Redistricting Board Hits Low Point In Process

When my grad students worked on their semester long capstone projects, there came a time, not far from the end, when it would all become too much and they'd throw up their hands and want to give up. 

The Redistricting Board seemed to reach that point this afternoon.  They couldn't make the PAM-E plan - that paired Senators Hoffman and Stevens - work  out in any other configuration.  The numbers weren't there.  The time frames for getting a plan before the June 1 filing deadline, what with getting VRA clearance and court approval, just looked impossible to them.

Should they tell the Supreme Court to just use the Proclamation Plan for this year's elections - an out the Supreme Court offered them?  Or should they try something, anything else?  Then board member Marie Green, who doesn't talk much, said she'd like to get more public participation, allow the private groups to submit plans.  The Chair has always been polite and respectful to Marie Green and he was when he said he'd decided to not open things up to outside groups.  And then he went on a rant about the people out there who said they had plans but never gave any numbers.  From my rough notes - not verbatim, but sort of the gist - he said, in part:

  "We have the save the Democrats in Fairbanks plan.  It was introduced to the court, but not to the board.  We’ve had three or four given to us that have been sent.  The ones making noise now haven’t sent us a plan.  They want formal presentation time.  I hesitate to give. If they were that excited why didn’t they send it Jan 17 the day after the court?  I understand they gave us 8X11, but no shape files.  That looks good, but no numbers.  I understand how you feel Marie, but I’m not sure about opening up."

Leonard Lawson, who presented the "Rights Coalition" plan ('save the Democrats in Fairbanks" plan) was sitting next to me and said they'd turned in the shape files (that have all the numbers) to the court and when he found out earlier today that the Board didn't have the numbers,  he brought them in.

Then Marie Green said she had a couple of plans emailed to her and she thought they had numbers.

And then Executive Director Taylor Bickford said that the Rights Coalition plan had come in about 20 minutes ago and it appeared to have the numbers and there was also the Calista plan.

One thing I admire about Chair Torgerson is that while he has gone on a couple rants like this before, he is also able to back up and change course once he gets it out of his system.  He worked through this and at the end when he was saying the meeting would reconvene tomorrow, he said, "Unlike your chair, try to have patience."





I'll try to put up more details on the meeting later and some video.  It was a very interesting afternoon. 

Board Gets VRA Expert Report, Breaks into Work Groups

The Board convened, reported on what they heard from VRA expert Handley, then broke into two groups of Staff and members to work on the Hickel 01 plan and the old PAM-E plan which was found to be constitutional (by the board) but they didn't use it because it paired Senators Hoffman and Stevens and they speculated it would have trouble with the Department of Justice. The key points from Lisa Handley:

• The Proclamation Plan is the new benchmark (The Proclamation Plan is the one they submitted but got turned down by the courts.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) measures retrogression from the last plan they approved.  Since the approved the Proclamation Plan (though the Alaska courts did not) it becomes the new benchmark plan.  So the number of effective native districts and the percentages of Native Voting Age Population (VAP) in that plan become the new norm, the new benchmark.  Though attorney White said he's still checking on this because the language includes "Last legal plan enforceable and in effect" and it's questionable if this plan was ever 'in effect' because the state courts rejected it.  No legal precedent for situation where state courts rejected a plan.  But Lisa Handley's interpretation is the most conservative interpretation.
• If they use the PAM-E plan, the lowest Native VAP would have to be 38%, though it would be better to be higher.
• If they DOJ had to choose between a plan with over all lower Native VAP's or higher Native VAP's but with a Native incumbent pairing, they would choose the latter. 

Then they broke up into two groups to work on the plans.

Here are my notes from the meeting.  CAUTION:  They are very rough notes, good for getting a sense of what happened, but not to be relied on. 

PHOTO NOTE:  Photos are from after the meeting when they were working on the plans.

Board Meeting 3/27/12  

10:02  Open
All there, Holm by phone.

McConnochie, Sandberg (GIS expert), Green

Torgerson: explaining what we are doing.  Eric Sandberg is back - GIS expert  - they will go to work session in two groups.  They will go ahead using the PAM-E plan as the base = put the Senator from Kodiak and Bethel together and Torgerson and ?? will work on Hickel 001 plan.

If ready, we’ll start adopting the new proclamation plan.  Otherwise push to tomorrow.  Exec. Session is listed in case we think we need one.  So far no need.
Approval of Agenda

Torgerson:  Letter from Handley.  Roll back everything a little bit.  Say this again because I’m building a record.  SC sent this back because we failed to follow the Hickel process, because we didn’t just focus on Constitution.  Last couple of days we engaged int hat process.  We adopted Hickel 01 plan and send the files to Dr. Handley, VRA expert, she worked late.  Her expertise is only whether we comply with VRA, not if comply with Constitution.  That is Board decision. 

Received this morning Dr. H’s report.  Handed out.

3 state house districts that meet requirements.
Interior Village - reconstructed HD 6 has NATIVE VAP of 33.3??%  this area needs at least a 50% VAP,   Other short district = Senate R  - Chain plus Kodiak.  her rec is 41.8%, we can come down lower because Chain is least polarized, but Hickel plan was 29.74% which is substantially below.  Conversation this morning, her lowest rec for R is 38%, so that’s our target.  She’d have to do an analysis, but she’d consider that probably ok.   ONe less effective House and Senate districts.  New BM plan is last one DOJ approved.  That’s our new benchmark.  Proclamation plan is now the Benchmark - the last plan DOJ reviewed and approved. 
So, our plan is retrogressive.  Because plans exist that are not retrogressive, it takes away the excuse that it can’t be done.  I believe it doesn’t not comply with Sec. V of the VRA and thus would not be approved.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: If we submit plan that doesn’t meet approval from DOJ?
OK< then back to us?
Torgerson: If you establish a bar at 46% and then come back with 42 you are below the bar.  But Handley said we can come up with lower.  We have a little more leeway.

Board Chair Torgerson and Member Brodie

lowering the #s - ability to elect or not - not any magic number.  Targets DOJ will rely on, but if lower, she’ll have to do new analysis to see if effective or not. 
Benchmark now is the Proclamation plan.  When I looked at that, looked at CFR on cases and asked her to check if that was the standard they use.  she did check, she was taking the most conservative approach.  Last legal plan enforceable and in effect - whether our is in effect.  There is not state plan that has been pre-cleared and State court that had problems under state law.  By doing the approach here, she’s taken most conservative approach.  If retrogressive after proclamation plan, it will surely be retrogressive on 2002 plan. 
Taylor Bickford:  She said if the 3rd Sen district was over 42% no further analysis would be necessary.  If in 38% range, she would have to do another analysis.
PeggyAnn McConnochie: The only way we got R up to where we did - trial court said it was not legal, if court said it was not legal and weren’t able to do that, is DOJ going to say that the plan, can she make an argument that the 38% would work,
Taylor Bickford: yes, it is riskier, but the argument can be made.  If plan at current range that pairs Hoffman and STevens, or plan that does not pair them, but is lower %, the DOJ would prefer the higher %.  The pairing alone wouldn’t hurt.  35% that doesn’t pair them and something like we have that does pair them.  DOJ would not except the lower %, the pairing itself wouldn’t be enough to kill it. 

Brodie working map on computer

Torgerson:  Jim’s Item 5.
White:  She’ll be available after 2pm our time to talk.
Torgerson:  I wanted her minimums, the rest if hypothetical.  We’ll work sessions.  Stay in this room.  Hooked up two projectors, we’ll work independently, but together.  Under open meetings act.  Open process as far as watching, but warn people not to engage the Board members.  Rather not lobby board members during the process.  We will take breaks, and you can talk them. 
Going off the record cause there is no way to have this on teleconference because two teams working.  We’ll come back around 1:30pm.  Or just work through rest of the afternoon and or evening.
Ask board members and staff, make findings as you go along.  If you bring forward a plan, that you have some sort of indication of why you did that process.  SC ruling, because it didn’t follow the process the court couldn’t demonstrate the Constitutional violations were necessary.  So you have to make that trail.  Also conforms to footnote 15 - that board make findings etc.  So that’s what we want to do to make a few notes.  A little more cumbersome than we did in the past. 

10:25  Take a 10:35 short recess and we’ll come back together.  Stand in recess.

Redistricting Board Adopts "Hickel" Plan 001 (With Fairbanks Maps)

Overview of What Happened

Monday they unveiled a plan template and three "Hickel" plans based on the template.  The template had the proclamation plan (the one sent back by the Court) districts - Southeast, Anchorage, North Slope, Matsu, and Kenai - that were not challenged and that people believe to be constitutional.  The rest of the map - interior, Fairbanks, and Western Alaskan and the Aleutians - was blank.

The three plans they presented - Hickel 001, 002, and 003 - filled in the white section with redrawn districts.  In each case the rural districts had excess population that didn't make up a whole district.  The 'whole' district in Hickel 001 was created by taking population from Fairbanks.  Hickel 002 with similar rural districts, took excess population from Matsu, and Hickel 003, with reconfigured rural districts, took excess population from Anchorage.

Tuesday they added Hickel 004 with rural areas similar to Hickel 003 which took the excess population from Kenai and Anchorage.

Then attorney White evaluated the constitutionality of each of these four plans.

• Kenai, no.  
• Anchorage, no.  
• Matsu, no.  
• Fairbanks, yes. 

Then the Board approved Hickel 001 (Fairbanks) as their constitutionally compliant plan to be sent to VRA expert Lisa Handley for her to evaluate whether Hickel 001 will be VRA complaint.

They know it will not.  And then they will start making those adjustments.  None of the printed maps was big enough to see the details of the urban areas, though the shape (GIS) files now available (see one of the two March 27 posts)  to people who had the software programs that would enable them to see the maps in detail.  I did take some pictures of the Fairbanks area from the computer before I left.  They are at different levels of detail so people can see how the district maps were drawn.  You can click on the images to enlarge them. 

 They also have a table showing how the house districts are paired to make Senate districts along with the population and deviation numbers for all the districts.  [I don't see it on the Board's website.  A staff member told me to take the odd number and the next even number - 1+2 - to figure out which seats are paired.]

 Staff confirmed that:

• Goldstream and Ester population were put into the rural district
• 80% of the City of Fairbanks is contained in two house districts that are paired in a single senate district

 Staff was going to send the shape files to Lisa Handley who was going to make a preliminary review in time for the 10am meeting Wednesday and then follow that up with a formal, written evaluation. 

 Below are my rough notes of the meeting as I took them.  USUAL WARNING:  These are rough notes, not at all verbatim, and you should use them to get a rough idea of the discussion, but don't assume that they are accurate or complete.


I'll try to put my notes for Monday on SCRIBD too for those with insomnia. Rough Notes: Alaska Redistricting Board March 27, 2012 You can make the SCRIBD window full screen for easier reading. It's the icon on the bottom left.

Mayor Sullivan Brings Coffee To And Chats With Sidewalk Sitter John Martin

[UPDATE 3/30/12 - Hear protesters describe the Thursday night bust.]

Sometimes you are at the right place at the right time.  As I got off the bus downtown I saw that John Martin had not been ousted by the police during the night, despite the notice posted at his 'camp' in front of City Hall.  [I just posted about this in the last post.] As I said good morning to John, he told me to wait a second and there'd be some good video.

Shortly Mayor Dan Sullivan came out of the Kaladi Brothers across the street with two cups of coffee.  He gave one to John and they chatted a few minutes about homeless policy.  John had told me beforehand that he was lobbying for a homeless camp at 3rd and Gambell.

In the video, it's hard to hear John, though the mayor is a audible.  It's hard with the traffic noise.  Although I've opposed the mayor's policies on occasion, this was not done for the cameras.  I just happened to show up after he told John he'd get him a cup of coffee.

[UPDATE Aug 3, 2018:  Some of my old videos stored at Viddler no longer work.  Sorry.][UPDATE Jan 31, 2019:  The Viddler videos seem to be working again.]




Meanwhile, the Redistricting Board meeting was postponed an hour so I had time to work on this.  But I've gotta get back there.

John Martin Back Camped In Front Of City Hall

Click to Enlarge

[I set the timer wrong for this, it was supposed to be posted earlier.  Sorry.]

After the redistricting board meeting I walked past City Hall and saw a small encampment and John Martin.  I'd videoed John at the Assembly meeting when they passed the law to prevent sitting on the sidewalk downtown because John had been camped in front of City Hall and the mayor didn't like it.

After the anti-sitting-on-the-sidewalk ordinance bill was passed, John said, they allowed him to pitch his tent on the Park Strip, but they took it away recently and now he's back at City Hall.  When I mentioned the law and asked if he could still stay here, he pointed to the notice, which expired March 25.




The video is very short since I ran out of room on my sound card.





We'll see if he's still here tomorrow.

Redistricting Board Attorney Responds to Supreme Court Decision

The Alaska Supreme Court's main decision on the redistricting plan was that the plan had to go back for reworking because the Board drew its plans with a focus on complying with the Voting Rights Act, not with a focus on complying with the Alaska Supreme Court decision.  Each has standards the Board tried to comply with, but the Board's attorney, Michael White, told the Board, early on, that the federal Voting Rights Act took precedence over the Alaska Constitution.  So, while the Board kept the Constitutional requirements in mind, it decided to set up the necessary nine Native districts and then work out the rest of the state.

The Supreme Court (not to mention the plaintiffs) pointed out a section in the 1994 Supreme Court Case Hickel v. Southeast Conference that said

"[t]he Board must first design a reapportionment plan based on the requirements of the Alaska Constitution. That plan then must be tested against the Voting Rights Act. A reapportionment plan may minimize article VI, section 6 requirements when minimization is the only means available to satisfy Voting Rights Act requirements.,,5"

On this basis, the Supreme Court said the Board had to go back and follow the court mandated process.

I couldn't help thinking that the Board's attorney surely had to know this.  Why didn't he direct the Board to do this?  Did he interpret it differently?  Did he think the Board was complying with it?  Did he think it wasn't relevant to this year's decision?

So I asked him after today's meeting.  I'm afraid I didn't have my camera out at the beginning.  He began by saying the key citation from the Hickel decision was completely off the radar.  As the video begins he's saying that the ruling essentially tells the board to ignore the federal law they have to comply with while they concentrate on meeting the state constitutional requirements.  You can hear the rest of his response on the video. 

If you want to see what the court said, you can see the text of the decision with my attempts to explain it here.  It's really not all that long. 

Redistricting Board Offers Three "Hickel" Plans

Member Green and Director Bickford, Torgerson and McConnochie in back

I still have to finish another 35 pages of Dirt Music for tonight's book club meeting, but let me post my quick overview of the board meeting.


They had  three "Hickel" plans.  This refers to the Supreme Court's citing of the 1994 Hickel v Southeast Conference decision which lays out a process for the Redistricting Board to follow and which was the basis for their sending the original plan back to be redrawn.

 
They started with a template that kept the parts of the state from their submitted plan that met the constitutional requirements (Southeast, Anchorage, Matsu, Kenai, and North Slope) intact. 

"Hickel" map template

They left blank the interior and Fairbanks districts and Western Alaska and Aleutians.  (see map)

When they tried to set up the missing rural districts they were about 7,000 people short* which they had to take from urban areas.

So starting from that template, they made three options.
Hickel 1 - reshapes the districts in the blank part and gets the 7,000 from Fairbanks.
Hickel 2.  does the same and gets the extra people from Matsu
Hickel 3.  does the same and gets the extra people from Anchorage. 

(The three Hickel maps are in the previous post.  Or you can get download them here.  But you can't see them large enough to see the details of what they do to the urban areas.)

Director Bickford and Member Brodie

It’s probably my imagination, but it almost seemed as though the meeting were scripted.  People asked the right questions - does it meet this or that constitutional requirement and if not why not - to show they had tried everything they had to try.  Board Chair Torgerson at one point actually said: 

"Just asking the same question ten times to get it on the record."

It seemed fairly reasonable as they went through Fairbanks.  This isn't easy to get all the various criteria to match.  It's like a Rubic's cube - as you turn it to get this side of the cube right, it messes up the numbers on another side.  Matsu was next.  But when they got to finding population in Anchorage (Hickel 3) to add to a district going out to the Bering Sea and Executive Director Bickford said:

"We picked up Kincaid, part of Lake Spenard, part of Inlet View precinct."

I just typed what I was thinking on my notes:  "This is so stupid."

Member Holm

My sense is that this was the point they were trying to make.  If the Supreme Court thinks we should try out pairings with other urban districts, let's show them what it would look like.  Even taking the more rural areas of Anchorage like Chugiak would have been as much of a stretch as Ester and Goldstream (suburbs of Fairbanks) were in the challenged plan.  But to pluck out pieces from neighborhoods in the urban areas of Anchorage was totally ridiculous.




I'll add more later, but thought I'd at least get this up now.







*"Short" means that they didn't have enough people to get within 5% of the needed 17,755 people per district.  They mentioned different numbers, but I think it came to still needing 9,000 to get enough for another district.

The Redistricting Board has three maps up on their website today (click documents) - Hickel 1, Hickel 2, and Hickel 3.  Presumably the staff was asked to come up with some options for the meeting that begins at 1pm.    You can click on the maps below to enlarge them.  Lots of details are missing.  But we can see that they've gone back to something that looks like the old District 6 [big yellow 37] that loops from near Valdez up along the Canadian border around Fairbanks.  That's got to be one of the Native districts and it looks like they set up another one to connect to it in Southeast [35.]  The other Native districts would be 40, 39, 38 and 36.  The other maps seem to be variations of this.
 

The question will be how big each district is and whether they're compact, contiguous, and socio-economically integrated.  And how they affect incumbents. 

We should find out more at the meeting.  You can also listen in online 

Live Stream: alaskalegislature.tv    at 1pm.

Here's the agenda:

CALL TO ORDER ROLL 

CALL APPROVAL OF AGENDA

 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S REPORT 

LEGAL REVIEW OF SUPREME COURT DECISION
EXECUTIVE SESSION 

STAFF PRESENTATION OF DRAFT “HICKEL” PLANS 

ADJOURNMENT

Can Saudi Arabia Rescue Australia's Feral Camels?

I'm  on page 221 of Tim Winton's Dirt Music.  I have about 180 pages to read before tomorrow night's book club meeting.  So I can't write too much now.  This 2001 novel has been growing on me, but let me focus on just one tiny tangent. 

Georgie is having a recurring dream about Mrs. Jubail.  Just brief mentions until we finally get more explanation.  Much of the book comes to us this way - sort of like life comes to us - in brief snatches that don't make much sense at first until it moves from our subconcious to our conscious minds.  We'd also heard that Georgie had worked in Saudi Arabia.  And on page 141 things come together as we learn that in Saudi Arabia she was a nurse and took care of Mrs. Jubail who had a terminal illness.  At one point,

"She asked was it true the Arabs imported camels from [Australia].  Georgie told her of the wild herds in the north that were the legacy of the Afghan traders." 

I took this picture in India, not Australia

Is it true, I wondered.  Well, it sounds basically true, but the Afghans seem to have been camel handlers. 

Southaustraliahistory  tells us:

Without the Afghans much of the development of the outback would have been very difficult if not impossible. Whole communities, towns, mining establishments, pastoral properties and some well known explorations in the interior have been made successful because of their contributions.

With their camels, who received more publicity than their owners, these cameleers opened up the outback, helped with the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line and Railways, erected fences, acted as guides for several major expeditions, and supplied almost every inland mine or station with its goods and services. These 'pilots of the desert' made a vital contribution to Australia.

The Afghans came first in 1838 and the first camels in 1840 as we learn from camelaustralia:

The first camel in Australia was imported from the Canary Islands in 1840 by Horrock. The next major group of 24 camels came out in 1860 for the ill-fated Bourke and Wills expedition. The first time the explorer Giles used camels he travelled 220 miles in 8 days without giving water to the camels. He later went from Bunbury Downs to Queen Victoria Springs (WA), a distance of 325 miles in 17 days and gave one bucket of water to each camel after the twelfth day. . .

An estimated 10,000 to 12,000 camels, imported into Australia between 1860 and 1907, were used as draft and riding animals by people pioneering the dry interior.

Now it's estimated Australia has about 1 million feral camels and in 2010 the country proposed to spend about $19 million (US$19.80 = Aus $19) to cull the wild camels.  But Saudis have come to the rescue:

The Saudi campaign, which calls on the country's rich to airlift the camels to the safety of the Saudi desert, comes after the Australian government announced it would kill 6,000 camels in the Northern Territory next week using marksmen firing from helicopters. [The fact sheet quoted below puts the number at 650,000.]

The animals are viewed as a pest in Australia, but they are revered in the desert nation of Saudi Arabia.

 It's not clear what happened. There were several references to this in January 2010, I couldn't find any later news whether anything happened.  But over a year later, we learn that an Australian entrepreneur is taking on the government's culling plan and wants to turn the camels into a lucrative business.  Arabian Business reports March 30, 2011:

A Queensland businessman plans to take on the Australian government in a bid to redirect a multimillion-dollar camel cull into a plan to exporting camel produce to the Gulf.
Outback entrepreneur Paddy McHugh hopes to persuade Australia to capitalise on its wild camel population to create a lucrative business, selling milk and camels into the Gulf region.
“We want to turn it around from a negative and produce an industry for Australia to export meat and milk to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. It’s got huge potential,” he told Arabian Business. . .

The feral animals are often labelled a nuisance, competing with cattle and sheep for food and crushing vegetation. In the Middle East, however, the desert animals are an integral part of life, used for food, drink and racing.
“The potential is huge and I just find it absurd that we want to shoot these animals,” McHugh said. “It’s a waste of phenomenal proportions. We believe there is an industry there that will compliment the Australian cattle and sheep industry and make another great export industry.”
Interest in camel produce is growing due to its reported health benefits. Advocates claim the milk contains up to five times more vitamin C than cow milk, less fat and less lactose while its meat is said to be low in cholesterol and high in protein.

The impact of camels on the environment, particularly during droughts, is apparently significant according to the Australian Department of Sustainability, Envornment, Water, Population and Community  fact sheet (updated March 2012):

In central Australia, serious and widespread negative impacts on vegetation have been recorded where camels occur at densities of more than two animals/km², though damage to highly palatable species occurs at much lower densities. In more arid country near Lake Eyre, significant negative impacts on vegetation have been recorded where camels occur at densities of more than one animals/km². Camels already occur at localised densities more than two animals/km² over much of their current range.
The impact of feral camels on native plants and drinkable water is most pronounced during drought, when areas close to remote waterholes become refuges that are critical to the survival of a range of native animals and plants. Feral camels can quickly degrade these areas during a drought to the point where they may no longer provide any refuge for native plants and animals, perhaps leading to the local extinction of these species. The Action Plan for Australian Marsupials and Monotremes recommends that feral camel numbers be reduced at specific areas to help protect the habitat of threatened animals such as the ampurta (Dasycercus hillieri).
Many water places are sacred sites to Aboriginal people, so the negative impacts of camels on waterholes, rockholes, soaks and springs can be culturally significant. Recent periods of drought have resulted in feral camels entering remote communities in search of water, and extensively damaging water infrastructure such as laundries, bathrooms, bores, taps and tanks.

There are tidbits like this throughout the book.  Just passing comments where I say, "I need to look this up."  I'm sure I'll write more on this book. 

Breakup Biking and Moose

It's been gloriously sunny, enough to melt snow and ice enough for it to freeze over into sheets at night.  That made for interesting biking yesterday when I went to meet a friend for brunch.  But the bike stayed upright and my helmet was never near the ground.

Coming home after we talked into the afternoon and I stopped by the library to see a few TEDx talks, was a different challenge.  It was another sunny and slightly warmer day and things were wet.

 
There is something primordial to the way snow and ice convert to water and air.  There are cracks and fissures and rivulets taking the warmed ice down gravity's path. That brown ribbon moving to the lower left was an inch or two deep water transfer from the parking lot to the street.

The cross walk had a couple of inches of water in it.

And soon the sidewalk itself was submerged and cars were offering muddy showers to pedestrians and cyclists.  I finally decided to just ride through it and it wasn't as bad as it looked. 

So as soon as I could, I slipped off the main street and onto a side street whose snow pack was still relatively solid.  And as I was biking by, suddenly noticed I was not alone.  A moose had found a comfortable spot in front of someone's house to lie down and chew its cud.  It wasn't much more than 15 feet away from me if that much and not at all disturbed that I was stopped to take a picture.

When I got home my tire had captured some of the street surface. 

For those of you making snide comments about Alaskans now, I would point out it's 8:02pm as I write this and the sun is still comfortably above the horizon and pinking the snow on the mountains.