May 17-20, 2021
This was a busy week with subcommittee meetings leading up to next week's full Commission meeting scheduled for Monday, May 24. The report will summarize each subcommittee meeting individually.
Citizen Engagement, Monday, May 17
The meeting focused on three topics - public hearings; advertising; receipt of maps from the public.
Public hearings - After considerable discussion, the Subcommittee reached a consensus that there should be a total of eight public hearings - four prior to the drafting of maps and four after. It was noted that the four after the release of the maps would be in a condensed time frame. It was also noted that hearings should require a balance of citizens and legislators as well as partisan makeup (Democrats/Republicans). A minimum of four Commissioners should attend each public hearing either in person or virtually. The Subcommittee settled on using the regions set out by the Cooper Center as a model for potential locations for hearings. The purpose of the hearings will be primarily to receive public comment not report on the activities of the Commission. There was not a final consensus on whether the hearings should be held in person or virtually. As background, DLS staff noted that meetings were costing on average $3000 per meeting. This did not take into account travel expenses. Staff was requested to come by with greater detail and an estimate for budget purposes. Final budget estimates for the Budget and Finance Committee were deferred awaiting additional staff input.
Advertising - The Subcommittee discussed a number of advertising and other outreach issues. Staff reported that a total of $160,000 was spent on advertising during the Commission selection process. This led to a back and forth about print versus electronic outreach. Reference was also made to utilizing outside organizations such as OneVirginia, to expand and leverage the outreach of the Commission. Staff was instructed to develop a more detailed draft plan for discussion taking into account urban/rural; ethnic; and demographic factors. There was discussion about incorporation of other languages on the Commission's website and during hearings. It was noted that Spanish was the most prevalent second language at 6.8% with others all coming in under 1%. However, this did not align with the Northern Virginia area. Staff estimate the cost at $20,000 for simultaneous translation of each language on the website. At the present time, the General Assembly does not provide such translation services for other meetings. The consensus was to place more attention on the allocation of resources to advertising over translation. Again, DLS will be developing a more detailed advertising and translation plan for budget purposes.
Receipt of Maps - The Subcommittee agreed that the Commission should be open to receiving citizen maps for consideration and that they should be taken seriously. It was suggested that this be done in conjunction with public hearings so they could be discussed. Note was made that these should only be submitted after census data has been received making the whole process very compressed.
Budget and Finance, Wednesday, May 19
The agenda included the following items:
* Consultants
* Advertising
* Accessibility
* Website Maintenance
* Public Outreach
* Administrative
The initial question regarding consultants revolved around what expertise existed in house as opposed to what was needed from outside. There was not a consensus as to whether the Commission should have partisan counsel or one counsel representing both sides. There was a division between the citizen members and the legislative members as to what was both realistic and achievable. There was also discussion about map drawing as opposed to passing maps. It was noted that the Commission would be recommending and not passing maps. There was a consensus that there would likely be little need for litigation counsel unlike some other Commissions. It was noted that the Attorney General had communicated that his office did not feel it was appropriate to take a position or appear to be taking sides thus arguing for the need for outside counsel. DLS was instructed to reach out to all Caucuses to determine the amount spent on outside counsel in the most recent redistricting process. Given the results of the initial inquiry, DLS would undertake to draft two RFPs - one for partisan counsel and one for a unitary counsel. This initial draft of this document would be delivered at the May 25 meeting of the Subcommittee. There was also discussion and no final answer as to whether the Commission would be drawing the maps themselves or relying on an outside consultant. This will be determined at a later date.
Discussion of the other items on the agenda were deferred to the next meeting.
Citizen Engagement, Thursday, May 20
The major topics included development of the budget and public input guidelines. Prior to specific discussion, the information provided by OneVirginia2021 (from our Redistricting Deep Dive conference) regarding public participation was noted and praised as being very helpful.
Budget Meetings- DLS presented a projected costs of $13,500 for each of the eight public meetings. (See earlier summary). Attendance was estimated at between $200 and $300 at each meeting. The figure includes per diem and expense, facility rental, and security. Live streaming of the meetings would be absorbed by DLS. There was discussion about alternative sites to reduce facility rental. The estimate for the 8 projected meetings was set at $108,000.
Budget Social Media Advertising - DLS prepared an estimate for social media advertising utilizing Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This included actual costs along with either a co-ordinator or a contractor to run the program. The program would run from June to November. The estimate for each platform was $5,100 making the total for all three to be $15,300. The consultant would likely cost $4,000 per month or $24,000. Each ad campaign for each public meeting would expected to cost $1,650 for a total of $49,000. There was also discussion of the cost of targeted print advertising in targeted communities. Based on the experience of the recruitment for the Commission, this was estimated to be approximately $7,000 per week (targeted to foreign language newspapers in NoVA).
Co-ordination and Available resources - DLS will be putting out a request for Information (RFI) to determine resources available from outside organizationsThis would be followed by a more formal RFP to contractors for the six month period.
The final estimate to be sent to the Budget and Finance Subcommittee was $250,000.
Public Input Guidelines - Note was made of the online portals for the Commissions in MI, CA, and CO as examples. The Committee set forth a number of items for future consideration including in-person vs virtual presentation, sign up process, rules of engagement, personal conduct, interaction between Commissioners and speakers, and how group presentations would be handled. DLS will be developing a working paper on these topics for future discussion. There was a consensus based on precedent from other Commissions that speaking time should be expanded to 3 minutes.