Reapportionment Public Hearing, Auburn 10-17-2011

LEGISLATIVE REAPPORTIONMENT COMMITTEE

17th HEARING

OCTOBER 17, 2011

Auburn, Alabama

MR. DIAL: Let me thank you for coming. My name is Gerald Dial and I represent Senate District 13 and I serve as the Senate co-chair of the redistricting committee. And we are here tonight because every ten years after the census we are required to draw new boundary lines for the House and Senate districts. That's simply because population shifts in this state and it doesn't stay the same. And to have one person, one vote, we have to draw new district lines each year.

We are conducting 21 public hearings throughout this state. This is hearing 19. We have been from one end of the state to the other. And we have had good crowds like we have tonight. This is one of the best crowds and thank you for coming. We have had small crowds. The idea is that under the new census guideline with 4,779,736 people we have to divide that into 35 and we get the ideal Senate district and that's 136,563. You divide that by 105 and you get 45,522 and that's the ideal House district. Now when we did the Congressional districts and the Board of Education districts early on we did those in the regular session. We did those during the spring break simply because we didn't want to have a special session and cost the state a half to three-quarter of a million dollars for the special session.

So during the spring break while all of our friends were out having a good time, me and my co-partners had six public hearings in the major metropolitan areas of this state to get input on the Congressional district. We were able to pass that plan during the regular session. And that plan has now gone to Congress for pre-clearing -- I mean, gone to the Justice Department for clearing. And all of us that had a conversation with that we hope that we get that plan and the Board of Education plan cleared.

We did that because Congress and Board of Education seats have to run 2012. The legislature does not have to run on the plan we are going to look at and adopt until 2014. So we feel like we are able to have more public hearings because we are out of session. And our plan is to take the public hearing and begin to develop a bill and have a bill ready that we can introduce when the session begins in February.

This is the first time that in the history that legislators have conducted public hearings throughout this state to get your input on how you think districts should be drawn. What you see on our right and left are the House and Senate seats that we have today.

We do not have a plan. I have not seen the plan. Everybody wants to know where the plan is and wants me to show them. I have not seen a plan. I refuse to look at a plan until we've had our public hearings and had our input because that would be a fallacy for you if I had a plan and I was going around listening to no avail. We are going to take the information that we are receiving today and we are going to take that and the other and we are going to develop a plan for the House and Senate. So that's why we are here today. And that's mainly why we are having these public hearings.

We will leave here and we'll go to Selma tomorrow and we will go to Montgomery tomorrow afternoon and then maybe Representative McClendon and I can go home and rest a little bit because we spent the whole month of October -- and Senator Figures, who is also on this committee has joined us. I have on my left my co-chair and a House member, Representative Jim McClendon. And I have a member-at-large committee member, Senator Vivian Figures from Mobile. And we are glad that they have joined us today.

I want to give you some numbers to give you a little concept of what we're involved with and why we are having to redistrict. I am going to take the whole geographical area that we are involved in, not just the Auburn area, because it involves a lot more than one or two people. Remember when you move one person in one district, you affect every other district. It's like dominoes. You can't just draw a great district for Senator Tom Whatley over there and go home. Because whatever happens with Tom Whatley affects me and everybody else in the Senate. The same thing for the other members.

Senate District 11 is Jerry Fielding's district and he has to gain 11,452 people. Senate District 12, Dale Marsh, has to lose 5,868. Senate District 13, which is my district, would go from Cherokee County all the way down to the Smith Station area and into the Russell County line, it has to gain 3,786. Senate District 25 to our west, Dick Brewbaker, has to lose 21,369. Senate District 26, Clinton Ross, has to gain 15,897. Senate District 27, Tom Whatley, has to lose 2,603. Senate District 28, Billy Beasley, has to gain 5,195. Senate District 29 to our south, Harri Anne Smith, has to lose 116. Senate District 30, Brian Taylor, has to lose 2,836. And Jimmy Holly in Senate District 31 has to gain 6,941. So that gives you a concept of what the Senate districts look like.

And let me give you some House districts too because we're involved in both of these. House District 31, Barry Mask, has to lose 913. House District 37, Richard Laird, which is north of here, has to gain 1,563. My good friend, House District 38, Duwayne Bridges has to gain 1,184. Mike Hubbard, House District 79, speaker, has to lose 7,429. House District 80, Lesley Vance, has to lose 9,379. Mark Tuggle, House District 81, has to gain 1,718. House District 82, Pebblin Warren -- I see my good friend Pebblin here -- she has to gain 2,132. House District 83, George Bandy, has to gain 4,482. And House District 84, Berry Forte, has to gain 4,204.

I give you those numbers to give you a little concept of what we're looking at as the legislature redraws districts. And that is not uncommon to what you are seeing state-wide. Population shift, people move. This is based on the 2010 census. That's what we are required by law to go with is the 2010 census. So that gives you a little concept of what we're dealing with.

Let me recognize at this time some people. And Tom Whatley, Senator Tom Whatley is here. Tom, stand up. Thank you for coming and being here and thank you for being part of this delegation. I enjoy working with you and it's great to have you here.

We have also Representative Duwayne Bridges, my House member. Duwayne, thank you for being here. He said to say something nice about him so he's a nice guy. Give me that $5 you owe me, Duwayne. Thank you for being here. Representative Pebblin Warren is here. Pebblin, thank you for being here.

Are there other legislators? I don't think I've seen any others come in. Other elected officials are Robert Ham, Lee County Commission, thank you for being here. I got the probate judge here, Judge English, stand up. Thank you for being here, Judge. Is there any other? Johnny Lawrence. Johnny, thank you for being here. You didn't sign in.

MR. DIAL: And I've also got my mayor, Mayor LaFord here from -- where are you? I saw her back there. Stand up, Mayor. From Smiths Station. I saw you. You didn't sign in.

MR. DIAL: No other elected officials. At this time I am going to turn it over to my co-chair, Representative McClendon.

MR. McCLENDON: Thank you, Senator Dial. Senator Dial is the Senate co-chair. And I am the House co-chair. This makes city number 19 we have been to. We will wrap this up tomorrow. It's been very interesting. I can tell you without a doubt this is probably the best turnout that we've had. And I am ever so appreciative of you all coming and helping us with this task.

We do have sign-in sheets. And when we reach the point where we are receiving testimony from anyone here that wishes to give it, we will go down those sign-in sheets. Generally we do the elected officials first and then go to the other sign-in sheet. And then anyone else at the end of that, we will reach a point where we will ask anyone if they want to speak. So even if you did not sign either of the sheets to show your attendance here, that's fine. We are going to get to you.

Anyone who has something to say to help us with this task at hand we welcome your comments and you will be given an opportunity to speak. We do not have a plan. Senate Dial has already mentioned it. What you see before you is the existing plan. We will have a plan eventually. We will take your comments and begin working with them.

Now, there may well be plans circulating around out there that individuals have, but our reapportionment committee does not have a plan. We have not seen a plan. No plan has been submitted to us. The reapportionment committee is composed of 22 members of the House and Senate equally divided. Once we come up with a plan, that will go to the reapportionment committee for consideration. Once it reaches the reapportionment committee all 22 members of that committee will have an opportunity to amend it or substitute it, kill it or pass it out and send it on. Eventually it will go to the House floor and the Senate floor.

Once it goes to the House and Senate floor all 140 legislators, 105 House members and 35 senators will have an opportunity to work on that plan. We've had folks request of us that they see a copy of the plan before the one we are going to vote on. But we don't know what we are going to vote on.

During the Congressional and BOE Hearings we had numerous plans offered on the House floor we had never seen before. They were debated and discussed and changes were made. And, in fact, I believe in both cases the plans that the reapportionment committee introduced to the legislature were not the plans that came out of the legislature. So it works like any other piece of legislation. The bill is very dynamic. The bill can change that deals with these things.

When you speak we ask you to clearly make sure the court reporter catches your name and if you will give us where you live and your community and if you represent a group, we would like that information for the record. Our court reporter is taking down everything today and you all can help her. Keep an eye on her. When she shakes her head to repeat, she will let you know that she doesn't understand.

All of this testimony today in all 21 cities will be transcribed. That information will be provided to the members of the redistricting committee. It will also be available to all members of the legislature and it will be available on-line. There is a tremendous amount of information about redistricting in Alabama on-line. All of the numbers that Senator Dial gave you about the districts being over or under and what we need to do to get them closer to the ideal district, that information is available on-line.

Our hearing officer, Mr. Dorman Walker, over here will tell you where to find all of that information. Now, we are here today to talk about redistricting the House and Senate. We had someone that wanted to talk about Congressional districts. That's over with. Or it's not over with but it's already gone to the Justice Department. We had some folks that said, well, they didn't think the census was done right. We can't do anything about it. That's just not our bailiwick. Our bailiwick and what we are interested in knowing is what you think needs to be done to adjust the districts. Some places we've got to take in more turf to pick up more people and some we've got to shrink them. If you think there is a community of interest that needs to come out or go into your district to help us do that job that is what we are interested in.

Our main job here for the Senator and this senator over here, Senator Figures, is to listen to what you have to say. We can't agree to anything. Obviously it's got a lot of steps to go after we get it. But we want to hear what you have to say. So our job is to listen. We can't cut any deals today. But we want to know what's going on.

Now, this meeting and these hearings are being conducted by a hearing officer, Mr. Dorman Walker. Mr. Walker is an attorney. His speciality is election law and voting law. He knows a lot about this. When you make your comments, please make your comments to him. If you have questions, ask your questions of Mr. Walker. He will conduct the meeting. He will recognize who will speak next. And ultimately he will end the meeting. With that being said I will turn it over to Mr. Walker.

MR. DIAL: Just before -- Mayor Dellinger, you did sign up. I found you on the other sheet. I found you and I owe you an apology. And thank you for being here. And thanks for letting Rick drive you.

MR. WALKER: Thank you, Representative McClendon and Senator Dial. I am Dorman Walker. I will be the hearing officer for this hearing. I am going to stand so that you can see me and I can see you. Thank you for coming tonight. This is a terrific crowd. I wish we had a crowd like this at every place along the way. But it really speaks well of the Auburn Opelika area.

I am going to call upon first the elected representatives and then I will call upon everybody else to speak. Whether you have signed up or not you will have an opportunity to speak so don't worry about that. I am going to allow three minutes for each person to speak. That's actually a lot of time. I will call on each person to speak once and no more than once. So you each get three minutes, one time to speak. When you do speak please start out by stating your name and if you don't mind the county you are speaking from or the community you are speaking from or whatever is the -- or the organization you are speaking for, whatever you think is relevant there is very helpful to us.

Before we talk about -- before I hear your testimony I want to talk about the guidelines that bind the legislature for redistricting. The first and foremost of these is the principle we call one person, one vote, which is the real engine behind redistricting. And the principle there is that everybody's vote should be equal. And you can see that if we had one district over here that had ten people in it and one district over here that had a thousand people in it then the voters in this district, their votes would count more than the voters in the district with a thousand.

So what happens is when we get the census data we take that and we put it into the existing House and Senate districts and we see what their population is now. And that tells us which districts are overpopulated and which districts are underpopulated. And by over and underpopulated what I mean is that we first calculate the ideal population which is simply the population for the state divided by 35 in the case of the Senate or divided by 105 in the case of the House. Whatever that number is every Senate or every House district should have when we finish redistricting that population. They should all be equal, that way everybody's vote counts the same.

Now, when the legislature does congressional redistricting it's required by the Constitution to have almost precisely equal congressional districts. It has a little bit more leeway when it does legislative redistricting. Ten years ago any redistricting lawyer would have said the legislation, you can have as much as ten percent total deviation in your legislative plan and it will be acceptable. In other words, you could have some districts that are overpopulated by as much as five percent above the ideal population, and some districts that are underpopulated as much as five percent below the ideal population for a total range of ten percent.

Since ten years ago there has been some change in the case law. And as a result of that the legislature has said that this time around it will only allow itself two percent total deviation. So in this plan the legislature can deviate from the ideal population by overpopulating some districts by as much as one percent or underpopulating some districts by as much as one percent for a total deviation range of two percent. So that's one person, one vote.

The second really important principle is that any plan has to be non-discriminatory. A redistricting plan has to comply with the Constitution and with federal and state laws and particularly with the 14th and 15th Amendments of the Constitution, federal Constitution I am referring to, and Sanctions 2 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And the gist of those provisions is that no redistricting plan can have the purpose or the effect of discriminating against racial or language minorities. And in particular Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act contains strong protection for the voting rights of minorities.

Any plan that is passed by the legislature will have to be reviewed and approved in Washington before it can be implemented here in Alabama. That can happen one of two ways. First, the state of Alabama can go to the trial court in Washington, the District Court for the District of Columbia, and say we would like a declaratory judgment that our districting plan is not retrogressive or discriminatory. Or we can make an administrative filing to the Attorney General of the United States and, say, here is our redistricting plan. Please review it and let us know if it's retrogressive or discriminatory. That's called a preclearance submission.

Now, with the congressional and with the State Board of Education plans which have already been acted upon by the legislature, the Attorney General of Alabama who is responsible for getting preclearance decided to both file lawsuits in the District Court of the District of Columbia and to make an administrative submission. So that's a decision made by the Attorney General of Alabama. And I don't know whether or not the same process will be followed when this plan is submitted.

But the point is that the retrogressive -- that the redistricting plan has to comply with federal and state law. It has to be approved by the federal government. And they have to determine that it does not leave racial and language minorities in a worse position than they were under the existing plan. Or that if, for example, we can't draw as many minority/majority districts this time around there has to be a very good unavoidable reason for it, such as a change in demographics within area.

There are also some other guidelines which the legislature has adopted, and I will tell you what those are night now. These guidelines are available on the web site for the reapportionment committee. If you want to see them just Google Alabama Reapportionment Committee and the first hit that you get will be the Joint Permanent Legislative Reapportionment Committee. You could also Google that but it's a lot easier just to say Alabama Reapportionment Committee. And on that site you will have the guidelines, you will have the make-up of the committee. There will be a chart that tells you which districts needed to be or are overpopulated and which districts are underpopulated. There is information for submitting, redistricting plans if you are wanting to submit one to the reapportionment committee. And by the way, all of the plans as they are submitted to the reapportionment committee will be posted on the reapportionment committee's web site.

When plans are introduced as bills to the legislature they will be posted on the reapportionment committee's web site and/or Alison, the legislature web site. In both cases you can review them and make comments upon them.

And in addition, if you want to try your hand at drawing a plan you are welcome to do that. The reapportionment committee makes its work stations and its personnel available on Friday for people who want to use it, private individuals I mean. So by all means, if you are interested in that call Bonnie Shanholtzer. And, again, just Google Alabama Reapportionment Committee and you will see the woman who directs that office, her name is Bonnie Shanholtzer, and set up an appointment. I will say if you decide you want to draw a plan you can't draw a plan for just one part of the state, because all of the districts have to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle you have to draw a plan for the state as a whole.

Getting back to the guidelines, another provision, a guideline that the legislature has adopted is that all districts will be single member districts, which means that only one person is elected from each district. And also no district will be drawn in a manner that subordinates race neutral districting criteria to considerations such as stereotype voters on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. All legislative districts will be composed of continuous and reasonably combated geography. Serenity resides for the people of Alabama and all districts will be drawn to reflect the democratic will of the people concerning how their government should be restructured.

The House and Senate districts will be drawn on the basis of total population as opposed to voting age population. The number of Senate districts is set by a statute at 35 and under the Alabama Constitution may not exceed 35. The number of Senate districts shall be not less than one-third -- one-fourth and not more than one-third of the number of House districts. The number of House districts is set by statute at 105. And under the Alabama Constitution may not exceed 106. And the number of House districts shall be none less than 67. Each House and Senate district shall be composed of as few counties as is practicable. Every part of every district shall be contiguous with every other part of the district. That is, every part of a district has to be connected to every other part of a district. Contiguity across water barriers is allowed but point or point or long lasso contiguity is not. Every district must be compact or as compact as possible.

A contest between incumbent members of the legislature will be avoided whenever possible. The integrity of communities of interest shall be respected for purposes of these guidelines. A community of interest is defined as an area with recognized similarities of interest including, but not limited to, racial, ethnic, geographic, governmental, regional, social, cultural, partisan or historic interest, county, municipal or voting precinct boundaries or commonality of communications.

Public comment will be received by the reapportionment committee regarding the existence and importance of various communities of interest. The reapportionment committee will attempt to accommodate communities of interest identified by people in a specific location. It is inevitable, however, that some interests will be advanced more than others by the choice of a particular district configuration. The discernment, weighing and balancing of the varied factors that contribute to communities of interest is an intensely political process thus carried out by the elected representatives of the people.

Local communities and political leaders and organizations and the entire citizenry will be consulted about new district lines. And, of course, that brings us to the purpose for the hearing tonight. So I will start calling on our speakers.

MR. DIAL: We have a member of the legislature, George Bandy, joining us today from House District 83. Thank you, George.

MR. WALKER: The first person I would call upon is a member of the reapportionment committee, Senator Vivian Figures. First, let me ask -- I need to know for Section 5 submission purposes, are there any members of the media here? If there are would you please identify yourself to the court reporter.

MR. EDDINS: I am Don Eddins with the Auburn Villager. I also practice law and I am also a lobbyist. I don't know what --

MR. WALKER: Thank you, sir. Thank you all for covering this. We appreciate you coming. Senator Figures.

MS. FIGURES: Good evening, everybody. I am Vivian Davis Figures. I represent Senate District 33 in Mobile. And it's an honor for me to serve on the permanent reapportionment committee with my colleagues here, Senator Dial and Representative McClendon. And I just want to thank you all for coming out tonight to this public hearing because it's very important that we hear your thoughts and opinions and recommendations as we work to redraw the lines according to the 2010 census.

It is my hope that we will be able to come back and share the plans that are offered before the legislature votes on them. But as we were explaining this to the citizens at the last public hearing, anything can happen in the legislature as colleagues can attest to with what happened when we did the congressional plans. And which in the Senate we started naming the three minute plan because there was a plan that actually was substituted for the plan that was actually -- that actually got the majority vote from the reapportionment committee. So anything can change, but I am hoping that what is offered to the legislature by or recommended by the reapportionment committee will at least be able to come back out. A lot of the comments that we heard from people around the state is that they would like to see the plans that we intend to vote on before we vote on them so that they can then give their opinions on that. And that's my desire as well.

So, again, I thank you for coming out. This is very important because as you know these districts will last us for the next ten years. So thank you very much and I am always glad to be in Auburn.

MR. WALKER: Thank you, Senator. Representative Pebblin Warren, would you like to speak?

MS. WARREN: Good evening, everyone. I am Representative Pebblin Warren from District 82. I am here tonight to put in my plea for District 82. And prior to the last census District 82 consisted of all of Bullock County, all of Macon County, and a portion of Lee County. The last census divided Bullock County up. Bullock County is too small to be divided up. Bullock County and Macon County mirrors each other. To be honest with you, Macon is the poorest county in the state. Bullock County is the third poorest county.

So truly there are needs -- there are so many things that are in common with these two counties that it's really unfair to the citizens. Because so often I get people calling me from all parts of Bullock County, we want you here, we need you here. And I have to respect the other legislator and say I can't come because that's not a part of my district. And if you know anything about Bullock County there is a lot of land and very few people in parts of that district. So what we're asking for and it's my plea is that we can restore District 82 to encompass all of Bullock -- and I know I heard the figure 2500 are missing. I will guarantee you Bullock County can give me 2500 people and we can make this district whole with that. So again, that's my plea is that it's of dire need that we reunite Bullock County into one district and make that District 82. Thank you.

MR. WALKER: Thank you, Representative Warren. Our next speaker is Representative George Bandy. Would you like to speak, sir?

MR. BANDY: Good evening, everyone. I represent District 83, which is contiguous with the district that Ms. Warren is referring to. And before the last census, the census before last I had Auburn, Opelika, parts of Lee County. And the last census before the one that we are dealing with now it was changed and the district line was brought up from out of Macon County to all the way up into Auburn. And I can agree with Ms. Warren's position that she can go back to Macon and Bullock. However, she may need a small portion -- which before the original lines were Notasulga and portions of Loachapoka and back to Macon and Bullock County. So I agree with that. However, I agree with Senator Figures concerning the maps that we're looking at now. These ones here are the ones that we ran under the last time. And there will be totally different maps. And they could look a lot different than the way they are now. It's my understanding that this county, Lee County has a significant amount of increase. And so I am sure that that would make a lot of these district lines over here change significantly. But I just wanted to say that I agree with my colleague on that issue.

JUDGE ENGLISH: Ms. Warren, I would just point out that Lee County prior to the '90 census, the '94 redistricting plan had one Senate and two House members. The '94 plan gave us three Senators and five House members. Today we have three and six. Representative Warren, I am going to mirror yours. But the folks in our county like to have one area that they understand as well. It's harder when you are split. So anything you can do to accommodate, try to make clearer for the citizens of Lee County, some of the district lines follow some fairly hard to understand lines. Other follow things like the interstate, which helps people understand a little better. The more that you can do to follow county lines -- I know one of the criteria that Mr. Walker mentioned was that the fewest number of counties possible.

JUDGE ENGLISH: I understand another criteria to say each county shall have no more than the minimum number required. Anything that you can do to help us minimize the confusion for the people in Lee County would be greatly appreciated.

MR. HAM: Robert Ham from District 4, Lee County Commission. And I agree with Judge English. I would like to see us not have Lee County so divided. And if we are going to be divided, at least make those lines make a little more sense. We do have enough population to have one senator. So that would kind of make sense if you look at that. I am sure that's not something at this time we can do. But we do have 140,000 here. Thank you.

MS. DELLINGER: I echo what Senator Figures said. My comment on this is the municipalities and how those lines are drawn. And we do have several Representatives. The most of them or all of them serve us well. But if you are dealing with just one person in each area it makes it a lot easier to get things done in the area.

MR. WALKER: Thank you, ma'am. Is there any other elected official who would like to speak?

MR. LAWRENCE: I'm Johnny Lawrence. I am the County Commissioner of District 2. I serve with Robert and the Judge. I would like to mirror what they are saying as well. When I was growing up here, you had two representatives and one senator. And we got a lot of things accomplished. The group that we have now it's a total of nine. We work very well together. We get a lot of things done for Lee County. But it makes it difficult to make things happen. And I would just like to mirror that we would like to have less numbers of Representatives and Senators if possible simply so that we have a little more, some of the words you used were commonality and unity among other things. I think that's what we are looking for in Lee County.

MR. WALKER: Thank you, Commissioner. Representative Bridges, would you like to speak, sir?

MR. BRIDGES: You get this many people you want to say, vote for me. I just wanted to briefly say, give my thanks to this committee for the hard work that you have done and for your dedication to fairness in this process. And I want to thank you each and every one of you for being here tonight. You see, this is part of the American dream that you get to help make the process work. You have input and things can be changed. A lot of people don't believe that we can change things but we can. And you can. Your input is so meaningful tonight and I represent District 38 in the House of Representatives. And it's an honor to be here with my colleagues and I thank you for coming tonight.

MR. WALKER: Thank you, sir. Is there any other elected official who would like to speak? I see no hands. Let me see a show of hands of everybody else who wants to speak, please, just so I have some idea. Okay. Instead of reading the list of everyone who signed up, I am going to start on this side and I will call everybody over here and then I will call everybody over here. So who over here wants to go first?

MS. SPEAR: My name is T. Spear. And I, technically I represent people from Opelika and Auburn. I am with the Concerned Americans of Lee County, Alabama. I did have the honor of working with Frank Gillman and Kim West on her campaign for Alabama Senate District Number 28. And one of the things that we found was where we appreciate the difficulty of what these people have to do, allocating the equitable numbers of individuals in each district. And I think they have answered. Is there any way they can return some level of sanity to the drawing of these districts? When you have a house on one side of the street in one district and then you cut out a little portion and then two houses down it's in that district and you skip houses, that doesn't make it very rational and very sane. And like a lot of these individuals here, we need to return some level of sanity to the drawing of these and quit with gerrymandering, cut that out.

MS. PITTS: I am Barbara Pitts and I am from Auburn. I am a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. I am in social mass and community and I am representing them as well as Alabama New South Coalition. I -- y'all messed me up. I got two pages. And I know I can't do it in three minutes. But I got some questions, I guess. I had a question and I had a comment.

Senator Figures, you did mention something that I did have on my list about an opportunity for people to have some input after you all do what y'all do. The documents you have up there is what is already in existence. I don't see what value that is for us to have input because if the plans are going to be put out there we need to have something to react to. And so I hope that citizens will be able to have an opportunity to have input after you get that plan together that you want so that we can, you know, look at it as well. But it would be for nothing for me to come up here and -- and I can't do that because I don't really know what to do right now.

Now my understanding is that 25 percent of the population is black in our state. And I care that 25 percent, that minorities be represented at that level when you draw the lines so that we can have some influence and impact on who is elected and who represents us. Representation is important. However the lines are coming down, all of that stuff is important. But representation is very, very important. So we know -- we want you to make sure that do not pack, vote and put us all in one big hunk where we can't have any influence anywhere else. We need to make sure that the districts are not diluted or have us dispersed all over the place where we can't have any kind of influence whatsoever. We would like for you to please consider that.

And I would like to have one question. I want to know with the input that is given here at these hearings, will it be -- you say you are going all the way up the line. You said something about the trial courts and you said something about the Attorney General. Will this information, some of this information that we are seeing at these hearings go there too or will it stop here?

MR. WALKER: This information will -- the transcripts are being made from every hearing. And those will be made, first, available to the legislature. At the same time they will be posted on the web site so you can see what was said in this hearing and other hearings. They will also I expect be included in the Section 5 submission package that goes to the Attorney General of the United States or would be included as evidence in any trial that was held before the District Court of the District of Columbia. So, yes, ma'am, they would be.

MR. WALKER: Ma'am, you had some talking points. Would you like to have those put into evidence as exhibits or not?

MR. WALKER: Okay. If you want to have them introduced as exhibits I will put them in.

MR. WALKER: These will be Exhibit 3 to the transcript of this hearing. All right. Who over here on the right side wants to speak?

MS. ABRAM: Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Joanna Abram. And I too am here on behalf of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated Social Action Committee. I am a resident of Lee County. I live in Auburn, Alabama. I would like to know, because we are having a lot of conversation at this particular point in time, when are we expected to hear something back from you? When can we follow-up? When are we expecting to hear something in reference to keeping us informed? But not only being informed, but also including us and giving us an opportunity to speak. I know it's kind of difficult to explain in reference to timelines and deadlines or projected dates. I understand that. But when we leave here today we would like to know when can we follow-up? When can we expect to see something on the web site? When can we see basically what we're talking about now, when can we see that on the web site itself?

MR. WALKER: That's a good question. The last hearing is tomorrow. We have a hearing in Selma at noon and then a hearing in Montgomery in the capital auditorium at three and that will close the 21 hearings that are being conducted around the state. All of those transcripts will be prepared and put into a package and also summarized for the convenience of the reapportionment committee and the legislature. And the first day of the legislative session is February 7th 2012, I believe. And my understanding is that the legislature intends to look at redistricting at its legislative session this year. It's not actually incumbent upon them to complete redistricting in this legislative session. And you know that once a legislative session gets going nobody knows where it's going to go. So the legislative elections are in 2014. And all I can tell you right now is that my job is to get these to the legislature, say, by the end of the month. And I am sure that when they start taking this up in the next legislative session it will be covered by the press and there will be publicity for that. Sorry I can't be more specific for you. Anyone else on this side? Yes, sir, with your hand up in the back.

MR. YOUNG: My name is Matt Young. I am a resident of Lee County. I represent myself. In my neighborhood there were so many signs at the last election I wasn't really sure who I was going to check my name next to when I went to my polling place because at my polling place I think there were three different Representatives you could vote for at the high school that I go vote at, and I think it was only one senator but it may have been two. I am still not quite sure. I can walk down my street 150 yards and it's somebody else's district. I drive up two miles and it's somebody else's district. And I am tired of it. And Lee County is big enough and Lee County has enough class to be its own and it should be. Thank you.

MR. WARD: My name is Keith Ward. I am from Auburn, Lee County. I think that if we went back to a 1990 type of process to start we might be well off. I think we ought to be very sure that Lee County is taken care of. I would much rather have my senator who was raised in Lee County, who has returned to Lee County and I know I can reach him if I need him. And so that's really what we are talking about.

I think we ought to mention the minority districts we need and that we ought to be sure that we maintain the minority districts that we currently have. But we should be careful that we don't simply compact all of the minority population into that number of districts. They ought to be spread out so that they have a fighting chance to be elected, but that they also have a competitive kind of an opportunity to be elected. And so if we really want to change the system we can't use the one that we have here where it was simply turned over to the Indians -- I'm sorry, Senator -- to decide for everybody what the district was going to look like, whether it's a senatorial district or a house district. And that really messes things up. And so we need a system where we get a reasonable population distribution and that we try to follow the idea of county by county by county all across the state, not just in Lee County. But we have real live districts that can be compacted within counties. And if that could be the beginning point that would be extremely important to the overall process.

MS. FIGURES: I have a question, Mr. Ward, for clarity. Who are the Indians? Or who are you referring to?

MR. WARD: Senator, when I worked with you in Mobile on financing schools down there you were one of the Indians.

MS. FIGURES: Well, I do have Cherokee Indian in me. But I was trying to find out what you mean by --

MS. FIGURES: Well, I was just trying to get your clarification on who the Indians were.

MR. WARD: I am talking about when we turned it over to the senators to work it out and we turned it over to the House members to work it out. And we lost any concept of keeping contiguous -- of -- we lost any concept of political lines being important. Suddenly we were more interested in population and getting people the kind of district that they wanted. We changed Lee County substantially to protect one senator.

MS. FIGURES: Well, I just wanted to know who you were referring to when you said the Indians.

MR. NOLEN: My name is Jeff Nolen. I am from Roanoke, Alabama, Randolph County. I am very proud to have Senator Dial as our senator. I'd like to thank each of you for the efforts that you've made in making this process organized and transparent. I am not a public speaker. I had to make my notes. And I will kind of read from it, if I don't I will lose track.

I am at best a novice at this process and I appreciate all of the efforts. I agree there is a lot of confusion for the multiple districts at each of the different levels in the offices of our state and local government. In our recent county redistricting we saw two proposed plans using a consultant, East Alabama Regional Planning. East Alabama Regional Planning in both the ADC and the Republican -- by the way, I should mention, I am also the vice chair of our local Republican party up there.

We agree, the ADC and the Republican Party agree that maybe -- I think we agree a lot more than people realize. But I really appreciate now Senator Dial put one man, one vote because a lot of that was being missed in our own redistricting. And the other issue was we agreed on the plan that was going to make the one man, one vote and also preserve the integrity of the 5th Commission District that maintained the majority and minority district. So with that they also went out and took that first plan and they went out and broke geographical blocks that were logical to break.

So which one do you think the Commissioners voted on? The other plan. They actually voted to adopt the other plan and it has caused some problems. One of the questions that I have is, this puts us into an issue with the 2012 elections. Again, like the lady asked there -- I already had this -- what is the time frame to be able for the next election that this is going -- is this going to be affecting any of the offices in 2012 so it would be 2014 then?

MR. NOLEN: Okay. Thank you. And then looking at that because I know on our local level we had certain time frames that we had to get for the Justice Department and for it to be able to go into effect.

MR. WALKER: A submission made, if you take the administrative route and submitted a preclearance submission to the Attorney General of the United States, the Attorney General's office has 60 days from the day after the arrival of the preclearance package to make a preclearance determination. The Attorney General can unilaterally take a 30-day extension and also can go back and start the 60 day period, if it's determined that the package was not complete when it was sent, but typically these determinations occur within 60 days.

MR. NOLEN: And where that affected us locally and, you know, I guess being time sensitive about this, we now have people that had they went with the proposal number two that wanted to run, say, for commission district in that area, now they are kind of in flux as far as which district. So there are people who, not only participating with the one man, one vote and preserving the minority in our county, which proposal number one did decrease that minority participation. So with that what -- with the time frames and everything what can we do?

MR. WALKER: I think what happened -- and I am just guessing on this -- is that we get the census data in February and they had to get something in place fairly quickly. As we have discussed, there is a lot more lead time for getting these legislative districts in place for before the 2014 election.

MR. NOLEN: Randolph County we are concerned about preserving those geographical blocks logically and minority participation.

MR. WALKER: Let's go over to the left side here. Who would like to speak first from this side? Yes, sir.

MR. DILLMAN: My name is Frank Dillman and I live in District 82, which is a minority district. And as far as -- I would like to dovetail on what Keith Ward was speaking about as far as a full diversity. We have 82, the northeast corner looks like the Finger Lakes of New York. And there is a voting district in there that will go deep into Auburn as far as voting is concerned. So there is a lot of confusion and I echo what the previous speakers are speaking of. I am not sure, there was one district that was mentioned earlier that Mike Hubbard's District 79, you know, he has to give up a bunch of people. And it really would be nice to see some of that for the full diversity to come down and include that Finger Lakes area into District 82. So I do ask you for your appreciation {sic}. Thank you very much.

MS. GARRETT: I am Marilyn Garrett and I live in Opelika. And I would like to reiterate what most of the other speakers have done, with nine legislators and a majority of them not even living in Lee County it makes it tough on the voters. The voters don't know who their representative is.

And also something that no one has mentioned is that when you have all of these multiple legislative districts, I think probate Judge English can verify that you are going to have huge numbers of ballots in all of these voting polling places. And I would like to tell you my experience at the last election. I was given the wrong ballot. And I said, I have the wrong ballot. And they said, no, you don't. Yes, I do. And so they sent me to the head clerk. And the head clerk says, yes, you have the right ballot. And I said, no, I don't. I knew I wasn't in Mr. Bandy's district. I was in Mr. Hubbard's district. So I said -- I insisted that they call Bill English. And I think they called the registrar instead and they verified that, yes, I had the wrong ballot. So it made me wonder how many other people on my street got the wrong ballot, how many other people in other voting districts got the wrong ballot.

MR. PENASKOVIC: My name is Richard Penaskovic. I am from Auburn. I have three one-minute questions. One is will the new immigration laws of Alabama open up this state for more careful scrutiny by the federal government than is normally the case? Particularly vis-a-vis the question of discrimination, Mr. Walker?

MR. WALKER: I think that would probably be more a matter of scrutiny under Section 2, that is a vote dilution claim, than under Section 5. But I am just speculating. I can't really answer.

MR. PENASKOVIC: My second question is easier. Does the reapportionment committee consist of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans?

MR. McCLENDON: The House and Speaker and the Lieutenant Governor appoints members to that committee based on whomever they like and there is no stipulation on who.

MS. FIGURES: In the Senate there are only two Democrats representing and then in the House there are five.

MR. McCLENDON: I don't know how the Senate does it, but in the House Speaker Hubbard makes the appointments. And of the 11 House members, the percentage in each party is proportional to the number that he appoints it. So the House members he went -- he really tried hard to make the 11 members he appointed to be a reflection of the composition of the House. Does that make sense?

MR. PENASKOVIC: Okay. My final question, I presume that the legislators will see that the final plan will be one most favorable to the Republican Party since they have a majority of the votes in the Senate and the House. Do you think that's the case, Mr. Walker?

MR. WALKER: Well, I can't say what they are going to do. I can say that the Supreme Court has addressed the issue of politics in drawing districts and has tried to come up with a standard after the last round and found that the standard -- or the round before that -- found that the standard it had articulated was simply not working in the district courts. It was a very vague standard. And the latest ruling of the Supreme Court on what we might call political gerrymandering is that there is not a constitutional limit or prescription -- there is not -- the Constitution does not address this issue. And therefore, they don't have anything to anchor an opinion to. And the end result is although it's a plurality decision, it's not a majority decision, which is a little bit more impressionable in terms of its authority, I think most people would tell you that right now the Supreme Court has left the door open to political gerrymandering over at least a certain range the way districts are drawn.

Now, there is a lot of speculation among some academics that someone will find a way to bring a Freedom of Association Clause under the First Amendment that the Supreme Court will find justiciable and address political gerrymandering through that door, but that hasn't happened yet. That may be one of the exciting developments -- if you are a lawyer -- in voting rights law that occurs after this current round of redistricting.

MR. WALKER: All right. These will be Exhibit 4 to the record. Anyone else who would like to speak? Yes, sir. Right here.

MR. TURNER: My name is Robert L. Turner I represent the Bullock County Voters League in Union Springs, Alabama. And we come tonight because we would like for Bullock County to be whole again. We have been divided as a county since the 2000 census. Bullock County has 10,194 people that lives there. We need to be a part of a whole legislative district. And that's our request to be a part, whether we are in District 82 or District 84, we want to be whole again.

The second part, Mr. Walker, you mentioned that Attorney General Strange went straight to the courts on the school boards and the congressional districts. What do you think the likelihood is of these going straight to the court with these legislative districts?

MR. WALKER: Well, he went both to the courts and to the United States Attorney General's office. He pursued both tasks on a parallel track. And he hasn't told me, nor am I privy to what his plans are on that. It makes sense that he will do the same thing with legislative redistricting, but I am just guessing.

MR. TURNER: And the comments made this evening by two different speakers, one concerning watering down -- and I admire Dr. Ward's comments -- watering down a majority/minority district. And we had a speaker mention Speaker Hubbard's district about putting persons in District 82. That would water down a majority/minority district if that happens.

MR. WHATLEY: I am Charles Whatley. And Butch Brock, would you stand up, please? Y'all look at his head. He does not have much hair. And Butch is our new elections officer for Lee County. And he's going to be an outstanding person, but if y'all don't give Butch some relief he will not have nearly this much hair next time. I talked to the probate judge. I believe, under certain circumstances if everybody runs and everybody has opposition we have the potential in Lee County of 127 different ballots. You know, if you can help us out with that, please.

Now, I put down when I came that I represented myself. But actually I represent the Beauregard Country Kitchen Coffee Drinking Society. Now, we are unanimous that we would like to have beat seven unified. By the way Representative Bandy is my representative. And Billy Beasley is my senator.

And my wife and I would like to be available to vote for our son. I will just throw that out for what it's worth. Or maybe we want to vote against him. Who knows, Gerald. It shows how old I am. Gerald and I worked on this same issue in 1980. And it's still hanging around. I used to represent Lee, Russell, and Barber County. And Barber County was the one that was chopped up at that time. And I thought it was terribly unfair for my county to be chopped up when I represented them. I think we had five House members and two senators down there. Now we are chopped up. And, you know, just give us some relief if you can, please. And I thank you for coming. And thank all y'all people for turning out too tonight.

MS. WRIGHT: My name is Ruth Wright. I live in Auburn and everything I came to say has already been well said by others ahead of me. I am pleased to see the amount of agreement in what we need. I only want to add one other issue.

I believe -- I am not going to repeat all that they said about more coherent districts. What I would like to emphasize to you is that with the constitution that we have now the legislative delegation does a lot about local government. They have ridiculous -- they have power that should go to the -- they have the power to make decisions, local decisions that they don't know anything about. And they have the power to decide, to make laws that should be made -- that are made in other states by legislators. I think that -- I can remember back to the better maps that you all have discussed. And I remember that I have been distressed for at least ten years about the direction that things were going in. I urge you -- I am not sure -- I realize the complexity of using redistricting as a way of settling Home Rule problems.

And I would like to say -- let me say one more thing and then I will get to what I want to say. When these Home Rule Bills, these rope-it bills, go to the legislature they have to face really complicated arrangements that have been worked out because the state government couldn't function with the constitution we had. They had to make up ways to avoid the provisions, and when a local bill goes to the legislature it faces dangers from that and even though there are things like legislative courtesy that can be held hostage by individual agendas. So that things are very uncertain for us, for the locality when they go to the legislature. I don't know what you can do. I realize what your primary duties are, but I hope that you will try to think very hard about some way that you can help reduce the difficulties that we have from the lack of home rules. I hope in another ten years we'll have a constitution with a good legislative article that will deal with these problems. But until then I cannot see any way to improve things except by improving the structure of the delegations. And I hope you will find a way to do that.

MR. WALKER: Thank you, Ms. White. Who else over here would like to speak? Please rise your hand. Yes, sir.

MR. SMITH: I am Paul Smith. I live in Auburn. And the two words that always come to me when I hear redistricting is political gerrymandering. And that's about all -- it seems to be synonymous but they seem to be the same. It seems prudent to me that since we do this every ten years that we ought to look at some different way to approach it in an equal, fair standpoint. You know, without having a different group in Montgomery next time we will do it again. So why not elect or establish some kind of a redistricting commission that is bipartisan that has, you know, representation from both sides and other people too, and have people on that commission who know how to do statistical valuations of geographical areas with the populations there. Therefore we are through with gerrymandering when we talk about redistricting.

MR. WALKER: Thank you. I will tell you that ten years ago when the Democrats were in charge of the legislature the Republicans made that proposal and it was turned down for some reason. More recently with the Republicans in charge the Democrats made that proposal and it was turned down again. Both parties knew that in order to activate such a proposal we would have to change the Alabama constitution, which requires it be done by the legislature.

MR. SMITH: Well, it seems to me that if that's the case and we all recognize that it is, then why don't we do something reasonable about it? That we, as a people, come to a situation where we say, let's be fair about this. Next time, ten years later, then we have the problem solved and don't have to go through the same thing again. So it seems reasonable whether or not you are a Democrat or Republican to do something in a reasonable fashion so we won't have to revisit it.

MS. FIGURES: You have to first elect those people to the legislature that have that same mind-set.

MR. DIAL: Let me make one statement. And we normally don't talk. But we were in Tuscaloosa last week and we heard the same argument. And I wanted you to know that the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and Auburn in Lee County are no different. Tuscaloosa County has three senators and seven House members. So I heard the same argument from them that I have from you. So I want you to know that the legislature in the past did not discriminate against Auburn or Alabama. Both of you have three senators and seven House members. I thought it was unique and odd. And I did not realize that until we were having this same public hearing. They have three senators and seven House members in Tuscaloosa County. So they don't have any more advantage than Auburn. So I just wanted you to know that nobody hasn't picked on one and given them one senator and two House members and give y'all three. It's the same. I thought that was just a unique thing.

MR. SMITH: I am Theo Smith from Bullock County, Union Springs, Alabama. And I made a survey of our district, Representative Warren's district portions thereof, and I would like to voice the sentiments of those that we have spoken with and we voice the same sentiments that Representative Warren has already -- I would just like to ditto what she has said. We would like to have Bullock County made whole, and whether it's with 82 or 84. For so long we have been with Macon County and that's almost the perfect marriage. So we would like to ditto what Representative Warren said.

MR. WALKER: Thank you, Mr. Smith. Anyone else over on this side who would like to speak? Anyone else in the room who would like to speak? Okay. This is your chance to tell the legislature how you want the new boundaries drawn. Last chance. Anyone else who would like to speak? (No response.)

I hereby certify that the above and foregoing hearing was taken down by me in stenotype, and the questions and answers thereto were reduced to computer print under my supervision, and that the foregoing represents a true and correct transcript of the hearing given by said witness upon said hearing. I further certify that I am neither of counsel nor of kin to the parties to the action, nor am I in anywise interested in the result of said cause.

/s/Karen Kelley
Karen Kelley,
CCR #317 CCR #317, Expires 9/30/12
Commissioner for the State of Alabama at Large
My Commission Expires: 8/27/12