After redrawing political maps, panel approves new districts

The state Reapportionment Commission gave final approval Thursday to its plan for new political boundary maps and now waits to see whether the Hawaii Supreme Court orders changes.

The Commission faces two lawsuits challenging the maps, alleging that they are based on a population count that includes too many nonpermanent residents.

Both lawsuits were filed this week.

"I don’t think we’ve had the opportunity to fully discuss or digest the lawsuits," Commission Chairwoman Victoria Marks said Thursday at a meeting of the state commission. She declined further comment.

The commission met for the continuation of a special meeting started last week that was needed to fix an error that was made in calculating which 12 of the state’s 25 Senate districts would be up for two-year terms in the 2012 election. The staggering is to ensure that only about half of the seats are up for election in successive elections.

Under the adopted plan, districts that would be up for two-year terms in 2012 include Senate Districts 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 12, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22 and 23.

The plan is to be published by the Office of Elections within 14 business days, but a judge could order changes.

Separate lawsuits filed on behalf of Hawaii County residents seek to have the plan ruled invalid and have new maps drawn.

The lawsuits contend the commission’s decision to extract only a limited number of so-called "nonresident" military members, their dependents and students — those who live in Hawaii but claim legal residence elsewhere — favors Oahu and denies the shifting of a state Senate seat to Hawaii County.

Marks said the commission did the best it could with the information it had. A change in privacy laws since the last U.S. census made it more difficult to locate most of the nonresidents and determine from which districts to extract them. Commissioners voted to extract about 16,000 of the estimated 90,000 nonresidents, based on the ability to accurately locate them and determine their residency status.

The commission’s technical staff has begun drawing up alternative maps employing various extraction scenarios to give the Supreme Court options should it decide in favor of the lawsuits.

One lawsuit was filed Monday on behalf of state Sen. Malama Solomon (D, Hilo-Honokaa) and members of the Hawaii County Committee of the Democratic Party.

The second was field this week on behalf of Mike Ma­tsukawa, a Hawaii island resident and attorney who argued a 2005 lawsuit concerning Hawaii County Council districts. The summary decision in that case stated that members of the military should not be counted in the county reapportionment, but that was not the main issue in the case.

Matsukawa’s petition argues the commission "offers no compelling reason, no analysis, no substantive explanation and no articulated reason to support its collective action or to otherwise demonstrate that the commission took a ‘hard look’ at the issue and made an ‘honest’ and ‘good faith’ effort to execute its constitutional duty under the Hawaii State Constitution."