[MUSIC PLAYING]
And I'm joined by my House co-chair, Mike Moran.
And would you like to make a statement
and introduce some of your members?
And then I'll do the same.
Sure, fantastic.
I'll start by introducing some of my members,
and then I'll just make a very brief statement.
What stage are we in?
We had the hearings, listening, learning, maps came out,
so now it's the comment period part of this process.
And so many of you from the House
have been at a lot of these hearings,
and you know how much time and effort
that we've put into this process.
Many of you have been in my office with Amanda, Brian,
and Nicky, who have been great on my staff,
trying to get us to what we think
is a fair and equitable end of the redistricting process.
So I'll just start by introducing
my vice chair, the gentleman from Lawrence Macos Devers.
Thank you for being here, Marcos.
Next, the gentlelady from Provincetown, Sarah Peake.
Thank you, Sarah.
The gentleman from Chicopee, Joe Wagner.
Thank you, Joe, for being here.
The gentleman from West Boylston and Worcester, James O'Day.
Thank you, Jimmy, for being here at this hearing.
I'd also like to recognize another gentleman
from Lawrence, Frank Moran.
Great last name.
Josh Cutler-- Josh Cutler's here.
Thank you, Josh.
All the way from Duxbury.
Tricia Farley-Bouvier-- I think she's
attended every one of these hearings
all the way from Pittsfield.
Thank you, Tricia, and thank you for your input
and help with the map out in that region.
You were very helpful in that process.
The gentlelady from Boston, Chynah Tyler.
Thank you for being here.
The gentleman from Haverhill, Andy Vargas.
Thank you, Andy, for being here.
I'd also like to recognize Paul Frost, a ranking minority
member.
Thank you, Paul, for being here, as well as the gentleman
from Southwick, Nick Boldyga.
Thank you, Nick, for your attendance
here at this hearing--
listening part of this process.
To anybody who is out there about to testify,
I want to just remind you that, 20 years ago, there
was no comment period.
We've put these things in place over the last two cycles
for a healthy discussion and feedback
from people in their concerns about the draft map
that we put out.
We are certainly open to suggestions, changes, comments,
there is no pride in authorship here on my side,
and I think I can speak for Senator Brownsberger
as well on that issue.
If you have a legitimate concern,
something that you think would make the map better,
if there's an area where you think
we could have done something to make a community of interest
stronger or a majority minority district stronger,
we welcome those suggestions and statements,
and they will be heard and considered.
That's what this is about.
This comment period will end at Monday at 5 o'clock, so if you
cannot testify here, or you know somebody in your community,
whether it be a community activist or a group
in your community that wasn't able to make it,
please let them know they have until 5 o'clock on Monday
to offer their comments and suggestions.
This is a two way street.
It has been since day one of this process,
and we are happy to have you join us and give us
any constructive feedback and/or criticisms.
With that, I thank you again, everybody, for being here.
I will turn it back to my co-chair and my senator,
Senator Brownsberger.
Thank you so much, Mike.
Let me just introduce the members of the Senate panel
that are with us today.
I have my vice chair Anne Gobi from Worcester town of Spencer,
who's been doing a wonderful job on coordinating
the Western parts of this process.
And Senator Gobi, if you'd like to say a couple of things,
you're more than welcome.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
No, I just, to echo, I appreciate
how this process has gone.
I appreciate the large amount of feedback
that we've received over the 19 hearings
that we've already had, and I wanted
to say a special thanks to you, to the two chairs,
for always listening and being there and taking
the time, especially Chair Brownsberger
for coming out and visiting all of the senate districts.
It was greatly appreciated, so we continue.
Thank you.
We're also joined by Senator Chang-Diaz, the senator
from Second Suffolk.
Would you like to make any comments, Senator Chang-Diaz?
No, sir.
Let's get right to the testimony.
All right, well, thank you, ma'am.
All right, so yeah, listen, I think Mike, my co-chair,
said it well.
We're here to listen.
We are here to try to keep improving,
and we appreciate all the great input and participation
that we've had so far, the New Democracy
Coalition, the Drawing Democracy Coalition.
Everybody has given us a great amount of assistance
in channeling voices so that we can hear them better,
and we look forward to everybody's testimony that's
here today.
And let's get on with it.
So I believe-- let's see, if I see,
in the panel, elected officials, I will call them.
But otherwise, I'm basically going
to go in order here as people have signed up.
Where people have signed up as a panel,
I will allow them to come together as a panel,
or have notified us that they constitute a panel,
we'll permit that.
So I have, first on the list, is Jack Leary from Stoughton.
Is Jack present?
No, I don't see him.
OK.
Joel Wynette from Framingham?
I'm just going to keep calling names--
Joel's being promoted now.
Terrific.
Thank you.
Just so people know, the next three names on the list,
and you can go ahead and promote these people,
are Benjamin Cohen, Eric Cochrane,
and then we have Cheryl Crawford.
And you can promote the members of her panel
so that they'll be ready to testify
as soon as we get to them.
So right now, I am recognizing Joel Wynette from Framingham.
Hello.
Thank you for holding these, and I did
get to look at the proposal.
I have a few comments.
My concern is that I'm from Framingham,
but we're having a significant change.
We're going from two major--
three representatives to four, and we're
spreading out to other communities
outside of Framingham, which is a little disturbing.
The two points I'd like to make is,
number one, the new precincts that were designed by the town
and city clerk, and I believe, approved by the state,
was not used in formulation of the boundaries.
And I wonder if there's an opportunity
to go back and adjust the boundaries based
upon the new precincts that were defined.
The second point I'd like to make is, two of the districts
are very strangely formed.
One of the members have called them two Pac-Men
eating each other.
And it looks like the upper blue area
could be exchanged with a lower blue area
to make the districts more contiguous.
So I know this it was made a lot in order
to preserve the existing incumbents
in their new districts.
We have a new minority--
majority minority district being formed,
but those two issues are concerning me
that were-- or three issues.
And we're going out again all the way to Worcester County
is being joined with Framingham.
Framingham is Metro West Center of Massachusetts,
and we're being fractionated amongst three other surrounding
areas.
So those are my comments, and the specific suggestion
of flipping a couple the areas just
to make it more contiguous.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for your testimony.
Does anybody want to comment at all?
Chairman Moran.
Thank you, Joel.
I feel like I need to give you some sort of feedback on that.
The primary concern that we had in the House
was there was a feeling, in Framingham, that the minority
population had grown in such a way in the last 10 years
that they were large enough to make a district where
the opportunity minority district would have--
minorities would account for over 50% of the district.
So in respect to elected legislators that
lived in that area, we started drawing a district that
had what we felt was the strongest majority minority
district we could draw in Framingham.
When we did that, it so happened to be incumbent free,
which obviously, we were happy about, especially given
the fact that I believe--
I don't know this to be 100% true--
one of the representatives out there, who is Maria Robinson,
may be leaving us.
I don't know if that's when, or if that's a guarantee,
but she may be leaving us.
And having discussed this with your local reps out there,
Framingham has 72,362 people, and it has two reps
that live in Framingham.
And it's very likely that, at the end of this,
they will still have two reps that live in Framingham.
One of those districts will be entirely in Framingham,
and that will be the majority minority district.
And the other district will go, as it's been in the past,
down to-- what is that area?
Ashland, and it will include Ashland, as it historically
has been.
Now, with regard to flipping precincts around,
I would be absolutely open to doing that.
As a matter of fact, one of your elected officials
has reached out to me and believes
that, if we flip a couple of areas,
we can make that district even stronger majority minority.
Now, I will tell you, I am not a perfect person on this.
So if I missed something there, my staff or I
missed something there, we are more than
willing to flip something to make that district a stronger
majority minority district because it's
my hope that district continues along that path,
and provides us with a member of Framingham that
lives in Framingham that can represent that.
Or that the people in that area can effectively choose
the person of their choice.
I guess that's the right way to say it.
So now, you're left with the rest of Framingham,
and when you take Ashland into account,
you have some population on top, on the north,
that needs to go somewhere.
Your population-- I know nobody wants to hear this,
but the boroughs which are west of you,
Marlborough, West Borough, North Borough,
have been growing over the years at a huge rate.
And after looking at this map, we
felt that it was right to make a district out there,
which encompassed as many of those areas as we could.
When we did that, it was light in population just by a bit,
so we moved it into one precinct in Framingham.
That's the new incumbent free district
that we created just west of Framingham.
And with regard to the new precincts,
this is something that I believe we're
going to hear a lot of today from clerks and others who
are talking about their precinct lines.
It is a challenge right now for all of us
to get to the finish line on this.
Our challenge is, we are constitutionally
obligated to finish this by November 8
because we have to allow people the ability
to move if they need to move, and I
believe there is a spot in my map, maybe two, where somebody
may have to move.
So when you come back 10 years ago,
we had a Democratic governor, and it was my belief
that governor would have signed anything we sent over.
I can't be so sure this time around with this governor
because he is not a member of the Democratic party.
He's a member of the Republican Party.
So I have to build in a 10 day area where he can look at it.
Maybe he signs it.
I don't know.
I think he probably will, but I can't guarantee that.
So that's determining our timeline.
As of right now, a lot of the municipalities
that are out there haven't had their precincts--
what they're calling their new precinct lines--
haven't had them even pass their local municipal level,
let alone go to the LEDRC.
So we can't wait for that to happen.
So we tried to articulate that when we filed House 4118,
I believe it is, back in June.
I think it was June, early June, we filed it.
And I believe it was the governor signed it--
I think it was June 10 it was signed?
Correct-- no, governor signed it on September 3, sorry.
And that was pretty clear that we were supposed to go first,
and the municipalities were supposed
to follow with their precinct lines,
paying attention to the lines that were drawn by the House
and Senate.
Some have decided not to go after us,
and they've tried to do it before us.
I would encourage them to--
we've moved back the deadline to the 15th of December,
allowing them time to coordinate their lines with regard
to our Senate and House lines.
So those Framingham precinct lines that are proposed
are really--
we couldn't use them because we didn't
have the time to use them.
And we want to be helpful, though.
If there's somewhere we can be helpful with our map
over the next few days, and there are suggestions,
we are certainly open to changing some of them.
But the idea that--
and I want to be very clear about this--
that the idea that we now have to change our House
lines to conform to some lines that may not
even been voted on by the municipality,
and certainly some of them haven't even
gone to be improved by the LEDRC yet, to ask us to do that--
it just is not going to happen because we can't.
So I want to be very clear about that.
So, Joel, thank you for your testimony.
I'm sorry for the long winded answer here,
but I did want to try to address everything that you brought up.
And if there are some suggestions that you
have in ways that we can potentially
move some stuff around and Framingham that makes sense,
especially if it makes that majority minority
district stronger, please send them our way,
and we'd be happy to take a look at them.
I just got a comment that Framingham
has approved the new precinct.
So maybe the other communities had not,
but we got ours on time and early.
So that's taken care of, and I think
there's just a couple of maybe minor, but improvements, that
can be made, and I appreciate.
I believe the city clerk and some of the city councilors
have also made suggestions, and I'll leave it up to them
to pursue it.
And hopefully, there can be some response from your committee.
Thank you.
Excellent.
Thank you, Joel.
Thank you very much.
Next up, Benjamin Cohen.
Thank you, Senator Brownsberger, and thank you
to the whole special committee on redistricting
for allowing me to speak here today.
Additionally, I'd like to thank everyone else who is here
to give testimony today, as it's better for everyone
when citizens get involved and make our voices heard.
We feel that way, too.
I'm glad that you do.
I have previously criticized this committee
for hosting hearings before the census data was released,
so I very much appreciate this meeting being held today
to allow the public to give feedback
before any maps are finalized.
All in all, I think you guys did a great job
getting these maps out given the pandemic
and the other circumstances surrounding this redistricting
cycle.
That being said, let's get the bad stuff out of the way first.
I personally think that the splits of communities
of color in Springfield, Framingham, Haverhill,
and particularly Brockton, needs to be
reassessed on the House map.
I'm sure that you're going to hear this
from a lot of other people today,
so I'll leave it to them, as they probably thought
about it more than I have.
I would like to focus the rest of my time
on the proposed State Senate map.
Districts 20, 30, 32, 33, 36, and 37 all have moderate
to severe compactness problems, both when measured
by a know-it-when-you-see-it measurement
and by the Polsby-Popper measurement.
District 20 is particularly bad and with the lowest
Polsby-Popper score on the map--
14.6 out of 100.
It's quite clear that we haven't completely abandoned history.
The district kind of looks a bit like
a lizard, a swift-footed lizard, if you may,
which is a close relative of the salamander,
but it's not quite there.
Now, with that said, I'd like to extend my sincerest thanks
to the committee for drawing Senate district number 35,
which is light blue on the map.
And it now contains the towns of Attleboro, North Attleboro,
Norton, Mansfield, Foxborough, Sharon, and Canton.
First, this district is so great because it
was able to unsplit the towns of Sharon and Attleboro,
both of which were split into two
districts on the previous map.
Additionally, this district allows the Attleboros
to be placed in with other towns that are closer to them
in proximity.
Under the previous map, these towns--
the Attleboros, that is--
were in the Norfolk, Bristol, and Middlesex district,
currently held by Becca Raush, which stretch all the way up
to Needham and Wayland.
Finally, this district is so great because of how connected
the towns in it are to each other by public transportation.
I often take the Providence-Stoughton commuter
rail line, which stretches from Boston to Providence.
The south of this line has stops in Attleboro, North Attleboro,
Mansfield, Sharon, and two in Canton.
This new district is proof of what
past and future investments in transportation
can do for everyone in the Commonwealth.
I personally lived in Canton for the first 18 years of my life,
and I've spent the past four years living in Norton
while going to school.
Seeing my lived experience on this district--
seeing my lived experience as a district on this map is a joy,
and I strongly encourage the committee
to keep this district together as they
move to finalize these maps.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate your testimony very much.
Thank you.
So Eric Cochrane is next.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for having the opportunity for me
to speak about the maps, and I appreciate the opportunity
that's made available here.
So I live out in Amherst.
I have a lot of concern about some of the maps, about some
of the neighboring towns around the Quabbin.
First of all, I noticed that Pelham is not
in the same district as Amherst under the proposed maps, which
I think really concerns about it being in a district
with Ludlow, which is a very different kind of town.
Pelham shares a lot with Amherst,
right down to a zip code and the neighboring school districts,
and I feel that they need to be in the same State House
district as-- to have a state rep who
understands the needs of both towns
as they're so very similar.
And the second thing is that I'm concerned about--
that the districts that go up from Ludlow
to New Salem and Petersham has a compactness problem.
It just syncs up-- it looks a bit like--
the way the map shows is like a large purple snake.
It's not very compact, and it's taking
in some towns I feel like are very different from one another
in terms of their history and their concerns.
And additionally, you have towns,
like Leverett and Shutesbury, that
are put in different districts at the moment,
as they were put into the same State House district
as the last time around, which I think
was a very good fit for those towns within Franklin County.
So what I'm saying here is that it
feels like Western Mass is not being adequately represented,
that it's being a bit chopped up.
It's not very compact, these current maps.
So my suggestion is that Amherst and Pelham definitely
need to be in a district together, and then
have Leverett and Shutesbury in the same districts
with other neighboring Franklin County towns.
And additionally, I am also repeating some of the concerns
about Springfield and Brockton, some of the minority
power being a bit cracked up as well,
and that those districts need to be
more compact to enhance the power of communities of color
within those cities.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you so much for your testimony.
We appreciate it very much.
Now, we have Cheryl Crawford, and I
believe that's with a panel.
The other members of that panel are Jeff Foster, Beth Wang,
and Amy Grunder.
That's the Drawing Democracy Coalition's lead panel.
I'll get started.
So really on behalf of the Drawing Democracy Coalition,
I want to thank Chairs Brownsberger and Moran
and the committee for this transparent and collaborative
process for redrawing the electoral district
boundaries in Massachusetts.
We really appreciate that you've taken up
this task with the gravity and the attention it deserves.
Overall, we support the proposed House map with two
requested changes--
the approach to draw majority minority and opportunity
districts, both by total population whenever possible,
we believe is the right approach.
Some of the House districts will provide very good short term
opportunities, especially in the incumbent three majority
minority house districts in Chelsea, Lawrence and Methuen,
Brockton, and Framingham.
Some of these House districts will not
perform until the share of BIPOC voters increases,
but we believe that many of the majority minority
districts that are not viable in the 2022 election likely
will be later in this decade.
It even took Representative Ayanna Pressley seven years
to mount a successful primary campaign,
and it will take emerging leaders a few years in some
of the opportunity districts.
We support the request from Revere Youth in Action
and the Coalition for Social Justice
to make two changes in the 16th and 19th Suffolk districts
in Revere, and the 11th and 13th Bristol districts
to strengthen representation in two critical gateway cities.
Our overarching concern with the Senate map
is that it is overcautious in its reliance on citizen voting
age population to draw majority minority districts.
We believe that there are seven opportunities to draw majority
minority districts across the state on the Senate side,
and we believe the approach to draw majority minority
districts with CVAP dilutes the voting
power of BIPOC communities, especially in the neighboring
Senate districts.
The Voting Rights Act is a safeguard
for underrepresentation, not a barrier to representation,
and although some Senate districts do not
reach the 50% plus 1 of a single minority group by CVAP,
it is still a reasonable political consideration
to group similar communities, notably Brockton and Randolph,
together.
These maps will be in place for the next decade,
and we want the committee to weigh both short term
and long term opportunities.
Solely drawing majority minority Senate districts
based off of CVAP creates short term opportunities
for authentic representation, especially in Boston,
but may foreclose on longer term opportunities for emerging
leaders in rapidly changing communities,
especially Randolph, Brockton, and Haverhill.
We urge the redistricting committee
to consider these requests in the coming days,
and really thank the committee, especially the chairs,
for their collaboration and communication
for many, many months.
Thank you.
Cheryl, I'll hand it over to you.
Or maybe, Jeff or Amy, do you want to go ahead?
I could jump in.
Good afternoon, Chair Brownsberger, Chair Moran,
honorable committee members.
My name is Jeff Foster.
I'm the executive director at Common Cause Massachusetts.
I really want to start by congratulating Chair
Brownsberger, Moran, and your staff
for conducting one of the most transparent and accessible
redistricting processes really in our history,
including over 15 public hearings and many that
were even language specific.
We're thrilled that the House map proposes
an increase from the current 20 majority minority
districts up to 33, notably including
four incumbent free districts.
We're also excited to see the Senate map propose
two new majority minority districts, but as Beth said,
we respectfully believe the Senate map could be stronger.
As was laid out in today's Boston Globe editorial,
the Senate standard is different from what the Senate
and House did 10 years ago and what
the House is doing this year.
We hope that there can be a second look taken at the Senate
maps, particularly to empower Brockton and Boston's
Black communities and Haverhill's Latino community
by using total population.
In 2010, the Senate chose to draw a new majority minority
Senate district in Springfield using total population.
It took almost a full decade, but it eventually
led to the election of Senator Adam Gomez.
The legislature also chose to create a majority minority
congressional district in Boston,
which resulted in the historic election of Congresswoman
Ayanna Pressley.
Neither of those majority minority districts
could be drawn using this stricter
standard of citizen voting age population
of a single group over 50%.
The Voting Rights Act should be the floor, and not the ceiling,
for deciding when and where to draw a majority minority
district.
And we do hope that the Senate's position here
does not set a precedent for future redistricting efforts.
As for Lawrence, we're so appreciative that you've
confirmed the suspicion that there's a Voting Rights Act
violation impacting nearly 73,000 Latinos.
We are concerned, though, that the strict interpretation
of case law here has led to a proposed district that's
too harmful to 36% of Haverhill's Latino population.
Now that we're in a remedial stage of addressing a VRA
violation, we believe that there are other ways
to justify a district for Lawrence that
addressed the VRA, but that doesn't harm Haverhill's Latino
community.
We believe that the 50% plus 1 single group requirement
is useful as a threshold analysis
to determine whether remedial action is necessary.
However, once that threshold is met,
and the legislature determines that remedial action is
necessary, then there is a greater degree
of flexibility in determining exactly how the lines are
drawn.
At that point, it is appropriate to look to a range of factors
to ensure that the remedial district that is drawn
will be effective, and that it keeps communities of interest
together.
One option is to consider our unity map
proposal of putting Lawrence and Methuen together with Dracut.
In both the 2016 and '18 state primaries,
Lawrence turnout represented the majority of voters
in those three municipalities combined,
so we know that the math is there to make it viable.
Perhaps even stronger is a district
that includes all of Haverhill with all of Lawrence
and the majority Latino precincts of Methuen.
That district would be 55% Hispanic in total population,
51.3% Hispanic in voting age population,
and even the CVAP rate is just 4%
less than the current proposed district.
In closing, if there are options on the table
to make our map stronger, we respectfully
ask that you consider them.
By looking again at the Senate map
with a total population standard,
we could possibly get up to seven majority minority Senate
districts, which would result in the Senate diversity being
nearly in parity with the Commonwealth.
And that's a win for all of us.
Thanks, again.
Great.
Thank you.
Cheryl.
I'll go ahead and jump in.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, Chair Brownsberger, Chair Moran,
and the esteemed members of this committee.
My name is Cheryl Clyburn Crawford,
and I am the executive director of Mass Vote, which
is a proud member of the Drawing Democracy Coalition.
Our colleagues have noted how the Senate's
overreliance on citizen voting age population
data contributes to problems when drawing majority minority
districts.
We wish to build off the concerns already expressed.
Boston, for instance, is one area of concern.
We worry that, by placing so many non-white residents
in the Second Suffolk district, it becomes unlikely
that another candidate of color can
be elected in a second Boston State Senate district.
Under the Senate's current proposal,
immigrant communities like Chinatown, South Boston,
the South End, and Dorchester really
risk underrepresentation.
Yet as the Drawing Democracy Coalition made clear
in our draft maps, we have shown how
the Senate can realistically draw two districts that truly
empower non-white residents.
Additional, while we praise the inclusion of Lawrence
in a majority minority district, we also
worry that, under the Senate's current plan,
Latino residents of Haverhill are
at risk of seeing their interests
split along two districts, weakening
their political power.
Finally, we are deeply concerned by the Senate's plan
to place Brockton and Randolph in two separate Senate
districts.
Even though these communities and Stoughton do not
have a majority Black citizen voting age population,
numerous reasons reinforce why they should be
joined in one Senate district.
For example, 30 years ago, Brockton's population
was 80% white and 13% Black.
Randolph was 85% white and 8% Black,
and Stoughton was 94% white and 4% Black.
Now, 30 years later, Brockton is 50% Black
and 35% white, Randolph 48% Black, 32% white,
and Stoughton, 21% Black and 68% white.
These communities have changed for the exact reason
that should be considered in the redistricting process.
Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of immigrants
have moved into the area, like Cape Verdeans.
Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of African-Americans
moved from Boston to this area because of gentrification.
As a result of the lived experiences they share,
the cultural bonds they possess, the challenges they
face, and the policy interests they hold,
these communities form a clear community of interest.
They must be in the same State Senate district.
If these concerns are not addressed,
we worry that the Black and brown low income
and immigrant residents of Massachusetts
will see themselves seriously underrepresented
in the Massachusetts State Senate.
We respectfully urge you to address these concerns.
Thank you.
And I'll pass it to Amy now.
Thank you.
Thank you, all.
Thank you, Chair Brownsberger and Chair Moran
and the honorable members of this committee
for the opportunity to speak to you today.
My name is Amy Grunder, and I direct legislative affairs
for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition.
We, too, would like to extend our deep gratitude
to the chairs and the committee for your work on this really
difficult task.
We're especially grateful for your fully realized commitment
to involve community organizations, including
us, in an extremely accessible and transparent process,
including, again, as mentioned earlier, all
the live interpretation to ensure
more equitable representation for immigrant and BIPOC
communities in our Commonwealth.
As with other communities of color,
the political participation of immigrant communities
is gravely limited by structural racism
and discriminatory federal policies of laws.
This isn't news to anyone here.
Massachusetts does have a once in a decade
opportunity to address these barriers
and, again, advance racial and immigrant justice
in the Commonwealth through redistricting in order
to build the political power of these communities
as this committee did 10 years ago.
The House and Senate maps both advance this goal
by significantly increasing the number of majority minority
districts.
Nonetheless, we do agree with our coalition colleagues
that the Senate map misses an opportunity
to create three districts of critical importance
to immigrant and other communities of color.
We're thrilled with the proposed Worcester and Springfield
districts, and that the Senate map unites the Latino
communities of Lawrence and Methuen,
but very concerned that it does so
at the expense and integrity of Latino communities
in Haverhill.
The Senate map also misses an opportunity
to create a Black majority minority district in Randolph,
Stanton, and Brockton, which is home
to significant Cape Verdean and Haitian communities.
And then finally, while creating a Black majority Second Suffolk
district in Boston, it does miss an opportunity
to draw a BIPOC district in First Suffolk.
And so I'm echoing the concerns of my colleagues
here on this panel.
As a result, we are concerned that the immigrant communities
of color and other communities of color in Chinatown, South
Boston, the South End, and Dorchester
will be deprived of the chance to elect
a candidate of their choosing.
We respectfully urge this committee
to reconsider the proposed Senate district
maps for Haverhill, Brockton, and Boston,
and propose that the Drawing Democracy Coalition's unity
map does offer alternative ways that would both honor accepted
principles of redistricting and create districts that
would allow communities of color to achieve equitable political
representation in our state.
And we strongly encourage you to embrace this really historic
opportunity to draw districts that
empower these communities to elect candidates that represent
their unique interests in the state legislature especially.
Thank you for your consideration of our recommendations.
I want to thank the Drawing Democracy
Coalition for all the collaboration we've
had over the past many months and for all the guidance
and input you've offered to us, and we will consider everything
that you've said today, as well as everything
that you've been saying through the past many months.
And we're grateful for all of that input.
Should we move on to the next panel?
I see no questions or comments, so I'm
going to call Pat Wojtas--
no, I'm sorry, Carol Chan of Framingham.
I'm not seeing Carol, but I do see Pat.
So the next three people--
we're missing Carol, but we've got Patricia Bensetler
of Bolton, Andy Vargas of Haverhill, Janet
Wilkins of Topsfield.
Let's make sure that those folks are ready to jump in,
and you can go ahead and promote them.
So next witness is Pat Wojtas.
Yes, thank you, Senator, for the opportunity
to speak to the committee about the work
that you've done on redistricting.
We definitely appreciate that, and before I
get to the concerns we have, I am
a member of the Select Board in the town of Chelmsford.
We want to note and appreciate the efforts
to make Chelmsford more of a whole community.
As I'm sure you're aware, for the past 20 years,
we have been parts of four House districts,
and through your efforts to redraw especially
the 14th Middlesex District, we'll now be down to three.
So we definitely appreciate your efforts on that.
The other two districts, in addition is the 14th Middlesex,
are the Second and 16th Middlesex,
which share other parts of Chelmsford.
When we first saw the proposed drawing of those,
comparing that to the new precincts that
had been drawn by our town clerk and registrars,
it looked as if there possibly would
be up to four precincts that would have to be split,
which would create a lot of voter confusion
and a lot of additional work for the registrars and the town
clerk.
My understanding is that they have
worked, the registrars and clerk,
to adjust some of the-- realigned some of the precincts
so that it would be reduced to just potentially two precincts,
which would now be split.
I guess, our ask would be that the committee staff work
with our registrars and town clerk
to see if there could be some accommodation made
for the Second Middlesex and 16th Middlesex,
such that, ideally, for all our new precincts
to be wholly within a district, but at worst case,
if it could be reduced to just one precinct, which potentially
would be split.
Obviously, the number of residents
is going to stay the same, and we're asking just
for changes within the town of Chelmsford, not to go outside
of our town boundaries at all.
So again, we'll be looking forward to the final result
that you come up with, and understand
the difficult timelines you have to reach
over the next several weeks.
And once again, thank you very much for allowing
us to provide this feedback.
Thank you.
We thank you for your feedback, and each and every person
that is testifying today, we are thanking you.
Moving on, thank you, Patricia Bensetler.
She's not on, but I have Janet Wilkins.
Janet Wilkins of Topsfield please.
I also thank you for giving me this opportunity.
I'm not speaking on behalf of any particular group.
I'm just a concerned citizen and Topsfield.
I've been a 55 year resident of Topsfield,
and in the latest census, our population
has grown to just over the threshold of 6,200 residents,
enough that we need to add a precinct.
But this was anticipated, and has been very well addressed
by our very capable town clerk.
What was not anticipated is the breaking up of this small rural
in nature community into two districts
that will be represented by two different people.
And as we are currently in a special election,
it is assumed, on my part, that one rep will
be elected by the voters of Topsfield
and others in the Fourth Essex district,
and the other will be assigned to us by the state.
Seriously, Topsfield's still the same small community
that it has been before this redistricting proposal.
We are still governed by a Select Board and a town
administrator.
The size of Topsfield does not warrant being
divided into two districts.
It will only serve to confuse voters.
I have seen this happen in other larger communities that
have already been divided into two or more districts, which
by the way, brings me back to our special election.
At a time when voters nationwide are suffering campaign burnout,
what better way could you have found
to kill interest in our special election that
is being held to replace representative Brad
Hill in the current Fourth Essex district?
What this sounds like is, in effect, go ahead
have your special election, but know that
should your candidate of choice win,
there's still no assurance that they
will turn out to be your representative after all.
It will all depend on which half of Topsfield
we'll decide to assign each representative.
Again, I have nothing more to add,
but I thank you for the opportunity.
We appreciate you taking the time to be with us today.
Thank you.
Chairman Moran.
Janet, thank you for your testimony,
and I feel like I need to give you an explanation.
It was apparent to us at one point
in this process that the--
and I know you're going to say, how does this come to us.
But it was apparent to us that we
could draw a third district in Lawrence that
was majority Hispanic, and under Section 2 of the Voting Rights
Act, we felt that if we didn't, we
would be certainly open for a lawsuit.
And that lawsuit, in my opinion, would be justified.
So once we made the decision to do that,
we knew it was going to affect the districts north of that,
which is Methuen.
Methuen can't go anywhere north because that's New Hampshire,
and to its left, you have Dracut,
which was in a district, a whole district.
And you had Haverhill, which is too big to have just one rep,
so it has to have two reps.
When we pushed the district north of the new district,
which is currently represented by Linda Dean Campbell,
we had to push that district into Haverhill, thereby pushing
everybody in Haverhill out of Haverhill
into surrounding districts.
And the way the population growth has been up there,
it became apparent that we did not have enough people,
once we did the Lawrence district, to satisfy
another full district.
So then it was up to us to decide how to solve that,
and what we did is we got rid of the Brad Hill district
solely because it was a district that just didn't fit anymore
after we put the Lawrence district in there.
And then we have the challenge of deciding
where cities and towns go, and when
you're drawing a district that has a plus or minus 5 deviation
that has to land somewhere around 43,000 people,
6,000 people is a lot.
I think we split 90-- we have 351 cities and towns,
and we only have 160 districts.
So whether we like it or not, some towns have to be split.
And the way the population was moving down from Haverhill
through the corner of the map, which
was Amesbury and the Amesbury area, we came upon Topsfield,
and it was just too big to put into one district.
And we knew it had to be split anyway
because it was over the 6,000 and change,
and that's how we ended up splitting that town.
I remember 10 years ago when I did this,
Deval Patrick was our governor, and at the bill signing
of the redistricting committee, the bill that we sent him,
he was asked about how his town that he lives in,
Milton, was split between two congressional districts.
And he said at the time, he said--
and he's the most powerful politician
in the state at the time.
He said, well, I asked people if they don't want their town
to be split, then which towns do you want split?
And he said, after that, he said, it's funny,
I never get an answer to that.
So I totally appreciate, and I understand Topsfield's
frustration with being split.
I apologize for the fact that we had to do that.
And know that it was done for no other reason
than the population shifts in that area,
and that, coupled with the new Lawrence district,
just led us to that decision.
So I felt like I needed to give you an explanation for that.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, again.
Any other questions, comments?
All right, going to Andy Vargas.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
That's me.
I don't know if you knew that.
But I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
Thank you, Chair Brownsberger, Chair Moran,
for inviting public comment on the proposed maps
that you worked so hard to develop.
It's been an honor to be a part of this committee,
and I appreciate the transparent process
and the engaging process that you all undertook.
There's been a lot of studies around how participation
has increased in the time of Zoom,
and we certainly saw that through the redistricting
process.
So thank you all very much for that.
And while I understand the challenges that
come with redistricting, I feel the deep responsibility
to highlight the harm the proposed Senate maps would
do to my hometown of Haverhill.
Chair Brownsberger, the following
is not a criticism of you, your values, or intentions.
I just want to make that abundantly clear.
The Massachusetts Senate redistricting map for Haverhill
harms our community in the following ways.
First, I have concerns with the Senate
establishing a precedent for using citizens voting
age population as the bar that needs
to be met in order to draw a majority minority district.
Seeking to find majority CVAP of one particular demographic
is a dangerous bar, and a precedent is set,
and it has long term ramifications.
This bar is extremely high, and as such,
is the standard conservative states have used to justify
not drawing majority minority districts,
where minorities make up a majority
of the total population.
The House's standard of total population
should have been the bar in the Senate as well.
The House's use of total population
led to 33 majority minority districts, the absolute amount
that could have been drawn.
Instead, the Senate used CVAP and drew only five majority
minority districts short of the seven that can be drawn.
Further splitting up a previously unified gateway city
should not be the default option simply
to try to reach an excessively high bar
to define majority minority.
Second, if the intention of the proposed maps
was to empower the Latino community in the Merrimack
Valley, which I don't doubt that it was,
the outcome is the exact opposite, however.
Under the maps proposed by the largest democracy
and civil rights groups in the Commonwealth,
Lawrence Latinos are able to elect
the candidate of their choosing, and Haverhill Latinos
are influential in electing their own senator
of their choosing in a separate district.
The Senate proposal takes away the opportunity
to have potentially two Hispanic senators from the Merrimack
Valley instead of one.
By surgically removing some Haverhill Latinos
and loading them into a Lawrence Senate district,
you take away the opportunity to have two Senate districts where
Latinos are a majority in one, and have
significant political influence in the other.
Third, the proposed maps signal that Haverhill Latinos
are expendable in order to satisfy a Voting Rights Act
concern in Lawrence.
It's essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Haverhill Latinos have been working for the past decade
to develop our own identity, a political capital
in the city of Haverhill.
This plan dilutes our voices and assumes
we have more in common with Lawrence than our own home
community just because we're Latino.
Furthermore, the proposed maps do the following
to Haverhill, a gateway city of 36 square miles
and 67,000 people.
36%, more than a third of the Haverhill Latinos,
are placed in a Senate district with Wilmington, Andover,
and Duxbury.
No offense to those communities-- wonderful
communities.
The following neighborhoods with significant Latino populations
are split into two Senate districts--
the Acre, the Highlands, Mount Washington, and Forest Acres
here in Haverhill.
Haverhill's been taken from the largest
city in the current Senate district
into being split and diluted into two Senate districts.
And finally, I also have concerns
with the math being used to justify
the padding of Haverhill Latinos into this district
and dividing Haverhill along ethnic and racial lines.
Estimating CVAP with the American Community surveys
is a legally untested method.
No one here knows what the courts
would say about justifying a district based off
of speculative ACS citizenship data.
The bottom line is this--
there's flexibility in redistricting.
There are legal parameters, and then there
are also values, principles, and real outcomes to consider.
There's more than enough flexibility in the law
to allow both a majority Latino Senate district with Lawrence,
while allowing Haverhill Latinos to be
influential in their own Senate district.
What is paramount to the redistricting process
is to listen to communities and find solutions to maximize
equity and representation.
That's all we're asking for here,
and it's in accordance with today's Boston Globe editorial
board piece that highlighted how the House's approach maximizes
long term equity and representation.
At the end of the day, a coalition of advocates
put forth a unity map that solved the Voting Rights Act
concerns in Lawrence and kept Haverhill whole.
Haverhill's Latino community, Haverhill residents,
local officials, and state leaders
are all united with these activists and largest
civil rights organizations in Massachusetts,
and asking you not to do this.
We ask that you implement the coalition's maps
and listen to our community.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate your testimony.
Appreciate all the work you're doing.
Any questions or comments for Representative Vargas?
Janet Wilkins of Topsfield?
She already went.
We do have Carol Chan.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I slipped them over.
The next one you have is-- oh, going back to Carol Chan.
Great.
Yep.
Thank you.
Carol Chan.
Hello?
You're on.
My screen is showing Maeve Wiesen.
You are on.
I'm on.
So thank you so much for taking time.
First of all, I want to echo what everyone has said.
I can see what an incredibly difficult, challenging job this
is, and I think you've done a remarkable job.
Nonetheless, many of us are certainly
feel that things could be a little better
for our own community, but I can see very clearly how difficult
this juggling act is.
I am from Framingham, and I am from precinct 3
in Framingham, which is the northeast corner.
I am a resident who, for the last--
I don't know-- five, six years, was the one little corner
of Framingham that was not represented by the two
districts in Framingham.
We were lumped in with Wayland--
I don't know-- Sudbury, Marlborough, et cetera,
and we quite honestly felt that we had little
to no representation even though we had a wonderful rep.
But we were such a tiny piece of his district
that we felt we had no voice.
So I appreciate that feedback was heard,
and an effort was made to pull my precinct back in.
And you have done that.
I'm in that little claw shaped red district that
circles around the big blue new district in the middle.
I also understand that because Framingham's population
is 72,000--
can you hear me?
Yes, we hear you.
Go ahead.
I understand that, because our population is 72,000,
we have to have at least two districts,
and I can understand, with all of the constraints
we're putting in the minority district--
and I do think that's a great idea.
And I am delighted that the Framingham minority
population will have an opportunity to be represented.
What disturbs me, distresses me, is
that, instead of splitting us into three districts,
you've split us into four districts
for no obvious apparent reason.
I would like to request--
I don't have the exact numbers here, but looking at the map,
there's one little chunk of Framingham that's
been in the northwest quadrant.
They've been tacked on to adjacent districts.
One is a district that goes out as far as Worcester,
and for the people who live in that corner of Framingham,
they have been cut off.
And I want to echo what the lady from Brockton said,
and a number of the other speakers.
While we appreciate the importance,
and I totally support the importance of the majority
minority representation, the integrity of the community
is very, very important-- all the people in the community,
including the minorities, everybody, every corner.
We all share more in common than we are different,
and to split us into four districts
means nobody really has representation
except perhaps that center new district in the middle.
But the rest of us are so disparate.
And things have happened.
Framingham has missed important opportunities in the past.
We were supposed to have a major project with Mass Bay Community
College building a new campus.
That fell by the wayside.
Other things like that.
When we don't have solid representation in town,
in the city, it's hard for us to progress
and keep up and move forward.
And we're just asking that you not
divide us into so many pieces that it
looked less gerrymandered--
I understand.
I can see the millions of constraints you have,
and I do appreciate that.
But if there is some way that Framingham could at least be
brought back to three districts split
three ways instead of four, it would be much appreciated.
By the numbers, we only need to be split in two,
and so it's pushing it to split to three.
And then I don't understand where it gets split to four.
That's all I need to say, and I don't
mean to sound complaining.
I do realize how complex this is,
and any change you make for any one town
impacts those around us.
But many, many-- looking at the whole map
of the state, many, many towns get
to keep their entire town contiguous within one district,
and that's ideal.
Framingham, I understand, has to be split,
but don't split us into four pieces.
Try to get it down to three, if you could.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for your testimony.
Anybody wish to comment?
Thank you.
Ask further questions?
Thank you.
Who's next, Maeve?
I promoted the next three people,
so it's Graciella Trillo then Lynne Bermudez, then
Andrea Fenster.
Terrific.
Graciella, please.
Hi, folks.
Thank you so much for letting us have this forum.
I'm very grateful for the transparency, as others have
mentioned, and all of your work, and I'm
sure the considerations you had to make were very thoughtful.
I'd like to echo what several people have
said about Haverhill.
I'm a resident of Haverhill, an advocate
for the Latino community, homeowner, teacher, business
owner.
And I have watched Haverhill, the Latino community
in Haverhill, grow not only in staying power,
where there's very little transients-- folks who
come, raise multiple generations of families here.
And I've also seen the leadership of the town
be very receptive and embracing of the Latino community.
We happen to work very well together,
and that has been an effort that has taken time.
So I would like to just bring to your attention
how devastating it would be for the heart of our Latino
community to be excised, for what
appears to be the benefit of the Lawrence and Methuen
contingent.
No disrespect to them or to your thoughts
in making the Latino community a large majority minority
district for representation and strength in the Merrimack
Valley.
However, what it would do to Haverhill,
as has been said very eloquently,
is diminish and make it the voice of the Latinos
who have, at this point, really taken
a hold with our community, and really dilute it, diminish it,
and make it pretty much inconsequential.
Because Lawrence, of course, can stand on its own,
the Latinos in Methuen can only support that, augment that.
But the Haverhill Latinos--
it's a large group.
We're 16,000, and we're in a large city--
the largest city in the districts that we have been--
that surround us.
Yet the idea of taking 36% of our Latino base
and moving that and splitting that,
and it really intersects the heart
of our community in Haverhill.
That just would be a very dangerous precedent for us,
and we would hope very much that you would consider
the work that not only the Latino community,
but the leaders in Haverhill have
done to bring us all together.
And Haverhill being big-- it's not little.
It's big.
There are a lot of us.
I think we really deserve to stand together
as one of the communities that has really worked hard
to do that, and I do believe that our voice would
be much more amplified in its entity
with the city of Haverhill, who stands on its own
with its diverse, inclusive, and progressive culture.
Please don't cut the heart out of our Latino community
in Haverhill at the expense--
at our expense to create a single strong district.
As Andy Vargas had said, if there's
a way to have more majority minority districts,
why are we, yes, robbing Peter to pay Paul?
To support perhaps one ideal, but at the great expense
of those of us who are not going anywhere
and care very deeply about our city.
Big city, large geographic area, large population merits
to be kept in its entirety if possible.
Thank you for your passionate testimony.
Just a couple of real quick comments if I may.
Of course, all the great work that you've
been doing to elect city councilors and state
representatives will, in no way, be diminished by this change.
And second, there is not a second minority majority
district to be had up in the Merrimack Valley.
There's only one.
I mean, in the second district, the Hispanic community
will be a relatively small minority actually.
So just to be clear, there's, at most,
one majority Hispanic district, or anything
that's remotely majority Hispanic district
in the Merrimack Valley area.
So any other, I mean, comments, questions
that people might have?
All right, well, thank you again for your strong testimony,
and we will keep listening.
Hey, Chairman Moran.
Thank you, Senator.
I just wondered if I could mention a few of my colleagues
that have joined us.
Tommy Golden, the gentleman from Lowell is here.
Thank you, Tommy, for joining us.
Bill Strauss, the gentleman from Mattapoisett.
Thank you, Bill for being with us.
Representative Dan Hunt, the representative from Dorchester.
Thank you, Dan.
And also from Holden, Mass, Representative Kim Ferguson.
Thank you, Kim, for joining us.
Senator?
Thank you.
Thank you again, Miss Trillo, very much
appreciate your testimony.
Lynne Bermudez, please?
Thank you very much, Senator.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the committee.
I am the chair of the Topsfield Select Board,
and I very much appreciate the comments of Miss Wilkins
earlier about our wishing to retain one
representative for the town.
That's what we're used to, but I understand
the complexities of all the work that you're doing.
What I'm going to be speaking about
is a problem that we see with the map,
but we believe there's a very easy fix for it.
So recently, I would say over the past eight months,
we put together two precincts for our town.
Up until recently, the recent census,
we have been a single precinct.
We put about eight months into thought work and analysis
and working with the LEDRC to come up with a division
that we think makes sense for our residents,
and it's broken along major roads in town.
Looking at the redistricting map,
it appears as if there was another line that was used,
and what we're requesting is that the boundary
lines that we had come up with, and that the town had approved,
be used in place of the line that you have.
It doesn't make a difference in the number of residents
that are in each district.
And I just got off a call with our current Senator
Lovely and our future Senator Tarr and representatives Kerans
and Minicucci, and we were all in agreement
that this minor fix to the boundary line
would save our town a significant amount of confusion
and money.
Going from one precinct, this would be basically putting us
into four quadrants.
So in every district, you would have two precincts.
So instead of having one ballot with one machine
and limited staff, we would have four ballots and four machines,
and we would require much more staff.
It would be confusing to the people in town,
and it would strain our already limited resources.
So we have sent off a letter to your committee with a map,
and we're going to actually send another letter today that
adjusts the current map that you have, or the proposed one,
with the minor change.
It angles that line just the slightest bit,
but it would make a significant difference to our town.
We're concerned that the confusion among residents
would suppress the vote, that people would not
know exactly who they were voting for
or where they should go, and it would be expensive for us.
So if you could make that minor fix,
we think it's a reasonable and simple adjustment that
would not affect any demographic splits or number of residents
per district.
And it is agreed to by all of the legislators that
would be involved in our town going forward.
So I appreciate your consideration
of this small fix, and I will send off today that letter
and a follow-up letter from our meeting
with the senators and representatives.
Thank you.
Sorry.
Chairman Moran.
Lynne, I just have one question.
How far along in the process are you
for these the new precinct lines?
Have you--
They have been approved by the town,
and we've been working with the state on this.
And they have been sent off to the state.
Have the LEDRC-- have they approved them?
To be honest with you, I think Beth Willis, our clerk,
is on this call.
I would think that they would have because they
have been working with us.
It's gone back and forth.
They've made changes.
We've made changes.
So I would have to say yes because we just
finished getting the boundary descriptions approved
by the state.
So I would say yes.
These are the type of discussions
that we like to have, and these are the discussions
that we do have because of the process we put in place.
And what we're going to do is we'll reach out to the LEDRC
and see if your maps are likely to be approved.
This is one of the problems we are dealing because of COVID.
It's hard for us to draw maps off
of potential precincts that may or may not be approved.
I've been on the call with a number of municipalities
telling me that they have no lines,
and then when I ask them, have they been approved,
and they're like, no, they're going to the council next week.
I'm like, well, that doesn't really help us.
If they've been approved by the town,
and the LEDRC does sign off and tell us that they won't likely
be a problem, we would have no problem incorporating any fix
that you would want, especially if you-- the way
you've done it, and you certainly
have notified all your electeds.
And if everybody's on board, and the LEDRC is OK with it,
then we would have no problem making
that fix provided it doesn't throw us out
of balance between districts.
That's the other thing that we have to worry about,
because while it may work in one case,
if you tip another one too high, then
now, we have to-- that follows down the map into other areas.
So if all of that checks out, I would
be more than happy to make that change,
and thank you for bringing it up.
And we'll look at it, and we'll get back to you.
Thank you so much, chairman.
Thank you.
Great.
Next would be Andrea Fenster.
Hello.
Thank you, members of the committee,
for providing the opportunity for me to testify today.
I will keep it--
I'll try and keep it brief.
My name is Andrea Fenster, and I'm
a staff attorney at the Prison Policy Initiative.
For the last 20 years, the Prison Policy Initiative
has been working to quantify the harm to our democracy that's
caused by the Census Bureau's practice of counting
incarcerated people as residents of the prison location.
The resulting redistricting with these skewed district
populations is often referred to as prison gerrymandering.
Now, Massachusetts largely avoided prison gerrymandering
in the 2010 redistricting cycle, and today, I'm
here to urge you to continue to be mindful of these prison
populations as you revise the proposed maps.
And where possible, use the allowable deviations
to account for those prisons.
Massachusetts has previously recognized the importance
of counting people at home.
The 2010 report from the chairs of a Special Joint Committee
on redistricting found that counting people in this way
does a disservice to the state and should be changed.
In 2010, Massachusetts is one of just three states
that took significant steps to avoid prison gerrymandering,
and now, following the lead of states like Massachusetts,
about 12 other states are expected
to avoid prison gerrymandering this cycle.
While we're happy to see the state's efforts
to avoid prison gerrymandering and happy to see that they
continue during this redistricting cycle,
there is still room for improvement.
As an example, on its face, the proposed boundaries
for the 37th Middlesex District don't really
deviate from the ideal population,
but that includes MCI Shirley and FMC Devens.
Without using those populations to pad the district,
it falls short by 5.5%.
Now, ideally, the districts that contain large prison
populations would be overpopulated
to account for the residents from other parts of the state
that were counted there.
So for example, the Ninth Norfolk district
is overpopulated by 4.9%, but when
you account for the populations of MCI Norfolk, Cedar Junction,
and Bonneville Correctional Center,
that goes down to a mere 0.5% deviation.
To assist you with this we're going
to be submitting some more extensive comments that
include more information about the prison
populations in Massachusetts, but in the meantime,
we urge you, just at the very least,
to continue to be mindful of the prison populations
as you're incorporating community feedback
and edits into these districts.
I know it's really complicated, and we're just
so thankful to be here.
So we just want to make sure that no one Massachusetts
State legislative district is allowed to dramatically bypass
the principles of equal representation.
Thank you all for your time.
Thank you so much for your testimony
and for bringing us back to that important issue, which
is one we did give consideration to and struggle with.
Any comments, questions from members of the committee?
Representative Dan Hunt, and then I'll
go to Mayor Fiorentini in a moment.
Thank you, chairman.
Thank you, committee members.
Thank you, Chairman Moran for your hard work
over the past few months.
I wear many hats today as a member of this committee,
as a state representative of Dorchester,
as the chair of the ward 16 Democratic committee,
and a resident of 16-9.
The proposal for the Suffolk district and the First Suffolk
Senate district to remove 16 9, 10, and 12
and pass them down to the current Norfolk,
Bristol, and Plymouth district on the Senate side
that would then become, I believe,
the Norfolk, Bristol, Plymouth, and Suffolk district,
I believe goes against the tenets of what you're
trying to do and keep communities of like interest
whole, unify cities and wards.
These three precincts are among the top voting percentage
precincts in the entire city and among those of the state.
I believe that this action would dilute
the city's voice of a community of urban, diverse, heavily
union-affiliated working class people in Boston
and fit it into a Senate district that
is upper class, that lacks diversity, and lacks
the needs of an urban district.
From my brief analysis, that's less than yours,
it would appear that the ward 16 area of Dorchester and Neponset
has always been kept whole in the Senate district.
This proposal, by moving 16 9, 10, and 12
splits St. Anne's Parish.
It splits St. Brendan's Parish.
It splits the Pope's Hill Neighborhood Association,
which is one of the largest and oldest civic associations
in the city of Boston.
It splits in half the Cedar Grove Civic Association,
which is one of the oldest and longest in the city of Boston.
I appreciate your hard work, and I know and appreciate
that creating the Second Suffolk Senate district
and making sure that was a strong majority minority
district was one of this committee's goals,
and I appreciate that you've accomplished that.
Moving those three precincts back to the First Suffolk
district and following the Drawing Democracy lines
by keeping ward 16 whole and stopping the First Suffolk
district, that's currently represented
by Nick Collins at Tremont Street, accomplishes this goal.
Alternatively, on Monday-- and I appreciate Chairman Moran
saying that these votes haven't been taken yet.
Alternatively, on Monday, the city council
will be voting on their new precinct
lines, which they have been working on for the better
part of two years.
If you simply include the precincts that are currently
in the First Suffolk district, that
solves your issue of that First Suffolk
district being overpopulated.
Right now, the Norfolk, Bristol, and Plymouth district
goes from Milton down to Bridgewater and East
Bridgewater.
It would appear that this would then make it even less compact
than it already is.
And I know that Chairman Moran had
mentioned House Bill 4118, which allows
you to utilize census blocks.
That is another way that you can accomplish
having the First Suffolk district mirror
what it looked like in the past and not be overpopulated.
So with that, again, thank this committee for its hard work,
and I would hope that you keep ward 16 hole,
you keep Dorchester whole as one of the larger populations
in the city of Boston.
I thank you for your time.
Appreciate your testimony and appreciate the input,
and we'll certainly keep it very much in mind.
Is Eric Van Loon up next?
We wanted to go to Mayor--
Oh, yes, thank you.
Mayor Fiorentini.
Thank you for your patience, mayor.
I appreciate and look forward to your testimony.
Thank you so much, Senator Brownsberger.
It's great to talk with you, again, and Chairman Moran, all
the other reps and senators.
I appreciate the opportunity to be here and to speak today.
I'm here today to speak about Senate district D19.
I want to echo what our state representative Andres
Vargas had to say.
I was thrilled today to hear so much concern
from people outside of Haverhill about the Haverhill Senate
district.
I strongly urge you to reconsider that proposal.
This proposed new district will split our community in half,
divides much of our minority community,
and splits them off from Haverhill
into a district where they no longer vote in Haverhill--
no longer vote with Haverhill.
They'll vote with Methuen and Lawrence.
This will dilute their votes and all but guarantee
that no minority from Haverhill will ever
be elected to the state Senate.
The proposed map segregates our minority community,
puts them outside of Haverhill and back
into Methuen and Lawrence.
It plays into one of the most common untrue prejudices that
allowed vocal minority have of our Latino
community-- that they're not really part of Haverhill.
They're part of Lawrence.
In fact, our minority community want to be integrated here.
They left Florence to come here and be part of Haverhill,
just as my grandparents did a century ago.
They want to be part of our community.
They've worked hard to be integrated.
They've worked hard to be members
of our boards and commissions.
They don't want to be split from Haverhill.
They want to be part of our city,
and they've worked so hard to do so.
And this is by no means a slight to either Methuen or Lawrence--
two great communities.
Wholly apart from the Latino situation of totally
diluting the votes of 16,000 members of the Latinos,
this proposal is wrong for our community
for several other reasons.
Gateway cities need strong representation.
That's been proven time and time again.
This deprives us of one.
The 16,000 Latino members of our community
will almost certainly never be able to elect a senator,
but the rest of the city will not
be able to elect a senator either.
I've heard, and we all know--
I've heard people speak today of people in the suburbs
not being willing to vote for a minority from a gateway city.
That's probably true, but what's also true
is that there's a strong voting challenge against voting
for anyone from a gateway city.
A Haverhill candidate will find it impossible to get elected--
or almost impossible to get elected in either of the Senate
districts and make it almost impossible for our city
to have an elected member of the State Senate.
It's a disaster for Haverhill, which
is redoing its precinct lines.
In several areas, there will be people in the same precinct who
will have different ballots for state rep, different ballots
and different Senate districts.
I like the idea of Mr. John Foster,
whom I've never met before.
He suggested different ways of keeping Haverhill intact
and not diluting our vote, one of which
was to keep Lawrence with Dracut and Methuen.
Haverhill is diversifying on its own.
Left on its own, Haverhill has a very good chance
of having minority representation.
I ask you to keep Haverhill intact
and not to split our community.
Thank you for allowing me to speak.
Of course, mayor.
We're always want to hear from you in public
and in private any time.
We appreciate your input greatly.
And any questions, comments for the mayor?
Thank you so much for being with us today, Mayor Fiorentini.
We appreciate your testimony.
So is Eric Von Loon up next, Maeve?
Yes.
Eric Von Loon.
Hi, can you hear me OK?
Yes, you're live.
Terrific.
Thank you so much for this opportunity
to comment on what is truly an overall excellent redistricting
plan that you all have created, especially
the creation of the 15 new majority minority districts.
It's a huge public service for the Commonwealth,
and we support that fully and are enthusiastic about it.
I'm here today to ask you also to reconsider
the drawing of the lines for Middlesex 13 and 14
in order to embrace other important values in addition
to majority minority districts, and that would not affect
any of the districts that--
the new ones you've created.
One of those values is town integrity, keeping communities
together, and another is a common representation
for joint school districts.
Our town of Concord, where I'm from,
has been in a single district for decades, maybe back
to 1775.
I'm not sure how long.
But this new plan divides the town,
puts half the town in a four town district,
and the other half in a separate five town district.
And I believe there's maybe no other, or only one other,
place in all of Middlesex County where a town is in a five town
district.
Having served-- been elected six times as our Concord town
moderator, I presided over a lot of special and annual town
meetings, and I can say, from that vantage point,
that there's a very strong civic minded population in Concord
that is cohesive and that thinks of itself as a unity
and would very much like to be kept in the situation of having
a single state representative.
There's a technical glitch, if you will,
in that Concord has grown, and population distribution
has changed so that none of our five current precincts
comply with state law.
I believe the drawings might have been using the 2010
census, but upgrading them to the 2020 census,
which we're just in the process of completing,
will require some redrawing of Concord area anyway.
And we would hope that could be an opportunity
to try to put the town back together Humpty Dumpty style,
if you will.
There is one other consideration that we
would ask you to think about, and that
is reuniting Concord and our neighboring town of Carlisle
into a single district.
We have the Concord Carlisle Regional school district.
Historically, Carlisle was part of Concord.
We have, today, the Concord Carlisle Community
Chess, the Concord Carlisle League of Women Voters,
and on and on.
The two communities are very close,
and we would ask your consideration
in both reuniting Concord and then
having Concord and Carlisle in a single district.
And I thank you so much for this opportunity
to present this view.
Thank you for taking the time to be with us.
Certainly appreciate it.
Questions, comments from members of the panel?
Hearing none.
Thank you, sir, very much.
Kerry Patel?
She's not here.
I believe the next person is Gabriela--
Is Senator Collins here?
No.
All right, Gabriela Taveras?
Hello, can you hear me well?
Yes.
Yes?
Thank you so much.
Well, first I want to thank the members of the Special Joint
Committee for your hard work and for continuing
to create a space where us citizens can
impart our opinions of the redistricting map.
I would also like to thank representative Andy Vargas
for making such an opportunity visible to his constituents
online.
As you mentioned, I'm Gabriela Taveras,
and I'm the vice president of the Equal Pay
Group, which is a pay equity and DDI consulting firm.
And I'm also a proud resident of Lawrence, Massachusetts.
I understand that redistricting map that is being considered
intends to group Lawrence with the Methuen and/or
Haverhill based off of the discussions today.
Therefore, to begin my testimony,
I would like to clearly state that I do not
believe that Lawrence should be grouped with Haverhill
or Methuen because our realities are very different.
Recently, representative Tackey Chan reintroduced bill H3115
in September, which called for equitable representation
of various ethnicity groups, and I
would like to use this bill as an example
that simply groups these communities together,
suggesting that you see the residents of these communities
as all the same.
But we are not.
I was born and raised in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
I've seen the Lawrence that was referred
to as the City of the Damned due to high crime and drug
trafficking and the lack of proper infrastructure.
I've also seen the Lawrence that became a place of solace
for immigrants under the Trump era
when it felt as though Latinos had limited options
to find fellowship and a safe community.
Now, I'm also seeing the gentrification of Lawrence
as we become a Boston metro city, where citizens are being
priced out of housing as professionals from Boston
begin to move into the city and into luxury apartments built
by developers.
One thing that's remained consistent
through all of these Lawrence eras
is that our voice has been diminished.
I'm grateful that the conversation
around redistricting is being had because every vote
and voice matters, and that's ultimately what this affects.
As a resident, I can confidently say that our voice has not
been heard.
While surrounding communities such as Dracut, Andover,
and Tewksbury, who we previously were grouped in with,
received collectively $38 million
in funding for infrastructure and/or education,
Lawrence is highlighted by our Senator
as having only received hundreds of thousands.
As the opioid epidemic rampages the entire state,
and truthfully, the entire country,
Lawrence remains one of the few communities in the Merrimack
Valley that provides the proper support
to house, feed, and rehabilitate people
experiencing the terrible disease of addiction.
Lawrence houses the largest homeless population
in the Merrimack Valley due to the surrounding
cities and their focus on public safety,
economic consequences, and image issues
associated with homelessness.
To support these three objectives, ordinances, zoning,
and police policies against loitering in public places,
sleeping in public places, and restrictions on panhandling
make it impossible to be homeless in their communities.
Ultimately, this just proves that the city of Lawrence
leads with its own identity of inclusivity, compassion,
and empathy.
And this is not a jab at surrounding communities
as I know that they do a lot of great individual work,
but this is simply the truth of people who live in Lawrence.
To properly represent a community,
you must look at who its people are.
We may share an area code, but we are not
sharing in identities.
As it stands, Lawrence is an overwhelmingly majority Latinx
community and has not received the proper legislative support
in the Senate that it needs and deserves
because our representation is lacking.
Combining us with Haverhill or Methuen,
as has been echoed throughout this entire hearing,
it would further this injustice and strip us of the opportunity
to create additional Latin representation in the Senate
that truly reflects us.
As diversity, equity, and inclusion
become a strategic focus in every conversation,
and clearly have been in your conversations,
I ask, how is it that we've allowed the 13th largest
city in Massachusetts, with nearly 80,000 residents,
that is larger than both Methuen and Haverhill,
to be continuously misrepresented by individuals
who do not represent our realities firsthand.
I close with this last statement--
if the true intended goal of redistricting
is to establish equity and give the people its voice back,
then I hope that you earnestly consider my testimony
and reconsider grouping Lawrence with Methuen or Haverhill.
We are our own people with our own identity,
and at last, we deserve our own voice.
And I hope that you will consider
allowing us to be able to vote someone
into office to represent that.
Thank you for your time and for considering
how your decisions affect my community, and with that,
I am all set.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for your testimony.
So I do have a question for you.
So Lawrence is about 90,000 people,
and to constitute a Senate district,
we have to have about another 85,000 or 90,000 people.
So we have to group Lawrence with some community.
Did you have any thoughts about who we should group it with?
Well, if we have to group Lawrence with another district,
then I do think it's difficult because I
hear the city of Haverhill when they talk about how they built
a Latin community that is so strong and robust,
that they want to be able to honor theirs.
And I feel as though grouping us even with what they're doing
is difficult because it is still a predominantly
white community, and the Latinx community is a little bit less
represented.
So if we had to choose and say, well, we have to pick one,
then of the two, I would say we would probably
have to do Methuen.
But I do think that there is a lot more room for conversations
to be had.
And I know that I'm coming later in the process,
so I don't want to discount the many hearings that you've had.
But I do think that it's important for us
to be able to look at the holistic picture of who is it
that is the most represented?
Where is it that we can be highly represented
and be able to have a greater say and a voice?
Well, that's very much our goal, and we
appreciate your testimony.
Any other questions, comments?
Certainly appreciate you being with us.
Thank you.
Jamie McNeil?
It looks like the next person is Jordan Powers.
I've had a few people not accepting panelist promotion
requests, so just note that if you want to testify,
you do have to accept that request.
The mechanism on this call is you come in as an attendee,
and then we promote you to panelist
so you can participate.
So when those requests come, that
means we're trying to get you up to be ready next.
All right, Jamie is coming now.
So Jamie will be here, and then we have Jordan.
Jamie McNeil will be next.
Dennis Bly is not here at the moment.
Thank you, chair, and I'd like to also thank
Chairman Moran and your strong advocacy for working people.
My name is Jamie McNeil.
I'm the general agent for the Hotel and Food Workers Union
Local 26 here in Boston.
I'd like to just echo a number of things
Representative Hunt had said.
We are a Boston union.
Thanks to a combination of good union wages,
and we have a first time homebuyer program,
we represent over 4,000 members and household members
in the First Senate district alone.
That's fairly unique in terms of labor organizations,
and again, I do credit people much smarter
than me coming up with a first time homebuyer program
long before I joined the Union.
But we have a Boston membership that is strong.
They're vocal, and they're very engaged in their community.
And our concern is just making sure that ward
16, which still has a number of working class people in it,
as Rep.
Hunt, noted stays whole.
We applaud everything this committee's doing.
It's not easy.
You've heard it a million times.
I can't imagine the task you're faced with.
But we really want to make sure that our Boston members have
Boston issues that are specific, and concerns that
are specific to Boston, and we see
that as a community interest.
And we'd love to see ward 16 remain whole
and in the city of Boston.
So thank you again.
Thank you for all your advocacy, and thank you
for the opportunity to speak and keeping
this process so transparent.
Thank you so much.
I want to thank you for your testimony and for all the work
you do for working people.
It's much appreciated.
I think we can move on to Jordan Powers.
Thank you very much.
My name is Jordan Burke Powers.
I use the he/him.
I'm an executive director of Mass Alliance,
and I'm a member of the Drawing Democracy Coalition.
I'm just going to mostly spend my time thanking you
for your efforts on this.
As most of you know, it does not come naturally
for me to say nice things about the state legislature,
and so I do want to actually say a sincere thank you.
I think the work that you all have both done
has been fantastic.
I'm going to spend some time being specific
about some of the things I think that really
work in the upcoming months.
On the Senate side, I want to thank you
for your work in Springfield and Worcester and Lawrence,
and then on the House side, the fantastic job
I believe you've done in Brockton, Framingham,
and Chelsea.
Additionally, I want to echo Chairman Moran's comments
around people seemingly upset that their communities
have been split apart.
I live in Worcester.
We have four representatives.
Those are for opportunities to have a say in the House
as opposed to just one.
Our communities have to be split.
There's 160 of them, and lines have to be drawn somewhere.
They will always be imperfect.
You can always do it a different way.
There is no one way to do this, having
myself drawn 209 districts in the process of making
our proposal to you all.
And so I want to encourage towns to embrace those changes,
and I think, whenever you go about trying
to create districts of opportunity
for people of color, there is a knock down effect
that other lines then have to be drawn.
And I think that you've done a really good balance
on the House side and want to echo
my colleagues' thanks on those.
I think that they have some specific changes that they'd
like you to make on the House side.
These would be Revere and Bristol,
and I would encourage you to do so.
But overall, I think that we really appreciate the work
on the House side.
On the Senate side similarly, I want
to thank you for your work.
I think Springfield has been strengthened
through this process, and I think it makes a lot of sense.
Additionally, for Worcester, I really
appreciate bringing people of color into one
of the Senate districts predominantly and making
sure we have a say in that district
since we aren't large enough to have our own Senate district.
And having us as much together as possible,
I thought you were very thoughtful about bringing
some communities that have historically not been included
along Main Street and Lake Avenue.
I think those make sense and really work together.
Similarly on Springfield, you've sort of
brought in communities of color and places
where communities of color are growing.
So in the next 10 years on the Senate side,
that Springfield district is going
to grow and be even stronger, and I
think it makes a lot of sense.
I want to spend some time also talking about--
because there seems to be a lot of confusion and testimony
around the Lawrence Methuen Haverhill district.
And so I want to state clearly that there is a Voting Rights
requirement.
There is a voting rights requirement
to put Haverhill with Lawrence and Methuen.
I just want to be clear.
And the Drawing Democracy Coalition
didn't put Haverhill in a district
where the people of color in Haverhill
would be diluted by being with the surrounding towns.
We could have drawn districts where Haverhill
was with Merrimack or Groveland, but we
didn't because it necessitates that it
be with other communities that have growing
populations of people of color.
So whether or not we could--
setting aside if it's whole or if it's not,
the Drawing Democracy Coalition did keep Haverhill whole.
But it put it not with another district where
that vote would be diluted.
It put it with Lawrence and Methuen.
And I believe that that's in line with the Voting Rights
Act, which speaks loudly in this moment, to this district.
Additionally, putting Lawrence back
with Dracut or another surrounding town
would again recreate the problems
that we fixed by decoupling Lawrence from Andover.
And I just think that, again, this moment
speaks that we should not be doing that.
So I want to echo what the Drawing Democracy Coalition put
out and say that there are communities in Haverhill that
are being split apart, Latinx communities that
are being split apart, and they should
be made whole in this process.
Absolutely, we should be using census block data
and all additional data that we can,
including testimony from people, to put those--
to ensure that all of those Latino communities
are whole in the districts that they are being put together
and not split apart and split in half.
I think that there can be-- we can do a better job of ensuring
that those are together.
Additionally, I want to say that there was testimony when there
wasn't the sort of heightened this, of having maps out
and having elected officials come testify.
There were young people who came and testified
in that hearing that spoke clearly
about the linkages in their lives between Lawrence,
Methuen, and Haverhill, and the organizing
that was being done by young people of color
in those communities that linked them together.
And so when we drew our maps for the Drawing Democracy
Coalition, and additionally, I think
when the Senate drew their maps for it,
they took into consideration that testimony.
And so I want to say that mirrors the testimony that
was testimonied at the time.
It mirrors, I think, what is required by the Voting Rights
Act.
I think that we can be more precise,
and I think that bringing in total population,
we should be doing the same thing that
was done there in Brockton, Stoughton, and Randolph.
I think that the same sort of impetus,
the same sort of need to ensure that people of color
have a say, is also at play down in Brockton,
and I want to encourage the Senate to relook at the maps
down there.
All in all, I just want to say that, again, I
know that this is, I think I said in open testimony,
that you could not pay me to do this job.
I know, when we were drawing our maps,
when I tried to redraw a house line,
and it caused a ripple effect of 70 other districts
having to change.
And I nearly cried late at night when I was doing it.
So I know what happens when you try to draw a line
and have to redraw another line.
That's not easy.
And so this is a really hard process,
and I think you all have done a great job.
Both of us certainly appreciate your testimony, and--
Thank you.
And more than that, we appreciate the very thoughtful
input, very specific input, that you've offered
at many stages of the process.
Thank you for that.
Well, thank you again, and I guess we move on to--
Chairman, I just had a quick question.
I'm sorry.
Yeah?
Thank you very much.
Jordan, I just had a quick follow-up question
about the Drawing Democracy map.
I know you said that it was guided by the input
that you heard from many of the young people,
but the unity map that was put out
had Lawrence, Methuen, and Dracut together,
getting to a 52% majority Hispanic total population.
So I just wanted to clarify that.
That was the unity map that was put out.
It had Haverhill separate.
It was Lawrence, Methuen, and all of Dracut,
and all of those communities were
kept whole, which I think is another important point.
All of Lawrence, all of Methuen, and all of Dracut, and all
of Haverhill.
All of those communities were kept whole under that.
I think that was an important thing to mention as well.
So I just wanted to clarify that,
because it sounded like you said that the unity map had
Lawrence, Haverhill, and Methuen together,
and that's not what the unity map had from what I recall.
We recall differently, so I will take a look at it
and take that under advisement.
Thank you.
I certainly-- yeah, I guess I'll say, I remember it differently.
I'm trying to pull it up and talk at the same time, which
is not something I'm good at.
I'd say, when I drew it myself, it just pops off the map
that there is a large--
the Voting Rights Act makes clear
how you drew people together.
I think that there are attempts in the Senate
currently to have a bill that would disaggregate data
in a way that makes sense.
I wholeheartedly support that bill.
I think that it should happen, and we
could avoid some of these things that we are going.
But the Voting Rights Act is clear
that when you have an opportunity
to draw a majority people of color district, you have to,
and you have to bring in the people of color who
are in those communities.
It would be hard to make the case,
I think, to separate them in that way.
It would just be-- yeah, it would be hard.
So I know when I drew it myself, that's why I put them together
because I think the Voting Rights Act guides you to do so.
Thank you.
Thank you again.
So, Maeve, I see Christine Yancey, Matt Boger--
Next is Harry Wolpert.
So I'm just going to call the names Christine Yancey, Matt
Boger, and Eric Cochrane--
not present.
Did you say-- who's next?
I'm sorry.
Harry Wolpert.
He's right there.
Thank you.
Harry Wolpert next.
Welcome.
You're still on mute, sir.
Harry is still on mute.
Sign language testimony, folks.
Oh, sorry.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
First of all, it is [INAUDIBLE].
Four.
I get that part.
Yeah.
I [INAUDIBLE] wait, I don't [INAUDIBLE]
what it look like [INAUDIBLE].
Now, I want to make sure that we understand your testimony,
and so far it hasn't quite gotten through to me.
If you are able to perhaps put some of that into the chat.
Type that into the chat.
Can we enable him to put things into the chat, Maeve?
Is he able to put things in the chat?
Yeah, anyone can put things into the chat at this point.
So, Harry, if--
I see something in the chat now.
Yeah.
I would like four districts in Brookline,
but I'm not liking how it looks like now.
So we got that part.
Did you want to say a little bit more
about how you'd like it to look in the chat maybe?
Yeah.
I think P4 and P5 in Brookline should
reunite in same district, and that it can work well together.
So that's about the House districts.
All right, that's clear.
[INAUDIBLE]
Was there anything else that you'd like to--
I see the fingers moving maybe.
Anything else you want to add?
I would like for either of them to be in one of the Suffolk
districts.
Yeah.
OK.
[INAUDIBLE]
All right.
All right, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for your testimony.
We appreciate you being on, and we
appreciate you working with us to get it across.
Chairman Moran would like to comment.
Yeah.
Brookline was a little bit challenging in our map,
but mostly because of things that had
nothing to do with Brookline.
With the retirement of the gentlelady from Jamaica Plain,
Liz Malia, we had an opportunity to add a majority minority
district in Boston, and one that is actually now going
to be represented by an African-American woman, who
was currently in the body.
That would be Nika Elugardo.
And to do that, we had to take her out of Brookline.
We had to reconfigure that district,
and in reconfiguring it, we needed
to grab population that was south of Jamaica Plain, which
caused us to also pull Eddie Carpenter's district also
out of Brookline by two precincts
to eat up some of that population, which then caused
us to bring in representative Balser
from Newton, which is why I was eventually--
my district was eventually pushed out of Brookline
as Tommy Mottola was taking over the precinct 1
that I've represented for the past 16 plus years,
pushing me into Cambridge by a precinct.
So all of that happened because of our ability
to create an additional majority minority district.
And one of the benefits of that--
that had really nothing to do with us trying to accomplish
it, but it ended up happening this way--
is that the area of Rosendale in Boston was able to go from--
which had routinely been represented by three people,
are now represented by two people.
So all of that shifting happened because of the retirement
and the need to draw an additional majority minority
district.
So I'm not sure you like that explanation.
I'm pretty sure you probably don't.
But at least I was able to--
I'm able to tell you at least why we did what we did.
All right, Harry?
Thank you.
[INAUDIBLE] it now.
Thank you, [INAUDIBLE].
Thank you, Harry.
Thank you so much for testifying.
Any other questions for Harry or comments?
Thank you.
All right, thank you.
Thank you so much for engaging, Harry.
I very much appreciate it.
I see--
Oh.
One more thought.
Go ahead, Harry.
Thank you so much.
You are welcome so much.
We appreciate your testimony.
We appreciate your engagement.
Yes.
So let's see-- Maeve, can we have Tanisha Sullivan
promoted please?
And while that's happening, I'm going
to recognize-- who's next?
Who's next that's available, Maeve?
I've promoted Kate Reed.
I also have tried promoting Barney Arnold a few times.
I just want to say that, in case Barney is listening
and just has not been seeing the promotion invitations.
Is it Barbara Arnold-- or I see Barney--
Yeah, Barney Arnold.
Yeah, Barbara, Barney.
All right, so I'm going to recognize Kate Reed,
and I'm looking for Tunisia Solomon then next, please.
Hi, thank you.
Barney Arnold is probably off to our 3 o'clock master
planning meeting.
So she's another member of our Select Board in Carlisle.
So first, I would like to add my thanks to you in your efforts
for making this a transparent process
and for this opportunity to comment.
However, I'd like to remind you that, unlike you,
we elected town boards are subject to the Massachusetts
Open Meeting Law, so when you put our draft district
maps such as these, we may not discuss them as a board
without having posted them 48 hours in advance of a meeting,
excluding weekends and subject to the hours
that the town clerk is available to post a meeting.
Thus, today, I am speaking for myself, and not for my board
since we were not able to post a meeting prior to Monday
at 9:30 AM, at which time we will
discuss and vote to support a comment
from the board as a whole.
So I would respectfully request that you extend your comment
period to at least Wednesday, October 20th,
and that in future, you give the affected town officials
and their residents ample time to legally post and attend
open meetings to consider such proposals,
which have such profound impact on their constituents.
Anyway, I will keep my comment very short today,
as I expect that my board will be submitting
a longer written one on Monday.
I also applaud the committee's wish to keep communities intact
and to maintain majority minority districts.
And I understand that, with the proposed redrawn Senate
districts, only 10 communities will be split.
However, the currently proposed House redistricting plan
splits a community that's never been
split before, and furthermore, that community, Concord, shares
a regional school with Carlisle, so the split affects us, too.
While it's understandably difficult to piece together
split towns-- and boy, I've been listening to this testimony,
and I do appreciate the effort you clearly have
been putting into all of this.
It was a surprise to us, and uncomfortable, to find
ourselves split--
that you split an intact town plus a regional school
district.
So what happened to Concord Carlisle appears to be unique.
A brief review of the other representative districts
does not reveal others in the Metro West
that have been split into five towns.
There's one grandfathered-in five town
district in the 37th Middlesex, but four
of the five towns in that district
are whole because they're small.
Carlisle just went from a district
of four contiguous towns to one of five, one of which
is not contiguous to us at all.
And as Mr. Van Loon, the moderator from Concord,
outlined for you a little earlier,
Concord and Carlisle in particular
are closely intertwined in our local government as well as
our social and political communities.
The draft map will significantly damage Concord and Carlisle's
effective representation at the state level.
And I thank you for your time today.
Thank you so much for weighing in.
Chairman Moran?
Sorry this is going to be a long hearing,
but I do feel a need to give you at least my explanation when
people bring up stuff like this.
So the problem in that region of the map, when it came to--
one of the beauties of having done this 10 years ago
is that I have some historical ability
to recall what happened 10 years ago.
So the boroughs out in that area--
Marlborough, Westborough-- sorry, not Marlborough.
Westborough, Northborough, and Southborough
have been growing at a very rapid clip.
And 10 years ago, we had to cut a bunch of towns in half
and figure out how we were going to satisfy that need
for the growth in population.
Well, over the past 10 years, it's grown again,
and it's grown so much that it was
enough to have its own, just shy of having its own rep district.
And when we made the decision that the Brad Hill District
in Ipswich--
and this is crazy, but when you have 160 districts,
this is how you have to look at this.
When we made the decision that the Brad Hill District, which
is centered in Ipswich, was going
to have to be abolished because of what happened in Lawrence,
we put that district and moved it out to the Boroughs,
allowing for the growth that has occurred in the last 20 years
out there to be satisfied.
Now, if you follow this, so we create the Boroughs.
That causes a lot of population need for the people
that were in there representing it, one of them
being Representative Carolyn Dykema,
the other one being Representative Danielle
Gregoire, and the third one being Representative Megan
Kilcoyne.
The center of Megan Kilcoyne's district
is Clinton and towns north of that.
The center of Danielle Gregoire's district
is Marlborough and the towns that were west,
but now she has to go east.
And the center of Carolyn Dykema's district
is Holliston and Hopkinton.
But now she's been pushed out completely,
so they have to go east.
So when you follow that, you have Danielle Gregoire
that moves into Framingham, thereby
moving Carmen Gentile out of Framingham.
Carmen Gentile needs to pick up population,
and he needs to go north not simply because he was removed
out of Framingham, because he was also
moved out of the town of Sherborne-- sorry.
Because Dave Linsky was moved out of the town of Sherborne
because we needed that to satisfy Carolyn Dykema.
Now, Carolyn Dykema has taken from Dave Linsky.
Now, Dave Linsky has to go north,
and he's got to capture some population in Wayland.
So now, Carmen Gentile is losing Framingham,
and he's losing Wayland.
There's only one place Carmen can go, and that's north.
That's how we land in Concord.
That's how he got up there.
Again, I'm not here to fully give you what you want to hear,
but I'm here to give you what my methodology was
and why I landed there.
So believe it or not, the Ipswich situation
and the Lawrence situation turned up in the Boroughs
because the growth over the last 20 years.
And then satisfying the districts that
used to represent the Boroughs, we had to go east and north,
and we landed in your Concord, which
is a population of 18,491.
I will tell you that, years ago, when Chelmsford had been split,
they filed a lawsuit, and it was said then
that there is no definitive way for the legislature to find
the best redistricting plan.
I happen to believe that's a true statement,
and it wasn't me that said that.
It was Supreme Judicial Court in the McLure versus the Secretary
of the Commonwealth in 2002.
That was what the decision said when
Chelmsford sued because they were split,
and they lost the case.
I don't get any perverse joy in splitting towns.
And I just feel like you took the time out of your busy day
to advocate for your community, and I just
thought I owe you an explanation.
I'm positive you don't agree with that,
but I just hope you know what I was thinking,
what myself and the committee was thinking, when we did that.
Thank you.
We just got thrown into five towns that
don't share our needs and concerns,
and we are very small, very small.
So we went from partnering with somebody
and had more or less a majority to a total minority.
So we totally lost--
I think we've lost our entire voice.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for your testimony.
Very much appreciated.
Could we have Tanisha Sullivan, please?
Afternoon, Chair Brownsberger, Chair Moran,
and other esteemed members of this committee.
I am Tanisha Sullivan, President of the Boston branch
of the NAACP, and today, I am here
representing the New England area
conference of the NAACP, of which I'm
a member of its executive committee.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
Quickly, by way of background, the NAACP
is the oldest civil rights organization in our country
with a focus on racial justice.
The New England Area Conference is the governing entity
of the NAACP for the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont,
and also supports the coordination
of branches in those jurisdictions on issues
of broad importance.
In Massachusetts, the Conference represents 13 active branches,
which extends from the Berkshires
to Martha's Vineyard.
Today, I am speaking on behalf of all
of these branches in Massachusetts
and providing this testimony.
For over 100 years, a cornerstone
of the work of the NAACP has been protecting and expanding
access to the American political system.
Through our advocacy, specifically related
to ballot access, to our fight for fair and complete census
counts, to our engagement and redistricting efforts,
to help ensure representation and access for some
of the most vulnerable and marginalized communities,
the NAACP considers the drawing of district lines
among the most consequential responsibilities
in our democracy.
Although we will always advocate for more inclusion
and transparency, we are pleased that in Massachusetts,
both the House and Senate have embarked
on this responsibility with diligence
and careful deliberation.
Again, we appreciate the opportunity to testify.
Our focus in reviewing these maps
have been centered in three specific areas--
one, protecting voting rights and access, of course,
subject to the Voting Rights Act;
two, advancing racial and ethnic representation
and access in the legislature and in communities
like Brockton, Boston, Springfield,
and Worcester; and thirdly, monitoring the representation
of rural Massachusetts communities,
like those in Western Mass and Martha's Vineyard, that
are home to small but influential BIPOC
and low income communities.
We generally are pleased with the maps as presented,
and although there remains work to do in three out of the four
cities of particular interest to us,
Boston, Springfield, and Worcester,
under those maps as presented, we
believe the communities are well positioned
to have representation that reflects
the ideological, economic, racial,
and linguistic diversity of those communities.
Thank you.
With the challenge of a decreasing population
in Western Mass, we also appreciate the attention
to connectivity and common interest
as the district lines required shifting.
That said, we join other stakeholders,
including the Drawing Democracy Coalition,
in expressing concern about the greater Brockton area.
I was raised in Brockton, and have lived in several towns
surrounding the city, and while the demographics
of my working class hometown have shifted significantly
over the past 40 years, making Brockton the only majority
Black city in the NAACP State Conference,
despite efforts to the contrary, we
have not seen similar change in the diversity of our State
House delegation in Brockton.
On the Senate side specifically, this
does give rise to questions about whether there
is a structural issue requiring remedy that this redistricting
process could better address.
But I want to be clear that we know this body cares deeply
about representation, and that representation
has been a core value guiding your deliberations and work.
Many of us have been in countless meetings
with you, Senator Brownsberger, as you dug into these maps
and sought to have a deeper understanding
of the communities that we're talking about,
and we greatly appreciate that.
But we also know that, with each shift in district lines,
there are other shifts that are required.
We know this is not an easy process,
but we also cannot wait another 10 years for the greater
Brockton area to have representation that is more
reflective, more reflective, of the ideological, racial,
ethnic, economic, and linguistic diversity that exists in that
community.
And so with that, we are asking that this body take
a fresh look at the greater Brockton area
to see what might be possible to help
ensure greater representation.
Thank you.
Appreciate that.
Appreciate your testimony and all of your contributions
to the process and your leadership
across a broad range of issues.
Let me assure you, we keep going back to Brockton.
We've gone back to it again and again
as the input has come in, looking
for what we think we can do there
in the balance of the law, in accordance
with the Equal Protection Clause and the Voting Rights Act.
And we will continue to double check our thinking on that,
particularly if we hear the strong input on that
from multiple people today.
Thank you.
Any other questions, comments for Director Sullivan?
All right, thank you so much for being with us.
Thank you.
All right.
So up next, we've got--
let's see.
Maeve guide me to who's actually next.
Yeah, I believe I've promoted Shawn Linderman, Stephen Bader,
Kate Kavanaugh and Ira Goldman.
So I'm just going to say names in between.
I got that we think we've gone by you now,
Christine Yancey, Matt Boger, Eric Cochrane.
We've heard from Barney Arnold.
Then Dimple Rana, Phillipe Villers, David Galvin,
and Lew Finfer, and I'm all the way down to Shawn Linderman.
Shawn Linderman is available, and we look forward
to your testimony.
Hello?
You're on.
I'm just a citizen.
I moved to Haverhill 20 years ago.
I've been in Massachusetts for 30 years.
I just wanted to say one thing.
Never say "just."
We're glad to have your testimony.
OK.
I live here in by happenstance, but very fortuitously,
I've watched Haverhill grow into a beautiful, multicultural,
exciting community, and it irks me
that a big chunk gets taken out of us that's mostly minority.
Why can't we just reduce the diameter of the circle
and reposition it so that we keep
our multicultural identity?
That's all.
You guys are dealing with complexities way
beyond what I can understand.
That's my view of what's going on with Haverhill in this map.
Well, the key thing to remember is
Haverhill will continue to make progress
in so many other ways--
wonderful leadership of state representative Vargas
and the city council and all the people
participating in making Haverhill wonderful.
That's not going to change.
Any other questions, comments for Shawn?
Thank you.
All right, thanks for being with us.
Who's next-- Alexander Golub?
I did not see him, so I've got Stephen Bader next.
Great.
Stephan Bader, thank you for being with us.
Thank you for allowing me to testify,
Chair Brownsberger and Chairman Moran.
I appreciate it.
I'm an elected member of the Concord Housing Authority,
although I am not speaking on their behalf
because we have not met on this subject recently either.
So I'm just speaking for myself.
I think that Eric Van Loon and Kate
Reed both made substantial--
spoke as well as I can on the dissatisfaction
that we in Concord have with being split in two.
To reiterate briefly, we are a town
that, with Carlisle, has a regional school district
and have been represented together for a very long time.
And I feel that splitting Concord
in the way the maps have been drawn
dilutes our votes by creating districts
that, at least mathematically, can
be won without a single vote from any Concord resident,
and for me, that's a problem.
That said, I will give an appreciation to Chairman Moran
for explaining how the redistricting shifted
from Ipswich to Concord, being at the back of the bus,
I guess.
But I understand it's complex, and I do appreciate the work
that you've done and the new minority majority districts
you've created, and that's all wonderful.
It's just a little frustrating for us
to be split when we're used to being together.
So thank you for hearing me out.
I think there are some other folks from Concord coming up
soon, too.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for weighing in.
Anybody else want to comment?
Thank you, sir, for being with us.
Appreciate it.
Who's next, Maeve?
I believe that Kate Kavanaugh is next.
Great, Kate Kavanaugh, please.
Thank you for your important urgent work
and this opportunity to give testimony.
I'm Kate, and I founded Concord Indivisible,
but I'm not representing them.
But as you might guess, I'm joining voices
with Eric and Kate and Stephen to speak
about the redistricting of the 14th Middlesex.
As you know, Concord has a unique history of activism
from the revolution to the current day,
and its residents have a strong sense of community, culture,
and place and are involved with current politics
and legislation.
Splitting us up would irreparably
damage the Concord Carlisle community and its ability
to be represented at the state level.
It seems likely you'll be revisiting this map,
so I'm hoping you'll keep that in your thoughts
as you're doing it.
And I can't imagine how difficult
it is to be trying to put together
the diverse pieces of this complex puzzle,
so I'll keep you in my prayers the next couple of weeks.
Thank you for remembering Concord.
We definitely need your prayers and your support,
and we appreciate that very much.
Thank you, Kate.
Let's see-- is John Nolan online?
No, but we have Ira Goldman next, yes.
Ira Goldman, please.
Thank you to the committee.
Thank you, Chairman Moran.
I'm pleased to be able to speak briefly,
and I'm going to save a lot of time
because I'm going to join my colleague Kate as well
as Stephen, Eric Van Loon, Kate Reed.
I'm a resident of Concord, a relatively new resident
Concord.
I previously lived in Lexington.
I served on the Lexington Democratic town committee.
I've been a delegate to the State Democratic Convention,
I think, four times or five times.
And I'm just going to join the chorus of Concord Carlisle
voices speaking against the division of Concord.
I understand you guys are working with a Rubik's cube,
and it's amazing how something that starts in Ipswich
works its way all the way down the South Coast
and back around--
or not all the way down the South Coast, but partly.
So I definitely see the challenges that you have.
But at the same time, when I moved to Concord,
I saw that we had a single state rep and welcome that,
and now, I'm disappointed to see the possibility
that we may be divided--
or likely to be divided into two.
As I said, I don't I don't envy your job.
I lived in Austria for 13 years, and they
have a parliamentary system without single district
constituencies.
And I think there's something to be said.
Maybe it would solve a lot of problems in this country,
in terms of the games and the challenges of redistricting,
to have some kind of a proportional representation
system.
But that's not what we have, so as I
said, I'm just adding my voice to the other Concord Carlisle
speakers to urge you, if there is a possibility
to take any second look at keeping Concord together--
Concord and Carlisle together, to please do so.
So thank you for your time today.
Thank you, sir.
Appreciate the testimony very much.
I see Alan Proctor also here.
Is Alan here, Maeve?
Who's next?
No, I believe the next person--
I tried to promote Vanny.
I don't know if I'm seeing Vanny.
I do see Virginia Crocker Timmins.
I'm just going to say the names in between,
let you know that we're trying to get to you.
Maeve, look out for Alan Proctor, Phyllis Ellis, Karen
Wimmelman, Heather McCann, John Tynan, Vanny Huot,
Paul Cohen are people that are on the list
that we've not been able to hear from.
But we'll come back to you if you are here.
Paul is here.
Paul is here, but he-- so we can do Virginia and then
Paul if that is all right.
All right.
So I've promoted Paul as well.
All right, well, if Paul's here, Paul is next.
Paul Cohen, and then it will be Virginia Timmons.
Good afternoon.
I recognize the hour's late.
You've heard a lot of testimony, so I'm not
trying to be repetitive.
But the request I have, and I'll just speak as background,
as Chairman Moran is aware, Chelmsford
has had four reps for two decades.
And now we're looking, under the proposed map,
to have three reps for the upcoming decade.
And I guess the request I have, which I think is attainable,
is why could we not make the switch in the proposed Second
Middlesex District, which has precinct 7 and 8
and Chelmsford, which is represented currently
by James Arciero?
Why couldn't we switch those two precincts and Chelmsford
with two precincts in the proposed 14th Middlesex
District of Acton of precincts 1 and 2, of which Chelmsford
would be part of that precinct already anyway?
So therefore, the end result would
be Chelmsford would have its stated goal of two state
representatives across the community,
and it wouldn't have any spillover effects anywhere else
that would cause a problem.
And so I just think that's something
we'd ask the committee to consider
in terms of making that switch.
Again, the two precincts of the Second Middlesex that are in
Chelmsford with the two in the open or unincumbent district
14 of Middlesex of 1 and 2 and Acton.
That doesn't affect the Acton incumbent,
which is not in this proposed 14th Middlesex District.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir, very much for your testimony.
Any comments, questions?
I just try to take people in the order that they were signed up.
I do see that Vanny Huot is with us now,
so I'm going to call you next, Vanny.
And then unless anybody else jumps in,
we will get to you, Virginia.
I promise.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with the committee.
My name is Vanny Huot.
I'm a lifelong resident of Revere
and the co-director of Revere Youth in Action.
I live and work in ward 2, and our hope
was to create an incumbent free house district
and at least preserve our community of interest
in the Shirley Ave and Beachmont neighborhoods,
those represented in the unity map
by the Drawing Democracy Coalition.
With respect to the recent release of the House map,
I was heartened to see the proposed new opportunity
district for the 16th Suffolk district seat, which includes
many neighborhoods with BIPOC and immigrant residents,
but it chops up my ward, ward 2, one of our identified
communities of interest and a known heart
center of the immigrant community of Revere.
The proposed map leaves out Shirley Ave ward 2--
precinct 1 and 2.
Many of the nonprofit organizations,
including Revere Youth in Action and other agencies that
serve our vulnerable population citywide,
sit in these precincts.
Thanks to a number of growing groups of community leaders
of color, this ward also has earned
a reputation of being innovative and culturally connected.
We shouldn't dilute the people power of ward 2
by splitting it into two districts.
On a personal note, I've lived in Revere
for almost four decades.
That's telling of my age.
But we've never seen a leader of color,
an elected leader of color.
The time is now.
We can't really wait.
I really think, to fully realize the potential
of the opportunity district, we should consider keeping ward 2
together and preserving our communities of interest
to give our community a shot of truly one person, one vote.
Thank you for your consideration.
Thank you very much for your testimony.
Anybody want to comment, respond?
I just noticed that Vanny was supposed
to be on a panel with Juan Jaramillo,
so I promoted him as well.
Oh, gosh.
Virginia, forgive me.
I'm going to try to stay on this thread here.
So, Juan, we can go to Juan as part of that panel.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, the members,
and as well, the Chairman Moran for all their work
on these maps.
I know it's no easy task given all of the different interests
at play and the necessity to empower communities
that have historically been disenfranchised
throughout the Commonwealth.
As Vanny mentioned, ward 2 is the cultural and diverse center
of the city of Revere, which was the fastest growing community
in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
and saw an 80% increase in Latino population
over the last 10 years.
I understand the difficulties in drawing
maps and the principles that need to be applied,
which include ensuring that--
which include a current state rep's place
of living as a principle of redistricting
and the challenges that presents for a city like Revere
and the town of Winthrop and surrounding communities, which
are so close to the water and have not that many communities
around it.
I was in full support, as president of the Concilio
Latino de Revere, of the map that
was presented by the Drawing Democracy Coalition, which
Concilio Latino de Revere worked with the Revere Youth in Action
on.
And a little concerned about the effects
that the map proposed by the House
could have on the ward 2 precinct--
the ward 2 region of the city of Revere,
which is now a majority minority community
with over 55% of its residents being non-white.
For context, the current 16 Suffolk district,
which encompasses much of Revere,
has a total population of 46% white, 36% Hispanic, 9% Black,
6% Asian, 2% Native.
The proposed district by the House--
oh, sorry, and I'll go to the CVAP numbers, which
are 68% white, 20% Hispanic, 7% Black, 4% Asian, 0% Native
roughly.
The proposed district, which was, I know,
done in good faith, but labeled as an opportunity district,
actually has more of a population of white folks,
less of a population of Hispanics,
less of a population of Black residents, less of a--
about the same population of Asian residents, and about
the same population of Native residents.
It also has, in terms of CVAP numbers,
more of a voting CVAP population of white residents,
less of a voting population of Hispanic residents,
about the same population of Black residents
eligible to vote there, less of a population
of Asian residents, and about 1% of population
of Native residents eligible to vote in the proposed map.
I am particularly concerned by this map
because it includes breaking up the historically BIPOC voting
ward of the city, which is ward 2.
In the last two major elections where a candidate of color
has been featured, ward 2 has come out in support.
In the special primary held on March 2 of this very year,
ward 2 went overwhelmingly to the candidate of color.
In the 2019 city council election,
which was the last other election where
a candidate of color was running,
ward 2, in particular precinct 3,
was the only precinct in the entire city that
went for a candidate of color.
That precinct has now been removed
from the remainder of ward 2, causing a concern over civil--
voting rights violations for our community.
I know how difficult this is, and I
know that the Drawing Democracy map sought
to create an incumbent free district,
but I do still think that there is an opportunity for there
to be a Revere-only district which
protects both incumbents in Revere and in Winthrop,
and creates far more opportunity for BIPOC
communities in this community and this city.
With that I would add that this map not only splits
ward 2, which is, again, the most heavily dense BIPOC
part of the city of Revere, but it also splits it
from other wards in the city of Revere--
or precincts in the city of Revere,
that are heavily Latinx or other, and less than 50% white.
So with that said, we'll be submitting a suggestion
for a map that maintains both--
maintains the principle of redistricting
of ensuring that the incumbents are not
put in with other incumbents, but that gets a little closer
to the idea of equity that this region so rightfully deserves.
I want to highlight that the city of Revere, which is now
a majority minority community, has no representation of BIPOC
folks in the city council, in the school committee,
in the State Rep delegation, or in the State Senate delegation,
and certainly not in the Congress.
So I urge the committee to rethink the map in this area.
Urban centers like the city of Revere
are anchored by the growing Hispanic population.
And in a city like Revere, the Hispanic community
or the non-white community has been clamoring
for adequate representation, and we can no longer
wait 10 more years.
With that said, again, I thank both Chairman Moran
and Chairman Brownsberger for the work on these maps
and how intentional they have been to create more opportunity
districts, while calling for them
to create a more robust opportunity
district for BIPOC communities in the city of Revere.
With that, I yield my time.
We appreciate your testimony.
We appreciate all your work on the representation there.
Chairman Moran?
Again, I just feel like I have to give
at least some comment on my methodology
that I was thinking here.
This area in the map was very interesting
for a bunch of reasons.
The growth in this area, their count, was very high,
and as I'm looking away here, I'm
actually looking at the map on my wall in my office.
So you had great growth.
And then we were nervous two years
ago because, quite oftentimes, these
hard to count populations get--
we miss out, and we don't count them.
But this time around, we definitely did in this region.
That's for sure.
So we had this opportunity here, when
you look at East Boston, Chelsea, Everett, and Revere,
to reconfigure it in such a way that the whole region be
an opportunity, and it started with removing
the rep from Chelsea, then figuring out
what to do with that.
And the challenge here is that you
have-- it's surrounded by places like Winthrop and Saugus,
who have not quite matured into areas
where we could get some additional BIPOC population.
So you draw an outline around the BIPOC population
in this area, and Hispanic is the one that pops off the map.
Glad to say we have two districts over here
that are Hispanic and majority minority section,
two districts.
And obviously, the one that I'm--
I'm going to sound a little partial here.
The one I most like is the one in Chelsea
simply because it's incumbent free.
And it's very likely going to give us--
if the people choose the person of their choice,
and you look at that district, you
would might likely see a Hispanic member
of the body a year from this January when we get sworn in.
And they're likely to be Hispanic from Chelsea.
So that was the one we drew and constructed.
We did keep and make the Everett one as strong as we could,
and we did the East Boston one.
We did the Chelsea one.
We did the Everett one.
Now, we're looking at the city of Revere,
and we moved out 3-2--
and we moved 3-2 and 5-3 into it.
And the problem I saw with precinct 2-- ward 2 precinct 2,
is we took away--
what's that area up the top there?
It's all along the beach.
It's called Beachmont I think.
Anyway, so we took that area away from the district,
put it into the Winthrop district,
and then if you follow those census blocks all the way down,
you'll see that they're very--
that precinct in particular is very white on one side,
and it's Hispanic or BIPOC on the other side.
So the reason we took a chunk out of it
is because we just thought, we were
trying to do as much as we could for the district
we were going to create.
That was the methodology.
I don't know.
I only look at those.
When I drew this, I didn't consult anybody,
look at anybody.
I looked at the census blocks, and those census blocks
were pretty heavy Latino.
And we moved them into the new district,
so when you I say split ward 2 precinct 2,
it's a strange precinct to look at from my eyes.
I don't live there, but I just see very white
on one side of the precinct and Hispanic
and BIPOC on the other side.
So we took that chunk out simply because we
were trying to make that other district over there a stronger
district.
But in the region, I'd like you to go up to 1,000 feet.
In the region, you're looking at two sections, two voting rights
district-- one that's incumbent free and two majority
opportunity districts.
And I was happy with the work we did in that region.
I think we did the right thing, and I
think we offered an opportunity in Chelsea that didn't exist.
And so just again, like I said to the people
in Concord, like I said to the people in, I'm sure,
Greenfield that are probably here to testify next.
You may not like, but I owe you an explanation on why I did it.
And I hope you can at least have a better idea,
and I will take a look at any suggestions you have.
But I just wanted to tell you why I did what I did
or why the committee did what it did.
Thank you.
I appreciate it, chairman.
And if I may add also, if I just could get some clarity
on ward 2 precinct 3, which is one
of the wards that is most AAPI.
What is the consideration there?
That's actually the precinct that I was referring,
not ward 2 precinct 2, if I'm getting this right here.
Mr. Chairman, you're on mute.
Thank you, sir.
Again, I wish I could remember it off the top of my head,
but I remember going into that--
looking at the census blocks and trying to grab some more BIPOC
population.
And we looked at that area as an area
we could do and then still leave enough
in that precinct for them to kind of balance
if they needed to.
But again, as I said, any suggestions
you have, please give me, and I will certainly give it a look
and see what--
I wish I could tell you.
I don't remember everything I did because it
was a lot of districts.
But that area of ward 2 precinct 2, if I remember correctly,
was a pretty good area for BIPOC population,
and that's why we grabbed it.
Again, I appreciate it, Mr. Chairman.
I'll pass along my suggestion.
Yeah, please do.
Please do.
I'll take a look at it.
Thank you.
All right, bye-bye.
Thank you for that important discussion.
Virginia, thank you for your patience.
No worries.
Thank you.
You're up.
Thank you.
I'm the current chair of the Chelmsford Select Board,
and I echo the thanks of others for the committee's hard work
and efforts to date.
I would also like to echo the previous comment made regarding
an extension for the comments deadline
in that the deadline imposed coupled with open meeting laws
has precluded our board to convene and discuss
these maps as a board and to develop a board
input before your deadline.
So that said, while I understand that you
are dealing with many interdependent complexities,
my phone has been ringing, and I am
concerned that many of my constituents and yours
do not feel heard.
Specifically for Chelmsford, it appears
that the committee used 2010 precinct lines that
were based on 2010 census data.
Our town clerk and the Board of Registrars
have worked tirelessly for months
with the preliminary 2020 census data
and with the state to get state input on our 2020 draft
precincts.
Those same draft precincts recommended by the state
were then approved by the town's Select Board
and increase our current precincts from nine to 11.
These locally approved precincts are now
with the LEDRC for approval.
The draft maps that you have proposed
require Chelmsford recently approved precinct plan,
now under review with the LEDRC, to have
four precincts split between multiple House districts.
This creates constituent confusion
and imposes significant extra burden and expense
on our elections process.
Even redrawing our precincts with your proposed lines
results in multiple split precincts.
Chelmsford has been in a position for 20 years
with Senate and district lines drawn
that do not serve our community and its residents well.
Our town clerk and registrars have very specific suggestions
to rectify some of these issues.
In addition to the comments previously provided
for consideration by my fellow Select Board member Pat Wojtas
and our town manager Paul Cohen, I
am asking that you please work closely with our clerk
and registrars and continue to put your constituents
at the forefront of your decision process
while honoring the tremendous effort
that our municipality has already
put into this with the state.
I am also asking that you consider the previous request
for extending the comment period deadline to allow boards
to legitimately meet under Open Meeting Law
to articulate their positions and suggestions,
and I thank you for your service.
We thank you for your service.
I know that being selectman is one of the most difficult jobs.
I did it for nine years, and it's actually very real.
Everybody cares about what's in front of them.
So thank you for being with us.
Chairman Moran?
So I just want to correct--
that's the second person who has said this.
A few things-- one is we actually did not
use the 2010 census data.
We did adhere to the precinct lines that
currently exist in your town, but we did not use 2010 data.
I understand, sir.
What I meant was that, when we drew those,
they were based on 2010 data piece.
So that's first thing.
The second thing is, we've said this many, many, many times,
we've drafted a piece of legislation--
we've pushed it through the House and Senate.
We put it on the governor's desk.
He signed it-- all telling municipalities
that, because of the COVID delays,
there is no way that we could allow, this time
around, for the 351 cities and towns
to go through a reprecincting process
and then us wait to do our district lines afterwards.
There's no way, given our constitutional requirement
to have this done by September 8,
that was ever going to happen.
So we passed House 4118.
4118 says that the municipalities
will go after we do our House and Senate
lines because we have to comply with the constitutional
requirement.
And we pushed the date back for reprecincting to December 15,
and we provide an opportunity, if there
is a conflict, for municipalities
to correct some of their lines.
I don't know how many times I need to say that,
but that is the reality of COVID.
And when we got these numbers--
and this time around, we're going
to have to live with that.
That's all I can say to people.
Only 127 towns have been okayed through the LEDRC right now--
only 127 of the 351.
So we could not wait for the rest of them
to finish, get okayed, and then for us to then start
our process, to start drawing, because that's
what would have to happen.
We'd have to start our process once that was complete.
It just was not going to happen, and we
wouldn't have this done probably until some time in, I don't
know, January, February, which would put us
way out of whack with our constitutional requirement.
So again, I apologize for the way this has happened.
I believe we've been very, very, very up front in what we
thought was the remedy, and for those cities and towns
that went ahead and drew lines and went
through this reprecincting process
before we came out with our lines,
the only thing I can tell you is that we've provided you
with an opportunity to readjust those lines up
until December 15, which is going
to be 2 and 1/2 months before we finish.
But the good news for the town of Chelmsford
is that we were able to get rid of one of your reps,
so now, you're down from four to three, so that's good.
And, sir, I would just add that, even
trying to redraw the lines according to what you've done
is still going to result in split precincts,
so I would just add that you work with our registrars
on that.
I mean, I don't think it would because you're
asking me to split precincts that you're currently
proposing to the LEDRC.
No, I'm saying we're looking at modifying
based on what you've done, and we'll still have precincts.
Well, I mean, there may be some split precincts-- or not
split precincts.
You're just going to have to redraw the lines to conform
with the House lines.
I mean, you're calling them split precincts.
I just call them more precincts.
There's no definite number of precincts.
You can add more and give them different numbers.
But at the end of the day, I'm sure we can figure that out.
But anyways, I just wanted to be very
clear on a couple of those things
because I didn't want anybody to think,
who may be watching this, that we used 2010 numbers.
We used 2020 numbers, and House 4118 really
was the guiding principle for how
we were going to do reprecincting this time around.
And it was signed into law by the governor on October 3.
So thank you.
Thank you so much for that testimony and discussion.
Maeve, who is ready next?
Brian Howard.
I'm just going to say the names of some people
we're passing by here.
I got to go quite a ways to get down--
so Sarah Caine, Kenneth Young, Linda Brown, Douglas Edison,
Katie Campbell-Simons.
Jeff Foster has already testified.
Beth Kline.
Amy Grunder has already testified.
Fermin De La Cruz Santana, and now, we're
down to Brian Howard.
So, Brian, thank you very much.
I look forward to your testimony.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity.
I am the town manager in the town of Randolph.
I have been involved in the municipal government
here for about 30 years.
I have lived here for over 50.
I know this community back and forth
and like the back of my hand.
I'm proud to live here.
I am proud of the community I grew up in,
and I'm the proud of the community that we've become.
I don't want to spend too, too much
on some of the issues that have just been discussed.
Chelmsford just talked about it.
But I do want to highlight that, for us, there's
certainly been some challenges.
We've had about three days now to review the maps,
and it's the precinct--
I agree, it's the data from 2020,
but it's the precinct lines from 10 years ago.
When I looked at the maps for Randolph,
in particular the First Norfolk, trying to exactly figure out,
without census blocks or meets and bounds,
I think I figured out what you guys are doing on precinct 4.
Because of my knowledge of the town,
I think you're going down north and then down Mill Street.
Not quite sure.
So some of the challenges there.
I do think our town council will be meeting
for the first time on Monday, so as you've
heard, the opportunity to have them meet in an environment
where they can discuss it, take a position,
and then reach out to you folks with their opinion.
If there is a way to delay that opportunity for them
to respond, I think that would be very helpful.
As you've heard before, we're looking at, right now,
based on the maps that I've seen, three split precincts.
I don't disagree that there is an opportunity
to try and merge the two.
We have a town council.
Our charter calls for--
we have 12 precincts.
We have four district councilors.
So we're trying to struggle also with making sure
that our map on the local level is not
open to any kind of a legal challenge based
on the plus minus five variants, but also communities
of interest.
I'm not sure.
I served as a town clerk for 20 years.
When I look at the map, in particular,
what looks to be precinct 4, I just
don't know that there's going to be a way to do that.
And for us, if we add a precinct,
we've got to add enough precinct to make it divisible
by the four, because of our charter,
and I can tell you that the cost of all the new election
equipment, all of--
it's significant because we did that 10 years ago.
So there are a lot of challenges there,
and you certainly don't want split precincts
and multiple ballots within the same precinct.
I can tell you, it's confusing for the voters,
and it's a real problem for your election work,
is having those additional ballot opportunities.
It just adds to confusion, and at the end of the night,
tallying out-- you name it.
It's quite a challenge.
Separate of those issues that have been talked about,
and I'm not going to focus too much on the Senate side
because I do think there's been a lot of folks
from Mass Vote, Tanisha Sullivan from NAACP--
there's been a lot of talk about the Senate
seat and the Brockton Randolph connection.
For 30 years, I've been pushing for Randolph
to have its own State Rep district.
I have long believed that Randolph, in particular,
with the town of Milton--
Milton, wonderful community.
However, when you look at the cost of housing,
you look at median income, and even more so over the last 30
years, the race and ethnicity, immigrant community status,
the language differences--
they didn't have a lot in common 30 years ago.
That gap has only widened.
When you look at the 2020 census that was just released,
the town of Randolph is number one in the state.
41.9% of the Randolph residents are Black.
Brockton is 33%.
Avon is 18.6%.
Out of the top seven in the state, five of them
border Randolph.
So the opportunity to create a--
and this is why, when I look at the two Randolph
districts being termed--
I came up with the term they used.
I think they used majority minority opportunity districts.
I strongly disagree with that term.
I don't think they are in any way, shape, or form.
Last year, 10 years ago, that claim
was made about the First Norfolk could be considered that,
and I'm going to get into that in a moment
as to why that just doesn't work that way.
When you pull up the map, and I don't know,
if I can share my screen, but if I can't, I do have a map here.
This is a heat map, and it shows precincts that are--
specifically, it's a heat map for BIPOC population.
But in particular, the orange--
Just so you know, Brian, we've made it possible
for you to share the screen, if you'd like.
All right, let me just do this quickly.
So when you look at the town of Randolph,
and you look at the heat map--
this is the town of Randolph, and this is the two rep
districts.
Where you see the orange and the dark orange,
that is percentage of the Black population.
As you border into Milton, and then you head this way,
the community gets significantly whiter and whiter.
In fact, the last two precincts that
make up Milton that are connected to Randolph
are 85% white.
And again, when you factor in the housing stock, the income,
the race and ethnicity, the immigrant communities,
you're diluting the vote.
Every precinct that you move out of Randolph and into Milton,
you're diluting the black vote.
In my opinion, you're also dividing the BIPOC vote
because--
and the same thing, for that matter, on the Quincy district.
Because when you create these--
and I look at it back as the former town clerk.
I used to run elections, but I also
used to run elections for candidates before that.
And so you can look at your population,
and your population is your citizens, your noncitizens,
the whole gamut.
And then you can get into the voting age population,
so at that point, you're dealing only with citizens,
and then you get to get into voting power, getting
your vote out, voter turnout.
And as I indicated 10 years ago, that when I was
told, by many, that the Seventh Norfolk--
actually there were about, I think, 1,000 more residents
from Randolph.
I said it's not going to matter because the voting
populations in the turnout within the BIPOC communities
will never be able to overcome that that's in Milton.
And we've had a few elections, one of them on an open seat,
and that's exactly what occurred.
I do think that, between Randolph, Avon, and Holbrook,
and Stoughton, there is a strong opportunity here
to create a very strong House district that
would be majority minority and, specifically, give
a real opportunity for a person of color to get elected.
So I know that Tanisha Sullivan mentioned.
I know our town council is also looking at this,
but they haven't-- they've been looking at it individually.
We haven't had a conversation.
I do think that they're frustrated enough
that the legal challenge is possible.
It's something where I truly believe that we
have an opportunity here.
We have an opportunity to do and create,
for the growing Black community on the South
Shore, a strong representative district.
And I ask this body-- and I appreciate
all the work that goes into it.
I can't imagine the work that goes into this.
But you have a wonderful opportunity here,
and it shouldn't wait another 10 years.
I said that 10 years ago, the numbers
have only shifted greater.
I really ask you to take a look at this because you
have a great opportunity.
Thank you.
Chairman Moran.
Thank you, Brian, and I will tell you
that this is one of the first places
that we went to on this map.
I was very, very hopeful that we could draw a specifically Black
district at 50% down here.
I can also assure you that we tried,
and we tried, and we tried.
The problem is, when you have your Black residents
in Randolph, and you try and connect them
to the Black residents that live in Brockton,
there's that town of Avon that sits there.
And it's just, there's too many white people,
to just use the language we look at--
or non-Hispanic white.
I guess that's the best way to say it--
that you can't do it.
So what we did was--
and I'd like you to go up about 1,000 feet here.
And I'm going to use names because these
are sometimes easier--
if we throw out numbers, I think the people
are more recognizable than just a number.
If you start up in Boston, and you
start with Chynah Tyler's district,
and you move down through Boston, Jon Santiago,
Liz Miranda, Nika Elugardo, Brandy Oakley, Russell Holmes,
Bruce Ayers, Robbie Consalvo, Danny Hunt, Michelle Du Bois,
and now an open seat.
If you take all of that population,
and you put a circle around it, that
is where the BIPOC population is clustered from top to bottom.
What we did with this map--
and I feel for Randolph.
The same thing happened 10 years ago.
It's only 35,000 people, and it's
sandwiched between two very densely populated minority
BIPOC communities, one of which in Boston on the lowest
point, which would be Brandy, which comes into Milton,
is a section 2 Black district, which Russell Holmes is
on top of that.
That's also a section 2 Black district.
So what we did when we looked at this--
and we tried to look at Randolph and see if there's any way
we could do something there.
The population that's in Brockton-- we
had an opportunity, by moving some precincts around,
to push everybody back into Brockton so that they're not
representing any of those towns outside,
and create a district in Brockton that's incumbent free,
where the Black population is the significantly highest
population in that district.
I will be shocked--
you never know what happens.
Candidates matter in this job.
But I would be surprised if we didn't have an African-American
from Brockton in the membership a year from now.
And the only thing, when I looked at this,
that I could reasonably do for the city of Randolph
was to take them from three reps down to two.
And we did that by splitting a precinct
and moving Representative Cusack out of Brockton--
out of Randolph completely.
When I look at this region--
I will tell you, I looked at it--
I kept looking at it.
And I just couldn't get there on it--
I just couldn't-- on an additional Black district
in that area.
But I did do an incumbent free district
where the Black population is extremely high, and hopefully--
there's no guarantees in this business, as we know.
Hopefully, that will produce an additional minority
representative from Brockton in the race when it happens.
So again, as I've said to everybody in this,
I don't know that you like all the answers I give,
and I don't know if you--
but I do owe you an explanation.
From this whole region, this is what I tried to do,
and this is what I thought was the best and right thing to do.
And it involved an incumbent free district in Brockton
that hopefully produces what I think it may produce.
So thank you, Senator, and thank you, Brian,
for your testimony-- not here, but during the process as well.
Thank you, and the only thing I ask
you folks to take a look at-- and again, I definitely
agree with the global view that you have to have.
I just ask you to look at Randolph, look at Avon,
and a portion of Holbrook, because I think it can be done.
But I understand that's going to screw up all the other lines.
So obviously, I have a very Randolph-centric look at this,
and you have to look at it more globally.
I get it.
I'll take another peek at it.
I will.
I mean--
Yeah, I thought 10 years ago, this would be the time,
and I hate to wait another 10.
You just have to have more babies down there.
That's what--
Long as it's not my family at work.
We're done.
Thank you, Brian.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
I'll take another peek at it and see if there's something there.
Maybe I was wrong.
I mean, I will tell you, I spent a lot
of time looking at this area, and I just
couldn't figure it out like the way
I think people wanted it to.
But I think in the bigger--
on a bigger picture, I think we did figure out something here.
It just didn't slide Randolph's way.
But I think we did a good job on maximizing the BIPOC
community in that region, and also creating
an incumbent free district.
Thank you for allowing me to testify.
Appreciate your testimony.
Complicated issues.
We appreciate the deep dive you gave us.
Maeve, who's ready next?
We have Fermin de La Cruz, except the panelist invite
as it is here.
Thank you, Fermin.
We're glad that you're back with us.
Look forward to your testimony.
If you're speaking, we're not hearing you yet.
Looks like you're still on mute.
We have no video and no sound.
Well, tell you what, we're going to come back to Fermin.
Who else do you have up, Maeve?
We have Katrina Huff-Larmond.
I know that she is supposed to be on a panel.
I know Jesse had to step away for another meeting.
I'm not seeing Anabel Santiago on,
but if she's here, if she wants to let me know,
I'll promote her.
Oh, I see, just kidding.
So we got--
So we have a Katrina Huff-Larmond and Anabel
Santiago, and Jesse Gordon had to step away.
Why don't we go to--
so the next one available who is on the list is Anabel Santiago,
and we'll go there.
And we'll go back to Fermin when and if she comes on live.
So, Anabel.
Hi.
Thank you for allowing me to testify today,
and for the chairs for having this comment period.
My name is Anabel Santiago.
I am the lead organizer with Brockton Interfaith Community.
We are members of the Drawing Democracy Coalition.
I both work and live in Brockton,
and I thank you for the work that you've
done around this redistricting process.
I assume you know where I'm going with this,
but many folks in Brockton, including myself,
are concerned with the Senate district that
has been proposed for us.
As it has been said before, the Drawing Democracy unity map
was based on communities of interest that
came from the residents of color in the area,
and our proposal is to unite our communities across Brockton,
Randolph, Stoughton, and Avon.
There are obviously a variety of reasons for this,
and it would be a missed opportunity
to give a powerful district and voice
to the people of Brockton, who we know vote differently
from the municipalities in our current Senate district.
We know that the precincts with the highest concentration
of Black residents in Brockton voted for the Black Cape
Verdean candidate in the last Senate race,
but that candidate did not win a single precinct in any
of the surrounding white towns.
Brockton, Randolph, and Stoughton
are similar in background, in that Black residents who
have moved from Boston have moved to these specific areas.
As stated before, there's a high concentration
of Haitians living in both Randolph and Brockton.
All four municipalities border one another,
and Brockton, Avon, and Stoughton share DW Field Park.
It's bizarre, also, noting that the two municipalities
with the highest concentration of Black residents
in the Commonwealth do not have Black legislative
representation in the legislature.
The Black population in Randolph, Stoughton, and Avon
are not significant enough in their current districts
to give Black residents an opportunity
to influence the outcome of an election,
let alone elect a candidate of their choice.
So the proposed Senate districts are drawn in such a way
that there is little to no opportunity for Black residents
in Brockton and Randolph to elect
a candidate of their choice.
And I saw that, in the proposed district, actually a part of,
I believe what I saw was East Bridgewater was added,
again further diluting the voice in Brockton.
Even with continued demographic shifts,
both districts are drawn in a way
that, over the next 10 years, there's
not going to be enough of Black population
to influence elections, given the larger white voting
block and the conservative nature of the municipalities
included in each of these districts.
So things to know is, using the strict citizen voting age
population, the CVAP, for majority minority districts
should not be a bar to group in communities of interest
together.
The Drawing Democracy unity map creates a district
with a much higher CVAP than the proposed Senate map.
Although it's not a CVAP majority minority district,
it is much stronger, and will become a majority minority
district in the coming years given the population trend
projections.
Population trend projections were used in other Senate
districts in the proposed maps of Lawrence
to make CVAP majority minority districts.
The House did not use CVAP to make majority minority
districts, and the House and Senate
didn't use it in 2011 either.
One of the Senate districts, Hampden,
was eventually filled by a candidate of color, Senator
Gomez, despite not being drawn as a CVAP majority minority
district.
The Drawing Democracy unity maps Senate district
for Brockton Randolph has a higher CVAP
than the Hampden district did when it was drawn in 2011.
Bottom line-- it just makes sense
to follow Drawing Democracy's recommendation
to combine Brockton, Randolph, and Stoughton into one Senate
district because of the shared interest around homeownership,
economic mobility, demographics.
Instead, the Senate proposed combining Brockton and Randolph
with less similar communities, which
makes it harder for BIPOC voters to have their voices heard
among supermajority of white voters.
So I urge the Senate to reconsider these districts
and give the people of Brockton and Randolph
the representation we deserve.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you so much for testifying.
I just want to pick up on a few things.
So you mentioned adding a precinct in East Bridgewater,
but actually we took away two precincts in Easton.
So the net move is in the other direction.
This district-- for those who want to measure this way,
this district is 51%--
it's 49% majority minority.
With the growth that you're talking about,
you're almost going to get there if that was the metric.
But from a voting rights standpoint,
the metric we have to look at is just
what is the majority population today.
We can't do projections.
We're not doing projections anywhere on the map.
That's not the basis for a voting rights claim.
And in Brockton, by the broadest construct
of what is the size of the Black minority,
no matter how big-- if you get really careful,
and I've done this personally because I've
really looked at this.
Because if there was a voting rights claim there, believe me
we would do it.
We would do what we could there.
But it's only about 40 something percent, low 40%,
voting age Black using the broadest construct.
Meaning anybody who says they are any part Black--
Black and other, Black and white, whatever Black--
all of those together are in the low 40%,
and so it's just not a majority minority population.
It's just not a majority Black population,
and we need a particular minority
to be the basis of our voting rights claim, which would then
authorize us to engage in race based districting.
Otherwise, in the absence of a possible voting rights claim,
our view of the law-- and different people
take this differently, but I think it's crystal clear--
is that we can't do that.
The Voting Rights Act is both a ceiling and the floor
to what we can do.
And I also just want to say that has nothing to do with CVAP.
There's been a world of confusion of things
I've been reading over the last few days about what CVAP is
and how it plays into this whole conversation.
Forget about CVAP because the CVAP rate is more or less
the same for all the different populations down in Brockton.
It's not an issue.
It's not part of the decision-- difference in Brockton.
The fact is we just don't have a big enough Black population
in Brockton to be the basis of a Senate district.
That's what it is.
I say, Brockton.
I mean, Brockton, Randolph, every single block that you can
find that has a Black population on it,
if you grab them all together, you cannot get to a Senate
district that is anywhere close to majority Black
in the Brockton area.
You have to throw in other categories, other, et cetera,
and then you can get to a majority minority,
but that's not something we can do from a voting rights
perspective.
I'm giving you a little bit more of a detailed response than I
usually give because I do want to pick up on this thing
that it's about CVAP.
CVAP is an issue when we're trying
to build a district that's going to be effective for electing
Hispanic candidate choice up in Lawrence,
but it's just not part of the conversation in Brockton.
It's got nothing to do with it.
It's just basic racial makeup stuff, for what it's worth.
But I want you to know how closely we've attended this,
how closely we've listened to this,
and how many times we've gone back over this because I keep
going back over it because I wouldn't
want to be wrong about this.
And we do care very much about our obligations,
and it's much more than an obligation.
It's an affirmative desire to, where we can,
lift up the candidates of people's choices.
It's truly where we're coming from.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming in, and stay in touch.
Stay in touch.
This is a process.
Over the years, this is going to keep going,
and if it's not this year, I got to believe, in 10 years,
it's going to happen in Brockton.
Thank you, Senator.
Thank you, again.
Katrina Huff-Larmond?
Hello, and good afternoon, I think we are in now.
We can still say afternoon.
Excellent.
Thank you.
I heard everything that you said about the voter rights claim
because I'm coming to you with some of the same language, some
of the same concerns.
So I just want to put my thoughts out there,
so they'll be on record in hopes that, yes, once again,
you could look at this.
But I thank you for your time.
I thank you for allowing this discussion to happen
and for bringing the community together and even explaining
what you did and how you did it.
As was mentioned a number of times,
I know this was not an easy process,
but I'm here today to discuss the proposed districts that
have been drawn.
First, I would like to discuss a Senate district, as you just
mentioned, Senator, D33.
You have proposed Randolph, Milton, Braintree, Bridgewater,
West Bridgewater, Easton, Stoughton, Avon,
which is about 66% white, 16%--
about 16% Black, 7% Asian, and 6% Latinx,
which leaves 29% BIPOC.
You also proposed, for D34, Brockton, Whitman, East
Bridgewater, Hanson, Halifax, Plympton--
I have no idea where that is--
Hanover, which is about 53% white, 22% Black, 22% Asian,
and 8% Latinx, which makes a population of 32% BIPOC.
It's important to see how these proposed districts are unfair--
seem unfair and unjust to many.
These proposed districts do not allow room
for equity representation.
The largest BIPOC community's on the South Shore,
and as was mentioned earlier, in the Commonwealth.
Needs are being overlooked and diluted
by surrounding white towns.
This is what concerns us, and this
is why we are here speaking to you today.
It's important to take into account the people.
During the beginning of COVID, Randolph and Brockton
have the same needs.
We took matters into our own hands
because we understood that COVID would affect our residents more
than those other towns and cities that
were in our districts.
We had to choose to have our voices heard in order
to fight this life and death situation.
Randolph and Brockton have residents
that speak multiple languages and share similar needs
in providing our residents with support
needed for all residents.
To say that Randolph has not shown
the evidence of disenfranchisement
means that historical factors have not
been taken into consideration.
History has shown that it is a lack of trust
of our political system that caused systemic racism
and other acts of oppression.
Therefore, BIPOC folks are less likely to be
political leaders or to--
less likely to apply to be political leaders.
The hope is that majority minority districts
will assist in building trust and encourage those
to see opportunities to make social change
and/or feel included in this race.
It's important that we look at the historical factors
to determine the needs of all residents
for our voices to be heard.
We propose Randolph, Brockton, Stoughton, and Avon, which
increased the BIPOC population.
With our proposal, you are looking at the districts
with similar demographics, which can
assist all residents in our districts
and not be diluted by other towns and cities.
And that's all I have to say.
I know you've been talking about this all day,
and I appreciate listening to other residents
and other members who have the same interest.
But it just speaks to how strong this concern
is for so many of us.
So thank you, and I appreciate the fact of you
allowing me to speak my mind.
And we appreciate you speaking your mind,
and we appreciate you being here.
We appreciate especially that you're
coming from the community and speaking for the community
and speaking from the heart.
So we appreciate it.
Thank you.
And again, believe me, we hear you,
and we looked very, very hard at this.
Thank you.
And we'll keep looking at it.
Thanks.
I thank you for that.
I'm going to keep moving now to--
who is next, Maeve?
I think Fermin De La Cruz should hopefully
have resolved tech issues, and I believe
he's going to speak in Spanish.
Thank you very much.
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
May I ask you to pause just a moment?
Representative Vargas, would you like to be--
would you like to translate what would he's saying?
Because I certainly want us all to be able to understand
the testimony.
Would you feel comfortable doing that?
Yeah, sure, happy to.
So why don't you translate what he said so far
and tell him what we're doing so he understands, and then
he can keep going, and you'll translate again.
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
So basically, he's saying that, in the city of Haverhill,
we've been working for years to develop good relationships
with the leadership.
We're one united city.
We don't have problems between different ethnic groups,
and we really are asking to not be divided by ethnic lines.
Thank you.
Please continue.
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
Fermin is saying
that, if you're splitting up our community,
in particular, Latino community, we lose political weight
at the state level.
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
He's saying that, by splitting the city in two,
you're diluting the votes, but also the futures
and political ideologies to be subject to another community.
So in the D19 district, it would be subject to Lawrence,
and in the D20 district, it would
be subject to the white communities
that Haverhill is grouped in with.
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
He said, my message is pretty simple.
It's that we don't want to divide the city of Haverhill.
We want to stay together as one community,
and I bring this perspective as a local resident.
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
Thank you very much for the opportunity
to participate in this event.
And thank you, Representative Vargas, for translating.
We appreciate that.
And thank you-- please convey my thanks.
Mucho gracias to--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
Thank you.
Let's see-- let me recognize Roberto Jimenez Rivera.
I know that he has got a certain timeline here.
Hi, Senator.
Thank you so much.
Let me just pull up--
here we go.
Hi, everyone.
My name is Roberto Jimenez.
I'm a member of the Chelsea School Committee
and political organizer for the Boston Teachers
Union, which is a member of the Drawing Democracy Coalition.
I want to thank the chairs of this committee
for having been so accessible to our coalition
throughout this process, and would
like to give special thanks to Chair Moran and his house
colleagues for putting Chelsea back together.
For a city that is over 2/3 Latinx,
and has been for over 20 years, it's about time
that we, the people of this city,
were able to elect a candidate of our choice.
However, I do have some major concerns about the Senate
districts that were drawn for the cities of Brockton
and Boston.
Brockton is the only majority Black city in New England,
and in the committee's proposal, it
will not be able to elect a candidate of choice
for the Black community because it's paired with white towns
to the south instead of the far more Black cities of Randolph
and Stoughton.
In Boston, there's a fantastic opportunity
to create a majority Black district,
and I'm happy to see that district was created.
However, there are many ways of drawing a majority
Black district in Boston that also
empower communities of color that
are left out of that district.
The proposed districts to the east and west
of the Black district do not empower communities of color
unlike the proposal submitted by the Drawing Democracy
Coalition, which creates a stronger Black district by CVAP
numbers and allows for coalition building between other POC
in Boston with white voters in Jamaica Plain, who
have demonstrated they are willing to vote for POC
candidates of choice by electing a Black State Rep, a Latina
State Senator, and a Black Congresswoman.
There are multiple ways of drawing these districts that
are significantly better than the current proposal
in my opinion.
Supreme Court precedent does not set the Voting Rights Act
requirement of 50% plus 1 CVAP as a ceiling, but as a floor.
Just because the law does not mandate
that coalition districts be created,
it doesn't mean that it is illegal to create them.
In fact, in 2009, people like John Roberts and Samuel Alito,
whom I would not consider defenders of the VRA,
said that coalition districts with white voters
are not impermissible.
The Supreme Court has also not ruled
on multi minority coalition districts,
but multiple circuit courts have said
that these are permissible.
You can have the political courage
to choose things that elevate the voices of people of color,
and yet we're not seeing that in Boston or Brockton.
Doing things that are mandated by law
does not show political courage.
I am simply asking the Senate to show that in places
where there is a choice between empowering people of color
and keeping us powerless, that you
choose the side of racial justice
over color blind legal rationales.
One last thing that I want to highlight
is the big difference in sizes between Senate districts
in Western Mass and greater Boston.
The target population for a Senate district
is 175,748 people, and the allowed variance
is generally 5% up or down from that, which is 8,787 people.
Districts in Worcester and west of Worcester
are, on average, about 8,300 people under ideal size
except for Senator Fattman's Republican, district which
is about 5,000 people over.
Meanwhile, districts that cover Boston
are, on average, about 6,200 people over ideal size.
That is a difference of almost 15,000 people on average.
It leads to the systematic overrepresentation
of rural communities at the expense of urban ones.
If the populations were more equal,
you can have a full extra district in metro Boston,
potentially even in the city of Boston itself.
We also know that cities like Chelsea
are systematically undercounted by the census, which
means that these differences are likely far greater than that.
Once again, we have a situation that is legal,
but that is unjust.
I would hope that the Senate can take action to fix this now
when there is still time.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for weighing in,
and I just want to thank you again
for all of your involvement so far through the process.
Thank you.
Who's next, Maeve?
Is it Donna?
Yeah, we have Charles Marquardt and Donna.
Let me check which--
I take it we don't have Richard Thomas Shea.
And Charles Marquardt is--
Is here.
All right, let's go with Charles next, and right
after him will be Donna.
Great, thank you, Senator Brownsberger.
And I want to thank you and your co-chair for all the
work you've done as a member of the board of election
commissioners in Cambridge.
We saw 13% growth concentrated on both ends of our city,
but not much in the middle.
So we have seen the pulls and tugs
of what happens as you try to move your lines around,
so I can only appreciate what you both have
done with setting your lines.
That said, our focus is on drawing the lines in Cambridge
to minimize potential impacts on subdistricts.
Back in the 2010-2011 process, we
were bequeathed with a subdistrict resulting
from the Congressional district, and what we have learned
is that every subdistrict is just like a separate precinct.
It requires its own voting machines, its own staff,
and its own list.
And that affects not only the federal state, but also
the municipal elections, because VRAS can only
have one set of lists in the system,
so we definitely want to try and minimize those.
Cambridge is lucky in that we have
the resources to deal with that, and many other communities
do not.
But it is definitely a consideration
that we are taking into account.
I'd also like to take a moment to welcome Representative
Moran to the city of Cambridge, as he is now
going to be representing part of our good city.
In the 18th district, we do have an opportunity,
I think, to avoid a subdistrict.
As it is currently configured, there's
3,993 people in the census blocks.
The Cambridge target is 3,588, so it's off by 405, or just
under 8%.
So we're going to be spending some time this weekend
to see if there is a block that we could propose
to Representative Moran that we could move from the 18th
into the Second to not have to have a 400 to 500
person subprecinct.
I think that's doable.
We also have the 24th Middlesex, which
we know we will have subprecincts
because we have just under 5,000 people in that district,
and that's a little bit too much for one and not enough for two.
So we know we're going to be moving those around,
but we look forward to working with your staffs
to make this a really good process.
And I also want to thank both of you
for taking the time out of your busy day
yesterday to meet with our executive director
and assistant director and walk through the process.
We greatly appreciate that.
We know how much time you spent on that
and how much more time you have to go in a very, very
condensed time frame through no fault of your own,
no fault of the municipality's own.
It is the result of the federal government and their inability
to deliver census numbers in a reasonable time frame.
So I think we're all dealing with that.
I think your committee has done a wonderful job
with what they can in a really, really condensed time frame.
I went back and looked at 2010, and we had six months
to do this work.
You've done it in six weeks.
So I applaud you for what you've been able to accomplish,
and I also--
personally, I'm in one of the new majority minority
Senate districts that currently will have Senator DiDomenico,
but I look forward to working with him as well.
And that's it for me today.
Thank you so much.
Chairman Moran.
Thank you, Charles, and please like yourself and Topsfield
and a few other municipalities where we can tweak
and where we can move.
We want to be helpful.
Absolutely, we do.
So if you can send those over to me and my staff,
we'll definitely--
if we can do it, we will.
Additionally, 10 years ago, when we
did the bill, section 11 of the bill,
we put in that bill that--
and my intent is to do that again in the House side.
And basically, it says, in a polling place for subprecincts
created under the act, in a location in the same building
as for an existing precinct, no additional election officers
are needed to do a subprecinct.
So we are trying everything we can
to work on language that at least brings down
the cost of some of these subprecincts where we can.
So we'll be doing that again this time around.
I appreciate it, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to bring to your attention--
a lot of those precincts, they have two different ballot
styles, two different voting lists.
It's actually safer to separate them.
But we do acknowledge that we don't
have to do that, but I think from a election administration
and making sure people get the proper ballot
for the proper election, we tend to lean in that direction.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
And I'm not suggesting that you don't
know how to administer election way better than me,
but if there is language then in the bill that does help you
like that, we want to add it.
So again, we can--
like the tweaks, we want to be as helpful as we can.
Thank you very much, and again, welcome to Cambridge.
Thanks.
Great.
Let's see-- next was going to be Donna Blythe-McColgan.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want
to thank the committee for this opportunity.
I know you've had a long haul before getting here.
I also have enjoyed, tremendously,
the last 4 and 1/2 hours of testimony on everyone's
concerns with redistricting.
I do have a concern with redistricting
and would like to bring it to your attention.
I've been a union organizer and member of the labor community
for 40 years.
I've also been someone who's lived
in Dorchester my whole life.
I'm now a member of the Civic Associations and a community
activist, and recently I discovered, or learned,
that Dorchester ward 16 would have
three of its precincts somewhat split, taken out
of Suffolk County, and inserted into suburban counties
of Norfolk County and Plympton.
And I have a question that I would like to ask,
is what was the reasoning and logic behind that?
I don't want to get into all the other particulars
of redistricting because there are many.
But the one question I have is, how do you--
a perspective that I come from with social and economic
justice and parity and recognizing that people
have a community of interest.
How do you take a community of interest of those voters
and residents and put them in a suburban county
where there is no community of interest?
I have lived in Milton for a few years in my earlier life,
and there is absolutely no comparison
between the needs of a suburb and the needs of an inner city.
So in all due respect, I would like
to have an answer as to why those three precincts were
removed.
Thank you.
You know what?
It does go all the way out to Lexington,
and all the way south to--
it's part of a fabric of movement
and our concern for creating the majority minority
district in Boston and preserving
the so-called opportunity district on the [INAUDIBLE]
side.
So it's a combination of demographic factors, voting
rights factors, and political factors.
So there's no easy--
there's not a simple answer.
It's just how it fits in the fabric of the thing.
If we tried to move them down now,
we'd be pulling down on allocation of districts
all the way up to Lexington.
[INAUDIBLE]
Hello, Mr. Chairman, how does someone
who lives on Galvin Boulevard have
anything in common with somebody who
lives in Lexington or Concord?
Where is the community of interest there?
Secondly, there is a number of maps that have already
been out there that have shown a minority majority district.
Our senatorial district has been represented
by a person of color.
I just don't get--
and many people in the community and civic groups
don't get it either.
Many of us in the community support the unity map,
but we also are 100% behind Representative Hunt's position,
that breaking up ward 16 is breaking up
the community of interests in Dorchester.
Yeah, Senate districts are big enough
that they tend to combine multiple areas.
For what it's worth, I represent four different wards
in Boston, all of which are split, so it's not so unusual.
But I take your point.
I mean, I certainly prefer to keep the ward together
if I could.
You're absolutely--
[INAUDIBLE]
I'm not telling you that you're wrong at all.
I'm just saying there's a bigger picture out there that
makes it difficult.
And thank you for that, but I do have one question,
and maybe Chairman Moran can answer this,
because it does have an impact on the State Reps.
See, where-- how he got to that decision,
or how you all came to that decision?
We'd like to have some clarity there.
Thank you.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
What is the question to me?
Ward 16 9, 10, and 12 being removed from--
That's not his fault. That's all my fault. That's on--
Thanks, Will.
That's on me.
It's on you?
So and you have--
your answer is what again?
I'm not quite sure.
My answer is I'm sympathetic, number one.
I like keeping wards together.
Number two, it often doesn't happen.
For example, most of the other wards in Boston are split,
or many other wards in Boston are split,
and they also are often represented by--
some are represented by people who live in the city.
Some are represented by people who live outside in the city.
So it's not unusual.
Senate districts are a big place,
so they do have to combine some different pieces.
And then the last thing is, why has it happened?
It's part of a fabric of a whole lot of different decisions,
and changing it at this point raises issues that go--
that effect a lot of other districts.
So that's my answer.
Senator, I would encourage you to take another look at that,
please.
We are a community of diversity, of different trades and unions
and households that really will not
be properly represented, would be disenfranchised.
And so with that, I ask you to sincerely look
at it again, and [INAUDIBLE].
Thank you.
I appreciate your testimony, and I promise you,
we'll keep thinking about it and talking about it.
Appreciate that, thank you very much.
--talking about it.
I don't think so.
Let's see, we got some--
I think some people need to mute.
So if you're not talking at this time, please mute.
All right, Maeve, who's next?
Yes, we should have--
I promoted Lew who previously--
Yeah, I saw Lew.
There's Lew.
So let me say the names down to Lew then.
I've got--
Lew was earlier.
Oh, Lew was earlier.
All right, Lew Finfer.
Welcome Lew.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I echo the numerous times
that people appreciate the hard work that you and Chair Moran
put into this.
I'm testifying on two of the Senate districts.
I've lived in Dorchester the last 50 years,
so the testimony you just heard from Donna McColgan,
similar to me, the breaking-- taking three precincts out
of ward 16 and moving them to a suburban district
seems really problematic.
Dorchester is one place.
People have worked hard to try to keep it together
and to deal with the issues of race and class,
which are tantamount and really important to deal
with in that community.
And taking out three precincts is just not
going to help in terms of being able to--
ability to work together on issues.
And I just would ask you, just if there's some way
to look at that again, because it's just
hard to think about a community like that being broken up
in that kind of way.
And it's just going to be difficult for people
to have their voice heard from those areas in a predominantly
suburban Senate district.
And they won't be part of the Dorchester-wide conversations
you'd want to have with your Senator on those issues
if they're not in that district.
So I just really ask you to look at it.
I walked all those streets over 50 years
and all parts of Dorchester.
And also the issue of trying to keep those predominantly
white working class areas of Dorchester--
to keep them connected to the communities that
are more people of color is really important
because the community is trying to grow and deal with change,
and there's some diversity even in those areas.
So I just ask you to look at, again, if it's at all possible.
My second area is that you've heard from people--
Anabel Santiago and others in Brockton I
know have the same questions and concerns about the Brockton
district and why it couldn't be drawn to include Stoughton
and Randolph.
And I heard your explanation, which I'm obviously not
as conversant as you are about the Voting Rights claim
authorization and needed to be a higher percentage.
But given that it's not, and you still
have to draw districts from this big area,
couldn't you still legally have made the choice
to pick those three or four communities--
bring Brockton, Stoughton, Randolph, and a piece of Avon?
Couldn't you have made the choice anyway?
Because you made other choices with communities in that region
that weren't based on racial composition necessarily.
So I just wanted to ask that, because it wasn't clear to me
when you made that explanation to her about
why you couldn't have done this.
The true motivation would be to group together people of color,
and that would be the predominant motivation
for making that change.
And under the Constitution of the United States,
Constitution says thou shalt not group people by race.
Thou shalt not discriminate, based on race,
in how you group people.
We don't segregate schools.
We don't segregate legislative districts.
The only basis for engaging in racially motivated
redistricting that the Supreme Court has recognized
is the presence of a Voting Rights Act violation.
But couldn't you-- because you still--
I don't know.
You're still looking at a set of, let's say,
20, 30 communities in there.
Couldn't you pick two of them?
Couldn't you pick Randolph and Brockton
and not do the whole thing?
I mean, there's lots of ways it could have come out that way,
Lew, but the story that we're asking is, let's not kid
ourselves.
That's why we would be doing it.
That would be our predominant reason for doing it.
That's why everybody here is urging us to do it,
and the Constitution says we don't discriminate.
We don't segregate schools.
We don't segregate districts.
We don't segregate housing.
We're not supposed to do that unless there's
a compelling state interest to do so.
In a context of redistricting, the only cognizable reason is
the presence of a Voting Rights Act violation,
which we cannot see in the Brockton area.
Thank you for responding on that.
These are, obviously, the tough issues.
It's tough issues, as you heard from the people of Brockton
and me, as one of the people in Dorchester
wanting to raise this.
So I appreciate the work you're doing,
and know these are tough issues.
And if there's any way to keep looking at it to find a way,
obviously, everyone's urging you to.
Understand you worked hard at it.
Thank you, Senator.
Thank you, Chair Moran, too.
Trust me on this, we have worked hard to do that Brockton thing.
This is one of the districts we spent a lot of time thinking
about what our opportunities were there,
and unfortunately, they're not the opportunities
that the people are urging upon us,
as we understand what we are allowed
to do by the Constitution.
Thank you.
Thanks, Lew.
Your welcome, Chair.
Next up?
David Allen.
Great, so I'm going to call Suzanne Lee.
I see Suzanne Lee, Nico Van [INAUDIBLE],,
Suzanne Lee, Steve Bickerton, the same Suzanne Lee.
People that were calling Karen Trowbridge.
Has she testified already?
No, she's not testified.
She's been emailing me.
David Allen from Concord.
And of course, you've got my number.
I'm from Concord.
Let me most heartfelt echo the near universal appreciation
for your transparency, for your clear dedication to inclusion,
and for goodness sake, to your commitment to making this
happen-- this many hearings.
If I might, I hope you would stay with me a moment
while I try to dive down into the basics here
in this question about, as you will appreciate,
drawing a line through Concord or Topsfield,
as an example, that bifurcates--
the phrase "the community of interest," or we
simply speak of community.
When I say dive down to the basics,
I mean, I get at what democracy is about,
and its root, democracy is the individual voter giving up
the right to represent themselves
and selecting some individual they'll
accept as their legitimate representative.
If we stop to think about it, the process
of identifying such a single individual
from several tens of thousands, who ultimately will vote,
is actually a quite involved, complex social and political
process.
If you artificially bifurcate that community--
in Concord's case, if you cut a line straight across it--
you frankly delegitimize the selection of someone
who will be recognized, again, legitimately as representative.
It's not just voting.
It's a complex, as I say, over weeks and months,
political and social process.
It gets at the very root of how democracy works.
Let me say that our problems here
in the little town of Concord, after all, a rich place,
pale by comparison with what you've
been addressing more broadly.
I very well appreciate that.
Although community of interest is really
what's at stake in all of these, and it's not,
I think, an inaccurate statement to say,
you get at the fundamentals for how the democracy can succeed.
Just to cover a point.
Is Concord a community, and Concord Carlisle,
as you've heard?
Just one small measure--
there are over 50 citizen committees in Concord.
There are not tens, but hundreds of people
who engage with the political process here month
after month, some of them on a much more frequent basis
than that.
And as you acknowledge, in some of those voluntary roles,
virtually full time jobs.
There is very much a live political community here.
The solution is one we don't have at our beck and call,
and that's to add more representatives
to your already 160 in the great and general court.
It'd be nice if we think about that down the road,
but immediately, we look in practical terms.
We've already heard there'll be a look at the possibilities
in Topsfield.
Since we're talking about half the population I've already
identified, about 18,000, that means we're talking about,
when you divide this 18,000 in half,
we're talking about if you were to make a shift of the line
either north or south to the border, a shift to 9,000.
That's not trivial.
I well appreciate, as somebody put it,
you're putting together a Rubik's cube here.
And again, I am most appreciative
of a very challenging task that you have.
At the same time, beyond hearing reasons,
I at least would like to hear that you
will look at the possibilities.
Once again, the change is a total of about 9,000.
I appreciate hearing that possibility.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Chairman Moran.
Thank you, David.
I just feel like it'd be helpful if I just give somebody--
gave you a sense of what we look at.
The smallest town or area in Massachusetts is Gosnold,
and there's 70 people.
The largest town is Boston, and there's 675,647 people.
There's 351 cities and towns that
range between 70,000 people to almost 700,000 people.
There are 2,158 precincts in the entirety of Massachusetts,
and if you break it down into census blocks, which
is the foundation of all this, there's 107,206 census blocks.
We have to draw 160 rep districts
that fall between a population of 41,740 to 46,134,
using those numbers as our basis for doing it.
We split 97 towns in our House map.
And I don't know off the top of my head,
but I think 34 towns somewhere around there
have to be split because they're over the size of a rep
district.
They're over 46,134 people.
It is impossible to draw--
you cannot draw a map where some cities and towns don't get
split.
Concord, sitting at 18,000 plus people, situated
where it is on the map for years, did not have a problem.
It wasn't until the cycle when you saw huge growth
in the Boroughs out in--
just east of Worcester, that you start
a cascading effect of 5,000 to 6,000 people
that ripple across the map.
And for years it never ended up in Concord.
There are towns that were split for years, but because
of the way that cascading effect happened in that region,
they were made whole this time.
It's not something that was done advertently or on purpose.
It was just the way the numbers and the dynamics
of doing this happened.
And who knows?
10 years from now, there could be some other reason
that ripple effect may go in an opposite direction,
and you may be made whole in 10 years.
But I do feel you gave us a thoughtful comment,
and I just wanted to try and give you a thoughtful one
back just so you have a sense of--
and I know you do because you said it a few times, that
the dynamics and the difficulties
that we have in drawing these.
But I just wanted to give you an equally thoughtful reply
to what you had to say.
So I hope you understand what we're up against here, David,
and I appreciate your testimony.
Thank you.
I do much appreciate, and I come to this ridiculously late.
As you will imagine, there's great alarm in Concord.
The Select Board met at 2 o'clock, an emergency meeting,
so I'm woefully uninformed about detail and possibility.
But I also see, from the numbers that you've given,
that you've got something like a 6,000 population swing
in there in setting up your districts.
And in looking at how you dealt with that bulge in the west,
I have a feeling that there is a possibility
to look at those borders out there
and ask what might be an additional possibility?
That, of course, is what--
and I'm just one voter in Concord,
although very concerned about these things.
That's what I'm asking.
Will you take a look?
I realize we're very far in the process.
We're going to say 15 or so of these get-togethers.
Nonetheless, that's what we're asking.
If you'll take a look at the possibilities out there--
you may not, but that's what we're asking.
And again--
We will look.
I give you my word, we will look,
and if there's a way we can make you more whole, we will try.
And we plan on being in here all weekend.
And you're here all day on Friday for God's sake.
Listen, let me once again say how much I
appreciate the transparency, the inclusion, and the dedication.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
You're muted, Senator.
Thank you.
Yes, I am.
Thank you.
Thank you again for your thoughtful testimony.
Do we have to go back to somebody
that we've missed here?
Yeah, is Jesse Gordon on--
He's rejoining as of now.
He's rejoining.
Let's go back to Jesse because he was on earlier.
At the moment, Jesse, you are still on mute and no video.
I think I've got both on now, if that works.
There you go.
I'll try to do a screen share, too,
so I can bring up my little map.
But let me speak before the map comes up.
I'm looking at the First Norfolk and Seven Norfolk districts
as a pair, both of which include Randolph,
and they currently, under the proposed plan,
split Randolph in half on the east-west axis,
with the eastern half joined with Quincy,
and the western half joined with Milton.
The result of splitting Randolph is
that our community is split into two arbitrary halves
with two incumbent representatives,
neither of whom come from Randolph.
And because we're the smaller group in both those districts,
it's unlikely that we'll end up with any chance of getting
representation from Randolph.
So I heard your explanation before about
racial characteristics.
I did speak about that in my previous testimony,
but I won't this time because you
made it clear that the Constitution forbids
using racial characterizations as the basis for redistricting.
So I'll look instead simply at representation,
and the split that's done currently is this white split.
Randolph is the green-- is the bottom half here,
and what I'm suggesting is that, within these two boundaries,
without touching any outside districts at all, by shuffling
the precincts around, you can create a Randolph
centric district that actually works
to keep Randolph as a whole and works
to keep the rest of the district as a whole
without affecting any other precincts whatsoever.
I sent in the numbers by email, but basically, the red
represents what we would do with Milton and Quincy combined,
and the green represents basically
the Blue Hills, Blue Hills Ave up to Mattapan Square and all
of Randolph in one district.
And the rationale for this is basically
that, if you made the split in that direction,
Randolph would be all together in one district.
There is no meaningful difference
between East Randolph and West Randolph.
We don't use those terms.
We actually do use the terms North
Randolph and South Randolph if you wanted
to have a meaningful split.
But the split that's made, of course,
has no meaning at all other than it's numerically necessary
and splits our community in such a way
that we won't be able to work together to elect a State
Rep from Randolph.
I do list the racial characteristics
because that's what I saw was done on the district maps that
were made, and it ends up as a 66% non-white district the way
I've drawn it, the green district in other words,
for Randolph, which is a much stronger minority
population than the committee's proposed Seventh Norfolk
district.
In addition, I did look at where the incumbents live,
and I believe that's a permitted rationale for how
to keep the districts together.
And I assume that was actually the rationale for splitting
Randolph in half, is that one incumbent lives
in the eastern part of Milton.
The other lives in the eastern part of Quincy.
And in order to make it that they were separated,
we took the brunt of that.
That could be solved within the lines that I've drawn--
the green district is actually a little bit smaller--
by making a census block link, little salamander tail,
up to the incumbent in Milton's district, and the numbers
would still work.
I recognize that it's a challenge because you'd
have split precincts, but it would
work within this allowance.
That would mean that Representative Driscoll would
represent his little census block area in Milton,
the Blue Hills and Blue Hills Ave in Milton,
and all of Randolph, and I think that would
be a fair contest to with him as the incumbent
against a new challenger from Randolph.
I think that would be serving democracy, serving
the people of Randolph, and respecting
the rights of the incumbent.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for your testimony, Jesse,
and any comments, members of the committee?
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Is Dennis Bly on the line?
No.
Hearing not, Jonathan Cohen?
Hey, Jonathan.
Hey, thank you.
Yeah, Jonathan Cohen here as the chair of the issues committee
with Progressive Massachusetts.
Wanted to thank you for holding today's hearing,
and wanted to make a few points.
One, just a minor polite request,
in the interest of accessibility,
maybe to be really meaningful this cycle, but at least next,
is on the proposed maps, if split precincts
could be clearly labeled.
One thing that I noticed in the House maps
was that their splits were often labeled on one part,
but not on the second part.
And since I live near a number of them,
I was just trying to figure out exactly what was going on.
And really to have precinct labeling on the Senate
maps would have been helpful to understand in Boston.
I live in a precinct that will be newly split,
and when I saw the Senate maps, had no idea which district
I was actually going to be in.
Also, on that point just really quickly,
is insofar as the way in which precincts
are split could be reconciled between the two maps,
I think that would be a useful way of reducing
the number of subdivisions in precincts
that would need to happen.
Just noting that, as myself, living in a precinct that
will be newly split, and that is in a different rec district
from the two other parts--
neighboring split precincts in a Senate district.
So that's just on a very hyperlocal part
to where I live in Boston, in East Fenway, but just
a way of making maps easier for elections officials
to work with when doing the eventual reprecincting
that, finally, Boston will be able to do,
which is an exciting thing given how the city has not.
Wanted to make a few points-- one,
that Roberto Jiminez Rivera had alluded
to before, that in the Senate maps,
most of the Western Mass districts are undersized.
They're within allowable undersize,
but they're often more than 8,000 people undersize.
And a lot of the Boston based districts
are over 6,000 or 7,000 oversize.
And they're within an allowable range
now, but given what we know about population movement,
that discrepancy will likely--
could get severe in the course of the next decade.
As we know that Western Mass district started out
very undersized and Boston districts started out
very oversized, the Boston based districts will likely
continue to grow, and the Western Mass districts,
possibly outside of Springfield, will likely continue to shrink.
So within possibly even a few years,
we'll have passed that allowable threshold.
So there's a lot of work.
I respect all the work that's put into,
and understand that any change somewhere has ripple effects
everywhere else.
But any degree of evening that out would, I think,
have a great benefit, especially because
of, on the general principle of one person, one vote,
it's effectively giving more weight to rural communities
in Western Massachusetts and less weight
to metro Boston relative to population.
Also, wanted to, again, amplify the points
from the Drawing Democracy Coalition,
especially around Senate maps.
Many people, who can better than I can,
have spoken about the Brockton district.
One thing I would even note about that beyond, I think--
Senator Brownsberger, you talked about not
being able to explicitly draw districts based on race.
In many ways, in that region, it's
something more beyond that, where
you do see population movement between those towns,
looking at some of the Avon, Randolph, Canton
to Brockton, which are actually a geographically
more compact district that you would end up with in a way
that you don't see population movement,
and that the only real apparent reason for leaving it as is
would be because the map is-- because 10 years ago, people
chose to make the map such.
And the fact that, 10 years ago, people
chose to make a map as it is, is arbitrary in the scheme
of things compared to the actual existence of communities
of interest around there.
But also, again, to the Drawing Democracy
recommendations about the possibility
of drawing a stronger second district in Boston--
given we did, in Boston, once have
a time where we had both Sonia Chang-Diaz and Linda Dorcena
Forry representing the two fully contained in the city
districts, and the First Suffolk district I've drawn
seems like it could be more difficult for somebody
to also be able to elect a strong candidate because of how
the lines were drawn to make the changes happen there.
But also, in general, to my earlier point,
the idea of any decisions based on demographics
are often that people are arguing
aren't purely just race based redistricting,
to my earlier point, and it's something that, to its credit,
the House map does, is recognizing
the areas in the city where you do have people,
if they're going to move, they're
likely to move between areas.
It's what happened when the map, to its credit,
combined parts of JP that have both
a strong Dominican population and that, even
though the new district is not going to be a majority
Dominican district, I'm recognizing that's where
the population moves are.
That if somebody is likely, if they're
going to look for a new apartment
or possibly buy a house, they're going
to do so in that same corridor.
And because of that, it makes sense to keep it together.
It seems strange to me that, that logic
of looking at those communities, which is clearly
a constitutional logic, and I kind of-- it's
done well in the House's map.
I don't how you can do that.
It's unclear how, to me, why drawing the Brockton district
would somehow be unconstitutional if what
the House is doing is fully in bounds as it is,
and it is good that the House does that.
So I was just unclear about the logic against the Brockton
district.
I think those are all of my main points.
I do think it's, in general, a good principle
to avoid splitting something, although I'll
say two points, that one, to those of people who are upset
about being newly split, as the chair of a ward committee that
is going from being four State Reps and two State
Senators to four State Reps and four State Senators,
you get more people to invite to your meetings.
So it's not a problem.
We all enjoy, even though, Senator Brownsberger, you'll
have a smaller part though we'll still look forward
to having you join us.
And so it's not as bad in the scheme of things.
Some of the remaining splits in the Senate map
seemed confusing in terms of rationale,
beyond continuity, like the split of Winchester
and the split of Lexington, which
were difficult to understand beyond the fact
that they arbitrarily were a decade ago.
But I do think, in general, reducing--
it's, in general, advisable.
But I think those are my main points,
and wanted to thank you again for holding today's hearing.
Thanks, Jonathan.
Thank you for your thoughtful approach to so many issues.
There's a lot in what you said, and I
won't try to unpack it all.
But we can talk offline if you'd like,
at some point, and sort of bat some of those issues around.
One thing I do want to give you some assurance on
is that both Representative Moran and I
are taking a look at the new precincts
and trying to harmonize the different maps that each of us
has for Boston because there is a lot of potential complexity
there.
So we are doing that.
Thank you again.
All right.
I see John Cuneo is online someplace.
Or was he?
There he is.
Sir?
I can't [INAUDIBLE].
We're not hearing you for some reason, John.
You don't look like you're on mute,
but we're not hearing you.
We're still not hearing you.
Tell you what, I'm going to come back to you.
I think you got some technical difficulties there.
You'll stay on the line here, and we'll come back to you.
Who's next?
And then we'll come back to John and give him another try.
Maeve?
Janet Kane.
Thank you.
So I'm going to call some names down to Janet Kane.
Audrey Hall, Danielle Erickson, Carla Charter,
Janet Liam Bruno, Louis Elisa, Paul Jamison, Nancy Gates.
Lydia Lowe has let us know that she has
submitted written testimony.
She had to go.
If any of those folks still wish to testify orally,
please let us know.
We will get you in.
Janet Kane, I'm delighted to recognize you now to testify.
Thank you, and good afternoon, Chairs Moran and Brownsberger.
I am here to ask you to reconsider the redistricting
decision for First Hampshire district.
My name is Janet Kane, and I'm a resident of Southampton.
I serve on the Council of Aging Board, the Parks Commission,
and the Housing Authority in town,
but I appear here as a voting resident.
Southampton has a large growing number
of senior citizens in town, and many
are finding it difficult to remain in their homes
where they have lived for decades
and contributed to the needs of the town for generations.
We do not have assisted living facilities in town,
and we need a focus on affordable housing
for this aging population and to find
creative ways to increase affordable housing overall
in Southampton.
The needs of Southampton are very different than those
of a large city like Westfield.
We need to focus on investigating
many of the unfunded state mandates that affect us
and drain the finances of a small town like us.
The redistricting takes away the largest population
of students that attend Hampshire Regional High
School to only replace them with all the other Hampshire
Regional High School towns with a lower population of students.
It makes more sense to leave the entire regional school
district intact, or to at least have
the largest segment supported by a Hampshire State
Representative.
As well, the redistricting removes Southampton totally out
of Hampshire County and realigns it with Westfield and Hampden
County.
Open space issues and initiatives
are a major concern to Southampton
as well as protecting our water resources.
This does not fit in with a large city
that has public drinking water and sewers.
Our needs are so different to those in a city like Westfield.
We have many wonderful small businesses,
like Glendale Ridge Vineyard in Southampton,
as well as being a large farming community.
It just doesn't align with the needs of the city.
I'm asking you to consider keeping Southamp--
excuse me, Southampton in Hampshire County district,
which would be more aligned with the needs and challenges.
Thank you.
Thank you for weighing in.
Appreciate it.
Chairman Moran?
But thank you for weighing in.
Go ahead, Chairman Moran.
Thank you, Janet.
Again, I feel you're the first one
to really testify or give us feedback
on this map, but virtually every precinct--
every district west of Springfield
in the Hampden, Franklin, Berkshire County region--
upper Quabbin region, almost every one
of them, except, I think, three, was low in population.
So it caused us some agita in this area to try
and figure it out.
Unfortunately for Southampton, they
are next to a section 2 Hispanic district.
That's Holyoke.
They are also near two other section 2 Hispanic districts
in Springfield, one of which we had
to reconfigure to get it to be a section 2 Hispanic district.
And when we reconfigured that, we
had to take the West Springfield rep, which in this case
is Mike Finn, out of Springfield.
And we had to take Jake Oliveira, who's
centered in Ludlow, out of Springfield
to draw a district in Springfield
that is 52% Hispanic section 2 voting rights issue.
So in doing that, I had to pick up population for the West
Springfield district and try to disperse it
across people in areas fairly.
We decided to do one in Agawam and one in Westfield.
Now, starts the ripple effect.
Both of those needed--
so now, they needed two.
And the district on the bottom, which
is represented by Representative Boldyga,
starts to go out to Granville, and then it goes to Tolan,
and then it starts to go up because we
didn't go into the Berkshires.
So it has to go to Blanford, because you're
dealing with towns out here that are 1,000, 1,200.
And you have Southampton, which is 6,200,
and it sits right on top of Westfield.
So as much as I'd love to tell you that there was another way
to do this, I thought about that,
and Representative Sabadosa certainly
tried her-- we tried our best to not do that.
But it was just in a position where, given the three section
2 voting rights issues that we had in Hampden and Springfield,
and the geographic position of Southampton as it
relates to those districts,
It was just really--
there was no way around it.
And again, as I've been saying all day, all night, all day--
or seem to be all night, you came,
and you gave good testimony.
I just wanted to give you my rationale for why it happened.
And again, you don't have to agree with it,
and you may not really like it, but I
do feel obligated to give you my rationale.
So thank you, Janet.
Thank you, Chair Moran, and we do feel often
we get shifted and kind of lost.
And I just hope our new representative will not
allow that to happen.
But we have a great person to represent us right now.
Understands our needs, and I'm very concerned that we're going
to be lost in the shuffle.
Listen, I know that area well.
The late Pete Kocot was a dear friend of mine,
and I was out there a lot.
And so I understand.
I mean, I know I'm a Boston guy, but I've
been out there quite a bit.
And I know the feelings of a lot of that region,
whether it's the Berkshires versus Franklin
County and versus Hampden, and I tried my best
to take all that into consideration.
And just geographically, where Southampton is on the map,
there wasn't much I could do.
So anyways, I'm sorry, but I just
wanted to let you know my rationale.
We'll see if we can relocate Southampton somehow then.
Thank you.
Great.
So let's give John Cuneo another try.
How are you doing there, John?
Yeah, we're still not hearing you, buddy.
There's something wrong at your end that we can't fix,
so we'll keep coming back to you.
So let's see, next up, I'm going to say some name-- who's next?
Francine Tishman.
Is here?
Great, Francine Tishman.
Hi.
You're on.
All right, two in a row from Southampton.
Perfect.
Yes, I was introduced.
My name is Francine Tishman.
I'm a two term member of the Southampton Select Board,
and I'm speaking here today only for myself
since we did not have sufficient notice in order
to consider this topic for open meeting discussion.
Thank you, Representative Moran and Senator Brownsberger,
for this opportunity to express my disappointment
and dissatisfaction with the redistricting decision.
Through this redistricting, Southampton
with a population of a little more than 6,000 people,
is being aligned with Westfield, a city
of more than 41,000 people.
Our issues and concerns are not the same,
despite our geographic proximity.
I feel strongly that our needs will
be relegated to a secondary position just based
on the sheer numbers.
It only stands to reason.
Our current representative has been active, engaged,
and accessible to the residents of our town,
and without exception, she has demonstrated, time and again,
her non-partisan dedication to her constituents
and our concerns.
Representative Sabadosa takes the time
to listen and to participate in small town meetings
and issues ranging from Select Board to Council
on Aging and everything in between,
as well as elementary and regional high school
meetings and functions.
She does this in order to share important information
with her constituents and to better understand our needs.
Armed with that knowledge, she has worked and guided us
through the bureaucracy to advance projects and programs
for Southampton's benefit.
I'm appealing to your sense of fairness
and asking that Southampton's representation be included
with other small Western Massachusetts towns who
share similar concerns.
Representative Sabadosa has given an important voice
to smaller Western Massachusetts communities.
I'm imploring you to reconsider your decision
and keep Southampton in the same district
as the other four towns in the Hampshire regional school
district and unified through their shared representation.
Do not separate Southampton from its Western Massachusetts
peers.
Thank you.
Thank you for weighing in.
Chairman Moran.
If you would, I just want to--
did you share that?
I want to put up on the screen, if I could,
a map that, hopefully, you'll understand, Francine,
what we were dealing with here.
Can you get that on?
Can you see the map on the screen?
No, I cannot.
Now, I can.
I have it now.
Can you follow my pen?
All of these towns here, every one of them,
needed to pick up population.
Every one of them.
And as I said to you, in this area here,
we had a section 2 issue with Springfield,
where we had to reconstruct a number of precincts
to create a section 2 voting rights district
that is over 50% Hispanic.
And then up here in Holyoke, we had
a decrease in population of, already, a section
2 Hispanic district, and we went over here to Chicopee
and grabbed some Hispanic population there.
So now, you start to see these two Hispanic districts here.
There's an Hispanic district here.
This is Chicopee, this is West Springfield,
and here is Southampton, and all these precincts
need to pick up population.
So again, I just want you to see the big picture
here in this map and the challenges
that we had in this region.
And again, I don't expect you to like what we did,
but I do want you to know what we were faced with
and what we were looking at as far as this map went and as far
as getting these districts up in population
so that they could fall within this deviation of 41,740
and 46,134.
So hopefully, that gives you some idea
of what we were dealing with.
I hear you, and we didn't mean to back to back double team you
with people from Southampton.
I appreciate your explanation.
But you're right, I'm not happy with the decision,
but it is what it is, and that's unfortunate.
Thank you very much for your time and your explanation.
Sorry.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for that.
Going onward, who's next, Maeve?
I think we should circle back.
Steve Bickerton is on, and I think he was a little earlier,
but wasn't on before.
Terrific.
Steve Bickerton.
Hi, thank you.
I'm speaking on behalf of the Cedar Grove Civic Association,
the Pope's Hill Civic Association, and the Port
Norfolk Civic Association.
We are the three civic associations
that make up most of ward 16 in Dorchester.
We submitted written testimony asking
to reconsider the current map, which splits ward 16
into two Senate districts.
We are a community of interest, and we have historically
been united as a city district.
The current map would group us with such suburban towns
as Easton and West Bridgewater, which
are very different from us.
I'd also like to add to that written testimony.
As you know, the city of Boston is in the final stage
of drawing new precinct lines.
The draft lines have been part of public discourse
and socialization for the last three years
and are being finalized with a voter certification
this Monday prior to the close of testimony
for this committee.
I would urge the committee to use the new Boston precinct
lines so the legislature is online
with other municipalities so that our House and Senate
district lines are using them as our guidepost
to have the best balance and up to date precinct data.
Those are my comments.
I'll keep it brief.
Thank you very much for the opportunity.
Got it.
Short and sweet is appreciated.
We're definitely taking a look at the new Boston precinct
lines.
Thank you.
Next is Dax Crocker.
So I'm going to call some names going down to Dax.
If I call your name, and you've been trying to get on,
make sure that you hit us in the chat so we know you're there.
Carolyn Chao, Cheryl Stall, Steve [INAUDIBLE] Paul Silva,
Judith Hudson, Stephen Kenny, Joe [INAUDIBLE]..
That takes us down to the Dax.
Dax, really glad to have you here.
The floor is yours.
Thank you so much, Senator Brownsberger and Representative
Moran, and everyone in the redistricting committee.
My name is Dax Crocker, and I'm with the Coalition
for Social Justice in the South Coast,
especially New Bedford and Fore River.
And we are members of the Drawing Democracy Coalition
as well.
I would like to start by congratulating you, thanking
you, praising you.
It's been a long road, a lot of work.
In regards to New Bedford, one of our original and priority
requests were that the six precincts for the State House
map along the 195 were reunited to New Bedford,
and that has been done with the map
that the committee released earlier this week.
Three of them were attached to a district
to the east in the Fairhaven Mariposa,
and three were attached to the State House district
to the west in Dartmouth.
And those six precincts have a community of interest
very closely with New Bedford, not with the towns to the west
and to the east.
And so thank you so much for bringing back
those six precincts.
It's a big deal for New Bedford.
Bringing back those six districts
begins to keep communities together in New Bedford.
The second step that you took, by drawing a majority minority
opportunity district, was to connect some of these precincts
that I have been speaking about to their community in the north
of New Bedford, and so people are
delighted that their friends, their family members, people
of their ethnic group, et cetera,
are now in the same district.
It's beautiful.
We really love what you did.
At the same time, we took a look at the map as a whole
and thought, how could this map be improved, for two reasons.
And if I could share my screen, let me show you the map.
Yeah, it's right here, so I'm going to share my screen.
This is the map that you released earlier this week.
In here, along the 195, where I am
hovering the mouse of my computer,
is the six precincts that I've been talking about.
If I go down south, this area over here, which is--
this is a ward 4 precinct A, and this little pink area here,
this little one here, is ward 4 precinct C, 15 blocks.
These two areas are Cape Verdean American neighborhoods
that, as a whole, are one community of interest
with this area where I am hovering the mouse,
and along Union Street to the west,
going towards the Buttonwood Park,
which is the zoo in New Bedford.
And so I think that the map could
be improved by not splitting that community.
That community, right now, is split.
Half of the Cape Verdean American community
is in the new district, and half of it
is in the old district, where it has been the last few years.
And we would like that community of interest
as a whole to stay together.
Otherwise, they lose political power,
and no one from their community could, hypothetically-- not
that I know of anyone, but could not,
hypothetically, say I want to run for office,
and I have a chance of winning.
They don't because they're not together.
Further down south, where I have the mouse now,
that's Ward 6 precinct C. That is a heavy Guatemalan American
community, especially of the ethnic group
called Maya K'iche.
Many of them live here in the South, and many of them
live here around where the number
74 is just north of the 195.
So I think that what I'm trying to say
is that the map that you gave us--
it's good.
It could be better by bringing these two communities that
have been split from the other half of their communities
together.
That would give a person of color from this new map
a true legitimate chance of saying, I live in my community.
I live in the district of my community.
I can run for office and win.
If people from this new district say,
we like the representatives that we have,
and it is legitimately they're choosing
to keep those representatives, that's beautiful.
And I don't see why they wouldn't.
Both representatives in this area
are beloved by the people of color community.
But as it stands right now, neither one
of these two representatives would
be the person of the people of color
choosing because the white majority would
have the upper hand.
It would continue to promote low voter turnout in the people
of color neighborhoods.
Because why vote?
The same people are going to get reelected.
So now, I'm going to show you a map that we drew based
on the map that you guys released,
and we think that it's improving upon the base of your map.
In this new map, as you can see, the Cape Verdean American
community and the Guatemalan American community
in the south of New Bedford are not
split from their other half in the center and in the north.
It's all one community, and the two representatives
that we have right now would still
live within the boundaries of these two districts,
except that they would live in the other district
that you drew.
Both of them are beloved, as I said.
Both of them are allies of people of color
and the needs that we have in New Bedford.
And what we are trying to say is keep the communities together
and give people of color in New Bedford a legitimate chance
next year to say we re-elected these representatives,
and they are there because of our decision our choosing,
not the other way around.
Thank you so much for your testimony always,
and you're always--
I can't hear you.
Yeah, I went off.
On and off.
Thank you so much for your testimony
and for all of your always thoughtful contributions.
Chairman Moran.
Thank you, Dax.
I will take another peek at this.
Clearly, I think you see our effort
that we were making here--
Oh, yeah.
To draw a district that represented this growth that's
happened in the last 10 years, and rightfully so.
That's one of the objectives we went into this with.
But I will take another peek at this
and see if there's any way I can improve upon it.
But thank you for bringing it to my attention,
and I appreciate your testimony.
And thanks to for the map.
That helps.
Thank you.
Yeah, and if I may add, Chairman Moran,
incidentally as a byproduct of keeping these communities
together, the map that we drew yesterday
brings the total community--
the total population, the total adult population,
and the total citizen adult population
in the majority of people of color.
And we can send you all the numbers.
And I heard earlier that Senator Brownsberger was saying, well,
you can't cut a district just to keep
all the people of the same race or same skin color together.
It's community of interest, and it happens that, obviously,
if you keep those communities of interest together,
their numbers go up.
So I will send you the information.
Thank you.
Great.
Thank you so much, again.
Who's up next, Maeve?
Zach Gavel.
Thank you to both Chair Brownsberger and Chair Moran.
I have less comments and more a request
just for an explanation.
I'm looking at a completely separate part
of the state from anything we've talked about so
far throughout the hearing, and it's
the First Middlesex and 37th Middlesex
districts on the House side.
And I'm interested in understanding
why those districts were split up the way that they were.
Both of those districts had a sufficient population
prior to being redrawn, and the only thing that happened
was the two districts traded territory internally.
So it doesn't seem to me like there
would be any sort of trickle effects
from other parts of the state.
It seemed more like just those two districts swapped Lunenburg
and part of Groton and part of Ayer.
As I'm sure you know, Groton has never
been split up historically on any map
that I could find on the State Legislator website,
so I'm curious why that decision was made
and how we came to not keeping those districts
the same as they were.
Zach, I just put this map on the [INAUDIBLE]..
Hopefully, you can see it.
This is actually a pretty easy explanation.
This whole area here was in desperate need of population.
And I'm not going to lie to you.
I took advantage of the fact that I believe--
well, I shouldn't say that.
Due to some challenging discussions
with my colleagues and people in this region,
it became apparent to me that maybe there
was going to have to be a few reps that
might have to run against each other because
of this whole area that needs population.
And this district, as you can see, looks very odd,
and it had one precinct in Pittsfield.
Pittsfield needed population, so I
start with doing this, making Pittsfield whole because that
is a principle that we try to do where we can.
Once I do that, I have to satisfy
this district with population because,
when you're out in this part of the map, you can't go north.
You can't go west.
So you have to equalize these, and then the flow
starts happening across the map.
This district here now gets eaten up down at the bottom
here because I dropped some here.
One of the things I did here that I thought was important
was--
again, I did this 10 years ago, so I can tell you there
was a big Berkshire, Berkshire, Berkshire, we want
to be in the Berkshires, leave the Berkshires alone
kind of thing.
So all three reps here are now in the Berkshires
in Berkshire County.
Nobody from outside of Berkshire County
represents any of Berkshire County,
and nobody from inside Berkshire County
represents outside of Berkshire.
So we do that, and then we start trickling across the map,
and we come to a situation where this whole region here
has to change drastically.
And the way we decided to do it is you
have one town here that's a decent sized town
in Greenfield.
If we gave Greenfield to one person, then one of these
would look crazy because, especially if I gave it
to the gentlelady who represents this district, then
this district would then go all the way over here and come down
like this.
And it would look, in my opinion, kind of strange,
and you can be in one side of the district,
and to get to another town on the other side of the district,
it might take upwards of an hour and a half.
So for the purposes of drawing a little bit
more compact districts up here, we separated Greenfield,
and we put some in this district and some in this district.
And when we did that, this whole region
here had to change because this region had to come west.
So that is the explanation.
That's why we did what we did.
Hopefully, again, as I say, there's
lots of ways people can draw these maps.
That's the way we chose to draw this map.
Some people don't agree with it.
Some people are happy.
But you definitely deserve, no matter who you are,
an explanation, and that's the rationale and reason why
we did it.
I appreciate that.
I wasn't trying to make a value judgment about the decision.
I was more just confused because it
didn't seem to me like that trickle effect would have
an impact because those two districts simply flipped
territory with each other, and there
was no external territory from other districts coming
into those districts.
It starts with that oddly shaped district, like I said.
The district represented by Paul Mark-- it starts with that.
He lives in Peru, so just to show you
where Peru is, if you don't know, Peru is--
can you move me out of the way there?
Sorry, give me one sec.
Peru is right here.
So Peru is in that area right there.
So if you start drawing districts,
this is one of those areas where,
if you start drawing districts totally around incumbents,
it was our thought out here as well as Paul Mark--
he knew that if I did this, which I had to do--
by every redistricting principle, I had to do that.
And in fairness, Paul understood that,
and he knew what was coming.
So I think he decided to, with the Senator out here leaving,
he decided to move up to the upper branch.
I hope that's what he's thinking.
So once he does that, now all this population here
has to go somewhere.
I can't bring this district because this has
pretty two good sized towns.
I can't bring it that far east because of that.
So the next two people that live out here are these two,
and they have to pick up this population.
And to do it in a compact way, and in a way that makes the map
look at least somewhat reasonable.
Look, I mean, you see these towns how they're shaped.
It's very hard.
When you got building blocks that look like this,
it's very hard to draw districts that
are nice and neat little blocks, but to make it look somewhat
compact, that's what we did.
Anyway, so that's the rationale behind it.
I hope that explanation at least gives you some understanding
about why that happened.
I appreciate it.
I think I'm still confused, but I do
appreciate you taking the time.
Let's see.
Who is next?
We have Marty Sweeney.
I think I might have skipped him before by mistake.
Yeah.
Good.
So before we go to Marty, which I'm going to recognize next,
I just want to call the names of some other people
that I think we've now gone by who are not here.
Brian Tully, George MacAvoy, Dr. Michael Anthony Walker Jones,
Gretchen Arnst, Tiffany Bell, Carol Berkley, Brian Tully,
and Alexandra Dewey, Diana Carey.
We're not seeing you.
If you're here, let us know.
We do want to recognize you.
Hit us in the chat.
So I'm sorry, who did we miss again?
Who am I coming back to?
Marty Sweeney.
Marty Sweeney, thank you.
Marty Sweeney.
Marty Sweeney?
Sorry about that.
Technical difficulties.
No problem.
My name is Martin Sweeney.
I'm a resident of the current First Suffolk Senate district
in Ward 16 in Dorchester.
Lifelong active union member, active community member,
and I'm very concerned about the proposal
to shift my neighborhood into Senator Timothy's area
in Milton, Avon, that area.
This proposal basically cuts--
I don't know how many people are aware of how Dorchester
has always been divided.
It's very parochial.
It's very parish-based, very working class, very
urban middle working class district,
and this is splitting my parish in half.
So our neighbors will now be represented
by a different Senator, and shifting the power out
of Dorchester to the suburbs is not helpful to us
as a neighborhood.
So I'm just concerned where the common values
and the common interests are here,
and how this serves us, to be separated
and to be put in a group that is really very dissimilar to us.
We're a neighborhood of working class people, and to be--
I just don't feel that Milton has the same common interests
as Dorchester.
So I would be hard pressed to feel good about it.
I understand the reasoning for redistricting,
but I'm concerned that we're putting
the cart before the horse here.
This is a very diverse district as it is.
Our previous State Senator was a person of color,
and we loved her dearly.
She chose to leave for the private sector.
This was not anything divisive on those lines.
I just don't see how this is helpful,
to take a working class, diverse, urban neighborhood
and align it with a very upper middle class
to upper class suburban district.
Thank you so much for weighing in.
I'm not going to argue with you.
I think you're--
I mean, actually, I think the district is not all Milton.
I mean, there's a lot of working class folks in that district.
But I generally try to keep things together,
and I understand--
You're splitting 16.
Yeah.
You're taking half of our district
that is a representative district.
You're taking an urban Boston district
and moving it out of-- moving our representation out
of not only out of the district, out of the County,
away from the power base for working class people, which
is the city of Boston.
I'm not going to argue with you about ward 16.
I'd love to keep wards together.
It does happen, as you've probably heard
of the testimony all day long.
We've had towns that are split, and I represent
a number of split wards, too.
And so it's not ideal, so I don't
want to disagree with you.
I respect where you're coming from.
Well, I would appreciate if you would take another look at this
and maybe find another solution and not
split the limited power that Dorchester
has as an urban, working class neighborhood and dividing that,
and basically weakening what limited power we do have.
I gotcha.
We will take another look at it.
Thank you, Senator.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you, panel.
All right.
Let's see, who else remains to testify?
Have we got everybody?
Everyone that is on the list and is here has been here,
has gone.
Is there anybody else whom we have not
called who is present at this time,
on the Zoom call, who would like to testify?
Hit us in the chat and let us know.
We'll give you a minute or two to do that.
I'm just going to pause for about a minute
to make sure that somebody is not desperately
trying to find the chat button.
Chat button is down in the middle of your screen.
At least on my screen, it's down in the middle of the screen.
At the bottom, it's got a little call out, like in a comic book.
You press that button, and you can say something in the chat.
All right, without hearing--
not hearing anybody else seeking to testify,
I would entertain a motion to close the hearing and adjourn.
So moved.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
All right, before I entertain that motion,
before I ask for a vote on that motion, thank you.
I just want to remind everybody online, anybody
who might be watching away from this Zoom call,
might be getting it live streamed,
that we will be having--
we are accepting written comments
through the end of the day on Monday at 5:00 PM.
You can do that through malegislature--
M-A as in Massachusetts, and then legislature, no spaces--
malegislature.gov/redistricting.
You can find your way to submit written comments
if you haven't already done so.
And, Chairman Moran, any other business before I
call for a vote on the motion to adjourn?
Just anybody who is listening, please don't think
your testimony here is enough.
If you have any suggestions, whether it be Topsfield,
Cambridge, New Bedford, really, what would be the most handy
is if you could give us Shape files and not PDFs,
because in PDFs, we have to look at streets and stats.
It's just easier for us to make changes
if you give us Shape files.
And I think there's some stuff we took in here today.
I think, Senator, you're probably feeling the same way.
There's some stuff that people brought up here today
that I think we can hopefully accommodate and make
some changes.
But hopefully, we also gave some answers
that people at least understood the rationale for why
we did some of this stuff.
So that's it, but please, get your stuff to us by 5:00,
and if you can get it in Shape files, even better.
And if we can do it, and do it in a way that
doesn't hurt the priorities of the map,
I would gladly be willing to do that.
So thank you, Senator, for sharing this very long hearing.
Thank you, and everything that Mike just said.
I join in his remarks.
We're eager to hear you in every possible way.
So there's a pending motion to adjourn.
All in favor, say aye.
[MULTIPLE SPEAKING SAYING "AYE"]
Any opposed?
This hearing is ended.
Thank you, everybody, for your endurance.
Thank you to all who testified.
Have a good weekend.
Thank you.
Good night, everybody.
Have a good weekend, everybody.
Thank you.
Bye, everyone.
[MUSIC PLAYING]