 Tom little thank you so much for joining us. You're the chair of the Vermont legislative apportionment board Which is a long way of explaining what we're going to talk about today And you sent out an op-ed to explain to people about redistricting in Vermont And I thought maybe we could shed some light on the subject and encourage some public participation in this process By doing this interview so welcome Thank you glad to be with you Lauren Glenn So you have been involved in legislative activities for years and and you are a wise counsel So it makes sense that you would be at the helm of this legislative apportionment board But why don't we start by just explaining what that is and why it's important for Vermonters Well, it's important because When the legislature was originally Created and structured and when the Senate actually got added in because initially there was only a house and not a Senate Early on in the 1820s and 1830s there were attempts Made to reapportion the legislature back then because people felt it wasn't fair and it was not sufficiently based upon population Nothing ever happened. However, until the early 1960s 140 years later when the some court decisions were made that said, yeah That isn't fair. There isn't equal voting access in Vermont because of the one representative per town structure of the house in particular and what you had and maybe the most stark way to illustrate that is that the town of Stratton had 38 people and one member of the Vermont house and Burlington had over 35,000 people and had one member of the house after that litigation the dust cleared in the early to mid 1960s the legislature reapportioned itself and established the apportionment board to Come into being and Start working every ten years About 18 months prior to when the legislature had to do its own final version of a new map So the apportionment board has met About five or six times now every ten years and we are in a sense advisory to the legislature But we take that that role very seriously and we'll be trying to provide the legislature with as much data and research and Redistricting options as we can And this is important because the census the 2020 census numbers are coming in and We know even without those census numbers that Vermont's population has increased which means we have to redraw the lines Is that right? But we have to redraw the lines every ten years almost no matter what happens to the state population because The state's population tends to shift within the state And if you've been following the internal population shift trends Those have been steady for 20 30 40 years Now we have another 10 years worth of that trend and it shows that The population in the southern part of the state and maybe Southwest Central Bennington Wyndham in Rutland counties Is continuing to gradually lose population and the northwest corner Franklin Lemoyle and Chittenden predominantly are gaining population and When you have I mean in an ideal world you would want each house and each Senate district to have the same number of people as each other ones which means The the there's equality of Representation The law has said that the courts have said that that doesn't have to be mathematically exactly equal But it has to be substantially equal and you have to make a sincere Effort to make it as substantially equal as you can At the same time the Vermont law in this area says You should also try to have the legislative districts Follow town boundaries and county boundaries and you should Do your very best not to subdivide towns and put them in different districts Those are end up being competing or colliding mandates and It would be one thing if you said well, we have six hundred and fifty thousand people in the state We have a hundred and fifty house members. We'll just draw use a computer program of sorts to create a hundred and fifty house districts that are almost identical in population And and people have actually we've done that as an exercise But it may it there's no very little resemblance to a state of Vermont map showing the towns And there's a there's a belief in Vermont that Keeping the towns distinct within legislative districts is a good thing because it gives a legislative district some cohesion And the people in that legislative district share things in common Not just who their legislative representatives. They may share a school district. They may share Other relationships commercial relationships and maybe in the old days they all went to the same market But and in many cases there also have been in the same house district for a long time And they're comfortable in a custom to being joined with one or two other towns in that district And they identify that way So those are Lauren Glenn some competing Mandates we have But but the one that that that trumps that comes out on top under the law is the substantial equality of population Because if you in the in the Stratton Burlington case from 1964 In a sense and an important sense the people of Stratton compared to the people of Burlington Stratton folks were way over represented They had one house member for 38 people and in Burlington the residents were grossly underrepresented And that's what we have to keep reminding ourselves we have to we have to avoid something that's stark and It looks like we're up at that the number now is one rep per 4,300 So somewhere between 42 and 4,300 is the ideal sized Single-member house district And we have a significant number of Two-member house district so you would double the size of that for a two-member house district So that's a number really by dividing 150 into the number of people in Vermont. That's not a federal number correct Yeah, it's it's pretty simple the arithmetic and to get the the ideal Single-member Senate district you divide the state's population by 30 And if you had a two-member senate district you would double that and for the senate districts that's Around 20 122,000 people for that ideal single-member senate district Now why did the legislature vote to break up the six-member chitin and county block Of senators and did they do that in any other part of the state? I know that was just for the chitin and senate district, which was the only one in the state that was had six Senators at large There are the Rutland senate district has three at large and the washington A district has three At large as does the Windsor district It's if you look at other states across the country It's very unusual to have Senate districts with even three people serving at large Vermont is the only one that has Currently has a six-member at large district And Something can be said in favor of smaller districts as Promoting better communication Between the elected representative and the people being represented And fundamentally The the the problems that were encountered with a six-member at-large district were Um instead of representing 21 or 22,000 people you were representing 140,000 people um and Uh, it also made camp made campaigning for many people very expensive and very difficult Uh, it gave it gave great Uh weight or power to name recognition Or to incumbents Um for that same reason and, um It it's slowly but surely over the last 10 or 12 years I think even the the incumbent senators in the chitin and senate district Came around to thinking uh, this is really too much and in 2019 the legislature agreed And amended the law to say that you can't have a senate district with more than three members at large so in doing this Redistricting work This time around We are looking at At least reducing that to two three member districts, but we are also looking at other subdivision Options You know all the way from six one-member districts to three twos Or some other combination So it might be that In your discussions you scoop up the One member district in colchester that serves colchester in the islands in the conversation is that you know when you're Are you drawing lots of maps to figure out what to do at this point to address that question also? We're beginning to learn and one of the problems we've encountered is that the us census bureau was under a federal law was supposed to Deliver us and the other states A final census numbers by march 31 This spring we still don't have that and now we've been we've been told august 15th It's going to be when we get the final numbers, but we do have Some reasonable population estimates that are 2019 estimates and we have been using those just to get our feet underneath us and to Look at the districts that are likely to have Need the most attention and Briefly the methodology that the the board uses is to Establish what the ideal sized district is and we'll talk about we can talk about the house Ideal now, which is around 40 200 people We then Look at the actual in this case so far the estimated population and we drop All those numbers together into a map Of the vermont house districts and that tells us for each district A percentage Greater or less than the ideal for the population of that house district And what the law says Is that you should look at the house district with the the highest positive deviation Over their ideal number And compare it to the district with the greatest negative deviation From the ideal And then you look at the spread between those two districts and that's what's called the overall Deviation for the entire map and the the law says that number should be reasonably tight The the the courts have never They the courts have been careful to not micromanage this process because At some fundamental level it has a political tinge to it and the courts rightly try to stay out of political arena, but Something approaching the high teens For an overall deviation for example where you had a house district with a minus eight and a half or nine Deviation meaning that they have eight and a half percent fewer people in that than the ideal And a house district with an eight and a half or nine percent on the high end Creating a deviation of maybe 18 points. That's sort of pushing pushing it It's worth noting that the the map that the legislature approved in 2012 The house overall deviation is 18.9 percent So we have but no one challenged that in court. So it became the law and that's what we have now, but Using the estimated census data, we've identified House and senate districts that look like their percentage deviations Are such That they need are going to need some adjustment So I imagine in particular you want to hear from people In those communities So can you say Name a few of them? In looking at the at the senate The And and and these numbers Are again are estimated, but but they're pretty decent estimates and the The problematic areas House and senate districts are where you would expect to find them generally if you Understand where the population shifts have been So the chitin and senate senate district has a very high positive deviation of over 20 percent now And the senate district at the at the other end of the spectrum is the bennington senate district of Somewhere around a minus Nine something And that overall that overall deviation is not Acceptable under the law. So we know that something's got a gift So that means that there's nine percent less people than needs to be in that district to be representative to be an ideal sized district And in the house districts, you see the same the same trend there are a Um, I don't know eight or 10 house districts in the chitin and franklin area With deviations of Over 10 percent and in one case Where am I now there's a South burlington house district with an estimated positive deviation of about 19 percent And that's a shift that's happened in the past 10 years essentially. Well, if you looked at those districts 10 years ago or 11 years ago before we did the last Remapping you probably would have found those To be have some significant positive or negative deviations, but now It's reached the point where They have to be dealt with then the There are a couple of districts in ruttland town ruttland city for example that have deviations of over 10 percent negative deviations greater than 10 percent So you're interested in hearing from people across the state, but let's say in particular from these regions Regular people. I mean you have map makers. You're doing your own mapping on the apportionment committee to kind of see where you're at But what kind of intelligence could a regular person shed light on these On this issue and what kinds of questions are you asking? We're we're we're suggesting that that Folks can go to the apportion boards a board's website on the secretary of state's Website on the right on the banner across the top of the secretary of state's website. There's an apportionment board Place to click and you can go find minutes of our meetings and a lot of materials about The reapportionment from 10 years ago and some of the the the efforts we're making now, but At a very fundamental level, I think it's the starting place is to figure out what district you're in right now and Uh, that's something that people end up figuring out when they go to the polls because you got to know where to show up to vote but Once we get these these census data We will be posting them and then you would be able to go to our a map on our web page that says Okay, I live in the bennington three house district Or the franklin six house district What does my percentage deviation look like? Maybe more importantly Lauren glenn would be Get familiar with the other Towns in which your district is located And if you you know that Something is likely to have to change about your district because of a high or low population Count The the trickiest question is how do you fix that? Now if if you have a a district With a significant negative population deviation The simplest way to fix that would be if that if the house district right next door has excess population You can say well, we'll we'll move a town around Keeping in mind that we're supposed to really try really hard not to subdivide a town um So you could say well the district next to us has four towns in it We could move one of those towns over into our district and everything will be evened up But if you're in an area of the state And this is true in in the southern part of the state where You have a low You have a significant negative population deviation in your house district and you're surrounded by other house districts with the same problem It's not so simple because Taking people from another another district is going to exacerbate their population deficit And that'll bump the solution to another district beyond them and Conceivably another one further out and so trying to fix a problem with one district is really often and right now in particular parts of the state a regional solution needs to be found we've received some Citizen input already Interestingly One dealing with a in the chitin and senate Where the the towns that are in the Mount Mansfield unified union school district Which are under hill Jericho? Richmond Bolton and Huntington, I believe They're looking at this subdivision of the chitin and senate district and saying we we want Our five towns want to be in the same senate district. We think that makes sense. We'll have More cohesion we'll have we know who our representatives are and they'll they'll be more They'll care more about us because they're not representing 140,000 people Um Those five towns are not large enough to form a single member senate district. So you have to add other towns One of the challenges there in particular is that 10 years ago the town of Huntington Was moved into the Addison senate district Not because there was a groundswell Of a public sentiment in Huntington that that's what they wanted to do but because um, the population in the Addison senate district was on the low side and Because Brandon kind of branded which had been in The Addison senate district for about 20 years, but which is a Rutland county town Had to be moved back into the Rutland senate district So the Rutland senate district could continue to support three senators That left a gap in the Addison senate district The apportionment board's recommendation 10 years ago was And and if you look at the contours of Addison county on one side is lakeshamp plains You can't add any people from lakeshamp plains Um at the south side, it's Rutland Because of the Rutland population problem, we couldn't add them there on the east side. You're up against the green mountains um and some Very small towns and we try not to put Towns on one side of the green mountains and it was senate district on the other side That really only left the the northern part of Addison county and the southern towns in Chittenden county, which are shallot Heinsberg and Huntington The apportionment board's recommendation was charlotte Legislature said no, we're going to put Huntington in So to to to address The residents of the mount mansfield union school district Folks To their concerns You'd have to take Huntington out of the Addison district But probably take either Heinsberg or charlotte and put it in unless You're going to take a much more Bald approach to this and say well, what if Addison isn't a two-member district? What if we divide that into two one-member districts? And maybe we can get more creative that way and we won't run into this problem with Huntington So those are the it sounds like that's the kind of questions that you're interested in feedback From the public about right we we've asked the public Do you have a preference in general over a single-member house district versus a two-member house district? And Do you feel strongly about the importance of following town lines and keeping towns intact Do you prefer single-member senate districts should we go to all single-member senate districts for example? And the the apportionment board did a a version of that 10 years ago Just to see what it would look like and it doesn't look at all like a county map No surprise interestingly in Vermont while we have this statute that Talks about trying to preserve county lines Our county government in Vermont our counties don't have much governance value or meaning in Vermont But nevertheless people identify with the county they're in um and I mean Vermont in the at the county level we have assistant judges Two assistant judges a sheriff Pro bait judges get elected on a county basis in the state's attorneys um, but It's not if you want to go across the lake to new york state. There are county assemblies They have county elected representatives and we don't we don't do that here, but our statute I think which dates back to the 1960s where the old Senate map was a county map And every every county had one senator except the larger counties with pop larger population had additional ones, but that wasn't a portion equally either Uh, and it was very very hard to change When populations shifted This reminds me of Frank bryant's famous maps that he shows professor front bryant at UVM of the various districts of service delivery, whether it's the legislative district the solid waste district the agency of human services district I mean, they're just Nothing coincides in vermont And I wonder if that's because of our exceptionalism or you know the strength of the locality as kind of the prime Self-identification that we have I'm not sure what the reason is but it may have to make it hard. We we have been working with The vermont center for geographic information, which is a not all that well-known piece of state government, but They have been extremely helpful in the mapping area and They can show you maps of almost I mean anything you could imagine and things that you can't imagine, but You're right. There are layers and layers of various governance districts If you look at a map of the utility coverage in vermont, that's a very distinctive looking map Fire districts in some towns Are still active and then you have Act to 50 district districts Planning districts So we've evolved these regional governance districts, maybe because our counties don't mean anything in terms of governance And one of the ways that when we write it right up our final report, this is more more so about the house Redistricting than the senate is that we try Particularly if we're bundling us a group of towns into a house district that have not all been together Before or at least recently in a in a district together. We try to to In a narrative description Give reasons why it makes sense for these towns to be together and what they have in common with each other Which may be geography. It may be a school district It may be some other historic ties I I did this work 10 years ago as well and what I found out in addition to the ties that bind Are the the ties that that divide And There's a there's a kind of a funny story I can tell in that regard but We received a letter at the at the apportionment board from a town For this time being I'm not going to mention these the name of these towns, but that said that we think that the best house district for us would be a two-member district with with our town and then the three towns Uh West of us in one two-member district Uh, and of course in that particular configuration the town that wrote us Because of its population would dominate that house district About a week or so later. We got a letter from The town at the west end of that configuration of towns that said whatever you do Don't put us in a house district with that town and it Which we we chuckled at and it reminded me at the time and and now of of what it was like the first day of Of school in middle school or or junior high school in the cafeteria when Everyone's deciding who they're going to sit with and who they're not going to sit with and there's some of that It goes on in the in the house redistricting where there might be Two towns that to an outsider might look like they have perfect harmony together But there's some reason in one case it was a it was a high school football rivalry That they really didn't want To be together There comes a time and it's kind of come very very soon. Um our deadline For getting our work done Was supposed to be the end of july But since we won't have the us census figures until at least the middle of august The legislature extended our deadlines one of our our public engagement processes is We will be issuing a an initial house map sort of a preliminary house map And sending it out to all the towns Publishing it on our on our website and all of that and a town that Disagrees with how it's been Placed in a district Particularly a town that we propose to subdivide or to put into a two-member district Those towns have the right to hold a public hearing Take testimony And then send us a counter proposal or criticisms of our initial Mapping proposal All those comments will be coming back to us from the The boards of civil authority in each town and the board of civil authority In each town is the select board members and the justices of the fees plus the town clerk And that unit of government is chosen in large part because in towns It's the board of civil authority that has A sort of oversight authority over local elections And they have some local expertise in that regard And when will you file your proposal with the legislature? Well, we were so under our Statute we're supposed to get all of this stuff done by the end of july Um, but the since the us census bureau has failed to send us the data that we need The legislature enacted some Changes that pushed this out into The late summer and into the fall so if I had to make a Estimate of when we would be getting this map out to the towns. I would say Sometime in the middle to the end of september Well, let's be in touch when those maps are Drawn so that we can generate some more interest and in the meantime I really appreciate your time and the work of the apportionment board the legislative apportionment board in Making sure that we get the kind of representation that we deserve in the state of ramon You got it. My pleasure Thank you, tom little. Bye. Bye