The Rose Institute at Claremont McKenna College was disqualified in its bid to redraw California’s political districts March 19 for failing to disclose all of its donors over the last ten years.
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The Rose Institute of State and Local Government works to address issues surrounding California’s state and local governments. Members of the institute have conducted research and published studies on demographics, redistricting, legal and regulatory analysis, and budgets and public finance.
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Every ten years California must redraw its political districts. The Rose Institute was one of two organizations this year that submitted bids to California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission to be the contractor to redraw California’s political districts.
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According to Douglas Johnson CM ’92, a Rose Institute Fellow who heads up the institute’s research on census data use and redistricting, the Rose Institute approached the Citizens Redistricting Commission and asked them to reconsider the donor disclosure requirement since the institute is funded by CMC and would have had to turn in data on all donors to CMC over the last ten years to meet the commission’s requirement.
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“We were hoping the commission would show flexibility,” Johnson said. “No educational institution would ever be able to turn over ten years of donors.”
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According to Peter Yao, a member of the 14-person commission and a former Claremont City Councilman, the commission voted 10-3 to disqualify the Rose Institute’s bid because they felt that by failing to disclose their donors, the institute did not adequately complete its proposal.
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“The commission is sensitive to how outside donors could influence any contractor,” Yao said. “The commissioners want to know if any partisan donor outside the college is putting undue influence on the Rose Institute.”
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As an academic institution, CMC could not accept donations to support politically partisan purposes because it is against IRS regulations, Yao said. However, he added that on the Rose Institute’s website the commission discovered that the institute solicited donations from the public. The commission felt that if money was donated directly to the Rose Institute that those donors should be identified, Yao said.
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Johnson, however, said that the Rose Institute was simply unable to put together a list of all its donors, and its failure to disclose donors had nothing to do with partisanship. Yao said that he understood Johnson’s explanation and that he had personally voted against disqualifying the Rose Institute.
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“Claremont McKenna did not receive any money on behalf of working for a political cause,” Yao said. “I was satisfied with that.”
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Since the Rose Institute was disqualified, the commission chose not to evaluate its proposal and qualifications any further, Yao said. Instead, the commission awarded the $510,000 contract to the Oakland-based Q2 Data and Research Firm.
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The Q2 firm also drew questions about its ties to the Democratic Party, but ultimately the commission determined that Q2 could adequately redraw the districts.
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“Going into the process, the commission understood that we could not identify a group that was completely neutral,” Yao said. “It’s never completely unbiased. It’s about identifying a group that can do a relatively neutral job.”
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Johnson acknowledged that the disqualification was disappointing for the Rose Institute. He said it was too far down the road to predict whether the Rose Institute would consider putting in another bid to redraw the political districts in ten years.
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He added that if the Rose Institute submitted another bid in the future, it would still run into the same problem if it were required to disclose all of the donors to CMC.
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