CHC 1979-06-26 - Laserfiche WebLink

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You can send it to the electorate if you want. It is not prohibited, you know, but all the reapportion- ment plans that we have seen , the commission ' s decisions are final after publication or without publication. MR. OMONAKA: So then if a person did accept the charter on the basis as the Charter Commission proposed , no matter what it is, then comes 1984 when their work is finished for them, would the reapportionment committee then have power to change say from district to at-large even though the electorate didn ' t have a vote on it yet? MR. ODA: That ' s right, under the proposed proposal. MR. OMONAKA: That is not right. MR. SCHUTTE : Akira, I didn ' t hear you on that. Would you explain that again? MR. OMONAKA: Assuming we adopt a plan to form a council and the electorate on the special election by a majority vote, have adopted that plan with the understanding that the reapportionment commission or committee be allowed to do as Mr. Ishida suggests , then if this commission and the electorate did buy the concept, say, strict districting, then the commission can turn that around to strict at-large. And I am saying that because the electorate did vote on it, it is not right that the reapportionment committee can change anything the electorate voted on. MR. ODA: I . . . . MR. SCHUTTE: Mr. Oda, that is why I kind of directed my question to you, to ask you if language could be written into this. Reapportionment--we are talking about enlarging the district because of x numberof additional voters , am I correct,:' it doesn ' t necessarily have to change the makeup of the district, outside of numbers? MR. ODA: Okay, let me kind of backtrack a little bit. As I hear what is going on over here, going back to Mr. Ishida' s proposal , I have some reservations of the legality of giving a reapportionment commission total blank checks to 1eta:-s_say., put districts where at-large candidates were originally assigned in the charter. Again , this goes back to the original purpose of what a reapportionment commission is. As I understand it, and I may be wrong, but a reapportionment commission' s duties and sole duty is to realign boundaries. It is , of course, and you will all -agree, I am sure, not to add any additional seats. it is`_not to change the basic framework of the makeup of the geographical or other makeup except to say that because district 2 has , perhaps, lost popu- lation and district 4 has gained population , to perhaps realign the boundaries so that the population within the various districts become fairly equal as much as possible under the one-man, one-vote principle. -15-