CHC 1979-04-17 PH - Laserfiche WebLink

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It seems that with this Charter Review Commission one of the major issues is reapportionment. Do you feel that instead of having the Charter Review Commission take that issue that we should have, possibly, a separate body solely for the purpose of apportionment? MR. PULHAM: I think that being that they have already wrestled with it and being there is a state reapportionment commission, if we use the representative districts which will then be reapportioned under the one-man, one-vote principal so that we meet that criteria, we would really have no need for a county level reapportionment commission, would we? - MR. ISHIDA: I may be wrong but someone just informed me, a couple of days ago, that the state constitution provides, which I haven ' t confirmed, myself, is that the reapportionment is to be based upon registered voters. Do you know if- that is correct? MR. PULHAM: No, the constitution does not say that, I know that. The reapportionment commission has to use the federal census. They are faced with a horrendous task , really, of trying to sort it out and see just how many people there are. But they have to draw from all these particular sources but the primary one is the federal census that is used. You would really get into trouble if you went with the voter registration or the votes cast in the one-man , one-vote situation. You would be so far off. That might be a more fair way to` do it. The people that actually participate get counted and those who don 't--you might wake some of them up. MR. CADINHA: Mr. Pulham, have you given any regard to the various commissions. . .the water commission in its semi-autonomous state. . . . MR. PULHAM: It would be my opinion that it should not exist. There should be no one involved in regulating' or in the spending of public moneys that is not accountable to the people and that is exactly what you have. You have a group that spends money that is not accountable to anybody because once they are appointed they are, as you say, semi-autonomous. They might as well be autonomous. No, they should come under the mayor so that he can be held responsible for them and if you want to put them under the council , that is fine. Ever-y_ono should: come back to the people to be accounted_ for -one way or the other. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, very much , Mr. Pulham. We, have next , Elizabeth Stone to testify. MS. STONE : I have two questions. First, when is the deadline for comments on this charter? When is the deadline for comments to be received on the charter? - 25 -