In its rush to staunch the red ink, California has “cut the mic” of one of its most successful recent undertakings: the California Citizens Redistricting Commission , which redraws legislative and congressional boundaries every 10 years.
Earlier this year, the Department of Finance took it upon itself to tell legislative leaders that the commission’s work was done when it submitted its maps in December 2021, completely ignoring that the commission was in the midst of another important part of its mandate: working with the Legislature to improve the redistricting process. As a commissioner, I want to continue this body’s important work.
Opinion
The finance department is ignoring how the state government code stipulates that the commission has the authority to recommend amendments related to the commission and that the Legislature may not amend them without the concurrence of the commission.
The government code (Section 8251) further provides that amendments mat not be passed by the Legislature in a year ending in nine, zero or one. Not only do we still have work to do, we also have limited time in which to do it.
The 2020 commission is only the second iteration of this body, and it is reasonable to believe that there might still be some adjustments required. The commission has been working through an extensive list of changes that members have proposed, based on their experience and more than a week of intense discussions culminating in the commission’s “lessons learned” report ( Recollections, Recommendations, & Resources ).
Some of the easier changes have already been agreed between the commission and the Legislature and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. But a number of the tougher items are still on the list and require careful deliberation by the commission.
New items are also emerging that require the commission’s attention.
The commission is aware of the state’s budget crisis and is not seeking exorbitant amounts or to exceed its mandate. But it does have a mandate beyond mapping that needs to be recognized in budget discussions. After we completed our maps, it was our understanding that we would have funding for four meetings a year, yet, since July of 2023, we have had funding for only one meeting per year (with no funding for any preparatory work for that one meeting), impeding our ability to discuss the remaining recommendations and finalize concrete proposals to the Legislature for timely debate and adoption.
The California Citizens Redistricting Commission is unlike most other state commissions: The commissioners are the executive decision makers; decisions on matters such as hiring need to be taken by a vote of the full commission. We recently lost our only staff member, along with a significant amount of institutional memory and technical skills required for the maintenance of our website and data collections, due to budget cuts. Those same budget cuts now impede us from meeting to discuss how to move forward.
This commission has not been profligate in its spending. We saved California’s taxpayers over $4 million in legal fees by producing maps that went unchallenged. In each period, we have underspent what was budgeted, and we have canceled meetings when they weren’t needed.
But there is a threshold below which we simply cannot do the work we are here to do.
In my decades working in international electoral assistance, I have seen that the most common way of undermining independent commissions is to starve them of the funding they need to carry out their work. I hope our state’s leaders can come together to ensure that the commission has at least the minimum resources it needs to do what the citizens of the state established it to do, which includes proposing changes to state law to improve future redistricting exercises.
J. Ray Kennedy is one of the Democratic members of California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission. This piece represents his own thinking on the matters discussed and is not an official document of the commission. Kennedy has worked in the field of international electoral assistance, primarily within the United Nations System, for more than 30 years.
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