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STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC ON AGENDA ITEMS CHR. HAITSUKA: Our first item of business is Statements From The Public On Agenda Items. Do we have any members of the public here today? MS. DAVID: Chair Haitsuka, we have one person in Kona to testify, that's Brenda Ford. CHR. HAITSUKA: Okay, we can have her proceed. Good afternoon, Mrs. Ford. BRENDA FORD (At this time Councilmember, Brenda Ford came forward to address members of the Commission.) MS. FORD: Good afternoon. Thank you for allowing me to address the Commission. I would like to speak on the issue of the Charter in Section III -17, the County Reapportionment Commission. Just as a little bit of history, the last time we went through reapportionment in 2001, the community, including myself, had tremendous problems with the Reapportionment Commission. Without going into all the terrible details, the ultimate plan that came out exceeded the Federal limits of plus or minus five percent for a total of 10 percent spread on reapportionment. I don't know how many of you are familiar with reapportionment. I'm making assumptions that you understand it and that may not be fair. But, the result of the Reapportionment Commission's work was a lawsuit, two lawsuits, one which I took all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court did not hear my case, they did not rule on it in any way. So, it stayed at the ruling of the State Supreme Court which in a split decision said the spread exceeds 10 percent, which is the Federal limit, but only by a little bit; so, even though it's wrong, we're going to let it stand. And that's where it was. As a Council person, I entered an Ordinance into the County Council to redo Section III -17, and I will submit my legislation that did not pass the County Council for a Charter Amendment. I will submit that as part of my testimony to the Commission. There are several things that need to happen in my opinion. First of all, this Section needs to be called Redistricting. There is a difference between Reapportionment and Redistricting. Reapportionment is moving representatives around, the way they do it for the U.S. Congress and the U.S. House of Representatives. There are only so many; there are 435, and they divide them up equally around the Country. Sometimes a State gains some; sometimes a State loses a Representative. Redistricting, however, changes the boundaries of a district to have equal numbers of people in the district. So we have a definitional problem. The second issue is the very late start. I believe that we start in 2011, per the Charter, and the Census is done in 2010. We really need to start this Commission in 2010 because there is such a steep learning curve on reapportionment or redistricting, whatever you want to call it, that it takes a lot of time for people to come up to speed. One of the objections that I have talked to Mr. Ashida about is the fact that the Commission never got training on how to do reapportionment or redistricting. They got training on the Sunshine Law; they got training on a few other things, but not on how to do redistricting, and therefore they started on with no knowledge, and did it wrong and just compounded their error. 2