State Agencies & Govt'l Affairs-Senate
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meeting will come to order and since i'm more than six feet away i'm going to get rid of that for just a few moments but i want to thank
everybody for being here and especially thank all the members for being able to show up and thank for some of you that's going to be working with the committee for being here. I don't foresee that this will be a long drawn out
meeting now. It's just basically our organizational meeting. We do need to take care of a couple of committee items, but I do, I've talked with most all of you members. I'm looking forward to this. It is a big change for me coming out of insurance and commerce after literally most of my entire career there, but I'm excited to be a part of this committee and excited to be working with all of you all. So members, let's go right through and get to our consideration of the rules and some
of the organization. Let me just mention a couple of things that staff has wanted to make sure that we make everyone aware of. And this is just a couple of things I want to throw out for you. Obviously, the meeting time is going to be consistent, just like normal, but we'll be here at 2 p.m. in the afternoon. Health and safety requirements, I think all of us have heard those multiple times maybe in our different committees. I won't say a whole lot about it other than the fact that they do want us to, obviously the committee is going to stay where we are for the
rest of the session, and they've spread out room in here. We're actually, I think, fortunate with the old Supreme Court to have a larger room than some of them to be able to work in, and so I ask that everybody including the people would be testifying or presenting to exercise the same standards for wearing your masks as that you do everywhere else and so we've got that stated obviously if you're not close to another individual or you're drinking and whatnot you're free to remove your mask in that case a couple things they've highlighted for me is
committee members staff and members of the public shall remove and dispose of any trash he or she creates during the course of the committee meeting. So staff is trying to clean these areas, make sure that when the next group comes in here that there's not. So I hope I don't need to be stating that every single meeting we get into. Committee agendas, I want to talk about that again. Everybody has heard this, I know, but I want to make special mention of the responsibility
of the bill's primary sponsor or the member who will present the bill to let the chair know that they're ready to have a bill placed on the agenda. So as the bill is filed, assigned to our committee, the bill will be placed on the referred items list for the committee. And then the committee chair, in this case myself, will use the referred items list to create the regular agenda for each committee. And we all know that's just a little tricky to what it used to be. So basically you almost have an on deck situation that's there and then you got to reach in there and pull those
folks back over on it so make sure that if a house member is working with you you know make sure they understand or if you know they're going to be down here i think all of us helping each other to make sure that the process goes smoothly would be best uh let's see here i will be working with the staff and of course we want to thank maddie airy and as i don't know if our other staff is here. And what's your full name? Leah Headley. So staff make welcome Leah
Headley and Maddie. He'll be helping us out and appreciate them preparing for this meeting as well. And I think the last little bit of housekeeping that we have here. Chair shall ask the committee members to review the list of bills being added to the consent agenda and the chair shall state without objection the bills will be placed on the consent agenda. If any of you object to any item that might be on the consent agenda, and you know what, I think really for us, I don't know about on the House,
but we're kind of familiar. This is the way we handle a lot of stuff, just passing our bills during like special sessions and when we had tight windows. The Senate got pretty used to, you know, saying we're going to have a consent agenda and we just ran these batches. And so if a member picks out something that you don't want to see run that way, or if you've got a House member that asks you to do that, that'll be up to you if you want to have that pull down for discussion and debate. Public participation, we've got sign-in sheets for each committee meeting will be posted electronically with the agenda on the General Assembly website and physically at each committee room.
an individual's name appearing on a public comment sign-in sheet does not guarantee that the individual will have an opportunity to speak during the committee meeting and that's based upon what's happening how much time we have all of those things for the purposes of the rules a lobbyist is considered to be a member of the public and that one does birth excuse me birth I don't know how I said that. Sorry. I don't know what reason that was made, but that's what's been designated.
So anybody know why we had to designate that? Very interesting. But anyway, they're designated a member of the public, which is what I really thought they were anyway when it comes to passing legislation. Now that gets us to really the part that I'm most accustomed to in a normal situation, which is adoption of the rules. So, members, you may have already gone through those. You have the rules in front of you. Is there a member that has any question?
I do want to highlight item nine for you, which is if a bill does not appear on the published agenda, it may not be considered by the committee unless there is an affirmative vote by six members of the committee to suspend the rules and consider the bill. and I think this really relates to the joint rule issue that we've already passed, which had a little higher bar to do that. Does anybody have a question on that?
Seeing none. In addition, you know, of course, if we're going to have a roll call, if one member calls for a roll call and I see that request, then I will obviously allow for that as normal. one thing that I ask when you think about item nine is that typically the committees I know in insurance and commerce if we had a situation arise where it was warranted if we needed to suspend the rules it's a simple majority to be able to do that but only exception is that one particular item and
that's item number nine I doubt that's going to come up a lot but if it did then if we have to go back, that's where that rule is going to be different. We'll need that six to be able to do that. Any questions at all on that? Anyone at all? Seeing none, I would entertain a motion for the adoption of the rules. I have a motion from Senator English, a second from Senator Bledsoe. All in favor say aye. All opposed say no. Thank you. The ayes have it. So we have adopted the
rules. Thank you committee for that and we are now down to some presentations and we have here the bureau was arranged I think for Michelle Davenport accompanied maybe by Marty Garrity to be here and so we recognize them to come and present to us information about redistricting. obviously a lot of people are interested in the in the redistricting issue and people obviously
that are viewing this committee meeting they've got an interest in it too and so I urge all of the stakeholders if you're here in the room or if you're watching the meeting reach out to your local legislator to get a conversation going and if you have input on that I'm sure that members the committee would be happy to represent that at the table for you. That being the case, Ms. Davenport, I'd like for both you and Marty to state your name and who you represent for the record
and then have you give us a brief on the redistricting process. Happy to. My name is
Michelle Davenport
Unverified
8:41
Michelle Davenport. I'm one of the legislative drafting attorneys with the
Speaker 6
8:47
Bureau of Legislative Research. Marty Garrity
Speaker 7
8:50
with the Bureau of Legislative Research. All right,
Speaker 8
8:55
thank you very much. You're recognized. Thank you, sir. As you may know, the General Assembly has been
Speaker 10
9:02
delegated the responsibility for United States congressional redistricting. This can get a little bit confusing because the legislature is not delegated the responsibility for actually redistricting the
seats of the Arkansas Senate and House. That is left to the Board of Opposition. Put your mic
mic a little closer. Absolutely. I can take this off if that's going to make
Speaker 8
9:24
it a little bit easier. I don't know if it's picking you up all that
Speaker 10
9:29
much, so I want to make sure people can actually hear you. Absolutely. In doing so, this is based on 7-2-101, and the General Assembly is responsible for the four congressional districts. We do that using the United States Census data. As you may have heard, redistricting is one of those issues that seems to be challenged a lot.
I did a very brief look, and from 2010 to 2020, the NCSL, the National Conference of State Legislatures, identified 49 major cases challenging some part of redistricting. A lot of those cases are not regarding the congressional redistricting. They actually identify things that are happening within each state's redistricting process. The most recent challenge to Arkansas's congressional redistricting took place on the 1991 redistricting,
and that was the case of Turner v. Arkansas. And the court found that there was no violation of the Equal Protection 14th, 15th Amendment, or the equal voting rights in that congressional redistricting
Speaker 10
10:35
looking at congressional redistricting, the federal rule really breaks down to one simple concept, and that is one person, one vote. This is borne out through quite a few United States Supreme Court cases.
And while one person, one vote sounds simple on the front end, it's often hard to make happen in reality because you have to be allowed some small deviation from the precise population equality in those congressional voting districts. A state, when they're looking at these congressional deviations, they must show that any deviation is justified for a specific governmental reason that is allowed. So the big question is, is how do we get there?
And how does this committee get there in this process? Typically, the census data is available on the federal level in early January. We would then look to be seeing that census data turned over to the states in early February. Unfortunately, we are not in that position this year. At this time, we know that the census data has not been provided on the December 31st deadline that was originally provided. And at this time, we do not have an estimated time or date of when that population census data is going to be provided to the states.
That puts the states in a little bit of an awkward position because any work that's done prior to receiving that population data will be based on old information and old data sources. But what we're going to be looking at, and actually there's a training tomorrow with Shelby Johnson of the Department of Information Systems. The Board of Apportionment uses the Department of Information Systems to procure the computer software program that actually does the heavy lifting of helping draw the maps. in putting that census data and putting it into a format that everyone can make use of.
That process is underway. The RFP has already been let and put out for publication and I'm sure we'll receive more information tomorrow from him on the exact status of that process. Once DIS picks the software, the Bureau will utilize the same type of software so that there's no questions that all of the information can communicate between the two systems. Once we've received that data, members of the General Assembly will be able to meet with Bureau
staff, specifically Lori Bowen of our Research and Policy Analysis Division, will be able to work with the members to develop each one of those maps that show their particular, you know, distribution of how they think the population should be distributed in those congressional districts. Once the member approves that map, that information will be transmitted to me to draft a bill. And these bills are going to look just like your normal bills during session. And if you're interested, you've got two great examples in existing code where you look at the congressional districts.
You'll notice the first district has some whole counties. And then it also breaks down by voting precincts or districts, voting districts. And that was to reach these equal population proportions. However, if you look at District 2, you'll notice it's actually all full counties. Those were some of the decisions that were made in the last redistricting, and I've looked at that will probably be something that this General Assembly may have to look at as well. Once a member approves the draft bill as created, it's filed just as any other bill.
They would be referenced and reviewed to state agencies, to this committee. A member does not have to be a member of state agencies. to request a map and a bill that would set congressional districts. That's available to any member of the General Assembly. Once that's done, this committee would follow its normal process in determining how they would like to proceed with adoption of those bills. And there are a lot of court cases, again,
that deal with specific elements of redistricting. However, I will put a caveat that a lot of those deal with the work that the Board of Apportionment will be doing on the state level, not necessarily the federal congressional level cases. But that's a very general overview. But if there's any questions or anything else I can assist with on kind of the high level, I'm happy to do so. Okay. And, members,
I'd be happy to entertain questions. And it's a good spot to mention for the future when we're really getting in here and got testimony.
just like normal committee try to get Maddie's attention and she'll she'll make sure that I'm getting everybody on list if you begin to have questions pile up I can see most everybody here even Senator English and Bledsoe though I can only see their heads basically but so I didn't I saw people looking at me but I didn't see a first question so is there Senator Ballinger you're recognized please use your mic so the people can hear they're watching thank you do
Senator Bob Ballinger
Unverified
15:49
we have do we have any kind
of uh estimates or projections like numbers and i my guess is that we'll get the numbers in plenty of time to do do business but if some people wanted to look at it and start working on it are there estimates that that we feel like are updated more than you know the
Speaker 27
16:12
2010 census numbers We don't have any, Senator Ballinger, we don't have any of those numbers. It's all based on 10 years ago. And so to try to create any maps, I think, without the official numbers is going to be hard to do.
Okay. I will just make mention, and obviously we can't depend on it in any way, but I believe that there are some third-party non-governmental entities out there that are doing projections and they're looking at things, but it's nothing that we can hang our hat on. And I won't even attempt to begin to name any so as not to feel that I'm encouraging anybody on anything, but I think if you go out there, you'll find there's some different entities that have got some projection information out there,
which might just be interesting to look at because a lot of the information that Michelle has has stated to us here today I think they include so that it can help you get a feel for it and and I don't mind also saying because I'm really not getting mentioning your names or anything but you can draw maps on some of those those programs they're third parties and you can begin to look at that and and and see what might happen if you draw one way or another and what that might look like. And so members, there's plenty out there to keep you busy if you wanted
to begin looking at that. Any other questions for staff? Senator Tucker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
17:40
you, Michelle. And I know you said that there are a bunch of factors in some of those cases. Most of them have to do with state legislative seats rather than federal seats, but I'm curious where in the process we're going to learn about that. Do you discuss those with member when they're putting the bill together, or when there's a presentation to the committee about what the districts may be, will we receive a briefing then about the one person, one vote
Speaker 27
18:05
requirements, or how does that work? We can do it how this committee wants to. I don't know if once this process begins we can provide a more in-depth legal analysis of that, or in addition to those members that might not be here we'll probably do a summary just to hand them when we give them their maps so it'll probably be both if this if this committee
so wishes. I'll just state just for my own you know getting feedback
and reading some about it obviously most of the cases and litigation has dealt with those state legislative districts and I think you said 91 was the last time that we had an issue with that. I just urge us to be prudent about things that the committee says and does so that you don't put yourself in a situation where somebody tries to use you as a reason to somehow impede the process. And so that means that we just we just don't I would encourage you not to over
politicize commentary related to us doing the job of getting this done. It needs to be finished for us to be able to proceed on and move forward. So any other questions from anyone? I think Senator Ballinger may have another one. So do
Senator Bob Ballinger
Unverified
19:29
we know that, you know, whether the Department of GIS would have, I mean, I just can't imagine us not having it. In fact, I thought I saw a document that showed the projection change in each district. So I mean, if it's something that
you guys don't have and i'm not sure exactly i mean i can reach out to the the gis department but i'm i'm curious as to there surely is somewhere where they have some sort of information where they can project you know how
Speaker 16
19:57
things are changing and senator ballinger that may be some of the information we receive tomorrow okay
Speaker 10
20:03
that we're doing a training with mr johnson to see what information is there i know the bureau does not maintain that information in the interim it again And as you said, another state agency may have some interim census data, but that would
not be anything we have or are able to map off of. Sure.
Okay, thank you. I'm just curious for the purposes of the committee. I think, I know three of us were here during the last census. How many of our committee members were here during the last process in the legislature? So Senator Bledsoe and myself and Senator English, I thought that might be the case. I wasn't sure if you might have already been in the House down there. But it was an interesting process, and that's all I'll say on that.
But it's one that's very important, and I think that the committee, of all the things that we do up here, you know, this is probably one of the most important jobs that we have is making sure that Arkansas has good, equally balanced, as best we possibly can, congressional districts. And so I'm looking forward to that process. any other questions for Michelle or Marty at this time we appreciate you being here and the training I didn't want to ask on the training part is that just a
staff internal training you're talking about yes
Michelle Davenport
Unverified
21:24
sir Mr. Johnson offered an opportunity for staff
Speaker 10
21:26
to come over and look at some of the base level geographic information on how it's put together the way that it works and he'll probably use some of the information from the 2011 redistricting process on how that physically went into the system and comes out so that we're more familiar with exactly what the outputs are going to look like so that we can be ready to be able to draft the bills expeditiously. And I'm sorry since I
Speaker 23
21:53
asked that question, will his office be the
one actually producing the maps for you or will you all be producing maps internally? We
Speaker 10
22:04
will actually have the ability to produce the maps internally and that's one reason we're doing so in a coordinated effort of training is so that because this is not something that our office does on a daily basis that we actually have an opportunity to work with those who are in the geographic mapping systems and are familiar with
the data and the program itself will be very instrumental in being able to do and I'm assuming this will be the first of many different training opportunities that we will have as staff so that we can utilize the software once
it's fully selected in the most efficient manner. I hate to ask the question because I'm not expecting you to be a history expert. But I think, I'm trying to think here, I believe that Arkansas had an extra congressional district as late as the 1930s or 40s, maybe.
I can't recall. Do you know when the last, when we
Speaker 10
23:02
lost a congressional seat? I do not know the dates, but I know that those congressional reapportionment, there's not been any indication from the information from NCSL that Arkansas would be affected by gaining any kind of population reapportionment. That's not been mentioned in any of the information I've seen coming.
Members, you can go out and look in that. I think it was probably mid-20th century, I believe, when we lost a congressional seat and went to the floor that we have now.
And I think, based on information I've read, that the two net large losers in the country are California and New York that are losing congressional seats. And Florida and Texas seem to be the big gains. And then there's some in between, but it's definitely New York and California losing some seats. So thank you. It's going to be an interesting process. Appreciate you being here. And with that, members, we only have one other agenda here. And I believe that Secretary Fetcher was here earlier than I thought.
And so we want to recognize Secretary Amy Fetcher of Transformation and Shared Services. And you should have before you, members, because of the heavy work. And I want to thank my predecessor, Senator Ron Caldwell, and all the members of the previous committee that did a lot of heavy lifting as it related to the transformation. and I know that we're awaiting a report that may be coming from legislative audit that begins to dial us in on, you know, what was the realized savings that was projected,
those sorts of things. I think that gets difficult at any time when you're moving pieces around. So they're trying to do an audit to get an idea of what that really looked like and that I'm sure we'll be getting an update on that as well. But I don't want to steal a lot of thunder, but I did want to refer you that Secretary Fetcher has provided some excellent help on what the new transformed situation looks like with all the different cabinet secretaries. We thank you with that. I'll recognize
you if you just state your name and who you are for the record, who you
represent, and you're recognized. Thank you.
Speaker 47
25:12
Amy Fetcher, Secretary of Transformation and Shared Services. Thank you, Mr. Chair and
Speaker 48
25:16
committee members for letting me be here today. Some of those in my office joked that when I walked into this committee room, I might have PTSD from the last session, but I assure you I do not. We appreciate being here, and as Senator Raebert indicated, we brought the new org chart just because this is the first session. We're operating
under the new plan since Act 910 passed, so you have that. I'll just point out on the fourth page That is what we call separate, independent, non-cabinet-level departments. So these are still part of the executive branch, but they remain separate because of various reasons. So we did include those, but the first three pages are part of the 15 departments. We listed the secretaries on there, and we also gave you a listing of secretaries' phone numbers and their chief of staffs.
So when you have questions about any of their divisions, you're always welcome to reach out to anyone in the divisions. However, if you want to talk to them, you've got their information. I just wanted to say a couple of words about our department, Transformation and Shared Services. What we do is really twofold. We support the other 14 departments and kind of what I call the operations of state government, like personnel, procurement, building authority, things of that nature you can see there on the
chart. But then we also work with the governor's office on any transformation initiatives that are going to go out to the 15 departments. Some examples of that would be the new HR system that we're implementing, have recently implemented as a way to recruit. It replaced the Arkansas all state jobs website which if any of you had used was 20 years old and difficult and clunky and replaced it with a new system that's really going to allow us to do a lot more with recruiting
and with that I just wanted to tell you about one piece of legislation that our department is putting forth this session which is one of those transformation initiatives and it is a statewide public service internship program. So this would be, if any of you are familiar with the way the governor's office has done their internship the last few years, they've done an excellent job of getting students in and getting them interested in public service and giving them
a little bit of a view of what we do in state government rather than just one department. So if it is not, it is an optional program. Departments are not required, but we've had a lot of interest in it if this bill passes. We have an internship program in statute at OPM currently, but we'd like to expand that and call it a statewide public service internship program. We feel like this is really going to help with recruiting and getting people in here. They'll be assigned to a specific department based on the needs, but they'll also come together to meet with
you all, to meet with different areas of government, and to learn more about what we're doing in state government and hopefully foster that desire to come back and work with us after they graduate. So that is really all I had today and just wanted to say hello so you know me and know how to get
Speaker 47
28:41
in touch with me, but I'm happy to take any questions if you have
any. Sure. Members, any questions for Secretary Fetcher at all? Well, it looks like that this is a free
pass for this for this this time i do thank you i do thank you for the update one and only three pass this is probably not a any kind of indication for the future but definitely for right now we appreciate this is an easy time and thanks for the updates and uh so members uh i'd be happy if there are any comments from any of you or any questions before we we go i do want to say that Senator Garner did tell me he wasn't going to be able to be here this afternoon, but he of course
is vice chair of the committee and he just was not able to be here this afternoon. Anything else before we adjourn? What would just be looking at your agenda? The way I try to run the committee and did an insurance and commerce is that if we got a bill, we get in here and run that bill because we don't want to stack up. I have not been giving an indication. I will just put it out there. if you've got people that are planning to run constitutional amendments, it'd be a really good time to be talking because either they have not been serious enough about it or they're somehow
not wanting to put it out there wanting to do it. But I have had no one that stated to me that they're going to do actually file a constitutional amendment. So if that is the case, have somebody visit with us and let's talk about that. Because if we suddenly had a rush of some of those, that's going to make a big difference for the committee. So that being the case, nothing further. Is there anything from anyone in the public that would like to say a word? Seeing none, the committee is adjourned. Thank you.
Agenda
A. Call to Order -
B. Organizational Information
C. Consideration of Senate Committee Rules
D. Redistricting 2021
E. Update on Transformation
F. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — STATE AGENCIES & GOVT'L AFFAIRS-SENATE, Jan 12, 2021 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Senator Jason Rapert Chair
Unverified
Michelle Davenport
Unverified
Speaker 6
Speaker 7
Speaker 8
Speaker 10
Senator Bob Ballinger
Unverified
Speaker 27
Senator Clarke Tucker
Unverified
Speaker 16
Speaker 23
Speaker 47
Speaker 48