Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, September 7, 2010,
Item 24
Number 24, receive briefing and take appropriate action on the redistricting process to be used by the county in 2011.
>> members of the court, my name is deece eckstein and I just have a brief presentation, but as is my want I have organized it into a power point presentation for the benefit of the court and the general public.
I want to start by hitting the highlights what's going to happen during redistricting over the next 18 months.
as everybody knows, the united states census bureau conducts a census.
that data is being aggregated and analyzed by the census department and will be presented in final form to the president on December 31, 2010.
shortly after that they will announce the reapportionment which means the reallocation of congressional seats.
there are 435 seats in the u.s.
congress.
the reallocation of those 435 seats among the 50 states.
it is likely that Texas will gain three and possibly even four seats in that reallocation which will change, of course, the dynamics and politics of drawing new congressional maps.
it will then fall to the legislature during its regular session, which will begin in January and last until the end of may, to redraw the maps for the congressional district for the statehouse and state senate districts and also for the state board of education districts.
if the legislature fails to draw the lines for the house and senate during the legislative session, during the regular session, then that task will fall to the legislative redistricting board which is a group of five statewide elected officials whose assignment will be to draw maps for the statehouse and state senate.
if they do draw those lines and those lines will go into effect pending court challenges and review by the department of just advertise.
if they fail to draw congressional lines most likely it will be turned over to a three member panel of u.s.
district judges who will draw a map.
it is possible for the governor to call a special session to ask the lee county you are to do that -- legislature if he wishes to do, but we won't know about that until general of next year.
while all that is going on around us, the Commissioners court during the year 2011 must redraw its own districts for the four Commissioner precincts and must redraw voting precinct lines for approximately 200 voting precincts here in Travis County.
it may also redraw lines for the justice of the peace and constable precincts.
those precincts, justice of the peace and constable, are not subject to a one man one vote rule and are not sub injection to population reallocation based on census data.
they are based on work loads and efficiency for the population.
that really will be a decision you in conjunction with those elected officials as to whether or not the Commissioners court wants to engage in doing that.
in any case what the court will do is, first of all, draft and adopt a request for services asking for vendors out there who wish to provide redistricting services to the county to come forward.
our timetable for that is to have a request for services in front of you in early November for your approval to put that out on the street to get applications or proposals from people by christmas time and then to evaluate those and to come back to the court with a recommendation for a contract early in -- either in late January or early February.
in the next phase of the process, that contractor will begin aggregate a lot of information and data, census data, political data, neighborhood data, in order to begin putting together the information they need in order to draw the maps and will probably in mid-june sometimes or late-june make a presentation to the court of a draft map for the Commissioners court precincts, and again if you elect to do that for the constables and justice of the peace precincts.
at that time if the court approves going forward with that, then we'll schedule a series of -- and again, we'll work with the contractors on this, we'll schedule a series of public hearings so that people can give us input about those maps.
we will refine the maps based on that feedback with the goal, again, of the court adopting a map by the end of August.
at that time we turn it over to the justice department.
we have to make -- the Commissioners court will have to make a submission to the justice department for preclearance under the voting rights act and we want to get that to them before October 1st at the latest in order to give them time to approve those maps and frankly to give the court time to fine tune the maps if they need to.
members of the court who have been here for -- who were here for the last redistricting will recall that the court had drawn its maps last time and then the redistricting board came in in October with new -- with the new maps for the statehouse and state senate districts and this court was asked to come back and fine tune its maps in order to accommodate those districts.
one of the requirements of the election code is voting precincts should as much as possible try to match up so that the boundaries of a congressional district and a statehouse district and a state senate district and a Commissioners court district all track each other as much as possible.
so with that in mind, we're probably going to have to wait till the summer just to even have a sense of where those tentative lines are going to be and there may be some fine tuning between then and November of next year.
in December begins the filing period for the March 2012 primaries.
so we're already talking about the round of elections that's going to happen after this round of elections.
so with that in mind, what we're asking for the court today is we want to advise the court of the fact there is a working group of county employees who have come together with the object of just supervising this process a little bit on behalf of the court and also of putting together the request for services which we will present to the court in late October, early November.
and those people are myself, cyd grimes, purchasing agent, assistant purchasing agent elizabeth cory, we have daniel bradford from the county attorney's office to assist us with any legal issues that come up.
melinda avey, the gis coordinating from the assessor's office and mary farrell from the county clerk's office.
we have already met once, put together this overall time line for y'all, and would like just your blessing to go forward at this point.
I think the next steps we want to do are-stakeholder meetings, the development of the rfs and court's approval of the rfs in early November.
>> just as a reminder on the public hearings, I think last time we had a public hearing in each precinct?
was it each precinct?
yeah.
>> I believe that's correct.
>> and one here.
so that -- you know, folks in those areas will have time and access to those groups.
>> that's a good point, Commissioner, and we're obviously interested in a lot of public input on this and it will be part of the specifications for the request for services to say that the contractor will organize a series of public hearings, you know, including one in each precinct and we'll fine tune that with the members of the court.
but we're very aware of the fact that we do want a lot of public input both because it's good for government and it's good for the -- our pre-clearance status with the department of justice.
>> can you recall who was on the working group ten years ago?
>> actually I cannot, judge.
I've called several people.
I know cyd was involved, but I don't know who else was involved in it a decade ago.
>> are these roughly the offices that we had involved last time?
okay.
so what you are asking for today is approval of the -- I think approval of the overall timetable would be helpful at this point.
>> so you would -- I see here where you indicate you expect the r.f.p.
to be initiated and then implemented, but when would the court see ah rss?
in November?
>>
>> [inaudible].
>> could you come to the mic?
>> our schedule would be for you to approve it on November 9th.
we would hope to have been able to give it to members of the court at least a week before that and maybe longer if that's the court's preference.
>> okay, well, we'll get an opportunity to see the rfs, though, before it's issued.
>> yes.
absolutely.
>> when is that?
that's not on November 9th, is it?
>> our goal would be to have the court approve the rfs on November 9th and have it issued right after that.
>> when would we see the rfs?
>> before it gets approved.
>> that's my way of seeing give us two weeks.
>> our goal would be for the court to see it let's say two weeks beforehand.
>> there you go.
there you go.
>> great idea.
>> did I forget to put that on the calendar?
I guess I did.
sorry, judge.
>> that was our next step for us really is two weeks before November 9th.
>> right.
>> I mean we may not want to provide input, but we may look at it and like to add something.
>> of course.
>> fine committee, fine work.
has there been a motion to approve.
>> so moved.
>> second.
>> fine motion and second.
any discussion on the motion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you.
>> thank you very much.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, September 14, 2010, 2010 7:56 PM
