Legislature(1997 - 1998)
01/21/1998 01:06 PM House JUD
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* first hearing in first committee of referral
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HJR 36 - REAPPORTIONMENT BOARD & REDISTRICTING Number 1209 CHAIRMAN GREEN announced the final item of business would be HJR 36, proposing amendments to the Constitution of the State of Alaska relating to redistricting of the legislature, and repealing as obsolete language in the article setting out the apportionment schedule used to elect the members of the first state legislature. Number 1225 JEFFREY LOGAN, Legislative Assistant to Representative Joe Green, Alaska State Legislature, came forward to present HJR 36 on behalf of the sponsor. He reminded members that on May 5, 1997, HJR 36 was introduced to the committee, at which time Jack Chenoweth, who was then legislative legal counsel, went through the bill section by section. That meeting had ended with a question from Representative Bunde as to the 17 states remaining that have multimember districts, asking whether the movement was to more multimember districts or more single-member districts. MR. LOGAN distributed to members a chart titled, "Change in Multimember Legislative Districts from 1980s to 1990s," which he had been given by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). He explained that the chart shows the 17 states remaining which have some sort of multimember districts, and it compares the 1980s and the 1990s with regard to the directions these states are going. He said, "And it seems that the state House numbers are a bit more illustrative than the Senate numbers, which show that ... there are fewer multimember districts, I'll say, which I deduct that there are more states with single-member districts. And hopefully that will answer Representative Bunde's question, but I'm sure it will generate others." Number 1342 REPRESENTATIVE BERKOWITZ asked: Of the 33 other states, did any of them move back away from single-member districts? MR. LOGAN answered no, that according to the NCSL, there are still only 17 states with multimember districts. "Nobody went back," he added. Number 1362 REPRESENTATIVE BERKOWITZ said he'd thought two or three of them had gone from multimember to single-member districts. Number 1366 REPRESENTATIVE PORTER advised members that another bill would be coming out soon which deals with this general area and suggests changing another body of law. In the research that he and the other joint sponsor did on that bill, they'd gone back and forth on the term "redistricting" versus "reapportionment." He stated, "As best we can figure out at this point, the term 'reapportionment' is appropriate for the reconfiguring of the boundaries of election districts." CHAIRMAN GREEN noted that he and his legislative assistant have a different interpretation of that. Number 1414 MR. LOGAN explained, "When the bill was drafted, it was the drafter's opinion at that time that 'reapportionment' is a term generally reserved to amending or changing the number of representatives within a fixed boundary, whereas 'redistricting' ... is the process of changing the lines within a fixed boundary, referring more to ..." REPRESENTATIVE PORTER interjected, "We will present case law that doesn't exactly support that position." Number 1457 REPRESENTATIVE JAMES asked what the procedure is under this legislation to determine how many Senators and Representatives we have in the state. She further asked, "What is the first test?" Number 1475 MR. LOGAN referred to a proposed committee substitute, version 0- LS0939\E, Glover, 1/20/98, which he said contains a few minor changes. He stated, "The constitution now ... in Article VI, Section 4, which is found on page 2 of the bill, Section 4, it deleted language there. It states the process by which the dividing will take place. And basically, they go from the decennial census conducted by the federal government, they take that number and divide it by 40, and that is the size of the district. And then they begin adjustment procedures after that, depending upon what the courts have to say. ... As you can see, we delete that language. We do not reinsert the number '40' in this language. And the sponsor has indicated that he may be desiring of inserting the number '40' relating to House districts, and possibly '20' relating to Senate districts in here, to clarify that, since we've taken that language out and it's not reinserted in the original bill or the committee substitute." Number 1564 CHAIRMAN GREEN concurred and said that is on page 2, line 2. He said he will be trying to establish 40 single-member election districts and 20 Senate districts, which would be an amendment offered when Mr. Logan was through with his presentation. Number 1579 REPRESENTATIVE JAMES indicated she had asked because "40" has been around a long time. She said she doesn't know what provision except another constitutional amendment ever gets us to any other number, although she doesn't know that another number is needed at this point in time. She stated, "But when you try to divide the state of Alaska into 40 equal sections, ... you have districts like 36 and 37 that [are] unwieldy for anyone to represent the people in there. And I'm not in favor of having a district with a smaller number of people. The 'one man, one vote' is a very important issue, I think, and so I'm not interested in that. However, ... if the really smart people get together, we might be able to figure out something to do with that. And so, having given that at this time, it seems like we might be able to give some instructions in the constitution to address that. And I don't know what they would be, but -- you know, I don't want to open that can, really, but it is a concern of mine." Number 1642 CHAIRMAN GREEN noted that District 10 is neatly packaged within the Municipality of Anchorage, as opposed to District 36, which he believed to be bigger than two-thirds of our states. REPRESENTATIVE CON BUNDE commented, "All but two states, Alaska being one of them." CHAIRMAN GREEN said the problem they would have, if they tried to break that geographically, is a very disproportionate representation from a very few people, which they would want to avoid at all costs. He concluded that geographically "we're going to be on the horns of a dilemma for as long as you and I live, at least." Number 1689 REPRESENTATIVE BERKOWITZ said there is another alternative, to simply repeal Article VI, Section 4, and have a mix of multimember and single-member districts. He added, "You could just randomly divide the top half of the state into a multimember district area and the bottom half of the state into single-member districts." REPRESENTATIVE JAMES suggested that would eliminate the "one man, one vote." REPRESENTATIVE BERKOWITZ disagreed. CHAIRMAN GREEN responded, "Not with multimember districts." REPRESENTATIVE PORTER said it would be even harder to get around. CHAIRMAN GREEN suggested then there would be "two, three or four people having a much greater area." REPRESENTATIVE JAMES said, "Unless they each only had one-quarter of a vote." Number 1717 REPRESENTATIVE CROFT asked what the impetus is for putting in single-member districts, as opposed to having that option for the reapportionment board, and why it is preferable. Number 1732 MR. LOGAN explained, "The notion is that under the current reapportionment plan, with single-member districts, we have had an opportunity to see how they work and to see how well they work. And some of the things we've noticed are that because the districts are smaller, first of all, campaigns' costs are limited. People have more attachment to their representatives. There are benefits of that type that we thought were important enough to enshrine the single-member districts in the constitution so that Alaskans have those benefits in the future." CHAIRMAN GREEN commented, "And you have a federal trend that way, as well as other states are trending that way." He stated his belief that, as Mr. Logan says, it is a much more workable system. He commented, "Smaller groups, people associate you ... as their Representative, as opposed to a group, two or three or four." Number 1777 REPRESENTATIVE CROFT agreed with that from his experience. His father was elected in a multimember district when Anchorage was multimember; walking with him door-to-door on his last campaign, Representative Croft said it was astounding to his father how much Representative Croft could know that "that's Susie (ph) and that dog's mean or whatever," whereas his father was used to having to walk the whole city, even back then. REPRESENTATIVE CROFT said that while he has a certain preference for single-member districts, he was trying to determine whether that should be enshrined. He commented on how rarely they change the constitution, which is appropriate. He said he'd read that in certain situations, multimember districts give the flexibility to ensure an adequate minority representation. Number 1830 REPRESENTATIVE PORTER stated, "Well, during the research that we did on the other bill that will be forthcoming - which doesn't address this area but is part of the research - in reading the cases, the federal guideline for population variance within an election district is 2 percent, and over that, if there's some specific circumstance that would balance off the intent to try to provide as much deference as possible to 'one man, one vote.' Our supreme court, on the other hand, in '86 held that our constitutional wording in the requirement to form contiguous and compact and - as nearly as practical - relatively integrated socioeconomic area, Section 6, allowed them to say, 'We, to accomplish this requirement, would allow a 10 percent variant, and even more, if to get into this area it seemed to be appropriate." REPRESENTATIVE PORTER concluded by saying he doesn't think that within the constitution they have a concern that a strict application of single-member districts would tend to have an adverse effect on minorities or socioeconomic groups. Number 1909 CHAIRMAN GREEN said he had talked with some Representatives from the Bush, who favor this kind of enshrinement because they are concerned that if they are drawn into a large area, they would necessarily - to keep from having such a tremendous amount of geography involved - "have to start gerrymandering into populated areas to get the population up enough, that they, in fact, could lose their identity more readily there than they would be having their own individual districts out in the Bush." Chairman Green indicated one Bush legislator had been present but had had to leave. Number 1942 REPRESENTATIVE JAMES asked, "Wouldn't it be nice someday if we get to the point where everyone could represent everyone without having to worry about a minority person representing minority? If we could just be colorblind." REPRESENTATIVE BERKOWITZ commented that the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't allow the drawing of lines based on ethnicity. CHAIRMAN GREEN asked whether there were other questions. He noted that no one from the public had signed up to testify. Number 1982 REPRESENTATIVE ROKEBERG referred to disagreement within the committee about definitions of "reapportionment" and "redistricting." He asked whether they were going to clarify those as they apply to this bill. CHAIRMAN GREEN replied that he would hope it would stay this way, as advised by the drafter, Mr. Chenoweth. Number 2044 REPRESENTATIVE PORTER made a motion to adopt 0-LS0939\E, Glover, 1/20/98, as a work draft. There being no objection, that version was before the committee. REPRESENTATIVE PORTER read from page 2, lines 4 through 9, Section 3 of the proposed committee substitute, with added comments. He said, "Redistricting - or Reapportionment, depending on this discussion - of the House and Senate. The governor shall redistrict the house of representatives and the senate immediately following the official reporting of each decennial census of the United States. Redistricting shall be based upon population, ... within each election and senate district as reported by the census." Representative Porter said that addresses specifically the boundaries, which is reapportionment, not redistricting. Number 2076 CHAIRMAN GREEN replied that the fine line is that it would be reapportionment if there were a different number, based on this census, "if we said, 'All right, we're going to have 41 or 44 or 38 representatives.'" Chairman Green explained, "We're not saying that. We're saying we're going to have the 40, and of those 40, the boundaries for each one of them will be determined by this census. And I think that's where ..." REPRESENTATIVE PORTER stated, "I thought I heard you say that reapportionment addresses the boundaries and redistricting the members." CHAIRMAN GREEN responded, "No. If I said that, I misled you. I'm sorry." REPRESENTATIVE PORTER said he thought Chairman Green was correct. "You'll hear this again, though," he concluded. Number 2103 REPRESENTATIVE JAMES said that is contrary to what is in the existing constitution, and they must have meant something when they put in Section 3, "reapportionment," and in Section 6, "redistricting." CHAIRMAN GREEN responded that if they had multimember districts, the number within that district might change. "We're not doing that," he explained. "We're saying one Representative per district. We're changing the boundary. We're not changing, within that boundary, the number of Representatives; that would be reapportionment." Number 2133 REPRESENTATIVE ROKEBERG asked whether they had looked at it beyond the boundaries of Alaska. He said there are large amounts of case law on this in the United States. He commented that it shouldn't be that big a deal, but they should get it right. CHAIRMAN GREEN asked whether Mr. Chenoweth had looked outside the state for this. MR. LOGAN said he would have to ask him, and he wasn't sure that in Mr. Chenoweth's new capacity working for the Office of the Attorney General, he could answer that. He suggested he could also ask the current drafter assigned to this bill to do that. CHAIRMAN GREEN asked Jim Sourant to address this issue. Number 2181 JIM SOURANT, Legislative Assistant to Representative Brian Porter, Alaska State Legislature, came forward to testify, saying he didn't claim to be an expert in this area but he had read all six or seven of the Alaska Supreme Court cases dealing with reapportionment. MR. SOURANT said to answer the question about which is reapportionment and which is redistricting, in one of those cases - the name of which he didn't recall, but it was on his desk with language underlined - by way of dicta, the Alaska Supreme Court has said that in a way, redistricting and reapportionment are one and the same, that there really can't be one without the other. He referred to page 2, Sections 3 and 4, of the proposed committee substitute for HJR 36, relating to Sections 3 and 4 of the constitution. He stated, "I would say both of those are the reapportionment parts, that is, the idea that reapportionment means you have a population base and you divide that by the number of districts. In other words, you're looking for a mathematical, perfect number where every district winds up having an equal number of people. That's the reapportionment part." MR. SOURANT explained that next is the drawing of the lines, which is in Section 5 of the resolution, relating to Section 6 of the constitution. He stated, "And it tells you basically ... that you draw these lines, and that's redistricting." He indicated neither the Alaska Supreme Court nor the U.S. Supreme Court has focused on the reapportionment part, "the population of the state divided by 40." Rather, they give that lip service as being the ideal way to start. MR. SOURANT continued, "But then you chip away at reality, which is found in ... your Section 5 and the Section 6 of the constitution, where they look at that language ... about trying to carve up these districts into compact, contiguous, and then in relatively socioeconomic areas." He said, again, the decisions pay lip service to the "compact and contiguous" part, barely touching on that, and they look at the socioeconomic parts to see whether or not there is trade. He suggested the best example of that would be the case involving the new district between South Anchorage and North Kenai. He asked, "Now, they're not contiguous, are they? Because they're not touching. The supreme court wasn't troubled by that. They said as long as ... you had airplanes flying back and forth, ... and everybody fished and everybody visited with one another, that was enough socioeconomic contact to justify the district." Mr. Sourant said he was not being rude to his elders on the court but was trying to give the idea that they put an enormous amount into that area. Number 2312 MR. SOURANT continued, "In fact, it's both the U.S. Supreme Court and in the Gaffney case, and in the Alaska Supreme Court, that say ... you can have a deviation of up to 10 percent with no questions asked, provided ... you've got some good, rational basis. And in Alaska, that means that socioeconomic stuff, which is pretty malleable. And they've hinted that ... you can go way beyond that in terms of the deviations. And I think the worse case that we had in Alaska had a deviation of 29 percent in the House, between districts, where some were over-represented and some were under- represented. That was knocked down, thank goodness, because that would be offensive, I think, just to about everybody. But somewhere ... between 10 percent and 29 percent, the way our Alaska Supreme Court is looking at these cases, ... they can allow that much deviation in true representation. So, I hope that helps, for a hip shot." Number 2359 CHAIRMAN GREEN indicated claiming a fishing community is the same as a bedroom community in socioeconomic terms or otherwise makes one wonder. He asked whether he was hearing that it is the wish of the committee that this be called "reapportionment" rather than "redistricting." REPRESENTATIVE ROKEBERG said they all just want to get it right. CHAIRMAN GREEN noted that where it used to say "redistricting" in Section 6, that had been dropped. REPRESENTATIVE ROKEBERG said in Section 5, it is a district boundary. REPRESENTATIVE PORTER commented that after going full cycle, what they would see in HJR 44 is they went right back and left it the way it was. Number 2435 REPRESENTATIVE BUNDE said it seemed to him initially "that you did redistrict and reapportionment at the same time, because if you drew the line, the numbers of the people that got included or excluded changed." He acknowledged the need for consistency and suggested maybe asking the drafters to take another look. REPRESENTATIVE JAMES suggested talking to Tamara Cook, the director of Legislative Legal and Research Services. TAPE 98-2, SIDE B Number 0001 REPRESENTATIVE JAMES referred to the civilian population and military bases. She asked, "Have you dealt with the resident/nonresident people in the counting, and is this an appropriate place to do it?" CHAIRMAN GREEN answered that this is not the appropriate place to change that back to "civilian." He asked Mr. Logan to elaborate. MR. LOGAN said it reflects the Egan case [Egan v. Hammond, 502 P.2d 856], an Alaska Supreme Court decision that said we cannot discriminate between a civilian and a military population. Number 0053 REPRESENTATIVE JAMES noted that her own district has a huge military population. She said she has always tried to figure out why people don't vote, and she believes she doesn't have as many people in her district because they are counting military people who have their residence somewhere else. She indicated she doesn't know that it is a problem. She stated, "I just about know how many people vote, and that's about how many people I have. But other places that have a large military complement in their district, technically those people get more votes than a person who has the right number of people who are voting in the district, in their district. And I don't know what that percentage is, but I think it's a considerable amount." CHAIRMAN GREEN suggested they would actually get less votes. REPRESENTATIVE JAMES disagreed, saying a fewer number of people with a vote is a bigger vote than a larger number of people with a vote. Number 0093 REPRESENTATIVE CROFT said Representative James had brought up a good point, and his own amendment goes to that point. He indicated he would be agreeable to having the amendment read either "reapportionment board" or "redistricting board," whichever is appropriate. REPRESENTATIVE CROFT made a motion to adopt Amendment 1, which read: Page 2, line 9 following "census.": Insert "The reapportionment board shall conduct a survey to determine the percentage of resident and non-resident military voters and shall reapportion based on the resident population." CHAIRMAN GREEN asked whether there was any objection. REPRESENTATIVE JAMES said she hadn't read it yet. CHAIRMAN GREEN said it was just addressing her question. REPRESENTATIVE JAMES answered that she didn't know how she wanted it settled. Number 0124 REPRESENTATIVE CROFT explained, "Our constitution said 'civilian population,' because, I think, when it was written the vast majority of the military population was resident somewhere else - or at least a large majority of it. And so, they said, 'We just want to count the nonmilitary.' The supreme court said you can't do that; if there are legitimate military residents, you have to count them. You don't have to count what Representative James was talking about, nonresident military personnel, which ... in the cases they keep abbreviating 'NRMP.' ... So, it's NRMPs that we're talking about, the people that might be counted there but are really military personnel that are residents somewhere else. And different apportionments have taken different approaches to that. It used to be -- actually, until the most recent one, they always did some kind of survey or asked the military for the information: 'Tell us where your people are registered.' The military did that for a while and then stopped, said, 'We're not going to tell you anymore.'" REPRESENTATIVE CROFT continued, "So, after that - I think in the '70s, but clearly by the '80s - they started doing surveys to get, 'Well, as far as we can tell, roughly 60 percent are resident and 40 percent are not; so, when we have a base with 10,000 people, we're going to estimate that's about 6,000 residents and about 4,000 nonresident NRMPs.' And the last census did not do that." Representative Croft suggested that as a reason why Representative James' district may have that inflated number. He said that aspect concerns him, and he still hadn't decided whether mandating single-member districts is the right thing to do. He stated that the amendment says, "The redistricting or reapportionment board - whichever one - shall conduct a survey to determine the percentage of resident and nonresident military voters and shall reapportion - or redistrict, I guess - based on the resident population." Number 0209 REPRESENTATIVE JAMES said, "If this reapportionment board, who takes and divides the population into equal segments, they're going to take out the nonresident military voters before they ... say how many people are going to be in ... each one, then, I guess, in those areas that have military, they have to again say, 'Well, how many of those nonresidents are in this area?' Because we'll have to expand a little bit to be able to get the number of people." Representative James said these nonresident military people drive the same roads, attend the same schools, and do all those kinds of things that residents do. She asked, "And does that mean if they're not counted in the reapportionment, they don't have a voice, either? I don't know how I feel about that." She indicated she also didn't know whether this is a good amendment or not, and that she believes there are many things to think about on that issue before they go forward with it. Number 0265 REPRESENTATIVE PORTER said that again because of research on the other bill, they'd looked into this. He offered to have Mr. Sourant elaborate if necessary, then said the best information they could get was secondhand, "reportedly from someone that worked at the census." Representative Porter stated, "And they said ... true enough; they do not try to discriminate between resident and nonresident military personnel when they do the census. I don't know if they discriminate between resident and nonresident civilians when they do the census. There's some accommodation for ..." CHAIRMAN GREEN agreed, "There is." REPRESENTATIVE PORTER said the problem with the amendment is that it begs the question, "What is a resident?" He said in this state, he'd guess that the military men and women, except perhaps those on temporary duty (TDY) at that particular moment in a ten-year period, will be inspired to become residents because of the Permanent Fund Dividend Program, which provides approximately $1,000 each. He referred to the court and said there was a lot of dicta, as always in court cases, but basically they had said, "You've got to count your military." Representative Porter said he would rather just generally count the military than try to get into the question of what a resident is, and by whose criteria. CHAIRMAN GREEN advised members that Mr. Logan had some answers. Number 0339 MR. LOGAN said he believed the sponsor would oppose the amendment. While in a perfect world Representative Croft's language solves a number of perceived problems, in the real world of reapportionment it also raises a number of problems. The first is with the term "survey," which is somewhat undefined and could take a number of forms. For example, in the last reapportionment, there were three different surveys, including a "voter ID" survey, a telephone survey, and a third survey. MR. LOGAN advised members that the Cowper reapportionment board had also enlisted the Department of Labor to conduct an $80,000 study to determine the military resident and nonresident populations. However, that information was inconclusive and was not used to make any final decision. MR. LOGAN indicated there are a number of logistical problems in determining what the resident versus nonresident population is. First is access to the base, which the military has left up to the base commander. Therefore, one commander may allow a survey while another does not. Mr. Logan said the biggest problem, according to material he has read, is that there is no way to survey off base, where a number of military personnel live, such as in Eagle River. The only way to do it would be a door-to-door survey, and the integrity of the sample of the survey would be suspect. MR. LOGAN noted that in the last reapportionment of the City of Los Angeles, for the city council itself the court required that legal residents, even if they were from across the border but legally there, had to be counted, although there was no opportunity for them to vote until they went through a citizenship process. Number 0439 REPRESENTATIVE BERKOWITZ suggested most bases would know how many housing units they had, how many were full, and how many troops were deployed at the base, and they could do simple addition or subtraction. He provided examples. MR. LOGAN responded, "You're absolutely correct. And Representative Croft noted in the introduction to his amendment that the military used to do this; we used to be provided this information. But there's no way for us to require that the military give us that information. And in fact, in 1990, there were some states where they backed out the home of record - the military - to provide that information to some states, and California and Hawaii were two. I believe there were four. I think Oregon and Idaho were the other two. But I know that in California and Hawaii, the military provided that information to the reapportionment board, and they were able to do that. And you're right: They know exactly where their people are pretty much all the time. But in Alaska, they chose not to do that. There we are." Number 0494 REPRESENTATIVE JAMES said many Alaska residents are not here and therefore don't get counted, even though they may be back here before the next ten years is up. She said she didn't know what other states do. Number 0512 MR. LOGAN reported that in one document, the number of nonresident military people was described as "insignificant." He told members he would try to attach a number to that for their benefit. "It may be heavy in Representative James' district, but statewide, from what I have seen, the number is insignificant," he concluded. Number 0551 MR. SOURANT advised members that at least two or three of the seven Alaska Supreme Court cases he'd read talked about this military issue. The important point is that there is language in one of those cases that the number of military people is so small that they use the words "de minimus" in terms of establishing the population base. So even in the Alaska Supreme Court's mind, this is not anything that will cause any egregious statistical errors. MR. SOURANT said he remembered - he believed it was from one of the state supreme court decisions - that it was so difficult to get the data about which military people were residents or nonresidents because the base commanders and administrative officers did not give out that data. "So, if I understand the intent of the amendment here, it's that the reapportionment board is going to do the survey, and it's not that they're trying to get this information from the census," Mr. Sourant said. "... You can spend a lot of money conducting a survey, but you won't get access to the data." Number 0610 REPRESENTATIVE CROFT wrapped up by saying "survey" was intentionally undefined; he wanted to leave that to the reapportionment board to figure out what appropriate poll, survey or analysis they believe is important. He referred to the example from Los Angeles and said he almost never follows examples from there, nor will he. He stated, "I don't know whether it's de minimus. Representative James, who knows her district better than any of us, says it's not in hers, and the important thing is, let's find out. Let's have some survey process to find out and approximate it." REPRESENTATIVE CROFT concluded by saying, "We know we are overcounting by some amount; ... when we count them as one-to-one, all residents, we assume that. And I think it's better to be a little right than certainly wrong. I mean, we might as well take a stab at this to get closer to the truth than simply acknowledge that we are going to be wrong on this. And it will be closer if we try than if we don't. So, for those reasons, I would continue to move Amendment 1, so that we have some estimate of what we know to be ... a small or a large problem, depending on whether Representative James' firsthand experience or the reports of the supreme court are accurate." Number 0674 CHAIRMAN GREEN said his final rebuttal would be about the concern over that being in the constitution. If the court looks at this and says, "We don't think you made a good enough effort; you went to the base commander and he wouldn't give you the information; you should have done this, this, this, this, this," it could hold elections in abeyance for an inordinate amount of time. Chairman Green questioned whether any possible good from determining the number of military personnel in Representative James' district is germane to the potential of causing the election to be held up. "I understand, and I think it's meritorious, if we could still get the information, I would certainly support the amendment," he concluded. "But I'm afraid not being able to get it will end up causing more problems than you'll ever solve by it." Number 0714 CHAIRMAN GREEN, noting that he maintained a "no" vote, requested a roll call. Voting for Amendment 1 were Representatives Berkowitz and Croft. Voting against it were Representatives Bunde, James, Porter and Green. Representative Rokeberg was absent, chairing another meeting. Therefore, Amendment 1 failed by a vote of 4-2. Number 0769 REPRESENTATIVE PORTER made a motion to amend page 2, line 12, to insert the word "forty" between the words "establish" and "single- member." CHAIRMAN GREEN asked whether there were questions or an objection. There being no objection, Amendment 2 was adopted. Number 0801 REPRESENTATIVE CROFT offered a conceptual amendment. He explained, "On page 2, line 8, it says [CIVILIAN], and that's taken out; I understand why from the Egan v. Hammond case. But in a previous draft, I'd seen 'resident,' and that's the way I'd understood the court interpreting it. We said 'civilian,' but what they really have to mean is 'resident.' Should that be 'resident population' there?" He said it is "pretty much a technical-doing-what-the- supreme-court-told-us-we-had-to-do." He concluded, "But with no modifier there, I'm not sure what would happen." Number 0831 MR. LOGAN responded, "Mr. Chairman, I didn't get to this yet. This is one of the two changes I mentioned in the committee substitute. The first change is that on page 2, line 7, the word 'resident' is deleted in the committee substitute. And the second change is that on page 2, line 19, the words 'and senate districts' are deleted." REPRESENTATIVE CROFT said he understood deleting the phrase "and senate districts" for consistency, but he didn't understand the deletion of the word "resident." Number 0862 MR. LOGAN responded that it was for basically the same reasons he had listed in opposition to Representative Croft's earlier amendment. In trying to define what a resident is under the case law, at the last reapportionment the court came to no clear conclusion, and it cost the state thousands of dollars to defend what that term was. Therefore, it had been recommended that "resident" be deleted here. CHAIRMAN GREEN added that it would be dependent upon the decennial population number. Number 0889 REPRESENTATIVE CROFT responded that it may be difficult to determine, but he would like the resident population to be the basis for "our election drawing." He added, "Setting aside the whole military issue, it should be, as best we can approach it, residents." REPRESENTATIVE PORTER said determining the population is tough enough. He said it begs the question of what to do about the residents of a particular election district that were not counted in the census, including, for example, military people who are residents but stationed in Germany, senior citizens in hospitals and students away at a university. Representative Porter asked, "What do you do about those folks if you say here that redistricting shall be based on the resident population? You can't use just the census, then, you have to use that plus some other things. And I don't think we want to get into that." Number 0946 REPRESENTATIVE CROFT replied that there are a lot of standards in reapportionment that are never quite met. However, he wants the standard to be the resident population; that is what we should shoot for, even if we will never count them perfectly. He said he feels that to do otherwise would be a grave error. Number 1003 CHAIRMAN GREEN replied, "Well, we are shooting for the decennial population, what is allocated to the state of Alaska by their count, rather than to say, 'Well, but that didn't include Maude, who was out of the state at the time.' And there will be those, both ways. We'll have some in, and we'll have some out. And unfortunately, we have some projections. They don't count every nose. And this is a problem with the whole census concept. But at least it reduces it down to a number that was given to us by the census takers." Number 1026 REPRESENTATIVE BERKOWITZ said he hadn't looked at one of those census books in quite a while. However, if he remembered right, he said, census taking includes numbers such as tourists and transient workers. He asked whether they are saying here that they'll count those people for redistricting purposes, or reapportioning, whichever term they settled on. Number 1046 CHAIRMAN GREEN indicated he presumed the objection was maintained. He asked whether there was further discussion, then asked Representative Croft for confirmation that he wanted to put "resident" in front of "population." REPRESENTATIVE CROFT answered, "Right, where 'civilian' was deleted." CHAIRMAN GREEN requested a roll call vote on Amendment 3. Voting for Amendment 3 were Representatives Berkowitz and Croft. Voting against it were Representatives Bunde, James, Porter and Green. Representative Rokeberg was absent. Therefore, Amendment 3 failed by a vote of 4-2. REPRESENTATIVE PORTER asked for confirmation that Chairman Green didn't want to deal with the issue of whether to call it "redistricting" or "reapportionment." CHAIRMAN GREEN said no, they were voting on it as-is. Number 1107 REPRESENTATIVE JAMES made a motion to move the proposed committee substitute for HJR 36, version 0-LS0939\E, Glover, 1/20/98, as amended, from committee with individual recommendations and attached fiscal note(s). REPRESENTATIVE BERKOWITZ objected. CHAIRMAN GREEN requested a roll call vote. Voting to move the resolution from committee were Representatives Bunde, James, Porter and Green. Voting against it were Representatives Berkowitz and Croft. Representative Rokeberg was absent. Therefore, CSHJR 36(JUD) moved from the House Judiciary Standing Committee by a vote of 4-2.
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