I just finished reading the Hawaii Supreme Court’s decision in the challenge to the 2011 Final Reapportionment Plan. It traces the background of the current constitutional language requiring exclusion of the nonresident population when drawing new legislative districts, and then examined how the reapportionment commission ended up adopting a plan that failed to comply.
I would recommend reading through the 28-page discussion in order to better understand the issues.
According to the court’s explanation, the reapportionment commission balked at excluding all of an estimated 120,000 nonresidents who do not consider Hawaii their home, a number that includes most active duty military, their dependents, and nonresident students. The commission voted to exclude only a limited number, about 16,000, of the total. This group was made of those whose local residences could be traced back to particular zip codes and census blocks. The rest, the commission argued, could not be located accurately and so could not be excluded based on existing data.
But the court ruled that determining permanent resident population for the purpose of reapportionment is a two-step process, and that the commission erred by improperly applying the requirements of the second step to the first stage of its analysis.
Determining the total number of permanent residents in the state and in each county required the Commission, in step one, to extract non-permanent military residents and non-permanent university student residents from the state’s and the counties’ 2010 Census population. Apportioning the senate and house members among nearly equal numbers of permanent residents required the Commission, in step two, to identify the specific locations of non-permanent military residents and non-permanent university student residents.
The court continued:
The Commission contends that it apportioned the state legislature in accordance with article IV, section 4 because it excluded, from the counties’ permanent resident populations, only non-permanent residents identifiable to particular census blocks. However, HRS § 25-2(a) requires the Commission to apportion the state legislature on the “basis, method and criteria” prescribed by article IV, which provides, in section 4, for apportionment “using the total number of permanent residents in each of the basic island units.” Nothing in article IV, section 4 requires apportionment based on the total number of permanent residents identified by census block. The 1991 Reapportionment Commission used census blocks to identify, count and locate non-permanent residents, but such method of determining the permanent resident population base was not incorporated in article IV, section 4.
The Commission’s method of apportioning the state legislature did not properly separate the step one process of
allocating the legislative members among the four counties from the step two process of apportioning the members within county districts. Identifying the non-permanent resident population for step one and identifying the non-permanent resident population for step two were separate processes. The Commission acknowledged at oral argument that it did not differentiate the step one process from the step two process.
The court notes that it was clear during the commission deliberations that excluding more than 20,000 nonresidents would result in a shift of one senate seat to Hawaii County and, reading between the lines, the implication is that the final commission vote was political in nature and intended to protect Oahu’s existing political clout.
It would be very interesting to read an account of the internal commission politics by someone who was closely following the reapportionment process. Which decisions set the stage for the commission’s final plan, and which players were responsible for those moves?
How about some of our readers stepping up to describe the play-by-play? I’ll be glad to entertain guest posts on this topic.
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Ian:
I attended all Reapportionment Commission meetings save one over a several-month period. I supported the Reapportionment Commission’s decision.
In addition to the reasons stated in the briefs and RC’s decisions, here is why I wanted to include all four sub-groups – active duty military, military dependents, college students, and prisoners – is that 48 other states and the United States count them while the 49th state already covers three of the four groups and is counting the fourth group starting in 2012.
The second reason is that these individuals are not ghosts – they not only pay taxes on gasoline and other retail purchases but also they use public services ranging from sending their children to public schools to swimming in state-owned waters. These folks also contribute tens of thousands of hours in volunteer work every month – from coaching after-school sports to taking part in environmental workdays to preparing meals for the homeless.
Not counting them also have a major impact on those of us who live in districts where there are military bases – Schofield, Pearl Harbor, Hickam, Tripler, Fort Shafter, Kaneohe Marine Corps Base; prisons – Kailua, Kalihi, Pearl City; four-year universities – Manoa, Kailua/Kane`ohe, downtown, Kaimuki & Waipahu/Pearl City, Kapolei.
Our elected officials still have to provide all of these folks services, but they will now be ghost residents.. That means the district boundary lines will be extended but there will be no additional funding for more staff members.
For example, a certain state senator has a military base, a prison and a university in her district totaling about 40,000 people. Assuming that all four subgroups remain in her new district, that means its boundary lines will be extended north and south to make up for the loss. However, these people will not disappear.
The fact that the State Constitution does not provide support for these people doesn’t make it legal to discriminate against them – given that that the rest of the country does count as does the United States government in determining the boundary lines of the US House districts.
There is still another impact that this decsion will have – the return of the canoe districts.
Have to go back to work – but this is an incredibly important issue that goes way beyond the head count.
I followed this closely from the get go, attended and testified at the only Hilo hearing (after the lines had been prematurely drawn) and came away with sense of dealing with another stacked deck from Oahu.
It was a stacked from the get go — the system was fully flawed in establishing a panel that excluded Big Island and Kauai membership. (The Maui member voted against most of the decisions, by the way.)
Chairwoman Marks was plainly haughty and disrespectful. She treated Stanley Roehrig, one of Hawaii’s pre-eminent attorneys, with contempt.
“Suzie” Bean maybe forgot she no longer was on the bench. She remains contemptuous even now after the 5-0 decision that came swiftly after the weak defense of her flawed plan.
The fix was on from the start and both Democrats AND Republicans on this island and Maui understood that. This is one time justice was done. Irrelevant gasoline taxes or whatever else to the side.
I argued without much success for a Con Con in 2010. This is just another example of how overdue one is.
Mr. Lind,
At the end of your above main post, you seemed more specific than usual about the kind of responses you were looking for. I’m uncertain as to whether my comment below is far enough off the mark to distract from your main topic. If you feel it is, please feel free to remove it. But if you remove it, I’d appreciate it if you would consider bringing up the questions therein on your page on another day. I can’t remember seeing this discussed in depth before. Thank you.
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I’m afraid I don’t have anything to share on how reapportionment deliberations went, but reading this article does bring a couple of questions to mind.
My focus of late has been Oahu’s severe traffic problem between the Leeward coast and urban Honolulu. Sub-issues of this problem include the rail transit issue and it’s flip slide, development in West and Central Oahu. (Please note that I am not trying to instigate a debate over rail here and have no plans to expressly advocate for one side or the other on this page.)
In the course of discussing these issues in local forums, from time to time someone will suggest that, because of its size, the Big Island is a logical candidate to receive future growth and population expansion.
My questions to anyone who might be better informed:
Is shifting some of Oahu’s planned growth to Hawaii County a viable alternative to development plans for Oahu being fought over now?
And if expansion to Hawaii County is, or could possibly be made, viable, could it be that this is not being examined for reasons that may also be “political in nature and intended to protect Oahu’s existing political clout”?
The population shift to the Big Island as public policy dates back to the 1970s and the State General Plan, if I recall correctly.
It has been quite successful. The problem is that essential services have not kept pace with the population shift, in part because of the Oahu-centric legislature.
Whjy shouldn’t the decision be O`ahu-centric? After all, we have more than three-quarters of the state’s population here.
The fact is that there are up to 120,000 people who have been disappeared by this flawed decision.
What is particularly ironic about this is that Hawai`i prisoners in Arizona have been counted there but prisoners at the Women’s Community Correctional Center here are counted nowhere.
In fact, one of the members of the Commission lives & votes on the Island of Hawai`i – Dylan Nonaka – although he did reside temporarily here on O`ahu while chairing a political party. He moved back to the Big Island in early August, if I recall correctly.
Let’s be frank here: The REAL reason behind this was to put the Democratic Party Senate candidates – Malama Solomon and Lorraine Inouye – in two separate districts.
Perhaps it’s time to get some new faces to run against them.
Again, be prepared to have to live with a canoe district or two again.
BTW – I lived and owned a business in Kailua-Kona for several years. When we lived there, it was a wonderful place to be. We came back to O`ahu for medical reasons.