Utah House Democrats

From Representative Rebecca Chavez-Houck
Salt Lake City

Using an Alternative Population Base for Redrawing Districts

A few states alter the data delivered by the U.S. Census Bureau before using it draw district boundaries by reallocating special populations such as students and military personnel. Some states have looked at adjusting the data to alter where incarcerated persons are counted. What are the legal and technical issues regarding changing the population base for redistricting.

Peter Wagner, Executive Director from the Prison Policy Initiative in Massachusetts

Refer to this link: http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/

Take away: Wagner advocates for prisoners being counted based on their home communities (where they have been living or are likely return after their incarceration) versus being counted in prison.  The later may provide greater disenfranchisement for prisoners as the needs of the community where they are being incarcerated may not be reflective of his/her home community.  Wagner presented a case where a city council district’s boundaries were drawn and the only non-prison residents were a few farm owners, yet, since the count for the district included the prison it ended up having a councilperson = to that of a district with thousands of non-prisoners.

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The Economy: What’s In Store

Panelists presented their take on current status of the economy; how the stimulus money will or won’t help: Simon Johnson, of MITs Sloan School of Management; David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s and David Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast, corporate communications and government affairs.

Refer to this link: www. Baselinescenario.com

Take away: Wyss believes that the recession is not over yet, but we are nearing the bottom, however he projects a sluggish upturn.  Unemployment is the biggest problem; although the pace of layoffs is receding.  Problem is, people cannot find new jobs once they are laid off.  Continuing downturn in labor force participation is more acute in urban areas.  Cohen is seeing “fear” in folks who are employed.  They are dropping seeming luxuries such as cable service in the fear that they will be laid off.  They are starting to save more, but during a recession this is not necessarily helpful: “the paradox of thrift.”

Wyss: the stimulus shouldn’t have gone to the states because it’s taking longer for it to kick in.  Stimulus has to be:  timely, targeted and temporary, the last one was none of the above.

Wyss advice to states: take as few actions as possible that run counter to implementing projects that use the stimulus, “get out of the way of the stimulus funding.  SPEND RESERVES versus laying off people; shore up safety net services, don’t let the bottom fall out from under folks; try to be as facilitating of recovery as we can be.  Get money out the door. Spend to stimulate the economy: annual capital budgets should be ramped up.   Repair old facilities and incorporate green building strategies.

For global fixes: we need global standardization and modernization of regulations; we are stuck using regulations established in the 1930s.

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Legislator Training Track: How to be an Effective Committee Chair

Take away: Being genuine with the public and colleagues (eye contact);

• Control: includes how one handles the agenda, debate, colleagues and audience
• Fairness: ensuring that everyone understands the process and protocols as well as time allocated for public testimony

Put together social functions to help committee members facilitate a collaborative environment.  ID the top three goals of the committee and make sure members stick to them (what are their individual goals, why are they on the committee, know this, too). Pass out guidelines/norms for the committee members that go beyond rules, helps with consistency.   Assign committee members to put together information and backgrounders to assist with committee work (consider and utilize their expertise and interests).

Use humor; bring the “humanity” back to the process.

Prepare thoughts for use at the end of the day/meeting when the media asks you questions. Oftentimes we are all so spent and tired after committee meetings (especially heated ones) that “exhaustion makes you say dumb things.”

One committee chair prohibits use of laptops by committee member during the meetings.  Meet ahead of time with members who have a tendency to get out of hand (or who use the meetings as a soapbox versus interaction with public and experts who are testifying).  As chair, hold back from debating with folks who are testifying…you set the tone.  Reserve the right to comment at the end to make chair’s comments (avoid surprises), but don’t get into it with folks during the meeting:  Bad form.

Take a break if you think things are getting out of control or use your gavel to regain control.  Consider setting up meetings totally dedicated to a potentially controversial issue so other agenda items aren’t short changed.

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Treating Violence as a Public Health Crisis

Interesting discussion:  Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has issued reports on this topic at:

However, the discussion got co-opted when an Illinois Senator used the session to inform attendees of his displeasure with the Ceasefire program (one of the highlighted programs of the session); had a contentious relationship with the founder of the program because he feels the program has been a waste of money for their state.  I felt many elements of the program were promising, but as with anything, would recommend due diligence in researching whether we’d want to use the program in Utah.  Ceasefire has been evaluated independently by the Department of Justice.

Take away: RWJ folks have funded a program called Playworks,  www.playworks.org,

that works with schools who have a lot of children who exhibit playground aggression. They send a staffer who teaches the teachers and students how to organize their playtime.  The challenge is that many kids who have grown in dysfunctional homes don’t know how to play; they either model violent behavior that they see at home or on TV… they deal negatively with their need to be physical and get energy out, they just don’t know how to do it.  The playworks staffer assists teachers in organizing structured play and teach the kids how to resolve conflict in a productive manner.

COCHS is a program that provides a process where parolees have preventative health care that starts in prison and then links them to a medical home upon release. Here’s the link to their website: www.cochs.org

Ceasefire www.ceasefirechicago.org uses public health protocol that treats violence within a community the same as any other epidemic would be handled. This includes sending a team of advocates (former gang members) who go to the hospital to intervene with the victim’s family right after a shooting in order to diffuse retaliatory behavior, follows this protocol:

• Interrupt transmission
• ID highest potential transmitters
• Change group norms

The paradigm of violence takes time to change but the notion is that the community begins to work toward not accepting the violence (basic community organizing strategies).  The strategies have been used previously in a Boston program, Operation Ceasefire so experts have mixed opinions about the Chicago program and its director.  Here’s a recent Governing article on the program: http://13thfloor.governing.com/2008/05/is-urban-violen.html