A panel redrawing legislative districts does not know how many nonpermanent citizens to exclude

The Hawaii Supreme Court issued an opinion Friday detailing the flaws in the state Reapportionment Commission’s plan to allocate legislative seats among the islands and draw boundaries for legislative districts.

But in its 29-page ruling the court did not say how many nonpermanent residents must be excluded.

The high court’s decision elaborates on its order issued Wednesday declaring the plan adopted by the commission invalid because it did not exclude enough nonpermanent residents as mandated by the state Constitution.

Former state Judge Victoria Marks, the commission chairwoman, said the opinion does not give much guidance on how many nonpermanent residents must be excluded.

She said she is considering asking the high court to clarify its decision.

What’s more, Marks said she doesn’t know whether the commission can prepare a new plan before Feb. 1, when candidate nomination papers are supposed to be available for the House and Senate seats.

“We’re sensitive to the timing,” she said.

THE HIGH COURT noted that the commission’s task was twofold: first, to allocate the 25 members of the Senate and 51 members of the House among the four counties; and second, to apportion the legislative members within the counties.

Knowing precisely where nonresidents live is necessary to the second step, but not the first, which requires knowing only the county of residence, the court said.

“The Commission acknowledged at oral argument that it did not differentiate the step one process from the step two process,” the court said. “The Commission’s military data, university data and census data on the state’s non-permanent residents identified, for step one, the resident counties of over 100,000 non-permanent residents, but identified, for step two, the resident addresses for only 16,458 non-permanent residents,” the court said.

Using the larger number would reduce Oahu’s senators to 17 from 18 and increase Hawaii island’s senators to four from three.

Opponents of the plan declared invalid contended the lower figure was picked to avoid that shift of a Senate seat. They also said the plan did not reflect the population growth on Hawaii island.

Among those challenging the plan were Gov. Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii island state Sen. Malama Solomon and three members of the Hawaii County Democratic Committee.

THE HIGH COURT’S opinion noted that the commission staff prepared three models of counting nonpermanent residents and the commission chose the 16,458 figure. The other two models have figures of about 73,000 and 80,000, both of which would shift a Senate seat.

Marks said that if the high court directed the commission to use either the 73,000 or 80,000 figures, it would be easier to come up with a new plan.