Dr. Rex Facer did not expect to receive a call from Governor Spencer Cox asking him to chair Utah’s maiden Independent Redistricting Commission. As a registered Democrat the call from the state’s top Republican was a bit surprising, but his party affiliation or political ideology was never questioned. “When the governor called me,” Facer said, “he simply asked: ‘Are you willing to do it, and will you do a good job?’”
Utah voters narrowly approved 2018’s Proposition 4, called the Better Boundaries initiative, to adopt a seven-member independent redistricting commission. The citizen-led proposition was created out of concern over past accusations of willful manipulation of political boundaries by state legislators to favor one party’s candidates over another, often referred to as gerrymandering.
The anti-gerrymandering proposition instructed both GOP and Democrat state leaders to select three nominees each to sit on the commission, with the governor appointing his nominee as chairman.
Earlier this year, Cox released a statement justifying his trust in Facer, saying he will bring “the public policy expertise, leadership experience, and unbiased opinion that we’re looking for.” That experience, Facer acknowledges, has accumulated through many unexpected opportunities similar to the independent redistricting commission throughout his career.
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Facer grew up in Oregon but frequented the Beehive state to visit family in Cache Valley. Although descendants of Mormon pioneer ancestors who settled Utah, his family had left for Oregon before he was born. His father provided for the family as a mechanic while his mother stayed at home, although she later became a nurse.
“Never in my wildest dreams would I think that I would have the opportunity to work overseas or head up a statewide redistricting commission,” Facer said. Most people he knew while growing up just had “regular jobs and simply sought to be good members of the community.”
This desire to do one’s best to help the community, mixed with what Facer admits is a fair amount of good fortune, propelled him into a career of public administration and management serving across the country and around the world.
As a young student, Facer completed his undergraduate degree in public policy analysis at Brigham Young University then straightway completed his masters of public administration. After BYU, he pursued a Ph.D. in public administration, public management, and public policy at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia.
His dissertation compared public and private human resource structures and their effectiveness. This led to opportunities to work at the university. “We affectionately called it ‘applied research,’ but essentially it was consulting work,” Facer said.
Cities, counties, and states contracted Facer and his colleagues to complete research projects and analysis concerning major initiatives taken on by the respective government entities. “For example, if a city wanted to expand its boundaries by annexing some property, we might contract to do a fiscal analysis to see whether it would generate enough tax revenue to cover the cost of providing municipal services,” Facer said.
“I did a whole range of stuff,” Facer said. Valuable experience in local government presented itself as he prepared a manual for a gubernatorial transition, consulted cities and counties, and provided technical assistance for other local government projects.
After several years, Facer’s hands-on local government experience and research caught the attention of his former alma mater. In 2001, BYU invited him to move his family back to Utah and teach as an associate professor of public management in the George W. Romney Institute of Public Service and Ethics.
For over twenty years now, Facer has taught select courses at BYU on human resource management, public policy processes, and public budgeting and finance, among others. Professor Facer’s work has been featured extensively in over 60 national and international stories, ranging from BBC and NPC, to USAToday and CBS.
Obama Administration’s Federal Salary Council
Facer’s active involvement with groups around the nation have led to fascinating opportunities, but perhaps none greater than his association with the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA).
In 2010, Facer was serving as chair of ASPA’s subset committee on personnel and labor relations. Around the same time, then-President Barack Obama’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was searching for experienced individuals to serve on the Federal Salary Council.
“I wasn’t looking to serve in the [Obama] administration,” Facer said, “but my involvement with ASPA gave me some opportunities to interact with them.” Then-OPM Director, John Berry, reached out to the association to get feedback on some labor reform ideas from the administration. This interaction provided opportunities for Facer and his colleagues to work closely with the administration. Not long after, President Obama appointed Facer and others to serve in his administration.
“The Federal Salary Council was a terrific opportunity,” Facer said. He served for over six years on the council making recommendations on federal pay issues and working with labor unions. “It’s one thing to be involved in writing about theoretical issues,” he said, “but it’s another to be making recommendations on how to actually do things, and it was exciting to be involved.”
This appointment led to formative experiences with others he did not expect. The other members of the council consisted of representatives from unions. He remembers discussing with a colleague about how worried he was “about these union people and how they would behave. Would they always be over the top and not be willing to compromise,” Facer remembers thinking.
As it turns out, Facer later learned that the union representatives were also worried about him. He was an appointee from a very conservative state. But, Facer reminisced, “We were all very surprised at how everyone sought to be honest brokers of the process.”
“We all have biases,” Facer said, “but we can get away from them by being honest brokers, listening to others and laying those biases on the table. We can trust each other, and by doing so, get things done.” He hopes to apply these lessons to the independent redistricting commission.
International Experience and Local Service Opportunities
Other opportunities to utilize his public administration and management expertise presented themselves, in what Facer observes to be in seemingly random fashion.
Facer’s involvement with the ASPA and the Federal Salary Council provided for interaction with the Astana Civil Service Hub. The Hub was organized as a joint Kazakhstan and United Nations effort to improve civil service in former Soviet bloc countries.
The goal of the effort was to facilitate the exchange of knowledge to promote and encourage better HR practices. The hope was that the civil servants would strengthen their government’s services and that would in turn inculcate more trust from their citizens.
Facer and others delivered presentations focusing on reforming their performance management systems and compensation systems. “It was a very interesting opportunity to engage and interact with top government officials in these countries,” Facer said. “Rubbing shoulders with these leaders was a very rewarding experience. They are terrific people who are just trying to make their part of the world a better place.”
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Engaging with others to help them help themselves seems to be a recurring theme throughout Facer’s efforts anywhere he goes. Locally, he served for many years on his academic department’s diversity and inclusion committee at BYU. “We were trying to make sure we were an inclusive academic unit, and ensure our students were prepared to serve without fear or favor,” Facer said. “We want them to be prepared to serve everyone with the dignity and worth all human beings deserve.”
Facer’s local service in the community also extends to expertise he has provided to the Utah City Managers Association, the Utah League of Cities and Towns, and most recently, as the vice chair of the Utah County Good Governance Advisory Board.
It was on the Good Governance Advisory Board where he met then-state senator Deidre Henderson also serving on the board. “We were tasked with examining the form of the Utah County government,” Facer said. “Unfortunately, from my perspective it did not end up passing, but out of that I got to work with Lieutenant Governor Henderson. And I think it was out of that experience that this opportunity to serve on the redistricting commission came up.”
Chairman of Utah’s Independent Redistricting Commission
Facer will measure the success of the Independent Redistricting Commission on two self-identified criteria. “Number one is to meet our deadline and submit the maps on time,” he said. “Number two is whether or not our maps are treated seriously by the state legislature.”
Although these are worthy goals, the commission will be up against difficult challenges on both fronts. The pandemic delayed the U.S. Census Bureau’s work and, subsequently, the data the commission needs to do its work. Recently, the Census Bureau released preliminary “apportionment numbers” to assign how many congressional seats each state will have, but the details on where people live in the state won’t be available till August at the earliest.
“Our original deadline of August has already been pushed back to November 1st due to this delay,” Facer said. But this still only leaves the commission roughly six weeks to conduct public hearings, review data, and draw the maps. Facer views this time crunch as their biggest challenge.
Additionally, the inaugural nature of the commission has already demonstrated some “lessons learned” for future commissions. “Appointing the commission to start in February actually puts us at a strategic disadvantage in terms of acquiring legal counsel and other needed contracts,” Facer said. He notes how slow and cumbersome the state’s request for proposal process is.
However, Facer later remarked, “even under normal circumstances where we would have had the data from the U.S. Census Bureau today, we would not be able to do our analysis because we haven’t had enough time to organize the office.”
His second measure of success relates to the advisory role the commission plays in the redistricting process. The legislature has the final say on where the political boundaries will be for congressional districts, state legislative districts, and state school board seats.
Facer’s hope is that the open and transparent work of the commission will provide compelling reasons for the legislature to accept and follow their recommendations. The most important of these reasons will be the public input from citizens on how they want their districts divided.
“We will start holding these public hearings some time in June, likely, then follow that up with more in July and August before the detailed data becomes available,” Facer said. A second wave of hearings will then focus on the actual maps.
A focal point of these meetings will be determining how Utahns define their “communities of interest,” a Utah specific standard called for by Proposition 4. “This criteria is defined by the public,” Facer said. Unlike other standards such as continuity that allows the commission to use mathematical formulas so no one interest has an advantage or disadvantage, communities of interest rely on the view of the people.
“So for example, we could have a community of interest where people of polynesian descent view themselves as part of one large community,” Facer said. “We could put them all in one district, but only if they live within a compact area.” Other communities of interest could be along municipal boundaries, school districts, or county boundaries where people feel they share similar interests.
Facer hopes that the commission’s robust meetings combined with a forthcoming website that will allow Utahns to draw maps as their requested submission, will best help identify where the public wants these boundaries to be drawn.
The “million dollar question” is how will the commission ensure that enough Utahns are aware of their work. “Our outreach strategy to include Utahns from all parts of the state will be crucial to the legitimacy of our maps,” Facer said.
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The remaining hurdle will be ensuring the commission maintains its independent nature and is not influenced by political forces in the state. “We are fundamentally different from the state legislature’s committee on redistricting due to the political make-up of our committee,” Facer said.
Proposition 4 mandated that two commissioners be appointed by the GOP, two from the Democrats, and two appointed who are not affiliated with a political party.
State Democratic leaders ultimately ended up appointing former Justice Christine Durham, former state Senator Karen Hale, as well as Judge Bill Thorne as their unaffiliated appointment. Republican state leaders chose recently retired Congressman Rob Bishop and former state Senator Lyle Hillard, with Jeff Baker of Davis county as their unaffiliated appointment.
“This will require Democrats and Republicans to agree, or Democrats and Independents, or Republicans and Independents,” Facer said. “No one party will be able to dominate the process which in turn will encourage Utahns to trust the outcome.”
But ideally, Facer is hoping for unanimity in the commission. “I have a lot of faith and confidence in the members of our commission,” Facer said. “They aren’t volunteering their time for the next several months if they don’t think there’s a way to come to a reasonable consensus.”
Facer concluded our interview by reiterating his hope that the fair and open process the commission plans to implement when drawing boundaries will be accepted by the state legislature.
“Small, minor tweaks by them when the legislature has to pay attention to things like who is in which legislative district will be fine. We won’t be paying attention to those details,” Facer said. “But if the legislature implements our maps and thereby maintains Utahns’ trust, that will be the ultimate measure of success.”
