also affect a second Senate seat.
• The Skagway plaintiffs challenged the Board decision to put them in a House district with the Mendenhall Valley in Juneau instead of with downtown Juneau with which they are much more 'Socio-Economically Integrated'  (SEI).   SEI is one of the Alaska constitutional requirements for districts.  

Judge Thomas Matthews, the Superior Court judge who heard the challenges during round one, agreed and ruled that the Board should go back and fix these two.  The Board has appealed these decisions, so everyone is back in court to argue their points before the Supreme Court.

• Matsu-Su and Valdez both challenged District 29 in which they were paired.  They argued they are not SEI and that the Board didn't seriously consider them until all the other districts were completed and so they just got shoved into one unconstitutional district.  
• Calista Corporation challenged how several villages in Western Alaska and asked the court to swap some villages between the two districts. 

Judge Matthews did NOT ask the Board to make changes in these cases, but Mat-Su and Valdez both appealed the decision.

Calista is NOT appealing the decision but is arguing before the court that ANCSA boundaries should be  legitimate factors to consider in redistricting.  

2.  LEGAL:  WHAT LEGAL PRINCIPLES ARE THE ATTORNEYS AND JUDGES DEBATING/WEIGHING AND HOW DO THEY IMPACT #1 AND FUTURE BOARDS?

This is the section that is slowing me down the most.  I've got a couple of important issues on my list so far are:

• The Hard Look Doctrine - If this came up in trial, or even Judge Matthews' ruling, I missed it.  I'm guess I took the words 'hard look' literally and just didn't know that that is a legal principle that sets up standards for the way the Board makes their decision.  Basically, as I understand this, the court is to not simply defer to whatever decision a government agency or board makes, but to take 'a hard look' at how they made it.  Both the East Anchorage and Skagway attorneys are pushing this and the judge agreed.  The Board seems to be saying this may be a standard for permanent federal agencies, but it's too high a standard for a temporary board with few staff.  

Skagway attorney Robin Brena listed key points for evaluating a decision:

• Deliberation - have to engage the evidence before you decide
• Transparency - have to be transparent in deliberation on why Board took decision
• Rational - treat like situations the same.  (They can't emphasis one criterion (say compactness over Socio-Economic Integration) for one district and then switch emphasis for another)
• Evidenciary propriety - have to explain and apply evidence before them

[I need to go back and review my notes and the video and the briefs so I get this right - the four points above are from my notes in the courtroom.]

• The Role of Public Testimony - I think this actually falls under the Hard Look Doctrine - it seems to be relevant to all four points just mentioned.  Judge Matthews pointed out in his ruling that since the Constitution requires 60 days of public testimony, there's an implication  there that the testimony shouldn't be ignored.  The Board argues that Matthews is saying that the Board must substitute the majority of public testimony for the Board's own reasoning and that this will result in political parties packing the hearings and getting followers to send in testimony.  
• Should ANCSA boundaries be used when making districts?  While Calista is not contesting Judge Matthews' decision, they are asking the Court to rule that ANCSA (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act} boundaries can be used in redistricting - particularly in unincorporated boroughs.  I have some questions about this, though no firm opinions.  I just don't know.  But there was only one party arguing for this and no counter arguments so I hope the judges act cautiously on this until it's clear what the impact might be.  It's important that Alaska Native voices are heard and respected by redistricting boards.  But I also have unanswered questions about the role of for-profit Native corporations in this process. 

These are the key issues I've got picked out so far, but there may be more

3.  PERSONAL:  HOW DO THE SKILLS, STYLES, MOTIVATIONS, AND EXPERIENCES OF THE ATTORNEYS (AND TO SOME DEGREE, THE JUDGES) IMPACT THE DECISION MAKING?  

This is probably the easiest category for most people to understand.  In the trial (and pre-trial) process, it became clear that the individual attorneys representing the plaintiffs and the board play a big factor in which way the decisions fall.  Without understanding these dynamics the public is missing out on a key factor that influences the decisions.  I have developed some thoughts on some of the attorneys and I want to write about this in a way that is reasoned, is backed with evidence, and isn't just a gossip session.  

I would note that throughout the trial and again Friday, the Board's attorney, Matt Singer, had to participate in every part of the trial.  He had to defend the Board in all five cases against the Board.  (Mat-Su and Valdez were paired together, but each had its own attorneys.) During pre-trial meetings, he could make a point, but then there were a bunch of other attorneys to challenge that point and to back each other up.  They all had time to think through what was said, but he was essentially 'on' all the time.  That is a heavy burden.  Intervening attorney, Nathaniel Amdur-Clark, did argue for the Board, so Singer had a bit of backup.  

ARB Chair John Binkley Chats With Me Briefly After Supreme Court Hearing

 I'm still digesting the various arguments made and questions asked by the justices.  Not ready yet to post an overview, let alone my reactions.  But I do have this bit of video I made with Alaska Redistricting Board Chair John Binkley after the trial, still in the courtroom.  

I'll let the video speak for itself.  

[Note:  I haven't posted my own videos much lately.  iMovie on my laptop changed and I just got out of practice.  It seems a bit easier than it was.  I also have really slow internet at home so uploading takes forever.  I had to go over to UAA to get reasonable internet speed to upload it. I had edited out the extra subtitles, but I must have uploaded the wrong version to YouTube.  I'll leave it up for now since I'd have to upload it to YouTube again.  Sorry.]

Supreme Court Tomorrow At 9am: Partial Preview

My sense is that those who have been following the Redistricting Board and the Superior Court challenges won't have trouble following the arguments tomorrow.  For others, giving quick overviews here isn't easy.  I have tried to do that with some of the cases in earlier posts.  

Key information:  9am at the Alaska Supreme Court  Friday March 18, 2022 9am. Much easier (since they are limiting the gallery to 50 people) is to watch it live at www.ktoo.org/gaveland .

You can also check out the filings in the Docket here.

You particularly want to look at the Responses (Numbers 33-40).  These are the arguments of the different parties.  

33 - State of Alaska - The State isn't arguing for against the maps or the judge's decisions about the maps. The State  has two concerns here:

1.  That the precedent set by the Court regarding the importance of listening to what the public has to say ("if you didn't intend to listen to what the public said, why hold all the hearings?).  The State is making an argument that that only applies to the Redistricting Boards and not other state boards.

2.  Also, the Court's decisions about attorney-client privilege and the Open Meetings Act should also only apply to the Redistricting Board and not other State Boards.

34 - Matsu-Susitna Borough - challenged (along with Valdez) District 29 which put Valdez in with Palmer and Wasilla suburbs.  Matsu-Susistna makes its points easy to read.

• The Court "requires remand to the Board to comply with the Constitution'
• Agreement with the Court's finding of violations of the Open Meeting Act
• Court was correct in its determinations regarding discovery

35 - Alaska Redistricting Board - Defending its decisions and challenging the conclusions of Judge Mathews they disagree with and supporting those they agree with

36.  City of Valdez - See comments below.

37.  Municipality of Skagway - Agreeing with the judge on public input and disagreeing with the judge that Skagway is Socio-Economically Integrated with the Mendenhall Valley.

38.  Felisa Wilson - This is the Anchorage case that challenged the pairing of the two Eagle River House seats with Muldoon in one Senate seat and JBER and downtown Anchorage in another Senate seat.  The judge ruled in their favor and the Board is challenging that.  This is a harder case to follow because it focuses on violations of principles of law such as due process, arguing that the Board went from transparent and then when it came time for Senate pairings it went opaque.  It argues that the East Anchorage plaintiffs couldn't make their case stronger because the Board withheld information until the very last minute - some of that including racial data about the voters in the Muldoon district.  As an observer of the Board and then the trial, it clearly appeared to me that the Board's strategy at the trial was to stall and delay.  See this January 19 post:   AK Redistricting Pre-Trial Hearing - Board Strategy Is Clear And Working.  

39.  Doyon Limited - Doyon led a coalition of Native Corporations in monitoring the Redistricting Board throughout the process, including creating their own proposed redistricting map.  The were pretty successful in getting all the Doyon and Ahtna villages into one district - 36.  They are here to defend District 36, particularly against Valdez' claims that the Board put Native Corporation goals ahead of the Constitutional requirements for creating the districts.  

Second reminder:  These were very quick grabs from the documents.  You can look at them yourselves for more details.  I'm sure all the attorneys would be rolling their eyes at my very brief takes.  

You can skim through these at the link.  But here's a little more depth into the Valdez case.  

Valdez - The basic argument seems to be that by committing strongly to the Doyon plan to get all the Doyon villages into one district (the new 36), the Board a) used a non constitutional criterion (getting all of Doyon together) and b) caused Valdez to be in a district that it is not socio-economically integrated with.  

Basically they say that the focus on creating a "Doyon District" resulted in a district that is not compact, not SEI (socio-economically integrated).  And the impact on Valdez was to put it into a district that had serious problems.  Thus, by using nonconktititonal criteria (getting all the Doyon villages together into D-36), the Board ended up with an unconstitutional Valdez district (29).

There's more detail, but that's the biggest argument.  And it's pretty clear that there was a lot of pressure to do that.  Doyon had a group of Native Corporations and money to create their own alternative map.  And Doyon attorney Tanner Amdur-Clark was allowed to act as an Intervenor attorney during the trial.  That is not to say that there is anything wrong with wanting to get all the Doyon (and Ahtna) villages into one district.  But that is not one of the constitutional requirements for putting the districts together.  Attorney Brena is trying to convince the Supreme Court that by locking in District 36, the Board created 

• an unnecessarily large (not Compact) district
• a district that was not Socio-Economically Integrated (even though it has all those Native villages, the population is 70% non-Native) and
• Put Valdez into a district which in which it has serious conflicts and thus whose interests in the legislature would be overwhelmed by Mat-Su portion of the district

[Note:  I scanned the brief fairly quickly, but I read the conclusions more carefully.  I'm just trying to give readers what stood out to me as the main thrust of the argument.  You can read it for yourself in the link below.]

From the VALDEZ-DETTER’S CORRECTED PETITION FOR REVIEW March 3, 2022, here's the conclusion of their argument::

"VII. CONCLUSION

The Board chose to prioritize the nonconstitutional goals of its individual members

over the consistent application of the constitutional requirements throughout the

redistricting process. Time-and-again the Board deferred to the priorities of the individual member from the geographic area under discussion. This is simply not the constitutional process the Board is required to undertake, and, as a result, the process failed to produce constitutionally compliant outcomes.

The Board set aside its constitutional obligations to establish compact and socio-economically integrated districts when it prioritized the nonconstitutional goal ofcreating a “Doyon” or “Doyon-Ahtna” district (District 36). The Board’s favored treatment of the Native voters in these villages, which constitute less than 30 percent of District 36, over all other voters cannot possibly survive constitutional scrutiny.

The Doyon district is not compact. It would be the third-largest state in our union. It is not so large because Alaska is a vast state with low population densities, as may sometimes justify a larger district, but because the Board set aside the constitutional requirements for establishing house districts and instead decided to (1) establish VRA [Voting Rights Act] districts early in the process in direct violation of the Hickel process, locking in portions of the Doyon district’s boundaries; (2) inconsistently and arbitrarily apply ANSCA boundaries to artificially separate Native villages along the lower Yukon drainage, while ignoring other ANSCA boundaries altogether; (3) form a noncompact horseshoe shape around the population of Fairbanks in an effort to keep Fairbanks intact in deference to Chair Binkley; and (4) establish and advance a goal of maximizing the voting power of far-flung Native villages (that are currently in four different districts) by combing them into a single district, even though the district was over 70 percent non-Native. The Board then further violated compactness by adding two strange appendages to capture 30 Ahtna shareholders in Cantwell and to capture the predominately non-Native population of Glennallen, breaking two borough boundaries in the process.

The Doyon district is also not relatively socio-economically integrated. There is no substantive or creditable evidence in the record suggesting the communities along the lower Yukon and those along the Richardson Highway are relatively socio-economically integrated at all, much less to the maximum degree practicable.

Since statehood, every governor and board has properly applied the constitutional standards of article VI, section 6 to place Valdez in a house district with the Richardson Highway communities, with the Prince William Sound communities, or with both. The Board in this case has orphaned the voters of Valdez from their closest neighbors and placed them completely in a district with voters with whom they do not work, live, or share common concerns. The Board took this action as a default in order to achieve thenonconstitutional goals it had already committed to achieve.

The Board’s actions ignored the public process, which overwhelmingly suggested Valdez should not be districted, let alone exclusively paired, with the Mat-Su Borough. The public process yielded voluminous and near unanimous comments in favor of Valdezbeing placed with the people its voters live, work, and share common interests with along the Richardson Highway, as it has been for decades, in what has been framed by the courts as “the most strongly integrated economic corridor in the state, the pipeline corridor, the Richardson Highway corridor from the south region of the North Star Borough to Valdez.”274

Rather than ensuring District 29 met the constitutional requirements for a house district, the Board chose to protect its nonconstitutional priorities and reach out to everyone it could for justification supporting pairing Valdez exclusively with the Mat-Su Borough for the first time in history. In doing so, the Board stretched this Court’s prior authority beyond recognition and advanced theories that diminish if not entirely abrogate the limitations to the Board’s discretion set forth in article VI, section 6 of the Alaska Constitution.

The Board did not map, much less look hard at establishing (1) a Richardson Highway house district; (2) a Valdez, Seward, and Kodiak house district by shifting 274 In re 2011 Redistricting Cases, 2013 WL 6074059 at *13 (emphasis added).

Cordova into Southeast; or (3) an Anchorage and Valdez house district. The Board chose not to even look at the maps already prepared by Member Marcum because they would require modification to the VRA districts and Doyon district in order to form a Richardson

Highway or Prince William Sound district. In addition, the Board discouraged Member Marcum from mapping an Anchorage and Valdez district altogether. Any of these alternatives would have resulted in more compact and socio-economically integrated house districts throughout Alaska, which the Board could have considered if they had properly and consistently applied the constitutional requirements. This Court should enforce these requirements and remand this matter back to the Board for consistent application when evaluating the viable alternatives it chose not to consider for the voters of Valdez.

Some of the parties that have filed briefs (Calista and the State of Alaska) have done to support or oppose concepts raised in this case.  Calista is arguing against Valdez' argument that ANCSA boundaries are not appropriate to use for redistricting.  ????   And the State of Alaska is arguing that the broader than normal interpretation of the importance of listening to the public ruling by Judge Matthews should not be extended to other public bodies.  (Check if there are other issues)

Calista is not challenging the judge's decision about the Calista region and the State is not advocating one way or the other about the maps, or even the Judge's standard for listening to public testimony for redistricting.