BILL ANALYSIS Ó ------------------------------------------------------------ |SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | AB 1986| |Office of Senate Floor Analyses | | |1020 N Street, Suite 524 | | |(916) 651-1520 Fax: (916) | | |327-4478 | | ------------------------------------------------------------ THIRD READING Bill No: AB 1986 Author: Davis (D) Amended: 3/29/12 in Assembly Vote: 21 SENATE ELECTIONS & CONSTITUT. AMEND. COMM. : 3-2, 6/19/12 AYES: Correa, Lieu, Yee NOES: La Malfa, Gaines SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE : Senate Rule 28.8 ASSEMBLY FLOOR : 41-31, 5/7/12 - See last page for vote SUBJECT : Redistricting SOURCE : Author DIGEST : This bill makes various modifications to a provision of existing law that requires the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to provide information to the Citizens Redistricting Commission (CRC) regarding the last known residence of each inmate incarcerated in a state adult correctional facility. ANALYSIS : Existing law: 1.Requires the CDCR, not sooner than April 1, 2020, and not later than July 1, 2020, to furnish to the CRC information regarding the last known residence of each inmate incarcerated in a state adult correctional CONTINUED AB 1986 Page 2 facility, except an inmate whose last known residence is outside California. Requires CDCR, in 2030 and in each year ending in the number zero thereafter, to provide this information to the CRC not sooner than the decennial census day and not later than 90 days thereafter. 2.Requires the information furnished by the CDCR to include, for each inmate, a unique identifier, other than the inmate's name or CDCR number, and last known address information that is sufficiently specific to determine the congressional, State Senatorial, State Assembly, or Board of Equalization (BOE) district in which the inmate's last known residence is located. Provides that the information may include, but not be limited to, ZIP Code information or street address information from which a ZIP Code can be derived. 3.Requests the CRC to deem each incarcerated person as residing at his or her last known residence, rather than at the institution of his or her incarceration, and to use the information furnished to it by the CDCR in carrying out its redistricting responsibilities. This bill: 1.Requires the CDCR to provide information to the CRC regarding the census block of the last known place of residence for each inmate incarcerated in a state adult correctional facility, instead of providing information about the ZIP Code of the last known place of residence. 2.Requires CDCR, when providing information to the CRC regarding the last known places of residence of inmates incarcerated in state adult correctional facilities, to exclude all inmates in state custody for whom a last known place of residence within California cannot be determined and all inmates in federal custody in a facility in California. 3.Requests the CRC, when using information regarding the last known place of residence for inmates that is furnished to the CRC pursuant to existing law and this bill, to do all of the following: AB 1986 Page 3 A. Refrain from publishing information regarding a specific inmate's last known place of residence; B. Deem an inmate in state custody in a facility within California for whom the last known place of residence is either outside of California or cannot be determined, or an inmate in federal custody in a facility within California, to reside at an unknown geographical location in the state and to exclude such inmates from the population count for any district, ward, or precinct; and, C. Adjust race and ethnicity data in districts, wards, and precincts that contain prisons in a manner that reflects reductions in the local population as inmates are included in the population count of the district, ward, or precinct of their last known place of residence. Comments AB 420 (Davis), Chapter 548, Statutes of 2011, which requests the CRC, when adjusting district boundaries for the state Legislature, Congress, and the BOE, to deem an incarcerated person as residing at his or her last known residence, rather than the institution of his or her incarceration. AB 420 was intended to end the practice whereby incarcerated individuals are counted, for redistricting purposes, as residing at the prison in which they are incarcerated, instead of at the locations where they last resided prior to incarceration. Critics of that practice argue that it artificially inflates the political influence of districts where prisons are located, at the expense of other voters. This bill makes a number of changes to the provisions of AB 420 in an attempt to allow for that bill to be more effectively implemented. Specifically, this bill requires CDCR to provide residence information for inmates by census blocks, instead of by ZIP Codes, since census blocks are the unit of geography that typically are used to draw district lines. Additionally, this bill seeks to provide greater guidance to the CRC about how to deal with inmates for whom reliable residence information is not available, AB 1986 Page 4 and seeks to ensure that information provided to the CRC by the CDCR is not considered a public record. FISCAL EFFECT : Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes Local: No SUPPORT : (Verified 7/2/12) Friends Committee on Legislation of California Prison Policy Initiative Greater Sacramento Urban League NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT : According to the author: This bill is a follow-up to AB 420 (Chapter 548, Statutes of 2011), which requested the California Citizens' Commission on Redistricting to count inmates, for redistricting purposes, based on their last known address (according to Courts/Corrections' records) rather than their place of incarceration. This is based on the authority in Elections Code Section 2025 pertaining to a person's domicile for voting purposes. AB 1986 seeks to fine-tune the provisions of AB 420 by: 1. Extending the scope of AB 420 to federal prisons by requesting the Commission to remove all federal prisoners from any data collected (the rationale for this is the difficulty of obtaining data on the federal inmate population within California from the federal government); 2. Increasing precision in the inmate address data to be provided to the Commission by expressly referencing census block data, which is the standard for map-able addresses; 3. Requesting that the Commission not publish any inmate home address data to address privacy and safety concerns; AB 1986 Page 5 4. Requesting the Commission to adjust race and ethnicity data appropriately in the districts containing prisons. Proponents indicate that: Prison-based gerrymandering unfairly dilutes the voting strength of communities of color, and undermines principles of fair representation. Collectively, African-Americans and Latinos are approximately 40% of the state population, but 70% of the prison population, with Latinos incarcerated at nearly two times the rate of whites, and African Americans at approximately six times the rate of whites. Prison-based gerrymandering deprives our communities of the representation to which they are entitled. AB 1986 will help ensure that this civil rights issue is addressed properly in California. Ending prison-based gerrymandering has been endorsed by civil rights organizations including MALDEF, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the Asian Law Alliance. LDF, the nation's oldest civil rights law firm, is committed to the full and equal participation of all persons in our democracy, and supports AB 1986. The Prison Policy Initiative, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that documents the effects of mass incarceration on democracy. For the past ten years they have studied how Census Bureau data is used in redistricting. They closely track the effects of prison populations on districts at all levels of government across the country. They discovered that most California counties with large prisons already take steps to limit the impact of prison populations on their County Supervisory Districts. These counties include: Amador, Del Norte, Imperial, Kern, Kings, Lassen, Madera, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, and Tuolumne County. These ten counties remove the prison population from their redistricting data, and AB 420 presented a uniform state-wide solution. California became the fourth state to end the practice of prison-based gerrymandering, extending its counties' efforts to State and Congressional legislative districts. AB 420 aimed to AB 1986 Page 6 prepare the State to count incarcerated people at home for redistricting purposes after the 2020 Census, but after analyzing New York and Maryland's implementation of their laws ending prison-based gerrymandering, they support the improvements that AB 1986 proposes to make to California's law. ASSEMBLY FLOOR : 41-31, 5/7/12 AYES: Alejo, Allen, Ammiano, Atkins, Beall, Block, Blumenfield, Bonilla, Bradford, Buchanan, Butler, Charles Calderon, Campos, Carter, Cedillo, Davis, Dickinson, Eng, Feuer, Fong, Fuentes, Gatto, Gordon, Hayashi, Roger Hernández, Hill, Hueso, Lara, Bonnie Lowenthal, Ma, Mendoza, Mitchell, Pan, V. Manuel Pérez, Skinner, Solorio, Swanson, Torres, Wieckowski, Williams, John A. Pérez NOES: Achadjian, Bill Berryhill, Chesbro, Conway, Cook, Donnelly, Beth Gaines, Garrick, Gorell, Grove, Hagman, Halderman, Harkey, Huber, Huffman, Jeffries, Jones, Knight, Logue, Mansoor, Miller, Morrell, Nestande, Nielsen, Norby, Olsen, Silva, Smyth, Valadao, Wagner, Yamada NO VOTE RECORDED: Brownley, Fletcher, Furutani, Galgiani, Hall, Monning, Perea, Portantino DLW:n 7/2/12 Senate Floor Analyses SUPPORT/OPPOSITION: SEE ABOVE **** END ****