April 19, 2010

The Honorable Warren Furutani, Chair

Assembly Committee on Budget, Subcommittee No. 4
on State Administration
California State Assembly
State Capitol, P.O. Box 942849
Sacramento, CA 94249-0031

Senator Mark DeSaulnier, Chair

Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review, Subcommittee No. 4
on State Administration, General Government, Judicial and Veterans Affairs
California State Senate
State Capitol, Room 2054
Sacramento, CA 95814

Re: Support for proposed 2010-2011 budget item 0911

Dear Assemblymember Furutani and Senator DeSaulnier:

We are following up on our letter of March 25, 2010 to indicate our support for the Governor’s
proposal to add $3 million to the Citizens Redistricting Initiative. We believe it may be helpful to
provide you with some details, drawn from our combined experience and knowledge about
redistricting commissions in other states and localities (as well as previous statewide redistricting
processes in California), regarding what we believe are the important needs of the Citizens
Redistricting Commission that will soon be seated in California in accord with Proposition 11 of
2008. These include staffing needs, areas of expertise that will be required, and some specific
categories of “hard costs” that we anticipate.

• Outreach. We believe that the transparency of the entire process and involvement of the
public (especially traditionally underrepresented populations) are extremely important
aspects that must be guaranteed in this new process for redistricting Legislative and state
Board of Equalization seats.

Proposition 11 establishes a constitutional mandate for the commission to “conduct an

open and transparent process enabling full public consideration of and comment on the
drawing of district lines.” Statutory sections of the proposition require that all data and
commission records be posted in a manner that ensures immediate and widespread public
access, and that the commission implement an open hearing process for public input and
deliberation that shall be subject to public notice and promoted through a thorough,
adequately funded outreach program to solicit broad public participation in the
redistricting process. In addition, as stated in Proposition 11, the commission must ensure
that a “complete and accurate computerized database is available for redistricting, and
that procedures are in place to provide the public ready access to redistricting data and
computer software for drawing maps.”

In order to do all that well, the commission will need to be adequately staffed and able to
take advantage of services for communication and dissemination of information through
 both traditional and emerging methods. Specifically, we think the commission will
require:

Public hearing coordinator

Public outreach experts to do both press outreach (including second
language media, digital media, etc.) and general public outreach (including
outreach to minority groups, community groups, etc.)

Translators; transcription service; sign language interpreter

Website administrator/content updater

A means of ensuring public access to redistricting software, such as
through assistance centers housed in community centers in various
locations around the state.
o Hard costs:

Flyers, etc.

Materials for hearings, including large-scale maps

Public noticing

Software (for example, software for electronic communication with large
groups).

• Technical needs. Since the process of redistricting is of its very nature a technical one,
we believe the commission’s chief of staff will need to be conversant with the technical
aspects of the work performed by other staff as well as able to coordinate the work
pertaining to commission meetings and outreach to the public. Staff with technical
expertise indicated in the following list will be needed to produce draft maps, convert
input that comes from the public in various formats into maps, integrate datasets received
from various sources including local governments and community organizations with the
commission’s dataset, and post map information in a manner “that achieve[s] the widest
public access reasonably possible.” Some of this work will need to be done during the
commission’s public hearings. While this list is of course only an estimate of the staffing
needed, we have drawn on the experience and recommendations of our collaborators who
have staffed local government redistricting commissions in California.

In addition to legal counsel that will be needed to help the commission comply with the
strict open meeting and related requirements of Proposition 11, counsel with expertise in
implementation and enforcement of the federal Voting Rights Act is required by the
proposition. We note that the nationwide pool of persons with the technical and legal
expertise needed for the commission to work effectively is not large and competition
among states for such services may be significant, adding to the cost of obtaining those
services.
o Team of experts

Chief of staff, someone with “technical capability”: Coordinating
technical issues, outreach, functioning of the commission.

Line-drawers (2-3 minimum): Processing public comment and data

Number crunchers (1-2 minimum): Formatting data received from external
sources for the commission’s dataset. GIS experience would be helpful.

Technical assistants (1-2): Updating and managing the website; indexing
information so that it is easy to find.
o Legal counsel, including Voting Rights Act experience

Types of legal issues the commission will encounter:
 • Voting Rights Act
• Procedure/public process issues.
o Mapping software: “Maptitude” – $10,000 per license.

• Commissioners’ expenses. The State Auditor estimates that a commissioner’s work

may consume 10 to 40 hours a week, with less time initially and more time towards the
end of the eight and a half month period from January 1 to September 15, 2011.
Proposition 11 requires that the commission hold hearings for public input before the
drawing of draft maps as well as hearings following the drawing and display of maps. An
estimate of commissioners’ expenses must include travel expenses to accommodate an
extensive schedule that optimizes opportunities for public participate. As noted above, it
is likely that some staff travel will be needed so that technical functions can be performed
at the hearings.
o 10-40 hrs/wk per commissioner @ $300/day
o Travel expenses for commissioners; also for the staff as needed.

• Administrative needs. The commission’s budget must include operating expenses:

o Office space
o Equipment
o Utilities
o Support staff.

As we have stated before, Proposition 11 designed the initial $3 million allocation to be a floor,
not a ceiling. With the passage of Proposition 11, the voters of California declared that they
wanted the redistricting process to be open and inclusive. We support the Governor’s proposed
addition of $3 million to the budget and believe that the Legislature’s support of this budget line
is important to ensuring that the Citizens Redistricting Commission is able to perform its duties
effectively and with full participation by the public. Moreover, we believe that this relatively
modest line item will go a long way to bolstering voter confidence in the Legislature and the
responsiveness of our state government.

Thank you very much for your support.

Sincerely,

Jeannine English Kathay Feng

California State President, AARP Executive Director, California Common Cause

James P. Mayer Alice A. Huffman

Executive Director, California Forward President, California State National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Robert M. Stern Janis R. Hirohama

President, Center for Governmental Studies President, League of Women Voters of California
CC: Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal
Review - Subcommittee No. 4 on State
Administration, General Government, Judicial
and Veterans Affairs
Senator Tom Harman
Senator Gloria Negrete McLeod
Assembly Committee on Budget -
Subcommittee No. 4 on State Administration
Assemblymember Juan Arambula
Assemblymember Julia Brownley
Assemblymember Paul Cook
Assemblymember Kevin Jeffries
Senator Denise Ducheny, Chair
Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal
Review
Senator Bob Dutton, Vice Chair
Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal
Review
Senator Darrell Steinberg
Senate President pro Tempore
Assemblymember John Pérez
Speaker of the Assembly
Senator Dennis Hollingsworth
Senate Minority Floor Leader
Assemblymember Martin Garrick
Assembly Minority Floor Leader
Mac Taylor, Legislative Analyst
Attn: Jason Sisney and Diego
Martín
Ana Matosantos, Director
Department of Finance
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

Assemblymember Bob Blumenfield, Chair

Assembly Committee on Budget

Assemblymember Jim Nielsen, Vice Chair

Assembly Committee on Budget