HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION

Transcript of Meeting of February 9, 2000

Hawaii County Liquor Commission Conference Room,

Hilo Lagoon Center

Attendance: J. Ray, S. Bess (from 5:15 p.m.), M. Herkes, S. Irvine, G. Martin, J. Santangelo, G. Yoshiyama, Counsel C. Yuen

Absent: E. Alonzo, K. Balog, R. Higashi, D. Kurozawa

And 12 members of the public in attendance.

The meeting was called to order at 5:05 p.m.

RAY: I’d like to call the February 9th meeting of the 1999-2000 Hawaii County Charter Commission to order. It’s 5:05 p.m. We’re in Hilo this evening.

Attendance. Present myself John Ray, Mr. Martin, Sue Irvine, Marni Herkes, John Santangelo and Gary Yoshiyama, and we’re expecting a couple of other members.

Statements from the Public. We’ll proceed with our Statements from the Public. We’ll lead off, Coco Pierson.

PIERSON: Thank you Mr. Chair and other members of the Charter Commission. My name is Coco Pierson and I’m from Puna. I was here, I think, one time just to give you some ideas before. I recognize some of the faces. Government is more user friendly when we have tags and signs in front of people that say who they are, and that’s not what you folks have here now. But you should keep that in mind to make government user friendly. The people who know you - Okay, we’ve got one.

HERKES: No, we’ve got a lot of them. They’re coming.

RAY: Okay, glad you reminded us. Go ahead.

PIERSON: You have a lot of items on your agenda today and I’m going to cover a lot of them in a very short time, and I’ll start with Fire Commission. Judging from what I’ve seen of the Police Commission, I don’t think we need a Fire Commission, and so I don’t think there’s any need for the people to vote on it. But if it goes on there, the people can tell you what they think. I don’t think there’s a need for one. If a Fire Commission would operate properly, yes, but certainly I didn’t foresee, when I voted to form a Police Commission, that the deck would be stacked with clones of people who considered their allegiance to the appointing authority far beyond their responsibility to the public, and so I would suspect that we would might have more of that if we had a Fire Commission. So, I would put my word out that we don’t need even to vote on it, but if we do, the people can decide.

I’d like to see the Police Commission reformed in the manner put forth by Del Pranke, to have it moved over under the Prosecutor’s Office, or done away with. Give the voters a chance. Do we want to change our minds about what we voted on in 1990, ‘92 to form a Police Commission? We can save some money here, and these folks are not doing anything anyway. And then Sharon Scheele comes before you folks. I wasn’t here, but as reported in the newspaper, and says she has no power to do the things she needs to do, and, after having attended many Police Commission meetings, this is pretty much like a child shooting his parents, her parents, and then crying that she’s an orphan. I watched as the Police Commission, with no reason that I can possibly think of, voted to change the Rules and Regulations of the Police Commission, to do away with procedures that would be helpful to the public. In one instance, they moved the time limit for filing a complaint from 30 days to 60 days, maybe. A token crumb, but an actual crumb. Imagine if the same thing was in effect for Wayne Carvalho, then we wouldn’t even have a matter, and they declined to even consider the Wayne Carvalho thing. They also made it easier for them, the Police Commission, to dismiss complaints out of hand with no investigation whatsoever. Why would they want to do that, unless it didn’t pertain to the Police Commission? If they get a complaint, if someone says, well, I’m filing this complaint because the moon is too bright. Yes, I can see why they wouldn’t need to investigate to dismiss that complaint. But other complaints of substance, they gave themselves the power to dismiss complaints, just get rid of it, with no investigation, and that went from a previous set of Rules and Regs that required investigation to all complaints unless they were more than 30 days, or they obviously didn’t apply to the Police Commission. So these people have blamed Corp Counsel’s Office. Well, we can’t go against what Corp Counsel’s Office said. However, on one occasion when I was at a Police Commission meeting, and just prior to the Police Commission meeting, Ted Hong was there and gave a little seminar about the Sunshine Law. What you can do and what you can’t do, and what procedures you have to follow, including specifically procedures to set time limits on public testimony, and the Police Commission had not followed any procedure to set any official time on public testimony. And probably within 30 minutes of the time that Ted Hong gave that advice to the Police Commission, Sharon Scheele, acting as Chair, announced that there would be a three minute limit. And she was not scared of what Ted Hong had to say on that occasion, but what I read in the paper is, well, they say we can’t do this, but she wasn’t intimidated about that, so I think it’s ingenuous what we’re hearing from the people from the Police Commission. So, reform it, move it, or give the people a chance to just say no to the Police Commission. Maybe people would like to just say no. And then we could just hold the Mayor responsible because the County Charter already gives the Mayor responsibility for the ultimate oversight of the Police Department, and move his term to two years, so that the people could vote. If something went too wrong, they believe something went too wrong, at the Police Department then they wouldn’t have to wait more than two years to do something about it.

Salary Commission. Give the people a chance to just say no to the Salary Commission. I listened in front of the County Council the other day as a perspective new member of the Salary Commission expressed how he wanted to serve because he thought people should do something for their community. Soon after that, he was talking about how people need to make good money, and really we need more money for these people, and good money will get us a better class of people. This particular individual did not mention which particular existing person that he would be regulating the salary of, could be replaced with someone if we paid more money. That didn’t get mentioned. So, just say no to that. The elected officials in this County, that would be the Council people, they should have the guts to do what they have to do. They really should have the guts. The Salary Commission is just a way for them to get out of it, and it’s removed from the people, and then they don’t have to take the heat, the County Council people. Give the people a chance and see what they say. Do we need this or don’t we need this.

Managing Director. I’m not sure what you folks have proposed so far on that, but that and the Legislative Auditor, I strongly favor not putting in specific qualifications that limit these jobs to just people who have these qualifications. It’s always been interesting to me that, if you’re 35 years old, you don’t have to be a lawyer, or you don’t have to be an accountant, or anything else, if you want to run and be the President of the United States. And in that particular position, you’re over a lot of attorneys and you manage a lot of things, and you’ve got a fairly high position in the Military, and yet, there’s nothing for that. So, consider that, not restricting these things unduly. Let’s loosen these things up, if anything. And give the people a chance to loosen that up because that’s what you’re going to do is make proposals, and the people can decide whether they want to limit this just to certain individuals.

Term Limits. We’ve been through that quite a few times, and the people have consistently said two years for County Council people, so I think it just about amounts to badgering if you want to give the people another chance to change their mind. Instead, give the people a chance to vote whether they like two years or four years for the Mayor. That’s something I’d appreciate. I think people already decided about the Council make-up. We don’t have floating Council members anymore. People already said what they like on that.

Department Head Qualifications. Keep it simple. Don’t make it to where the Mayor’s favorite person cannot be in this position. But if we just have two-year terms for Mayor, the people can tell the Mayor what they think if Department Heads.

I don’t see the Board of Ethics on here, but you folks could, if you so wished, make a statement about government people lying, okay, in the course of their official jobs. Not to their wives, friends, or enemies. You could put out something and let the voters decide whether lying should be one of the prohibited acts mentioned in the County Charter under the Board of Ethics, okay? Give the people a chance to say whether they want lying or they don’t want lying, and this is not to be confused with false information erroneously given. This is lying. This is when someone says something that is false, and they know it’s false, and they say it anyway. That’s lying, and that’s wrong.

Thank you for the opportunity.

RAY: Okay, thank you. Any questions? Next, Curtis Tyler.

TYLER: Good afternoon Chairman Ray, members of the Commission, Mr. Yuen, and guests. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak before you today. I’m sorry I haven’t been here more frequently, but fortunately today my schedule permitted me to come here. I’d like to begin by thanking you again for all your hard work. I know you’ve been meeting a lot, especially on the weekends. And I want to thank you for it. I hope that my absence has not been indicative of the public’s absence, especially on your weekend meetings, because I know these are all well intended and you’ve obviously done a lot of work. So I want to thank you very much for your work.

Second, I’d like to thank you for what I saw in this morning’s paper about considering an Environmental Services Department, especially as it relates, not to just the environment, but as it relates to solid waste and wastewater. I think this makes a lot of sense. Commissioner Irvine had called me regarding this and I hope some of the materials we were able to provide you were helpful. I think this makes a lot of sense. I don’t know all the details. I pretty much know what I read in the paper this morning, and I want to thank you for giving this consideration. I think it makes a lot of sense.

I’d like to just go down your Unfinished Business list and make very brief comments on each one of these, and my comments will be based on a minimal amount of information that I have on these agenda items, but, I’ll make some comments.

Mr. Chairman, do I understand that the Department of Public Safety is something that may be considered in lieu of the Police and Fire Commission, or is this in addition to?

RAY: That was something we were considering. Just to give you a status. We made a lot of progress in terms of wrapping up our preliminary recommendations at our last Saturday meeting. So we’re really just a couple of items shy of having pretty much stated and formulated a preliminary set of recommendations, so other than one or two of these items, we’ve already taken preliminary votes and decided whether we’re going to recommend these initially. And what that means is that we’ll come up with a set of preliminary recommendations with brief description about them, and we’ll go out for a set of public hearings that will start on March 11th and will go four Saturdays in a row. So over the next couple of months, we’ll be taking input from the public and the County on all these items that we put out on a preliminary basis. After that couple of months, and during that time, we’ll finalize our recommendations and, hopefully, wrap things up around June.

TYLER: So the Department of Public Safety would be in lieu of -

RAY: That’s what it would be. I can tell you that we’ve -

TYLER: No?

RAY: The Department of Public Safety -

TYLER: Is in addition to.

RAY: Would be a department that would encompass Police, Fire -

TYLER: I see.

HERKES: But not in place of a Commission

RAY: Oh, a Commission. Excuse me.

TYLER: Okay.

RAY: Anyway, we’ve decided not to pursue that so you don’t have worry about that one.

TYLER: Oh, okay.

RAY: Let me just run you down. We are recommending a Fire Commission. We are not recommending changes to the Police Commission. We anticipate recommending some changes in regard to the -

TYLER: Managing Director. Yes, I read about that.

RAY: Salary Commission -

TYLER: Oh, the Salary. Excuse me.

RAY: In terms of the salaries that they’re able to set. We’ve got testimony on that this evening. We’re recommending substantial changes to the description, and not only the Managing Director but the whole Executive Section in the County Charter, reorganizing that. New language regarding the Legislative Auditor, in fact, changing that to the Legislative Research Office, rather than Legislative Auditor. Term limits only as how they would work in the 6-3 recommendation; 6 single member districts and 3 Council at-large. A number of fairly minor Department Head qualifications; the two significant ones being taking out the qualifications for Registered Engineer in Department of Public Works and the Water Department. And they’re the major ones.

TYLER: Okay. I had read about some of these.

SANTANGELO: Point of information, Mr. Chairman. There was one discussion about the Police Commission, and there was a part where it goes to hearing, and we weren’t going to put that in with the Fire, and we were possibly considering taking that out of the Police. It still make it cumbersome to dismiss the Chief, but it make it a lot easier than it is now.

TYLER: Okay, thank you for that clarification. I appreciate it. In any case, what I wanted to say about the Fire Commission and the Police Commission, and what I saw in this Department of Public Safety, was, I think, when Commissioner Santangelo was on the Council, we had talked about a possible Public Safety Commission. I think Council member Leithead-Todd had mentioned something about this when the idea of the Fire Commission came up. I’m not here to suggest that one is better than the other. I know that at the time this came forward, one of the major considerations for me was how this would impact the budget. What were the costs going to be? Was this going to be doubling the costs or were we going to take half the fees from the Police Commission and put them into the Fire Commission, and I don’t know if you’ve considered that. Perhaps you have. But I know there are many, many members of the Fire Department who are quite strongly in favor of a Fire Commission. At least they have contacted me.

RAY: Just so you know, we have looked into it in regard to how the City and County operates, which implemented a Fire Commission some few years ago, and I can’t remember the exact figures, but it’s relatively minor, the costs.

BESS: $12,000, I believe.

YOSHIYAMA: Initially, and $3,500 annually.

RAY: That’s the cost to run a Fire Commission, City and County of Honolulu.

TYLER: Oh, really?

HERKES: They do it with their staff.

TYLER: Wow. Well, Hear! Hear. Can we do this for the Police Commission too?

HERKES: Could have some good ideas here. You’re right.

TYLER: Good work. It’s nice to have the taxpayer citizens on this Commission. That’s great. Well, thank you. Of course, the Council, and I’m sure this Commission has also, received complaints about the Police Commission, and the perceptions, right or wrong, about some things that are done, or not done. And I don’t know the intricacies of this. I’ve never been brought up before the Police Commission. In fact, I’ve never attended one of their meetings, but certainly, the Council members have been recipients of complaints from time to time. And I guess my only comment about this, the Police Commission and the Fire Commission, is that they be the old kiss formula. Keep it simple and do the work that needs to be done. And to the extent that there’s some problems, well, let’s fix them. To the extent that things are working well, let’s not throw them out. And as I say, I’m not as well versed on this as some members of the public who, I know, testified regarding this.

With respect to Item number E. and the Salary Commission, I’m inclined to agree with Mr. Pierson, that if we can’t stand the heat, we’d better get out of the kitchen. And I can see why a Salary Commission was put forward to distance the elected officials from setting their own salaries, but we have been known to vote on things at least as controversial, or more so, than that. If it simplifies things, and it makes people more accountable, then I would certainly be in favor of it, and I’m telling you this, of course, as an elected official.

RAY: Were you aware that Maui County empowered their Salary Commission to set the Executive salaries, I think, seven or eight years ago? And I’ve gotten input from them that’s worked really well. I spoke with Linda Lingle about that.

TYLER: Good. Well, I know they increased the Council members’ salaries to about $48,000 or so. I know that.

HERKES: So you can’t be entirely opposed to it.

TYLER: No. No, I’m not. I’m just trying to look at it from a real simplistic standpoint.

HERKES: I know.

TYLER: And I’m not asking you to go into work that you haven’t already considered. Just giving you a comment.

I was pleased to read about what I read in the newspaper regarding the Managing Director having additional duties and requiring Council confirmation. I think those are good steps. As all of you know, I favor a County Manager. I understand this is not something that you’re going to move forward on to the ballot, and I respect you for your decision. But this is certainly a move in the right direction, so I wanted to give you some positive feedback. And I’m glad that you’re looking at that because I think it would make a big difference.

And in terms of rearranging other duties in the Executive Branch, perhaps that’s going to be very helpful too. I assume, by looking around here, that this is something that’s going to make government work better for all of us, including the Administrators.

I read some reports regarding the Legislative Auditor, and as I recall, you are considering, instead of a political appointment, more like a Marian Higa type of appointment, that would go for a longer period of time. Is that correct?

RAY: We toyed around with that but that just really didn’t seem to make sense in terms of that not really being the function of the office. As you know, it’s not an Auditor’s Office.

TYLER: That’s correct.

RAY: So we’ve kind of gone the other direction. Now we’re recommending it being called the Legislative Research Office, and increasing the description and, hopefully, the tie-in in terms of appointments and staff reviews, and whatever, but basically, it’s a political appointment. It’s tied to the County Council Office, so we tried to address that major dynamic.

TYLER: Okay. So what I had read previously, you’ve had some changes since what I read in the newspaper, I guess a month or so ago.

RAY: But you know, you’re being a Council person and intimately familiar with this office, once you take a look at this proposed language, if there are any suggestions you have in terms of how to make this office operate more professionally and more independently, but still be a part of the Council Office, and still be subject to political appointments, we’d certainly appreciate it, because I think that’s clearly an interest of a lot of the Commissioners. We still can’t figure out how to do it anymore than we’ve come up.

TYLER: I will review it and give you some input if I feel that I have some to give.

I was surprised to see Term Limits on here, and you’ve explained -

RAY: That was just in relation to the 6-3, yes.

TYLER: I am not in support of the decision to put this back on the ballot. I think the people have spoken very clearly, but I respect that you work in a democratic situation, and I think it will be soundly defeated. At least I hope it is, but anyway, that’s my two cent’s worth on that.

With respect to the Department Head Qualifications, I have read what you’re considering with respect to the Department of Public Works and the Department of Water Supply, and it has some merit. I am concerned that in the Planning Department we don’t have requirements for someone who has a planning background, and I think if we look at some of the other Charters around, we will find that you’re required to have certain kinds of requirements there. I realize that we had a situation for some period of time where the Acting Chief Engineer was not a registered professional engineer. And some of us were critical of this, and the Mayor took the action that he took, and everybody knows what went on there. But, I think it makes some sense, in the more specialized areas - In fact, most of these are specialized. When you look at the Department of Finance, I mean, we can’t just take somebody off the street. We have to have someone who has a background. I think, in terms of planning -

RAY: Curtis, we have a whole slate of suggested changes for the Department Heads so you can take a look at those because we do have proposed changes for the Planning Director. But perhaps you could -

TYLER: Thank you. I’ll review those.

Moving right along, Boards and Commissions. I think I’ve spoken to you before. I realize that Boards and Commissions are mentioned in different areas of the Charter, but their make-up is significantly different. And I would like to suggest to you strongly, and I realize there’s some logistical problems involved with this but, strongly, that the one section, I think it’s 13-4, or whatever it is, the one section that says Boards and Commissions, is that everything fall under that, and that you follow the Charter Amendment that was overwhelmingly adopted by the electorate a year and a half ago. There was a residency requirement. You needed to be a registered voter, and each Commissioner had to represent a Council district. And I just think it makes a lot of sense to do this instead of this one is at-large, or this one is district representation. I understand that, if you go to a 6-3, you’re going to go back to that other thing.

RAY: We thought that we were being painted into that corner, but we’ve since decided that we’re not going to recommend changing the existing nine Commission districts tied to the Council districts. We’ll just going to come up with some language that ties them to the districts as they existed in the year 2000, in case the 6-3 is voted in and we do do away with those. But we’re not going to recommend those. In fact, we’re going to increase it in that we’re going to recommend the Water Commission be appointed from the nine districts as well.

TYLER: Good. I hope they’re all like that, and I knew that nine heads were a lot better than mine. I couldn’t figure this out, so I figured you’d figure it out. I’m glad you did because -

HERKES: Mr. Tyler, from the look on our counsel’s face, he hasn’t figured it out either, so don’t hold your breath.

TYLER: Well, I wasn’t looking at him.

HERKES: We were all laughing because we were looking at him and he has this big frown.

RAY: That’s why lawyers get paid so much. They figure it out for us.

TYLER: I think it makes it much more accountable, much easier to understand, and you know, I wish we could figure a way to encourage more people to participate in the Commissions. I mean, what we see here is we see this rotation. Well, his term’s ended so he goes over to this one, or she goes, comes over here, and I’ve received a lot of complaints over the years, and possibly some of you have, Mr. Santangelo when he was on the Council, Mr. Ray, about well, you know, gee, we submitted an application for ten years, and then nothing happened, they never picked us. It needs to be a more open thing instead of, what appears to be, a lot of political consideration then. I don’t know whether that means that the Council gets involved in the recommendations, or the appointments. Clearly, when I see some vacancies, I try to find someone that can fill the vacancy, but maybe it needs to be more codified that that. I’m not sure. I haven’t given a lot of thought. I just think the system that I see now is just the same old faces that just rotate. Not that they’re not competent, not dedicated, etc., but I would hope that, with as many Boards and Commissions as we have, and as many members, we could involve more members of the public instead of just seeing the same old thing.

HERKES: It may surprise you to find out that a lot of us agree with you, and we went round and round and round trying to figure out ways to put language in, or even less members on the Commissions, so there’d be more people available. Curtis, I don’t know what the answer is. I agree with you, though, that’s a problem.

TYLER: I don’t either. We all should work together on that and work with the Executive Branch, and try to come up with a win-win situation there.

One point - I don’t know if this has been made and I don’t mean to bring this up as some very controversial thing, but a number of Native Hawaiians came before the Council over the years, and talked to us about the jurisdictional issue of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands, and the section in the Charter regarding the geographical limits. And, it says the entire Island of Hawaii. And it doesn’t say excluding the sovereign lands of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands. I’m not trying to raise a red flag here. It’s just something that I wrote in my Charter. Is this something that we’ve got to look at? I don’t know.

RAY: We did.

TYLER: Did you? Okay.

RAY: It was brought to our attention.

TYLER: And I don’t see nonpartisan on here. You’re already going to go forward on that.

RAY: Right.

TYLER: And nonpartisans are not tied to - It’s a -

MARTIN: Stand alone.

TYLER: It’s a stand alone Amendment, right? Okay. I congratulate you on that. I’m glad to know that it’s coming forward. I hope that’ll pass. I think people will find that to make government more efficient. And as someone who plans to run for re-election, if it makes the whole financial process simpler and cheaper, I’m all for it.

And obviously the typos and things like that are going to be corrected. We don’t have to -

YUEN: It does not need a Charter Amendment. Those can be corrected, some of them at least, in the printing process, and they can be corrected the next time it’s printed.

TYLER: All right. I don’t mean to have this rear it’s ugly head here but the Mandatory Program Review thing, you’re not going to mess with that, or what?

RAY: Nothing’s proposed at this time.

TYLER: Okay, well, thank you for leaving it in our lap. Anyhow, I understand the difficulty. I’m happy to answer any questions if anyone has any. I appreciate the opportunity to -

RAY: Ms. Herkes.

HERKES: I’d like to go back to the Public Safety Commission. Maui has a Public Safety Commission. They only have the Fire Department under it though. I have to qualify that statement every time I make it. But that is something I would like to see, a Public Safety Department with a Commission overseeing, with the Fire Department, the Police Department, Civil Defense, Emergency Services, Animal Control, Building Inspection. We could put a whole bunch of stuff under Safety, ordinances and laws that are passed to protect the safety of our residents. That’s not something the Commission, however, has seen fit to advance so we may leave that to future Charter Commissions. But it would have a Commission. I don’t want you to get the feeling that the Commissions were being abolished, but I think we’ll probably be recommending a Fire Commission and a Police Commission.

TYLER: Okay. Well, we already have a Police Commission so it’s simpler to go with one than to changing all the language. And I think one of the most difficult tasks before us all, as voters, number one, and number two, you as Commissioners, is to figure out is that going to be presented to the public, to the electorate, so they can understand this, instead of saying I’m going to leave this thing blank. We don’t want to see a lot of blank votes. I could stand before you here and come up with a hundred different things that need to be changed there, but if people just, kind of, throw this thing in the wastebasket, or say oh, I’m voting no on everything, or I’m going to leave it blank, well, this is not accomplishing anything. So I think it’s far better for you to look at the big ticket items, the ones that really are going to make a difference, as opposed to some of the things that the old detail man here would like to see happen, because I know we can’t solve all these, and do an effective job. I realize that, and it came to me after studying this for about six months, saying boy, I’m going to come in with all this stuff and bring these things. And I finally said how are we going to get this stuff passed, nobody is going to understand it.

RAY: George.

MARTIN: Mr. Tyler, I’d like to say thank you to you for coming out and the rest of the people in the audience this evening. As far as the mention that you made on the Hawaiian concern, it was brought up. There was some individuals that came in with a discussion and made mention of, not only our Constitution but the Federal Constitution, and we did ask Counsel, not only on the legitimacy but, if there was anything that we had to worry about, and we was advised accordingly. So it was addressed.

TYLER: Thank you. I appreciate it. I didn’t know whether it was and just thought I’d bring it up.

RAY: Ms. Irvine.

IRVINE: I have to say that I did not realize that we were pau with considering the Police Commission. I thought, at our last meeting, that -

RAY: We’re not pau with considering anything. This is all preliminary.

IRVINE: Okay, thank you, John. I just wanted to hear that because otherwise, I was going to move that we disband the Police Commission.

TYLER: I had made a comment here, and I didn’t know if it was appropriate to say, but when I read the Charter and it clearly states that the Police Commission has the power to remove the Chief at any time with cause, and then I heard about this Opinion from the Corporation Counsel, I, kind of, went oh, man. It’s incredible because we had people come and testify, and say doesn’t anybody know what’s going on here. You’ve heard the criticisms. I’m not going to come here and talk to you about the criticism. I just think that whatever is done, if you’re going to keep the Police Commission, and create a Fire Commission, let’s give them all $3,500 a year. That sounds like a good idea. But let’s not over-complicate this. If a Commission on Public Safety is something that has been very good for Maui, even though they only have the Fire Commission, you know, let’s look at it. And maybe other jurisdictions have combined this. I don’t know, but what we don’t want to do is create another situation where we have a whole other series of complaints coming in because somebody doesn’t want to do their duty, or can’t do their duty, or whatever. I don’t know if Mr. Santangelo has mentioned this, or Mr. Ray. Something that has occurred to me as we’ve been through this William Silva case, which is painful for everybody, and it’s not over by a long shot, and I suspect we may have additional things like this in the future from other areas, but that remains to be seen. The Council constantly sees cases in Executive Session where the Police Commission has made a determination that this was done in the course of performing their duties, and I don’t know about Mr. Santangelo and Mr. Ray, but there have been some situations, to me, that I’m wondering, holy mackerel, how could that have possibly been in the course of the duties. But once the Commission makes this determination, the County, through the Council, is obligated to provide a legal representation. And I’m not an attorney, obviously, and I don’t know all the details of these situations, but sometimes I just shake my head and I’m wondering how did we ever get into this situation. This is not on any General Order. This is not a part of what a prudent person would do. And I’m just wondering how this happened. So I don’t know if you’ve considered that. I don’t know if there’s a solution to it. Certainly I’m not going to micro manage the Police Commission, but it has come up on more than one occasion. Thank you very much.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: Curtis, just one quick one on the Police Commission. It, at least occurred to me, and I think some of the other Commissioners, when we looked at it, and you talk about keep it simple, that one of the answers is what the Commission can do themselves. And it deals a lot with this micro managing, because one thing we didn’t want to do was to dink around with something that caused micro managing, and I think that Jason reported that. But if the Commission was to hire a Chief on a performance based, or some other type of contract, then it’s incumbent, and it’s built in that they review, and that means the information has to be forthcoming. And the Chief can then be handling his or her, because we’ve got some good ladies out there, department in a manner which takes care of a lot of this stuff. It doesn’t come to the Commission because his or her job is on the line based on a performance. He or she has come and said I want this to happen. I’m going to look at this on the line. You know what I’m saying, so that’s a lot of reason why -

TYLER: Absolutely.

SANTANGELO: But in the process of taking out a certain in-product, then it does make it a little easier, but it can’t be a knee jerk thing. It still takes time and the time line that requires some thought, so that it can’t occur in one meeting and end in one meeting. So, that was just part of it.

TYLER: Good, well, I’m glad to hear the performance based concept.

SANTANGELO: And it’s up to them.

TYLER: Because on the Mandatory Program Review, this was, sort of, what was in my mind, as in the background of this, was it’s performance based. It’s outcome based, so how do we determine what we set out to do is accomplished, and how do we measure this, because frequently in government, we don’t do this. And so I’m glad you brought that up because, to the extent that we can incorporate that kind of language in our Charter in terms of performance based budgeting, that really makes a lot of sense to me.

SANTANGELO: But can you imagine, Curtis, that you’re hiring a Chief, you’re sitting on that Commission and one of your criteria in this performance base is that ‘I will reduce public complaint by X amount and here’s how I plan to do it’. Public complaint doesn’t go down. You bring your Chief in and you’re having this discussion about why, and a lot of things can happen in that. But again, that’s up to them, and so that’s why that was left that way.

TYLER: It’s like anything. If you were to go with a County Manager, one of the things that has to be in there is you’ve got to have a performance based contract, and it’s only as good as the performance measure. So if you have a measure that is not reflective of a good job or a bad job, but it’s just something that is easy to measure then it becomes ineffective, and you’re wasting your time because your outcome measure either cannot be measured or it’s measuring something that is really inconsequential. So that’s the real key to this and that’s the difficult part, and I know members of the public have written to you regarding that. I think the main thing about the Police Commission and the Fire Commission is they should act independently. There shouldn’t be a prevalent perception that, rightly or wrongly, they’re working for the Chief or for the department. Maybe I misunderstand this but, to me, it’s a public Commission of oversight, and I’d like to see it conduct itself that way and not as some people have said this is a rubber stamp, and we don’t need anymore of that. It’s not helpful for the Administration, whether it be the Executive Branch or the Fire or the Police Department. It’s not helpful. So whatever we can do to make this positive, I appreciate it and thank you very much.

HERKES: One more question. I thought of you immediately when we read this Maui Charter and it had a Cost of Government Commission, and I hope you’ll read that because I think that’s right up your alley. We all like that and we’re going to put that in ours.

TYLER: I have read it and I’m familiar with it. I’ve read all four Charters many, many times. It certainly has worked on Maui and I know there’s some questions today but nevertheless, anything we can do to make government more efficient and make best use of the taxpayers’ dollars, I’m in favor of.

HERKES: One other thing. I found our County Charter difficult to understand because the Commissions were not with the departments that they were overseeing, and so I think that we’ve - Haven’t we made a decision to put them the departments, or if we haven’t, I’ll make a motion later on that they have the Commissions with the departments, so that you have a complete entity of the Commission and the department and the Department Head.

TYLER: I think that’s a good idea because you’re not searching all over, where is this thing. If you do that, keep that other, I think it’s 13-4 so that the line in each of the department areas will say ‘and their appointments will be accordance with Section 13-4', so that everyone follows the same procedure, so it’s not like this one has at-large seats and this one has - Do that, please. I think it’ll make it much simpler. Thank you again, Aloha.

RAY: Jim Otterson.

OTTERSON: This is my friend and co-worker, Bob Barry. Have any of you changed ideas on this manager type?

HERKES: Everybody changed their ideas.

OTTERSON: Pardon?

HERKES: Everybody, except me, changed their ideas.

OTTERSON: No, I know you’re for it.

BESS: That’s not true.

OTTERSON: But everybody else is against it.

MARTIN: That’s not quite true.

RAY: Wait. We have come forth with a proposal to keep the Managing Director, but to change the duties and rearrange the Executive Department within the County Charter, and that’s what we’re going to be proposing on a preliminary basis. We’re not going to be proposing a Council Manager form of government.

OTTERSON: I notice here that you have Department Head Qualifications. That would be up to a manager, in my ideas, and, like it would be in Riverside, that would be up to the City Manager to determine the qualifications of the different managers, like your Planning Department, Police Department, Fire Department, and all of those areas. And so that would solve one of your questions you have on here. He would also be the Manager of the Police Chief and also the Fire Chief. He would take care of both of those departments, well, in fact, every department in your City, or County, or whatever. You could get rid of a lot of this stuff here by just going to a manager type government. Like your Planning Department, that, in my estimation, is way down below, and it should be one of your most important departments in the City or County because they are the ones that your children, or whatever, are going to have to work with on down the line, but here it’s so much different that they’re planning not ahead, but planning backwards, and I know that for a fact because all you have to do is drive around and see some of the jobs that are being done. So that would definitely need to be a licensed engineer in that position. I’m not going to say too much tonight but I would really like to have you really think about this because it’s a very, very important issue, and you’ve got another ten years before you can really change it. And I think the way you’ve got this set up, that your manager type that you are talking about, the Mayor would still be the boss. Is this right?

RAY: That’s right.

OTTERSON: So you’re not ahead anywhere. You still got the turnover of the type of people that walk down the street everyday, and I’m sure, if you had a multi-million dollar business, as I’ve said before, you wouldn’t pick somebody off of the street to run it, and that’s exactly what it is now. Would you like to say anything, Bob? I just would like to have you really think about this because it’s going to be another ten years you’re going to have to live with this.

BARRY: Thank you. I only wanted to bring out something that’s already been talked about, and that is a City Manager. The town I grew up in in Southern Oregon, a town of about 30,000, about 25 years ago went to a City Manager type of government, and my cousins, my aunts, uncles and everybody who still lives there, say it’s the best thing that ever happened to that city. In addition to that, at the same time, or about the same time, they went to a Department of Public Safety, and they took the Fire Department and the Police Department, and put it under one head, and both the Chief of Police and Fire Chief reported to this one head, who reported to the City Manager. And it worked very well, according to my relatives. I did not live there at the time. I had already gone into the Navy and college and everything else, but my relatives tell me it’s the best thing that ever happened to our little town in Southern Oregon.

RAY: Thank you.

HERKES: What’s the name of your town?

BARRY: Grants Pass.

HERKES: It is a little town in Southern Oregon.

OTTERSON: Another thing here I noticed, too, is you have a Wage Commission.

HERKES: Salary Commission.

OTTERSON: Salary Commission. This would be under the manager type too. He would take care of all of that. His department would take care of all of that.

RAY: Thank you. Any questions?

OTTERSON: And I haven’t sold you yet, I can see.

RAY: All right, thank you. Walter Moe.

OTTERSON: Just remember, though, it’s a very, very important issue because I have lived under it and I know it works. Thank you.

MOE: Good evening Chairman Ray and the rest of the Charter Commission. I need to speak into this mike to record it. Am I correct?

RAY: You’re correct.

MOE: Okay. I don’t know if I want to refer to myself as a rubber stamp but my name is Walter Moe and, to my surprise, a month and a half ago I was invited by the Mayor to volunteer for the Police Commission. So I had the pleasure of appearing before the County Council a week ago to be questioned by our distinguished panel of Council people, and not being familiar with anything really for knowing what’s going on, or concerning myself with the work of the Police Commission, etc., I started looking into it and, to my surprise, in that discussion I detected a certain amount of puzzlement among our Council people in understanding certain language within this Charter. So I started reading, and read it probably ten times over and over, and the more I read it, the more, let me say I didn’t necessarily became more confused because I know what I’m reading, but what I’m reading is contradictory, and not very clear, so my purpose over here is really not saying that I’m advocating any changes in structure, but what I’m asking you to consider, to review the text and language of the Charter, and make it understandable.

RAY: Which particular section confuses you?

MOE: Okay, for instance, ‘adopt such rules as may be considered necessary for the conduct of its business and the regulation of the matters committed to its charge and may review the rules and regulations’. May? In other words, they don’t ever have to, or look at it, or go home? So is that the intent? May.

RAY: Okay.

MOE: One of the points. Of course, I’m talking about Section 7-2.2 Police Commissions, on page 14. Next one is ‘a summary of the charges filed and their disposition shall be included in the Annual Report of the Commission’. Understandable. Now, if you read this, ‘filed and their disposition shall be included’, how does that reconcile with the statement ‘neither the Commission nor its members shall interfere in any way with the administrative affairs of the department’? Now, whatever you would be doing under the particular instruction, you are interfering with the administrative affairs of the department. Now as I understand it -

RAY: How do you interpret that?

MOE: Apparently, there have been -

RAY: That’s not the way it reads to me. I just wondered where you see the conflict there?

MOE: Well, down on (d) it says ‘make periodic reports to the Police Commission about the activities of the Police Department and about action taken on cases investigated by the Police Commission’. So if I would be asking questions in reference to what happened, what took place, what actions have you taken, I would be interfering with the administrative affairs of the department. No? Yes? I don’t know. Do I need a Corporation Counsel attorney to give a ruling on this? Apparently that took place several times. So all I’m asking, really, would it be possible if we could really clean and clear this up? I’m not here to change structurally anything, okay? I’m not saying abandon it, or something, or have this happen, or that happen, but make it easy for me to understand so that if I am - I’m not even there yet, I don’t think. We never had a meeting yet. I was questioned by the Council but I don’t think I have heard from the Mayor’s Office what the next steps are, and how this works. But when I heard ‘to be a rubber stamp’, whatever I’m doing, I take very serious, and I work at it, and I really would like to work at it. But for me to work at it, I really have to get a rule book, or I have to be given, at least, something basic for me to work on, and refer to, so I really know what is the authority of the Police Commission. What is it that we can ask, shouldn’t ask, need to ask. Yes ma’am?

IRVINE: I just wanted to say that I think we have suggested a Fire Commission which we copied, more or less, from the Honolulu County Charter. Their Police Commission is written up quite similarly to their Fire. I think it’s much more understandable and does explain better what the Commission’s supposed to do, and I’m certainly hoping that we’re going to be looking at that again.

MOE: On this subject, I’d like to just say that I urge you to take another look at it, and don’t pass it by and say that’s it, I understood through the paper.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: Walter, I take it from your conversation, you were confirmed.

MOE: I was at the County Council, and I was approved unanimously, I believe it was.

SANTANGELO: Okay. So now you’re getting ready to serve on the Commission.

MOE: So now I’m getting ready to serve on the Commission.

SANTANGELO: I have this question. I’ve talked to past Commissioners and there’s been a whole plethora of opinions, but one that, kind of, was a thread through it all is sometimes they felt like they had been sentenced to a five-year sentence. What do you think of these Commissions being five years, and I meant to ask Councilman Tyler that and I forgot to, but what do you think about looking forward to five years?

MOE: Well, I think five years really, it stresses it. I think after two, three years, you’d, kind of, say okay, I’ve done my duty to society and my community. Five years is a long time.

SANTANGELO: Especially when you talk about participation, but thank you, Walter.

MOE: But staggered terms, so there’s continuity within the Commission, is very important. Mr. Commissioner, would I be allowed to touch on another subject of passionate concern to myself?

RAY: Sure.

MOE: And that is substandard, nonconforming private subdivision. Do you Commissioners, every one of them, do you know what the meaning is of that?

HERKES: Is that in the Charter?

MOE: It is but it isn’t, no. It is on page 21, sort of, but I think, and I spent two years visiting with community associations, etc., and I had proposed a plan in 1997 to the Mayor, who asked me to prepare a plan on how we may solve the problem of the nonconforming, private, substandard subdivisions. We have 49 substandard, nonconforming, private subdivisions on this island. We have 42% of the people live in them, and in a very straightforward way, this can be argued. We are not entitled, by law, to receive within those communities, within those subdivisions, any assistance, any services from the County, by law. In other words, we are not allowed to receive a street light. We are not allowed to receive the paving of a road. We are not allowed to receive anything in these subdivisions, and we could go on for many hours in the details of this, but I will stop right there. What I’m saying to you, and what my fear is, and it has been interpreted like I’m threatening, or so on. I’m not. It’s the last thing I would like to do in my community, in the place I chose to live, and, most likely, probably die in this beautiful island here. My fear, if this is not being addressed, this elephant, according to our Chairman Arakaki - If this elephant of a problem, and the Mayor has concurred with me on this, and others - If this is not being addressed and dealt with, eventually this County will face millions and millions and millions of dollars of class action suit money, okay, because it will happen. And there are rumblings out there, and if you go and you visit these communities out there, why do we have an alienation in Hawaiian Acres, where people want to put up a cable and put rocks there? Why do we have the discontent on this island among our people, and why do we have all these? It’s because we have, through no fault of anyone of us, inherited a system of division of land that took place inappropriately many years ago, and eventually, eventually, the County or the State must deal with this, must address this. The problem I see in having researched that, and having consulted a Constitutional Law professor on the mainland, is that the County doesn’t act within a certain given amount of time, then the parties, the plaintiffs, have fulfilled their legal obligation and they can move on to the State, and they must pursue the same process with the State, and after that, the Federal justice system will entertain a class action lawsuit.

RAY: Walter, what are you suggesting that’s in the Charter to address?

MOE: I am suggesting that you provide, and I can provide this for you, what work we’ve done, and what I really am saying is that the work has taken place that resulted in a resolution to address the problem, and the Mayor has said why don’t we take one community as a model, and try the establishment of a Financial Management Improvement District. And he would like to have Hawaiian Paradise Park to be considered. Now he says I need the approval of the County Council. The County Council has been requested a number of times to deal with it. They’ve chosen not to. I’m saying if you put in the Charter some language, under some provisions, that would require that in due time, I think we would serve this community well and we would avoid a lot, a lot of legal problems in the future. I have made some copies over here for your review, and you might want to look at it. I have three copies over here.

HERKES: Give it to our lawyer. He says what we can put into the Charter.

MOE: And this took place in 1997, that we worked on and it died. There was some heroic effort made by then Councilman John Santangelo, and John Ray, who at that time, said folks, why don’t we just vote on this thing, but it died nevertheless. So, I’d like to make you aware of that enormous problem, and trust me, it is a problem. It is one of those well kept secrets that most of us really don’t want to address or talk about. Thank you very much for your attention. I appreciate being here.

RAY: Thank you Walter. Anymore public testimony? We’ll proceed with our agenda.

Minutes Approval. There are none.

Financial Status Report. The same as the last financial.

Communications. In your packet, four e-mails.

Unfinished Business. We’re going to move directly to the Salary Commission item, as we have Michael Ben and Barry Mizuno here to speak to that issue. You folks want to come up?

BEN: Members of the Commission, we didn’t have any prepared statements. We came here to answer any questions you may have. I understand you folks were missing some information that we did provide. There is one thing I wanted to speak to just for your information, and it might come up in the public hearings and whatnot, but officials that we’re talking about, who we wish to confer the Salary Commission to act on the salaries - I just wanted to mention that there are four public officials who are not tied in with the Mayor’s term, and I often feel awkward when I speak of this because I’m one of those. The Director of Personnel who is appointed by the Civil Service Commission, the Director of Liquor Control who is appointed by the Liquor Commission, the Chief of Police who is appointed by the Police Commission, and the Department of Water Supply, the Manager, is appointed by the Water Commission. We do not serve at the pleasure of the Mayor. We serve at the pleasure of our Commissions, so theoretically, especially with these positions, the incumbents may be in these positions for a great number of years. My predecessor was short time, he was four years. Before him, I remember there was one Director of Personnel who was in his position for 20+ years, and conceivably, all of the incumbents that I mentioned, could be long term career Department Heads. I also wanted to make mention although I did mention the Water Manager, that person’s salary is set by the Water Commission. Why that’s so, I could not explain. I mean it’s just not specified anywhere, as to who sets the Water Supply Manager, but that’s another issue. But I just wanted to point out that there are individuals who do serve long term and we’re not necessarily co-terminus with the Mayor, or with the County Council.

RAY: So, just to refresh everybody’s memory, we have some language that I submitted, draft language, in a memo form before the last meeting, and then Mr. Ben furnished us with a list of positions. We received prior testimony in regard to this item, so I’ll just open the floor for discussion or questions. Marni.

HERKES: We had a question in our last meeting about the Civil Defense Director. Who sets his or her salary?

BEN: Civil Defense Director is a Civil Service position, so his salary is set according to the Compensation and Classification Pay Plan that I promulgate.

HERKES: Okay. So basically, it’s a classification. I have a question also about half-time and part-time positions. What does the County need doctors for?

BEN: They’re primarily involved in conducting our pre-employment physicals, plus the annual physicals that a lot of occupations require, such as Police. Police have annual physicals, as well as firefighters, I believe, have physicals every two years, in addition to referrals that may be made for determining whether or not employees are physically capable of performing their duties and responsibilities.

HERKES: Have you ever done any cost benefit studies on whether it’s more effective, or more cost beneficial to the taxpayers, to have them on staff rather than send them to doctors in the community?

BEN: We did a study back in ‘90 or ‘91, just on the issue of pre-employment physicals alone, and based on the going rate for pre-employment physicals in the private sector, yes, it was more cost effective to have them on staff, yes.

HERKES: On staff? Okay.

IRVINE: Might I suggest that the current rate is quite a bit less now. Being I physician’s wife, I know. So you might look into that again.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: Ben, one of the things, I don’t know if we’ve covered it yet, and we were trying to cover it, but I know when we were on the Council, we’d go through a lot of these salaries and these Union negotiations, but there was always this group of people that came to us that was never represented by some sort of bargaining unit that some how, kind of, were left out on their own. Can you help elaborate on that so that we may want to include that in this Salary Commission?

BEN: If you’re talking about the cost items you approve for this second group, I’m not sure who you’re exactly -

SANTANGELO: They’re salary. They weren’t Department Heads. They weren’t represented by HGEA.

BEN: There is legal authority for paying every employee that the County has. Back to these employees who are not covered by Collective Bargaining Agreements, there is a provision in law that directs the Chief Executives of each County to grant, or set the salaries, or increase benefits by Executive order, so it always came to the County Council for approval of the increased costs associated with any increase in salaries or benefits for these particular groups of employees.

SANTANGELO: And our Deputy Prosecutor is one of those?

BEN: The Deputy Prosecutor is one of those who are compensated on the Executive Salary Schedule, so that position is included in this proposal to have the Salary Commission be responsible for that.

SANTANGELO: So, with what you included then we pretty much covered it?

BEN: Yes.

RAY: Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: I might be asking the same question here. I don’t know. The present Charter language speaks to Department Heads and their Deputies.

BEN: Present Charter language?

YOSHIYAMA: Let me ask it a little bit different way. I don’t understand, in the Salary Commission’s proposal, the inclusion of Assistant County Physician. The Salary Commission’s proposal speaks to Department Heads, along with their Deputies, right? Why the inclusion of Assistant County Physician?

BEN: What we did was took every position that’s compensated on the Executive Salary Schedule now, and threw them in this spot. Otherwise those salaries would be subject to Council approval, and possibly the same consequences as we’ve been experiencing could occur with those positions.

YOSHIYAMA: I’m just trying to figure out why. I mean, other than they’re part of this plan now, so there’s no other reason for shifting them over, because it’s part of the package so it gets moved, the whole package.

BEN: Yes, we moved the whole package, but again, one of the underlying reasons for doing so is to remove the establishing of the salaries from the political process, or make it less of a political process.

YOSHIYAMA: Okay. It leads me, then, to my second question is we were considering some broader language than what was proposed by the Salary Commission, or looking at. I think you wrote in here you’re going to base it on ‘accepted principals of pay and compensation for work performed’, etc., etc. What our Chair has proposed was something a little bit broader, so that their total salaries and benefits has a reasonable relationship to both the compensation of Civil Service employees and the private sector. So, one is broad and one is very specific. I was wondering if you can address, or Barry, you can address, why you’re using this specific language?

RAY: That was my language I threw at the end. I was just looking for some guidelines for the Commission. In other words, we’re competing with the private sectors to hire employees, and we also have to deal with the Civil Service pay grades in terms of that whole relationship, and so that’s why I put that in there. That was just a draft that I threw out for discussion before our last meeting.

BEN: I think we’re both trying to accomplish the same thing, but I don’t know which one you think is more specific. I think Mr. Ray’s one is more specific than the one I’ve submitted because ‘accepted principals of pay and compensation’ doesn’t include scanning the market, the private sector, and whatnot, so see what pay is in those areas. Plus, it doesn’t preclude you from considering other matters, and I can’t think of any right now, that should be considered in setting salaries.

RAY: Sue.

IRVINE: I wondered if, on Saturday, we didn’t change that compensation of Civil Service employees to public sector and private sector. Did we?

HERKES: Yes we did.

IRVINE: Okay, so that it would be more general and cover the whole works.

HERKES: Mr. Ray, the difference that I see is that the language which you’ve submitted, which is mostly what’s in the Maui Charter, is in plain language, and the other one is in bureaucratese. It’s the way government talks, and the plain English one I can read and I can understand. And when we get into 25%, Section (e), ‘in accordance with general accepted principals’, and the whole thing, it’s just more complicated. And the simple one that’s in Maui is a paragraph that says ‘Salary will be set by this Commission.’

RAY: The last sentence I wrote up is not in the Maui Charter actually.

HERKES: I know, but the rest of it is.

RAY: In regard to the Maui Charter, and I didn’t call them and I should have, as far as how all this works over there, but it looks like they just have jurisdiction over appointed Directors and Deputy Directors. I don’t know. That would be interesting to check out. But then, also, it says ‘the Salary Commission shall consult with those Boards and Commissions who have appointing authority for Department Heads.’ So I would presume that means they set those salaries; they just consult with those Commissions. So, in the case of the Liquor Department, I would assume, under this, that they would set that salary but they would consult. Is that the way you would read this or not?

BEN: Yes.

RAY: It could be any way. I’m just trying to figure out - I wonder how it works there.

BEN: There’s a definition as to what consultation is, and yes, it is getting involved with the appropriate Commission, and having dialogue with them, and considering any recommendation they have. If I may, I just wanted to make one comment on Mr. Ray’s draft, and I don’t know whether or not this is the intent of the Charter Commission but it only references Civil Service employees. I’m not sure if you’re referencing County of Hawaii Civil Service employees or Civil Services in the State, or could we go to the mainland, you know?

RAY: No, that’s just off the top of our heads, something to throw out there. So, all these are subject to refinement, but it seems to me the two big issues are do we cover everybody in this Executive Pay Plan, and then how does it work with the departments with Commissions that presently appoint salaries. We have to work out those details, how all that would work. Any other questions for these folks?

Barry, something that I’ve always been bothered by is the uniformity of salaries for all the Department Heads, and should a future Mayor take our recommendations in regard to the Managing Director position to heart, the way we’d like them to, and really use that position as the Chief Operating Officer of the County, City Manager type, I would imagine, and hope, we would be recruiting somebody that would probably be considerably higher paid than anybody in the County, including the Mayor. Do you think the Salary Commission might look at it that way?

MIZUNO: Mr. Ray, actually the Commission in the past, and I’ve been on it now for four years, and in our discussions that I’ve participated in, we’ve always used the Mayor’s salary as, kind of, the point at which is the top salary should be of the County, as far as what the elected officials are, and everyone else should be below that level. He, being the Chief Executive, it just seems right.

RAY: Okay, but were we to switch to a Council-Manager form of government, clearly you go out and hire a top gun City Manager type to run the County, and so should we adopt more that type of managing scheme.

MIZUNO: So what you’re asking is if we were to adopt a City Manager type of government, should the salary of the City Manager now be higher than the Mayor?

RAY: Right.

MIZUNO: Quite definitely. It could be.

RAY: Other questions for these gentlemen? Jan, do you want to say anything? You just happen to be here. We just happen to be in your office.

IRVINE: I guess I wondered should we make it clear, if we’re thinking of leaving the County Physicians out, should we do that here and now?

RAY: Yes, we’re going to go back to discuss this. I didn’t want to keep them up to the table, or here, any longer. Jan, do you have anything to share with us, thoughts on this?

PAKELE: Salary?

RAY: How this would work. In other words, if we were to make this Charter change, that the Salary Commission were to set this whole level of salaries - I guess it’s unfair to ask you that since it’s your salary. Okay, well thanks. We might as well open up the floor to discussion on this item, and so what’s everybody’s thoughts, first in regard to the number of positions that would be covered? First off, do we have pretty much consensus that we want to give the Salary Commission increased authority over, at least, Department Heads and Deputies? Can I have a show of hands that are in favor of that preliminarily?

ALL COMMISSIONERS PRESENT RAISED THEIR HANDS.

RAY: Okay, we know we’re moving in that direction, so let’s discuss the number of positions that would be compensated under this plan. So, I’ll open that up for discussion.

HERKES: The number of physicians or positions?

RAY: Freudian slip there. Positions. Anything?

HERKES: You mean a number like 25?

IRVINE: This list is not going in the Charter, right, or is it?

MARTIN: Why wouldn’t it?

YUEN: If you were to adopt this whole list, you would say ‘Department Heads and First Deputy’, but then you would also have to list the additional people who are not Department Heads, and I don’t see any way to do that besides list them. And the ones who are not Department Heads are the physicians, the Safety Coordinator, and the Band Director. So you would have to say that in the Charter.

YOSHIYAMA: Pretty much as what the Salary Commission did in their proposal.

YUEN: Yes.

HERKES: It’s probably why they did it.

IRVINE: Actually, don’t we have two Band Directors in our Charter at this point?

MARTIN: No we do not. Leave the band alone.

IRVINE: No, I think we have two in the Charter.

MARTIN: It makes mention of East and West. There’s not two.

IRVINE: But this is just one Band Director. I guess they only pay one.

RAY: So, assuming we’d have to list all these positions, just from a sale-ability standpoint, I think that’s somewhat of a negative.

HERKES: Yes, it sure does.

IRVINE: In the future, our Managing Director will be head of a department because we’ve made it a Department of Management, so those two - And isn’t the Housing Agency a Department? I guess it’s not a County Department.

YUEN: It is a County Department. The Housing Agency is a Department but it’s not in the Charter. It’s by an ordinance. It would not have to be listed, right. The only ones that would have to be listed are the physicians, Band Director or Directors, and the Safety Coordinator.

IRVINE: So it cuts down the list a bit.

HERKES: So why doesn’t Maui have to list them?

IRVINE: Maybe they’re all in Departments. Maybe they don’t have them.

RAY: My sense is, if we’re going to go this route, that it makes sense to pretty much address all these positions.

IRVINE: Are the County Physicians really that hard a political decision for the Council to make? I mean, I have a feeling if they threw something out, people would either take it or not.

RAY: I don’t recall ever dealing with the County Physicians when I was in the Council.

IRVINE: It’s a well kept secret.

SANTANGELO: Yes, I don’t know how they got their raises because it didn’t come before us.

IRVINE: They’ve probably had this status pay grade prior to the time you guys were there, and it just stayed there. It can’t go much higher.

HERKES: Does everybody have to come before the Council for a raise?

RAY: The ordinance has to come before the Council for a vote.

HERKES: The ordinance.

RAY: Yes, for these. And my experience on that was it was almost an impossible political decision to make, or to support it, and we went nine years, some pretty prolonged period, without raises.

BEN: From ‘86 until ‘90, and then ‘90 to ‘97.

MARTIN: Join the real world.

SANTANGELO: No, the bargaining units didn’t move like that. The bargaining units went right along. It’s the non bargaining that took these -

MARTIN: They must have had a hell of a good organizer or negotiator.

RAY: Mr. Ben, what we’re having a dilemma with is all the other positions, other than the Departments and the Deputy Departments, and quite frankly, not so much not wanting to support them, but from a strategic standpoint, putting these on, we don’t want that to be a deal killer if somebody happens to be opposed. Quite frankly, the physicians or Band Directors, or whatever, we’d hate for that to bring down the whole proposal. I can see the headline. Steve.

BESS: John, let me understand. Chris, what you’re saying is you have to list all of them?

YUEN: No.

BESS: You’re saying all Department Heads and their Deputies, and the following named Departments.

YUEN: That’s right, if you were to go with this complete list.

BESS: So, we’re only looking at how many people?

YUEN: County Physicians, the Safety Coordinators, and the Band are not Department Heads.

BESS: With all due respect, John, I don’t know that, assuming we may take some other action regarding the County Physicians, that naming an additional three positions in addition to Department Heads and their Deputies would fly in the face of the voters. My sense.

SANTANGELO: For me, the issue on this thing, Mr. Chairman, is that we’ve seen that the people that have the greatest impact, being the Directors and the Deputy Directors, on our government, and the quality thereof, and to me, that’s what I’m looking at. So, if this Commission feels these other names does jeopardize it, I’d certainly want to drop them. Just to let you know where my agenda is.

IRVINE: I think a lot of people would be quite interested in the fact that we have County Physicians, or surprised.

SANTANGELO: But what would be accomplished by putting them on here?

IRVINE: Well, that’s what I mean. That’s why maybe they should stay out, if you want it passed.

SANTANGELO: Yes, I’d like to see the Directors and Deputy Directors passed because I’ve seen what a mess that is.

RAY: So, what’s the cut if it read as Maui County Charter reads? It just says ‘elected officials, appointed Directors and Deputy Directors’.

BEN: It would be four physicians, Band Director, Safety. That brings it to six. And the next question you need to wrestle with is County Clerk, Deputy County Clerk, Legislative Auditor.

SANTANGELO: Well, that’s their own people.

BEN: And that would bring it up to 9. I just can’t think of the Department Heads right off hand. I just wanted to make one caution. Don’t rely on the term ‘Department’ and ‘Deputy Department Heads’. We do have an Office of Housing. It’s not identified as a Department so I don’t want that to slip through the crack. It is a position appointed by the Mayor.

IRVINE: Our attorney did say that would be covered. Aren’t the County Clerk and the Clerk’s Office - I mean, that’s a Department in the County.

YUEN: There’s a way to write this that would include all those people. The Charter says the Clerk is basically treated like a Department Head. The Legislative Auditor, I have to check on what that is. Of course, we have a proposal now that would change that and would make it - We could write it so it included all those people. The Safety Coordinator, I think, is arguably a gray, - Depending on how you worded it, you could word it to cover the Safety Coordinator, and that’s another one where we took a vote to put the Safety Coordinator in the Civil Service Department, but you don’t know whether that’s going to pass. If that goes to the voters and it’s left as it is, we could write it in a way that the Safety Coordinator gets covered by this Department Head thing. The ones that are definitely not a Department Head, that you couldn’t put it under just the umbrella of some blanket coverage, would be the physicians and the Band.

RAY: Michael, the physicians and the Band, do you know directly when the salaries of those have been brought forth in recent time? I don’t recall.

BEN: Any proposed increases did include all of these positions because the proposal took the form of an increase in the Executive Pay Plan itself.

RAY: Okay. Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: Just so I get this straight. We have an Executive Pay Plan, and then we have, for everyone else, is under a separate pay plan, excluding elected, if we call employees, whether appointed or not. Put it another way. If we cover this, everybody is covered.

BEN: Well, I don’t know what you mean by ‘covered’. Everybody is under something right now. We’re saying remove it under this very political process and put it under something else.

YOSHIYAMA: Is there another group that’s got to go before the Council?

BEN: Yes. Their own employees. There’s a pay plan for Council Aides. There’s two other pay plans for employees specifically within the Council. But other than the Council employees - In fact, some of our Council employees are covered by our Civil Service Plans.

YOSHIYAMA: Right, okay.

SANTANGELO: Just a couple positions.

YUEN: But also, Deputies in the Corp Counsel’s Office -

BEN: They’re under a separate plan not subject to Council approval. There was a change in the ordinance that gave the Corporation Counsel and the Prosecuting Attorney the power to establish the salaries for their Deputies.

YUEN: I wasn’t aware of that.

SANTANGELO: When was that, Ben?

BEN: About two years ago, I think, under your term.

SANTANGELO: Okay, that’s when we struggled with that, yes.

BEN: The Council passed enabling language. The two Departments are still wrestling with developing a schedule.

RAY: What’s your pleasure?

HERKES: I’d make a motion if I could figure out what to put in it. Got any suggestions? I would like to make a motion that we give the Salary Commission the opportunity to set Department Head and Deputy Department Head salaries.

IRVINE: Second.

HERKES: Now, what else I have to say in that motion, I don’t know. Can we just say that?

YUEN: No, I think that’s fine. I take it that you would include - Let me just talk about the gray - the Legislative Auditor would be included.

HERKES: Yes.

YUEN: What about Safety Coordinator, included or not included?

HERKES: Safety Coordinator is in the Civil Service Office. I thought we took that out. It’s separate.

YUEN: But the voters have not done that. Just tell me, if the voters don’t put the Safety Coordinator in the Civil Service Department, would you want the Salary Commission to set that person’s salary?

HERKES: You’re asking me if I want a Safety Coordinator, aren’t you?

YUEN: No, not that.

HERKES: Yes, that’s the only place it could set it.

YUEN: Okay, then we understand the motion, I think, and it can be written without specifically saying Safety Coordinator. There’s a way to write it so it would include the Safety Coordinator.

IRVINE: Would this leave out the County Physicians and the Band Director, then?

YUEN: Right, the motion, as stated, would not include the physicians and the Band Directors.

RAY: So, discussion on that motion. Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: I’d like to amend the motion, if I could, to include the other positions as proposed by the Salary Commission.

RAY: Do we have a second?

MARTIN: Second.

HERKES: You have to have my permission. I mean Gary has to have my permission to amend the motion.

SANTANGELO: No, he doesn’t.

MARTIN: This is correct, but we can vote on it and then we can amend it.

HERKES: I beg your pardon.

SANTANGELO: No, you have a motion to amend, a second. You vote for discussion. You vote on that and if it passes, that becomes part of the main motion that you made, and that’s parliamentary, you don’t need.

RAY: Okay, discussion on the amendment.

BESS: You know, what I’m going to say may not be directly on the amendment, so you can rule me out of order. Let me just suggest something. I’m just wondering whether or not, if we were to change the name of the Safety Coordinator to a Director, Safety Director, and then we used his language the way he’s saying, and we say ‘such other Directors as provided by the Charter’, and then that, of course, assumes we’re knocking the physicians out, but what I’m trying to do is create a classification of Directors that would cover all of those other positions, and I’m unable to do it with regard to the physician’s position. It’s just a thought.

HERKES: But you put the Band back in, didn’t you?

BESS: Well, he’s a Band Director. Yes, I’m putting the Band Director back in.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: Safety Coordinator. Am I to understand that this Salary Commission could then set the Directors’ salaries at a different level from one another, or is it going to be one of these straight across the board things?

RAY: It was my understanding that, yes, they could.

SANTANGELO: Because I would hate to take a position as innocuous as the Safety Coordinator, right now, that really has no teeth, and really doesn’t accomplish much when it could accomplish a lot, and throw it in and have it getting what the Public Works got, or something like that. That would be my only concern.

BEN: Yes, the Salary Commission believes that, under the proposal that we had submitted, then since Mr. Ray’s proposal follows the same line, that they would have the authority to establish different levels of salary if they saw fit, based on the factors that’s mentioned in the proposals.

SANTANGELO: And then when it comes to the amended motion, I’d like more clarification from the person who moved because, again, the Director and Deputy Directors are what’s most important, and we want that to pass. So what you proposed, why did you propose that, and again, if there’s people out there that aren’t represented, and this helps them, we want to help them but what was your main intent there, Gary?

YOSHIYAMA: It’s my view that these positions serve in similar authority to Department Heads and Deputies. That’s basically where I am coming from. If not in terms of supervision, I think the level of authority that they have is comparable.

IRVINE: I think I’d have to disagree with that.

YOSHIYAMA: That’s fine, Sue, but I’m expressing my opinion.

IRVINE: Yes, I’m expressing my opinion too, though, that the Band Director, and I think, Safety Coordinator really don’t equal Head of the Department of Public Works, and I would hope that the Salary Commission - I mean, it looks to me like they pretty much do put Head of Department X amount, Deputy X amount, and they haven’t been considering these others, but somebody has considered these others differently now because they’re at a much lower level. You know what I mean? The Safety Coordinator and the Band Director. And I would hope they continue to do that.

SANTANGELO: Point of information. Chair, would his motion change that? They’d still be set a different rates.

RAY: They could be. Yes, they’d be subject to the Salary Commission. So, other discussion? I’d like to speak in favor of the amendment. There is some political risks, but it just seems logical to me that if we’re asking the Salary Commission

to address these types of salaries that are all within the same category, and I would just hope they would address them under the same kind of guidelines as the way I see the world, more from the private sector, and look at what’s a fair and realistic salary level for these. But I can’t think of any reason why they shouldn’t, other than just politically, I’d rather it didn’t appear on the list, just because it seems a little more controversial, but I don’t have any reason not to support it. Marni.

HERKES: Point of clarification. I’m not sure I understand your amendment. Was your amendment to include this complete list?

YOSHIYAMA: Yes, correct.

HERKES: The complete list. Did the amendment include changing the Safety Coordinator’s designation to Director?

YOSHIYAMA: No.

HERKES: So, we haven’t done that. Okay.

BESS: And one other suggestion on that point. Basically, we’d be just changing the Safety Coordinator’s position, but we could say ‘such other Directors and Coordinators as provided in the Charter’, and again, I’m proceeding from the assumption that we’re going to do something about the physicians. But maybe that’s a false assumption.

HERKES: Well, we are. We’re including them in the motion.

BESS: Okay. I’m going to vote against.

HERKES: Because of the physicians?

BESS: Yes, and because of the whole list. I mean, I think there’s a way of handling this to make it more palatable to the -

SANTANGELO: They won’t put all that in here. If I understand right, Mr. Yuen, you said that this can be worded in which we don’t have to list these with this long protracted thing.

YUEN: You have two ways to do this, the way the motions are stated. The way Gary’s motion is stated, you would have to say, not exactly, but something like ‘Department Head, First Deputy and Physician and Band Director would be set by the Salary Commission’.

IRVINE: And Safety Coordinator?

YUEN: No, I would word it in a way that the Safety Coordinator would be included as a Department Head, as long as the Safety Coordinator was not moved into Civil Service. If the Safety Coordinator was moved, the Safety Coordinator, by any stretch of the imagination, is not going to be a Department Head. Now, the way Marni’s motion was stated, the Charter Amendment would just say, not exactly, but something like ‘Department Heads and First Deputies’, and it would include everybody on the list except the physicians and the Band, and if the Safety Coordinator is moved to the Civil Service, then it won’t include the Safety Coordinator.

SANTANGELO: One other question, if I could direct one at Michael. Mr. Ben, if the physicians aren’t on this list, there’s all kinds of ways to handle that. You can go out for an RFP. There’s other ways to hire people, is there not? These are full time people?

HERKES: No, but they’re County employees.

SANTANGELO: But they’re County employees.

BEN: They are County employees, yes.

SANTANGELO: But I’m saying, if they’re left out and there’s disgruntlement about that, there’s other ways to solve that problem.

BEN: What problem are you talking about?

SANTANGELO: I mean if they didn’t want to be County employees anymore and you needed to do this, right?

BEN: I’m not being facetious, but if they didn’t want to be County employees, they can resign and we can hire another County Physician. I don’t know what point you’re trying to get at.

RAY: Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: Mike, if the County Physician, or Assistant Physicians, are not coming under the jurisdiction of the Salary Commission, they would continue to be a part of the Executive Pay Plan that goes through the present process, right?

BEN: Right, they would continue on the existing methodology whereby the Council would determine their salaries.

YOSHIYAMA: Okay, I just wanted to clarify that.

SANTANGELO: And who else would be left on that?

BEN: I’ve kind of lost track, who’s in and who’s out.

SANTANGELO: No, Ben, on the Executive Pay Plan that would then go through the political process, who would be left in that?

YUEN: If Marni’s motion is adopted, the only people on that Executive Pay Plan would be the County Physician and the Band.

HERKES: We have an amendment to my motion.

MARTIN: No, no, would be off of it.

YUEN: The original motion.

HERKES: Yes, but there’s an amendment, therefore they’re both together.

SANTANGELO: The question was in how this is being handled in your motion, and that passed and it went to the ballot, who would not be included, and then would be in the Executive Plan, and it seems like it would be just those two.

HERKES: I understand that. Three. Four.

IRVINE: Well, the four physicians and one Band Director.

RAY: So, does everybody understand? Does anybody want to air on this or what do you think as far as whether to include -

HERKES: I think we have a very confusing motion and I’m going to vote against it to get it off the floor. If we can.

SANTANGELO: The amendment.

HERKES: Everything.

SANTANGELO: Don’t be confused. Your motion’s a good motion. There’s an amendment to include these people, that’s all. You can kill it or you -

HERKES: Do you vote on them separately?

IRVINE: First you vote on the amendment. Then you vote on -

RAY: We have an amendment whether to add these additional positions that we’ve got to vote on, and then the main motion is just without those positions.

SANTANGELO: Or if it passes with that amendment.

RAY: Okay, so all in favor of the amendment, raise your right hand.

COMMISSIONERS MARTIN, RAY AND YOSHIYAMA RAISED THEIR HANDS.

RAY: Opposed?

COMMISSIONERS BESS, HERKES, IRVINE, MARTIN AND SANTANGELO RAISED THEIR HANDS.

RAY: So the amendment doesn’t carry. All in favor of the original motion raise your right hand.

ALL COMMISSIONERS RAISED THEIR HANDS.

RAY: Okay, motion carries. And just remember this is just preliminary. A lot of people aren’t even here tonight, and I’m sure we’ll get more input on this.

Does everybody want to take a five minute break? Okay.

RECESSED The Chairman called a recess at 6:50 p.m.

RECONVENED The meeting reconvened at 7:05 p.m.

RAY: Let’s reconvene the meeting. Gary reminded me that we did need to clear up the language on that last sentence on the Salary Commission, where we’re talking about the -

MARTIN: Civil Service employees.

RAY: Yes, and we talked about that but didn’t, I don’t think, come to any conclusion. So we need to let Chris know how we want that written up.

HERKES: Do we have to do a motion? Can we just let Chris know we want it ‘public and private sector’ employees?

IRVINE: Yes, that’s what I thought we had.

YOSHIYAMA: Using your language.

RAY: Well, that’s fine with me.

MARTIN: Is that legal, sir, or do you need a motion?

RAY: There again, this is a draft.

YUEN: I think there’s a consensus. For some of these things, the Commission has approved the totally final language, but still in preliminary form, but I mean, actually the way it would appear in the Charter, and I’ll just write this up, and I know what the consensus has been on the discussion, and you folks will approve it, and then it’ll be legal. I’ll just write it up as we discussed.

RAY: And I’m sure we’ll get input as we go along. Mr. Ben wanted to comment on the issue of Department Head Qualifications. I showed him a copy of the draft language that I put forth at the last meeting, so he wanted to say -

HERKES: For the Managing Director?

RAY: No. Well, all of them, but that short list of the different Department Heads.

HERKES: Oh, that’s right. You’re right. I’ve got it.

BEN: What I wanted to do was caution the Commission about the establishment of qualifications. The concern that I had, and I don’t know exactly what you’re doing, but I did take a look, and the problem I’m thinking of did appear in one of the qualifications - But, not to define the qualifications so much that you get into a situation where you don’t have qualified candidates. I had thought about the Managing Director because all of the talk about responsibility, of managing a City or a County, and you’re not going to find many people in Hawaii that has that kind of experience, if you were to specify it like that. But I did notice in the proposals, they talk about experience, both private and public sector, so that would take care of it. But, there was one that I had some concern about, and that was with respect to the Fire Chief. There’s a proposed requirement of three years administrative experience, administrative capacity. And I’m not quite sure what the definition of administrative capacity is, but I think you need to look at what you think it is because normally, your pool for the Fire Chief will come from Fire. Do the Fire Captains or Battalion Chiefs have what you folks are calling administrative capacity?

MARTIN: The way I interpret it is exactly that. The Captains, as you say Battalion Chiefs, would automatically have it because they’re in that position up to, and possibly, more than three years.

BEN: Well, what I’m cautioning against is don’t automatically assume that a Captain has administrative duties, or a Battalion Chief has administrative duties. I think of administrative as a broader department-wide type responsibility, so I’m just cautioning to make sure you folks are clear and we don’t eliminate, or we don’t over qualify the position.

RAY: I did lift this out of Maui so this is language out of Maui County Charter.

BEN: We did have one problem way back, I think in ‘92, on that very question because it was taken from Captain and there was a concern expressed to the Mayor about whether that person was, in fact, qualified to be Fire Chief, and I don’t know where the qualification language came from that they were referring to.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: I appreciate your comments. You’re the Personnel Director. You’re the man that deals with this a lot. I think our overall broad goal was to insert some language in every position that began people thinking about the fact, what kind of qualifications there should be in that position, and we had no intention to limit anybody to that position, but what we found, and this is one of the reasons we took the engineer out, is that the administrative role is more important in the Department Heads than the actual engineering role, or firefighting role. That they be able, like you, to work with people, that they be human resource people, that they be people that have some experience dealing with departments and things. So I appreciate your comments. Thank you.

RAY: Steve.

BESS: I was just looking at the proposed language that we’ve already voted on, and to address Ben’s concerns, it would just take a little bit of tweaking here, and it would seem to me that - the Fire Chief shall have had a minimum of five years training and experience in fire control, and it now reads including at least three years experience in a responsible administrative capacity, but to just indicate that the guy demonstrates administrative capacity and strike any reference to experience, so that we don’t run into that problem with the Captain that hasn’t had the experience, but he demonstrates the capacity.

RAY: Other comments?

YOSHIYAMA: I don’t know which Fire Commissioner told me, because both of them that I talked to, from City and County of Honolulu, sat in on the selection process for their present Fire Chief, under their amended Charter, and one of them did tell me that they had to disqualify, I think, some Fire Captains - They’re similar language to us, at least three years experience in a responsible administrative capacity. That’s the same language as City and County, the one we have now in our Charter.

RAY: And did they say that was a negative in their mind?

YOSHIYAMA: The person that was telling me told me that it was a positive, him or her, I don’t know which one told me, but some of them qualified because they had temporary assignments to Battalion Chiefs, but pretty much the same, Battalion Chiefs and up, if they had 3 years, automatically they were qualified. I took it like it was a good thing, but then again, they were looking at a whole bunch of people who were applying. I think their list came down to, like, 16 candidates who qualified, and they interviewed them all, so it’s the pool. They have a larger pool.

YUEN: Could I ask a question on this? There’s the Chief, then there’s a Assistant Chief, and then Battalion Chief, and then Captain?

BEN: Correct.

YUEN: And how many Battalion Chiefs are there?

BEN: Three or four.

YUEN: And then the Captains, do they all have some kind of supervisory responsibility over people?

BEN: The Captains are the first line of supervision at the Fire Station, and you have, what they call, platoons. Each platoon works 24 hours. There’s three platoons at each station, and the Captain is the head of the platoon at that particular station. So every station has three Captains and we have 14 or 16 Fire stations. That’s the number of Captains we have out there.

YUEN: See, my reading would be that somebody with three years as a Captain would have administrative experience. I think people would make the assumption that it was likely that you would be looking at a list of people in-house. I don’t know that you want to say that the Fire Commission, if they look in-house, is limited to three or four people, as to who the next Fire Chief can be. That would be pretty restrictive.

RAY: That’s just looking on this island, right? I mean, you’re assuming that you’re going to hire somebody as Fire Chief -

BEN: No, my concern is if the intent is to be able to allow Captains or other firefighters - There may be other firefighters that have administrative experience elsewhere that came here but they assumed the lower level role, but I thought the Commission would want to provide our own employees opportunity, and I just wanted to make sure that we don’t put language in there that would exclude them from being part of the pool.

YUEN: You’re raising a good question, and I know that this did come up in ‘92, and that it is a gray area. My own read of it is that a Captain should qualify for administrative experience. It’s something that this Commission can look into further if you want to make it more clear so that there isn’t a problem in the future on that particular point.

RAY: George.

MARTIN: You bring up a real interesting point in the interpretation of whatever it is that we put forth to the voters. The voters vote on it. It now becomes part of the Charter. Interpretation of that - Chris, how are we going to deal with that, if, in fact, two years down the road, or three years down the road, it comes exactly to a situation as being mentioned here? I believe that everybody is in agreement that it is the Captain, and possibly even people below the Captain that may have had some, as you’re mentioning, administrative ability from some other place, and not necessarily in a Fire Department, but any department that we’re touching upon here. Like we make mention of Department of Parks and Rec, same thing, pretty much the same language, and if you have a working supervisor that has administrative ability, and demonstrates it well, what’s going to preclude them from taking that position, or being considered for it, if our interpretation is not being taken the way we interpreted it, or the way we intend it right here and now?

RAY: Sue.

IRVINE: I just wondered if it would make it quite a bit clearer if we did what Steve Bess suggested and say ‘and demonstrates the ability to work in an administrative capacity’.

MARTIN: If that were to suffice, no problem I think, and I agree. But again, it still comes down to interpretation.

RAY: How about ‘and has demonstrable administrative skills’?

BESS: Wonderful.

HERKES: So move.

IRVINE: Sounds good.

MARTIN: Does everybody know the meaning of that word?

RAY: Yes, they have to be able to demonstrate that they have -

SANTANGELO: Ben, the way it’s worded now, do you feel that would interfere with our Fire organization to not see a career track here, that it would not encourage people towards excellence in trying to achieve that?

BEN: I think the proposal on the floor would address that. If not that, and we’re back to the three years administrative experience, I would really ask that it be clarified, either through discussion so that the minutes reflect intent, so that when the question of interpretation comes up, we can go back and say, hey, the Charter Commission had intended that Fire Captains are included.

SANTANGELO: Because I think part of the intent of the language is to create a stand-up, stand-alone individual, rather than one who, and I don’t like to use the word ‘cronyism’, but one who aspires to this position, and really can’t hold his own and is really more dependent. It’s a large budget, I mean, even P&R is a huge budget, so we’re looking for that expertise, and I understand what you’re saying but I would be reluctant to move away from something that I felt gave a good possibility we’d get more of a funded individual. You know what I mean?

BEN: I’ve got no problems with the reason why you want to do the qualifications and why you want to set it so high. I would, naturally, want to do that too, but I’m looking to be sure that, yes, I will have candidates I can consider.

YUEN: If I can make a suggestion. This one is a little easier than, perhaps, some of the others because we’ve definitely made a motion to put the Fire Commission on the ballot, and there are qualifications now stated for the Fire Chief. Because the voters are going to be voting on a Fire Commission, the qualifications can be restated slightly. For example, along the lines of Steve’s motion so that there isn’t this problem that comes up as far as the eligibility of the Captains, and that’s a way to make this clear. And it would be only a very slight change.

BEN: May I make one more comment on what I saw there? I notice on the Planning Director, there’s no reference to private and public, and being a bureaucrat, when you say public and private in all the other ones, and you forget to say that with the Planning, what do you mean? It was an oversight, I know.

RAY: Sure, we can include that. Okay, thank you. So, since we were talking about the Department Head Qualifications, do we want to approve the list as submitted with the changes as talked about?

MARTIN: I thought that was done already.

RAY: Did we approve all these?

IRVINE: We’re talking about this page of yours?

RAY: Yes.

YUEN: Excuse me. That was approved by vote on Saturday, this list, except for Public Works because we did that separately; Water, we did that separately; and the rest was voted on.

RAY: So how about if we’ll just regard that as a friendly amendment suggestion by Mr. Ben, to include the language on the Planning Director?

BESS: Yes.

HERKES: Yes.

YOSHIYAMA: Yes, sounds good.

RAY: Okay, let’s get back to the agenda. Environmental Department. Do we have anything to cover on that? Are we clear?

IRVINE: I think we pretty much covered it. In going over my notes, folks from the County, the Department of Public Works, and whatnot, have asked for a Commission to help them set sewer rates. And the Council has punted this one just like they punt salaries, and I don’t know, should we make any mention of that being the body that would do that, or are we just going to forget about that for now?

RAY: I think that, obviously, that will be a major focus of the Commission that’s attached to that department, but they won’t be empowered to set the rate. They’ll be empowered to recommend them. I mean that’s a given, I’m sure.

IRVINE: Okay.

RAY: But I don’t think that that’s on the floor to empower a Commission. I mean it’s something we discussed.

SANTANGELO: I don’t know that we can do that unless it’s like with the Water, it’s semi-autonomous. I don’t know that we can usurp the Legislative Branch with something like that, so it’s an advisory -

RAY: So my understanding is that it’s just an advisory Commission but I’m sure that’s one of the things they’ll address. And we may get more input to change our minds.

Department of Public Safety. I think we’ve put that behind us.

Fire Commission, we voted on.

Police Commission. There was talk tonight, and I’m just not sure where we went with that as far as language from the Fire Commission.

HERKES: I made a motion on Saturday to take the Fire Commission language into the Police Commission, right?

BESS: She did.

HERKES: And then we waffled a lot with it.

IRVINE: Actually, Marni, when you stop to look at it, Honolulu has already got very similar language that they transferred - I don’t know whether they transferred, but their Police Commission is quite similar to what their Fire Commission does. And then Chris did go on to tell us that three of the items in there, (c), (d), and (e), I think, would maybe give them a little more power. To me, a lot of that just spells out more clearly what their duties and powers are because they obviously don’t know what powers they have, because they ask the Corp Counsel, and he or she says -

RAY: I remember Roland definitely brought up -

IRVINE: Doesn’t want the one, yes.

YUEN: We did have this discussion on whether to import the additional powers that are not in our present Police Commission, but my notes say that the discussion was continued to today, and it was not voted on.

MARTIN: Yes, it was continued and I think it was Mr. Bess that needed more time to think about it. And there was another one, too, that was forwarded till today.

SANTANGELO: And where are we with that language that said ‘hearing’? Weren’t we going to remove that ‘hearing’?

MARTIN: That’s what Chris was going to write up and propose back to us at some time in time.

YUEN: Yes, I don’t have that but I’ll get that. I’m sure that was, though, for just the Fire Commission, but you’re going to discuss the Police Commission. If you want me to remove the ‘hearing’ in the Police Commission then I can do that too, but you haven’t voted to do that. You haven’t taken a vote on the Police Commission.

IRVINE: What I liked, actually, about the Fire Commission, that they have also in their Police Commission here, is the beginning where there’s a Statement of Policy. It says why they are setting things up the way they are. It’s on page 54 of the Honolulu Charter. ‘In order to achieve their purposes, the Police Department shall be conducted in accordance with the following: (a) Standards of recruitment shall be designed to attract into the service persons with high degrees of education, intelligence, and personal stability. (b) Promotions shall be based upon fair standards of merit and ability which shall include peace keeping and law enforcement criteria. (c) Grievance procedures for the people and police officers for this city shall be based on due regard for their constitutional rights. Now, those are the specifics underneath their Statement of Policy which is up near the top. It’s like the Fire Commission, and it really spells out where we’re headed, and I think that part definitely doesn’t give the Commission any more power, but it may, at least, help people know, as Mr. Moe said, what they’re trying to do. And I recognize the fact that further down, on our Fire Commission stuff, Chris did say that there were three things that added to their powers if we put them in. (c) was review the department’s operations as deemed necessary for the purposes of recommending improvements to the Fire Chief. I guess our Police Commission, sort of, doesn’t do that now. And what Roland really didn’t like, ‘review personnel actions within the department for conformance with the policies under Section 6-4.2, and that’s what I just read was 6-4.2. No, sorry, I did not.

HERKES: You’re getting Police and Fire mixed up. You were reading Police, and you’re reading Fire now.

IRVINE: Yes. Police and Fire. I just think we ought to go with better wording or provide our Police Commission - They can hire personnel necessary to carry out their functions, and I think, if nothing else, tell them that they are empowered to hire an attorney so that when there’s a conflict of interest between the Corp Counsel, who’s representing the Police and the Police Commission both, that they can hire independent counsel, the same way we have. Any one of these things might clarify their duties.

RAY: To me, that’s a given under the present language.

IRVINE: They don’t seem to understand that, though.

SANTANGELO: That’s their responsibility.

MARTIN: Yes, I happen to agree with John, and if, in fact, you read the Charter as it’s written, if the discussion is the Chief staying or not staying, fired or not being fired, it’s spelled out. They could have fired him a long time ago.

IRVINE: You’re right.

MARTIN: Stand up and do your job is what it comes down to.

HERKES: But you need the votes.

MARTIN: Again, if you bring it forth to the Commission and then the public sentiment comes into play, then, are they doing their job or aren’t they. Plain and simple.

HERKES: I agree with you.

RAY: If we want to just add some language that you mentioned in that first section, I guess that’s one issue.

HERKES: Policy statements.

RAY: Probably not particularly controversial. As far as the other language, the main section that seems to be controversial has to do with reviewing personnel policies, that one particular item. Does anybody have any feeling about that one particular - You want to read that again, Sue?

IRVINE: When we were talking about transferring this to Police, it was Section 6-4.6(e). ‘Review personnel actions within the department for conformance with the policies under Section 6-4.2 of this Charter.’ So, 6-4.2 has the same sort of language that I was reading that they have in their Police Commission.

RAY: Chris, do you think that’s problematic?

YUEN: Well, I make the same comment that I made with the Fire Commission. I think it is very open ended as far as the authority that the Commission can authorize under this section. I doubt if the intent of the people in the Honolulu Charter was to actually have the Fire Commission evaluate promotional decisions, and evaluate disciplinary actions, and the like. But I think it is possible to use this language as justification for doing that. If you put it in here, they might exercise it only up to a certain point, or they might use it to go to quite some length as far as how they used it. So, that’s my comment on it.

RAY: So, how about if we use all the language and just take out that one item? Does that make sense? Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: Before we do that, is there a language we can put in that would stop it at that point where the Commission would not be reviewing disciplinary actions, promotions, and stuff like that? Can you think of something?

IRVINE: Well, if you took it out, they wouldn’t be empowered to do that, right?

YUEN: I think you could say that they could review promotional policies and procedures within the department, or personnel policies and procedures, and then it wouldn’t be that they would be reviewing individual actions. Because the way it’s written, it says ‘review personnel actions for conformance with Section 6-4', which is a broad statement of merit principals. But, I think it boils down to that the Commission, if you have this language in there, that if they want to exercise the power, yes, they can ask the Chief to come in and they can say who did you promote, and then why did you promote Joe instead of Bill to be Captain, and give us your reasons for doing that because we want to see if this is in conformance with the merit principals, and so, and so, and so and so.

RAY: So, if we just inserted your language into that, as far as reviewing the policies, then that should address that?

YUEN: That would take care of that.

IRVINE: Actually, under (c), above there, if we just took that out, it might work because under (c) it says ‘review the department’s operations as deemed necessary for the purposes of recommending improvements to the Fire Chief’. Or is that not quite the same? It would take out the specific personnel.

HERKES: You’re right. I think we ought to just take the personnel thing out.

IRVINE: I think Roland would be happier if we just took personnel out, because that’s personnel actions.

RAY: Do we have a motion to approve the language with that deletion?

HERKES: Motion to remove (e). Right.

SANTANGELO: Second.

RAY: All in favor.

COMMISSIONERS: Aye.

YUEN: So, for the Police Commission, there would be an amendment that would add (c) review the department’s operations as deemed necessary - this is for the Police Commission, and (d) evaluate at least annually the performance of the Police Chief and submit a report to the Mayor and the Council. Okay? We’re looking at Section 6-4.6. This is taken from the Honolulu Fire Commission’s powers. There were three that were actually different from what we already had in the Police Commission, and those were (c), (d), and (e), and we were going to vote to amend the powers of the Police Commission to include (c) reviewing the department’s operations, and (d) reviewing annually the performance of the Fire Chief and submitting a report to the Mayor and Council. Yes? Okay, fine.

IRVINE: Yes. But now, did we include in this that overall Statement of Policy. I really like that Statement of Policy that they have in the Police Department.

YUEN: I didn’t think that was included in the motion, but if somebody wants to make a motion to that effect, then that can be done.

HERKES: So move.

IRVINE: Second.

RAY: Everybody clear that we include the preamble language? All in favor?

COMMISSIONERS: Aye.

RAY: Opposed? Moving on.

Salary Commission. We’re pau.

Managing Director. We need to discuss anything else on that? I think we got that all.

Legislative Auditor. I had a conversation with the Legislative Auditor this afternoon, and I was hoping that she would be here this evening but I hadn’t requested her to be, so she probably couldn’t get by. She expressed some concern over the lack of authority in this version that we’re looking at here, but didn’t offer any specific suggestions on how to correct that, and I, at this point in time, don’t have anything to offer. I agree it’s weaker than I’d hope it would turn out to be in terms of establishing more independence and authority for the office, but I think we’ve got to realize this is part of the County Council Office, and these are political appointments so I don’t know that, that being the reality, there’s much we can do. John.

SANTANGELO: Radical departure here.

RAY: Yes, if we want to radically depart.

SANTANGELO: We looked at this Environmental Department and we said this shouldn’t create a larger cost to government because we would be removing things in a certain area, and in fact, over a period of time, probably save money because we’d have a better operation. In the Legislative Auditor’s Office then, is there a thought that this be removed and made a department that served the Council, but then would be autonomous? Anybody want to talk about that?

RAY: It doesn’t make sense to me. To me, the radical departure would be we create an actual Auditor Office. That would be a separate function and office that would, clearly, need to be independent, but not a Legislative Research Office, I think, in my mind.

SANTANGELO: Okay.

RAY: So, did we vote on this?

YUEN: Yes.

RAY: Okay, so let’s just go out with it for now and see what input we get.

IRVINE: I thought, in reading it over, it was an improvement over what’s in there now.

RAY: Oh, I think it is.

IRVINE: And even an improvement over what Connie had suggested.

SANTANGELO: I think the question that’s being raised just comes from how does reality fit into this, and I don’t know that we can mold that. We can imply things. We can encourage, but in the end, it’s done the way it’s done.

RAY: Term Limits. 6-3 Council Make-Up. Department Head Qualifications.

I know that I’d brought this up, and that’s the Water Commission. I thought we had taken a vote on this. It’s a nine member Commission now, but tied to the Council districts. Chris said we didn’t vote on that?

YUEN: I don’t think we did, but let me go back to my notes.

SANTANGELO: Would you like a motion now just to cover the base, because I would so move?

BESS: Second.

HERKES: Did you jump right over 6-3?

RAY: I didn’t think there was anything new to discuss. I’m sorry.

YUEN: There’s one thing left on the 6-3 Council, and that was how to handle the Planning Commission and the Police Commission.

RAY: I didn’t hear that.

HERKES: I wanted to bring up something on 6-3, the three at-large seats. Maui designates, and Sue tells me we used to do this too, a geographical residence for their at-large seats. They’re voted for at-large but they have to live within a specific district. In the three seats, I thought it might not be a bad idea to designate the Senatorial Districts for the at-large seats to live in. Does that complicate things terribly?

RAY: I don’t think it complicates things but I don’t think it offers any real relief if you look at where those three people could live.

MARTIN: Yes, but where they could live is understood, but the reality is you have a larger base, now. I think it makes a better sell on what we’re going to try and propose here. Was that a motion?

HERKES: That’s a motion.

MARTIN: I second the motion.

RAY: Okay, so the discussion is you tie the three seats to at-large seats.

SANTANGELO: To the Senatorial Districts?

HERKES: Yes.

YUEN: Just a point of clarification. Then you’d actually have three different elections then.

HERKES: They’re voted for at-large though.

YUEN: Yes, but you will vote for one in each Senatorial District because that’s the only way you can make sure that they will all actually end up residing in the three different districts. What I’m saying is, when we had talked about at-large before, the voter comes in, they have a list of names, they can vote 1-2-3 from that list of names. I’m saying this as a technical point. Whether you guys want to vote for this is up to you. But, if one Council member must live in each one of the three districts, they must run separately from the three districts because there can be five who live in Hilo, and the voter can vote for three of those people. The three people who live in the 1st Senatorial District can have the highest number of votes.

HERKES: How does Maui do it?

SANTANGELO: Chris, you’re simply saying it’s single member district, that’s all it is.

YUEN: I’m not sure how Maui does it, but they must do it this way because either that, or you may not have the three people with the highest number of votes winning the election. It’s one or the other.

HERKES: One of them has to live on Lanai, one of them has to live on Molokai, and one of them has to live in East Maui, and one of them has to live in West Maui, but they’re all voted on at-large.

YUEN: So you have the people who are Lanai candidates run against each other and they’re voted on separately. So what I’m saying is, with your proposal, you have to vote for three different seats. The people in the 1st Senatorial District, the people that happen to live there, all run for one seat, and the people who live in the 2nd Senatorial District all run for one seat, and the people who live in the 3rd Senatorial District all run for one seat. I just wanted to make that clear.

HERKES: Right, but everybody on the island votes for them.

YUEN: Right, everybody on the island votes for them, but it’s in three different races.

SANTANGELO: So, if I’m, quote, in the 6th District, there would be six of them, I would be voting for under four areas. I would be voting for my single member two-year term, and I would be voting for three other at-large.

YUEN: That’s correct, yes. I’m sorry if I confused you, but that’s right, and so instead of it being a multi-member three votes and the highest three win, you have three separate races, but everybody would end up voting for four Council members.

IRVINE: I guess I thought, when Marni suggested this first, it was just for the appointed Commission members that would fall in this.

HERKES: No.

IRVINE: But, it’s for the whole election.

HERKES: That’s the way Maui does their County Council.

IRVINE: Yes, but it’s like our old one used to be. Everybody’s at-large and it’s quite easy for people to understand. This may be beginning to get a little complicated.

SANTANGELO: Why is that, Sue?

IRVINE: Complicated? Because people vote for one person in their district, and then one person from here, here, and here.

SANTANGELO: It’s all in one ballot. You have a little box that says vote for one of these. You have another box that says vote for one of these. You have another box that says vote for one of these. And you have a fourth box that says vote for one of these.

RAY: That seems awfully strange to me, just off the top of my head.

MARTIN: If I may, I think what Chris touched upon, his analogy, and it would come off as being very difficult to palate is somebody with less votes could walk into the Council and say I’m the elected person and I come from Senatorial District 1, although you, from Senatorial District 2, had 17,000 more votes than me, but because I come from 1, I got to represent.

SANTANGELO: They’re all the same size.

MARTIN: I understand that. I’m just saying that it’s possible.

SANTANGELO: Same with the different Council members, too, in single member districts now, George.

MARTIN: Como esta?

SANTANGELO: In each Council district that same thing exists. Not every Council member goes on the Council with the same amount of plus votes.

MARTIN: No, I understand that. But what I’m saying is in this particular synopsis, you’d have a person that has less votes, and the same person was running in the same arena, because it’s at-large, and they would lose. It would be confusing, I’d think.

IRVINE: They’d just be running in three different races now. I mean, it’s no longer quite as at-large.

SANTANGELO: It is at-large.

IRVINE: Yes, they’re being elected at-large.

SANTANGELO: When we had the Council districts before this, six and three, they had residents that ran at-large. It was the same thing. We dealt with it.

BESS: Excuse me. What’s the purpose of having at-large seats? Let’s return to that.

MARTIN: Exactly.

BESS: Aren’t we looking for people that have an island-wide, kind of, perspective? And should there be any geographical tie to having an island-wide perspective?

MARTIN: I retract my second.

SANTANGELO: Then I’ll second it. To answer that for me, I think the attempt was, and Marni made it, but the attempt is to show that there’s a fairness that’s trying to be achieved here. That we’re trying to create equal representation.

MARTIN: Yes, I agree but I don’t see how it’s going to be done.

SANTANGELO: Well, that’s interpretive. I mean, the assumption that they’ll all come from Hilo again, that’s the anti-argument, which is legitimate. But the pro argument is that we’re trying to create, and again I go back to this government, we’re trying to create something that gives us stability and a sense to this Council. And if it helps to sell it that way, by golly, I’d go that way.

RAY: But I agree with Steve. I think that’s contrary to the whole reason you folks want these at-large districts. I mean, if you want island-wide candidates, I think that’s what they should be.

SANTANGELO: In your opinion. But in other people’s opinion, to try to get this sold.

RAY: And it’ll help kill it.

SANTANGELO: And I’d like to warn this Commission.

MARTIN: So why aren’t you behind it, John?

SANTANGELO: There’s two schools of thought that say one has a chance of possibly getting it passed, and another one will definitely die. So, one could support something so that they know it would die.

HERKES: I suppose I’m looking for more representation for Kona, than just two people. And I suppose that was a way, and I think that’s why Maui is set up that way, so that Lanai will have representation, so that Molokai will have representation. I mean, they have their own Planning Commissions. So that East Maui and West Maui will have a representation and a large vote.

RAY: So, how would you guarantee, under that scenario, that you’d have more representation?

HERKES: I’d have a Council person. I’d have three.

RAY: Well, wait. Under the three Senatorial Districts, you don’t have that representation. They could all three be from East Hawaii.

HERKES: There’s a Senatorial District in Kona and West Hawaii.

RAY: Yes, and where does it go? Where does Andy live and where does Lorraine live?

HERKES: I understand that.

SANTANGELO: Mr. Chair, in this motion, let’s think of it this way. Again, let’s get out of the box for a minute, because for me, having a four- and a two-year is what’s important to create some stability. What if we looked at this and took away the idea of at-large over the whole island and took your idea of just Senatorial, and made that a single member so that everybody’s voting in a single member, but the Senate District, which is quite large, Sue, like Andy Levin’s Senate District goes from Kailua all the way to Hilo. That’s a large district, which is smaller than the whole island by a third, would be a single member.

IRVINE: I just missed what - John, what were y