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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION
Transcript of Meeting of May 10, 2000
Hawaii County Liquor Commission Conference Room,
Hilo Lagoon Center
Attendance: J. Ray, E. Alonzo, S. Bess, M. Herkes, R. Higashi, S. Irvine, D. Kurozawa (from 5:15 p.m.), J. Santangelo, G. Yoshiyama, Counsel C. Yuen
Absent: K. Balog, G. Martin
And 14 members of the public in attendance.
The meeting was called to order at 5:00 p.m.
RAY: I’d like to call the meeting to order. This is the 1999-2000 Hawaii County Charter Commission. It is Wednesday, May 10th, 5 p.m. We’re in the Hilo Lagoon Centre, Liquor Control Conference Room.
Attendance. This evening at the present time: Sue Irvine, Marni Herkes, Steve Bess, Vice Chairman Roland Higashi, John Santangelo, Gary Yoshiyama, Eddie Alonzo, and myself John Ray, Chair. We are expecting two more members. One of our members, George Martin, is out of town. He’s on the mainland, so we knew that he wouldn’t be here.
Statements from the Public. We have a number people signed up. If you’re not, you need to fill out a form other there and hand it across to the desk.
The first person signed up is Del Pranke, followed by Mai Apple McCullough. Del.
PRANKE: Thank you, Mr. Ray, Mr. Chair and Commission members. I’m here to talk against several proposed items. We’ve talked about these some before, but new things have happened in the last couple of weeks that I will bring to your attention, I hope to help you to understand why I’ve taken some of the positions I have. I won’t talk about all of these because I know there are other people that will talk about some of them. I’ve talked with them and they pretty much have some of the same ideas. So I’m going to skip the non-partisan and the Council 3 at-large seats. I’m opposed to those.
The Fire Commission and the Police Commission items, number 4 and 16, I’m going to lump together. The Fire Commission amendment, as it reads now - it might be changed - reads essentially the same as the current Police Commission, and the current Police Commission has trouble doing its own job without us getting it fixed. And the way I read the proposed amendment, that was proposed before, would simply cause the Police Commission to get farther involved in the Police Department without helping solve the problem of real oversight. The Police Commission should not be involved in running the Police Department. The Police Chief is the only person who should do that. When you blur the lines of command, you cause more problems than you solve. And the way I read it, the amendment put in by the Police Commission would simply do that, simply put them more involved inside the Police Department. Whoever set up the Police Commission before did at least one good thing and that was to keep the Police Commission completely out of the day-to-day operations of the Police Department. That should be a linear, military-type chain of command so there’s no confusion for the people who are out on the street with their lives sometimes depending upon the fact that they know what their chain of command is. And to set up a Fire Commission that would essentially be the same kind of thing, with no real control, or no real oversight of the Fire Department, would be a mistake. I urge you, still, to put before the voters the opportunity to have the Police Commission and the Fire Commission, if you wish to put it in, appointed not by one person. Have the Police Commission and the Fire Commission, one member from each district, appointed by the Council member from that district and approved by the rest of the Council before they are appointed. The reason being we cut out some of the political influence that occurs when one person appoints the people who are overseeing a part of the government that’s run by the person appointing them. It’s just a total conflict of interest.
To give you some insight into this, it’s come to our attention in the last week or so that Wayne Carvalho may have falsified a federal document – a document required to be filled out by someone in the County, and it’s required by Executive Order. This is a document which would allow us to get marijuana eradication funds from the Federal Government, and they have what they call an OJP, an Office of Justices Program, form that has to be attached with this. And that OJP form requires that the person signing it certify three things: (1) that the money won’t be used for lobbying; – and there’s a purpose for me telling you this. I’m sorry. (2) there’s a debarment, and (3) that we try to have a drug free workplace. The debarment is the key. The debarment says that you certify that the person signing this has not been convicted of civil fraud or civil bribery within the last three years. Mr. Carvalho signed this document on the 11th of April. I guess he can’t remember back to December. The problem is we can’t get rid of him, and here’s what’s happened. The County of Hawaii has also been convicted of these things. We may not be able to get any drug control money for the next three years because we can’t get rid of the guy. We need a Police Commission that has clear authority to oversee this, that’s completely separated from the Executive management of the County, and has the independence to take things into their own hands, and not controlled by politics. This is a true fact. This document is now in the hands of the FBI, and they will be looking at it. And, of course, the County Council asked the Corporation Counsel to look into it, but we may have a problem with that.
Now, in addition to the problem of getting rid of the person, we’re stuck with the liability of this because we can’t get rid of him, so that brings us to the second thing – the proposed Charter that I told you, which would be the second possibility, is to allow all officers of the County to be impeachable. If we could have impeached Mr. Carvalho, maybe we wouldn’t have been in this position, when we first learned about this stuff some years ago. And impeachment would have been a simple surgical slice, and then we could have gone on. But instead, this thing lingers on and drags on and we’re stuck with this situation which is dragging us down. So I urge you to allow people to vote on the opportunity to have each Commission member on an oversight committee appointed by Council members – only the four oversight committees – and to allow for all officers of the County, not just the elected officers, all officers to be impeached. And I urge you to reject the idea of making the impeachment process more difficult. The idea of an impeachment is to quickly get something to court because an impeachment is like a quo warranto. It goes ahead of anything else on the docket as quickly as it can, so that the judge makes a decision. Now, the judge is still deciding by law whether someone has committed an impeachable offense. It’s not the 100 people signing. It’s only the judge making the decision. The purpose of the impeachment is to allow for a quick resolution to something that might otherwise drag on, as we’re seeing in this case.
So those are the things that I would urge you, most urgently. And, of course, from my friend, Mr. Pierson, – I don’t think he showed up. He was going to.
RAY: He’s here.
PRANKE: Oh. If he’s signed up, I’m sure he’ll talk to you about having ‘telling a lie’ to be a violation of the Code of Ethics. Thank you very much.
RAY: Okay, questions?
SANTANGELO: Del, you said you’re opposing non-partisan?
PRANKE: I am.
SANTANGELO: In ten words or less, why?
PRANKE: Well, I’m going to let other people talk about it, but non-partisan elections, I believe, don’t allow for third and fourth party candidates the opportunity to actually gain a foothold into the election process. But the other thing is how do we stop the money coming from parties? How are you going to say the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party, the Green Party, cannot solicit money for somebody that they want, if that person avows himself as a Green, or such a thing? How do the citizens know that?
SANTANGELO: Well, Del, the thing I would counter with that that I struggle with this, every darn time we’ve had somebody sit up here and talk about the Mayor, they want to talk about a minority vote getter serving, and this solves that problem. And time and time again, on Council races and the Mayoral races, we’ve said this guy, or this girl, did not make it, and yet they have the seat.
PRANKE: We oftentimes elect a plurality President. You know. In the past, they’ve been plurality Presidents. That’s not been a problem. I don’t see the problem with the plurality – I mean, besides it gives me fodder to pick at him about.
SANTANGELO: Well, that’s an honest answer.
PRANKE: But, I know that some people have complained about this, but they just don’t understand the plurality. If we had something like the Israeli system where you had to get enough support from all these different parties – I mean, there’s all kinds of different systems. But I don’t see any problem with this. I’m not in favor of the non-partisan elections, but I’ll let others talk. They’re more eloquent than me. Thank you.
RAY: Mai Apple McCullough, followed by Peter Martin.
MC CULLOUGH: Thanks for this opportunity to speak to you folks. I came basically because it was the last chance for community input to come in, I think, on this Review Commission or proposed Charter Amendments.
RAY: We are taking final votes this evening, but we will be meeting again. It’s probably not the last chance.
MC CULLOUGH: Thank you. I made a list somewhere here of my yeas and nays, and I have to say I do basically agree with Del’s testimony except for non-partisan elections. I am 100% in favor of non-partisan elections. I don’t think that politics, or at least party politics, have any business in County Government, and that’s what we are here is a County. I feel real strongly about that.
So, I have yeas on number 1, 3, 5, 9, 11, 17, and 19, with a couple of sparse remarks. On number 4, I want to say also -
RAY: Why don’t you identify what it is you’re opposed to, just for the record.
MC CULLOUGH: Favoring:
1. Non-partisan elections.
3. Strengthening the authority of the County Managing Director.
4. A yes tentative on waiting until after the – The Fire Commission, number 4 is the Fire Commission. I’m sorry I feel befuddled by this request. Ya’ll have the papers, right? Everybody knows what they are.
RAY: Actually, no, we don’t have absolute numbers tied to absolute -
MC CULLOUGH: Okay, I just didn’t want to take up all the time. Okay.
4. Creating a Fire Commission. I can’t really say yes or no because, in my opinion, we need to wait to get the Police Commission working so that we have some kind of rules that we can follow that apply to different Commissions. I don’t think we need to create more of a brouhaha until we get things straightened out with what we’ve got.
I am in favor of the proposed amendment 5 for a Department of Environmental Services. Sounds like a good thing.
9. On a Safety Coordinator. Sounds good.
11. is on the Qualifications of the Heads of Department of Public Works and Department of Water Supply, specifically. Yes, I just think it’s a good idea to have good qualified people and I think we can make exceptions but, overall, I think that we do need to have qualified people, not necessary somebody gets appointed because they’re somebody’s cousin or uncle or somehow related. I think the nepotism that we have had for the way it’s always been done, kind of thing, here in Hawaii County has really got us pretty deep in shit, if you’ll pardon the expression.
I also favor the proposed amendment 19, Cost-of-Government Commission, an overview that would suggest ways to reduce the cost of government and increase efficiency. Okay, so that’s the yeas.
Now, on the nays:
2. Amendment on the Council to include 3 at-large seats. No way. Every district must have representation of its own, period.
6. Amendment proposal on Planning Department functions. No, and I think it ought to just be deleted completely.
The 7th proposed amendment on Legislative Research. I just wanted to ask, well, why do we need a Legislative Auditor’s Office? I don’t understand. It seems like this is already being done. Do we really need another office here? I don’t know. I guess you guys know more about it than I am, but unless we really do, I’m not in favor of that. In other words, I would vote nay.
On the proposed amendment 8, Holdover of members of Boards and Commissions. I don’t think so. I think it does allow the Mayor more authority over keeping things the way that it is if we don’t have a good and benevolent Mayor, then I think that can get us in trouble. I think our Mayor has far too much power in this County.
I’m opposed to proposed amendment 10 on the Planning Commission powers. I think that ought to just be taken out too. It’s got to go through the Council, all this stuff – through our elected officials, in other words, not appointees.
The 12th proposed amendment on Impeachment. I would just say no, please leave this like it is already. It’s hard enough. Don’t increase the number of people that are registered voters who are now necessary to get anyone impeached.
Also, no on 13, which is Special Counsel being appointed for County officers and employees when Corp Counsel has a conflict without Council approval. This is a joke. It’s a conflict of interest all over the place. Any place but Hawaii County, this would never get on paper in black and white in front of the public because it’s so ludicrous.
14, I vote no on having a Board of Appeals move to the Corp Counsel.
And I vote heavy no on the 16th proposed amendment on the Police Commission being given powers to get into the doings of the Police Department. A Police Commission, by my understanding, is supposed to serve as a check and balance over the Police Department. That means they look at stuff and say, because they can be objective, oh, this isn’t good. They’ve got to be objective. They can’t be too involved in the administration, or the running, of the Police Department because then they won’t have any objectivity.
And I also vote no on the 18th proposed amendment on the Salary Commission being given power to set salaries. I think that this, as it is, established by ordinance, is just fine the way it is.
I think that’s everything. I’m sorry I was so verbose and used a bad word. Thank you.
RAY: Okay. Peter Martin, followed by Marshall Blann.
MARTIN: Good evening members of the Commission. We have been before you a couple of times before recently talking about these issues. And the last time I was assured by a couple of members that we wouldn’t need to worry about at least one of them, the at-large. I’d like to see some show here as to how we stand on the at-large, from the members, because there’s no sense -
RAY: You’ll see as soon as we vote on it.
MARTIN: All right. We feel very, very strongly, many of us, not just in my group, but all over the County. Yes Marni, we do.
HERKES: Some do.
MARTIN: And those people who have been listening know that. I will say that should you choose to vote for 3 at-large, we will be obliged, as groups, and this is not a threat, with all due respect, to do our very best to defeat all the issues because we can’t pick out one and hope that people will remember the number. So this is very, very important. We finally have a Council which is more and more representative of all of the districts of the island. And what this is going to do, the 3 at-large, is to take that representation away.
The other thing is the proper qualifications for Department Heads. This is really a critical issue in the good functioning of any government. If you take the Department Head qualifications away, you leave the door open for favoritism, appointment of people who are not qualified but happen to be friends of so and so, etc., etc. We don’t ask a surgeon that hasn’t gone to medical school to take out our appendix and we shouldn’t be asking a non-engineer to make engineering decisions. So we ask you very, very sincerely to pay heed to these things. They are very important. Thank you.
RAY: Okay, thank you. Marshall Blann followed by Walt Kriewald.
BLANN: Thank you for the opportunity to voice my opinions. I’ve had a chance now to study the document which I picked up at the Waimea reading. I have a series of comments; some a little bit substantive, the other a little bit more nitpicking.
To go out of order before going into the order of the list from Waimea, first thing was the Audit Department. My understanding was, because they hadn’t done an audit in eight years, we’re going to change the name to Legislative Research. Now, it might be the reason they haven’t done an audit is because none of them appointed has any accounting experience or auditing experience. The Mayor may have his reasons for appointing people like that.
RAY: This is part of the County Council Office. It’s not part of the Administration.
BLANN: Okay, thank you. What I was going to say is any governmental agency that has $180 million annual budget, or even a smaller, needs to have an accounting done every year, if it’s not. In fact, it, I don’t think, should be done by the Audit Department. So, if they’re not doing that, I’d say get rid of the Audit Department. (indiscernible) be done by an independent national auditing organization.
RAY: By the way, the County is audited by an independent national auditing agency every year.
BLANN: Are they? Oh, okay, thank you. I’m relieved then because I thought that wasn’t.
The next item I wanted to mention is I don’t know if it’s possible to put some sort of an ethics conflict of interest resolution before the County to vote on. It’s nice to brag to my friends from Texas that members of our Council from Hilo and Puna get contributions from as far away as Long Island, New York, and that they’re appreciated by corporations that far away, but I think when they vote on issues effecting those corporations, it would be ethical and correct for them to recuse themselves. I think the voters of this island would go along with that. I think it would be nice if they had a chance to vote on that.
All right, now I’d like to go to some of the specific items. I would say I’m not in favor of the at-large, as I stated last time.
The Managing Director. I don’t know that it’s stated but I would think he should have the same professional qualifications as a County Manager would have, though I would prefer that there be, in fact, a County Manager.
On Article V, Section 5-1.2, I would just suggest a small change of wording. It says ‘the mayor may serve for more than two terms but shall not serve more than two consecutive full terms’. I’d suggest changing that ‘may serve for more than two terms, but shall not be elected to more than two consecutive terms’. Conceivably one day, you might get someone unscrupulous who might resign just before the end of the term, as it’s worded now, and run again for re-election. That would not be in the sense of this. So if we just said ‘shall not be elected to more than two consecutive full terms’, I think that would take care of that.
13-3, Appointments. I want to say, again, proper professional degrees are needed. As written, I think maybe, the terms there such as ‘proper investigation ‘ and ‘related fields’ are so ambiguous that they don’t mean anything. They’re too broad and I think maybe one wants to say a little more clearly what constitutes ‘proper investigation’ and ‘related fields’. That’s done somewhat for the Planning Director but I’m a little taken aback by the term ‘geography’ as a qualification. It might be nice if they can tell you where the Holy Roman Empire used to be in a map of the world, and the Ottoman Empire, but it’s not clear to me what that has to do with running a Planning Office. An appointment in Hilo would probably be able to tell us that the Grand Canyon is not what he reaches back and finds, but I don’t see that as relevant, again, to running the Planning Department.
RAY: Actually, the field of geography is quite broad. I studied Coastal Geography when I was in college, which was actually directly applicable to planning issues in this County.
BLANN: Okay, it’s not what comes to my mind by ‘geography’. Geology, I might say –
HERKES: Mr. Ray, could I ask a question?
BLANN: Please.
HERKES: I went through about 15 different Charters, or documents, from different entities on the mainland and across this island, and I looked for language for Managing Directors, for qualifications. I didn’t find a lot of language that pleased me, or that I felt comfortable with. Do you have any specific language that you could propose? I mean, like five years experience, and those kinds of broad things, are fine, but they don’t really fill the bill.
BLANN: What I would do, for example, for a County Manager or for the Managing Director, is I would go to a professional organization. I suspect County Managers have one. Most professional groups do. I would try to get information from them, and possibly consultants from some of their Boards, and have them help outline what is proper language in that field. And in general, in the different areas, I would try to contract professional organizations, try to get some ideas from those and condense those into what seemed good.
HERKES: Thank you.
BLANN: Article VI, Chapter 5, Department of Environmental Services. Again, maybe I misread this, but it didn’t seem as though the qualifications of the Director needed to have any experience in Environmental Science Management. It looked like it was purely administrative, and I would think that that post would need someone who, preferably, had a degree in Environmental Science and some experience in management processes.
6-5.4. I put let the Council submit names, one list from each Council member, so that must have been some Board or Commission.
Under Section 13-4, having to do with the 90 day succession of appointments from the previous Administration, I would say no. I would write it that they may continue up to 90 days if requested in writing by the new appointive authority. So if it was a post that the Mayor would appoint, the new incoming mayoral candidate could request that the people stay on, but he shouldn’t be saddled with dolts for 90 days if he doesn’t wish to be. That could foul up the setting-up of a new Administration.
5-6.2. I’d borrow from old Office of Price Administration and ask if the trip is really necessary. It seems we may be creating a lot of new governmental posts. This, I hate to sound like Ronald Reagan but, is increasing the cost of government and making government bigger. Wasn’t clear to me, if that Commission was necessary.
At the bottom of the page, I would suggest a wording from the present, ‘should the Safety Coordinator be abolished’ to the more genteel ‘should the position of Safety Coordinator be abolished’.
6-2.2. Again, do not remove the professional qualifications.
Section 2, under Impeachment, I would plead with you to leave it alone. It has not been abused. As I said, if anything, it’s under-utilized. I see no reason to change it and to clutter the ballot with a change when it has not been a problem, unless the politicians are thinking of changing their activities, getting very abusive, and they want to be further insulated from the voters rather than responsible. But what I would like to see, if we’re going to change the numbers, is the requirement of getting an Initiative on the ballot from 20% down to a level of two or three percent. I think that’s more reasonable and feasible. What danger is there to let the people vote on whether they think something is a good idea or not?
HERKES: May I ask another question?
BLANN: Please.
HERKES: On impeachment, do you favor island-wide impeachment for single district members, or do you favor single district voters only impeaching. I mean, I could reach into somebody else’s district and impeach their Councilman.
BLANN: Right now, I think that’s exactly what I’d like to see.
HERKES: So you favor island-wide for single districts. Okay.
BLANN: There was 5-6.3, Board of Appeals and my recommendation there is to make it nine members, again one from each district, consistent with some of the suggestions that have come from this group on some of the other Boards.
Department of Research and Development, I’ve already given my ideas on that.
The Cost-of-Government Commission, finally. It seems to me that the meetings are too frequent as proposed, that every three to four years would be more appropriate if you had such a Commission. That’s because it takes them one year to study the operation of the government. It would take a second year to put the changes they recommended into effect. By then you’re appointing a new committee to study again. It seems that the changes haven’t really had a chance to work in and see if they’re effective until they’ve had a year in place.
RAY: We are amending that to every four years.
BLANN: Great. That is everything I wish to say. Thank you.
RAY: Walt Kriewald, followed by Councilwoman Bobby Jean Leithead-Todd.
KRIEWALD: I don’t want to keep hitting a dead horse here, but there are a couple of things in the minutes of your previous two meetings before the Waimea meeting that I took issue to, and both of them come from Ms. Herkes. One of them, she says about spending money for campaigns, and she says ‘do you know how much, let’s pick Chairman Arakaki, spent in his last campaign’, and I brought that up at the Waimea meeting. He spent $71,000 running unopposed. Finance matters a great deal in the County elections, and I didn’t have time to pull the rest of them, but I just picked Al Smith’s, but I’m sure Ms. Leithead-Todd can speak to it, maybe. Mr. Arakaki’s ran 40 pages and I didn’t want to burden anybody with that. But, 60% of his funding comes from West side developers. The rest of his funding comes from the East side of the island, but it’s all – I don’t want to say all, pardon me – most of it is from lawyering firms, planning consultants. It essentially has no small person input. What you’re doing is financing campaigns with contributions from large developers. If you go to a 6-3, this will just burgeon out of control. If Mr. Arakaki can spend $71,000 in a single district running unopposed, you can do the math and see where you’re going to come up with a campaign island-wide and where all the money’s going to come from. It’s just not going to come from $100 from Jim Smith and Sara Jones.
The other thing that I would like to state. In here she says ‘and I think a lot of it has’, and she’s speaking again about 6-3, ‘with our elected officials using their lack of power and blaming other people, so they blame other people so that makes it more difficult for government to function. You know how West Hawaii loves to blame East Hawaii for all their ills.’ I find that offensive.
RAY: Well, let’s don’t get into personal attacks. If you’ve got some testimony that directly relates to the Charter Amendments, that’s fine.
KRIEWALD: Okay. That’s my testimony. It’s in the minutes of your Charter Commission.
RAY: I understand that. Okay. Thank you.
KRIEWALD: Thank you.
RAY: Okay, Councilwoman Bobby Jean Leithead-Todd, followed by Harold Jim and Patrick. These are the last two people signed up to testify, so if anybody else wants to testify, you need to sign up over there. Hi, Bobby Jean.
LEITHEAD-TODD: Hi. This past weekend the Hawaii County Democratic Party held its County Convention. The convention was co-chaired by Nancy Pisicchio and myself. We had three resolutions in front of the convention concerning proposed Charter Amendments and we voted on those resolutions.
The convention approved a resolution favoring the creation of the Fire Commission.
We took a position in opposition to the 6-3 proposal for Council elections and passed a resolution in favor of retaining the nine single member districts.
And we also took a position in opposition to non-partisan elections.
And that’s basically all I’m here to speak to.
RAY: Okay, thank you. Any questions for Councilwoman?
IRVINE: Bobby Jean, can you just say a bit about what the vote on the non-partisan, why they’re in opposition? I suppose they are a Party and that might mean why.
LEITHEAD-TODD: Part of it is Party, but some of the rationale in opposition to non-partisan was similar to the rationale for our support of single member districts. We think that in a non-partisan election, by removing labels from people, you’re really removing information about the candidates from the population, and that most of the Parties go through a process where you have Precinct meetings, you have a County Convention, you adopt a platform, you take positions on various issues, and so there is a process before people run as candidates where they receive input from the entire island. And also for those of us who go to the State Convention, we get input from the entire State regarding their positions on particular issues. When you run in a non-partisan election, you don’t have any of that, what we consider grassroots input, so we think that it weakens grassroots participation in the political process. You know that some of the criticism you have about the current system, we think will be worse in a non-partisan situation. We think it will favor the candidate who is an incumbent. We think it will favor the candidate who has the biggest war chest. That’s some of the reason we are also opposed to the single member district. Those things cut both ways for us as Democrats. If I happen to be the Democrat –
RAY: You mean opposed to the at-large district?
LEITHEAD-TODD: Yes, we are opposed to the at-large. It raises the cost of the elections and it also, I think, makes it more difficult for grassroots participation.
RAY: Okay. Thank you. Harold Jim and Patrick Kahawaiola’a.
KAHAWAIOLA’A: Good evening. My name is Patrick Kahawaiola’a. I’m a Native Hawaiian and a resident of Keaukaha. I would like to preface my statement, and maybe show some disappointment, but, however, with our coming before this Charter Commission, being asked to propose some language for Charter review a month ago, and not have had the opportunity by the Commission to even receive any kind of acknowledgment, approval, or disapproval, of our language based on, maybe, some unfounded fears that we hope maybe could have been cleared up. So let me again thank you for allowing us, as Native Hawaiians, to come forward and make testimony. It pains me based on the fact I don’t know how many Native Hawaiians, or somebody sitting here, that have really, within their hearts, the ideas and the thoughts that what Native Hawaiians go through in their own lands. However, I’m not going to dwell there because I believe you have responsibilities, and the responsibilities that you, some so aptly gave testimony to, with different people that I’ve been privy to sit in on in your discussion here with interacting with other people that gave testimony, was that one, I guess, Commission member mentioned that they were duly constituted under the laws, and as far as they were concerned, they’re operating here in a legal fashion. I’m not saying that you’re illegal. I’m saying that you need to consider the facts and the plights of the Native Hawaiian. When you took this job, some of you swore to uphold the Constitution of this State. In this State of Hawaii, the Constitution reads right off the bat, it says the people, the State and its people will uphold the Hawaiian race. I happen to be that Hawaiian race. This Charter, which is only 36 pages long, makes no provisions for Native Hawaiians. We brought that language forward for you to consider that would incorporate Native Hawaiians into your Charter. Your Charter starts off in the Preamble and it says this: ‘We the people of the County of Hawaii’; then you go to your definition in Article I, Section 1-1 gives the clear definition of who that people are. ‘The people of the County of Hawaii shall be and continue as the body politic and incorporate by the name County of Hawaii hereinafter in this charter call County.’ That’s who the people of this County of Hawaii is. I hope you’re not assuming that I’m part of that body political just because I happen to be here in the County of Hawaii. I was born and raised here. So I need for you, in the language we’ve proposed, because I come from the land. I happened to be born and raised on the lands within this county. That’s why we were here again. In the second section of that Article I, it talks about the geographical limits. ‘The Island of Hawaii and all islands within the shores thereof and the waters adjacent thereto shall be the County of Hawaii.’ Again, I come back to ask you, the confusion that this county has perpetrated to the Hawaiian people is that we once received an Opinion of your counsel here that says we’re all included. This deals with Hawaiian home lands also. And if it does, put Hawaiian home lands in there then. Put it there. Don’t say the whole island and then when we go to different departments within this county, we have no jurisdiction over Hawaiian home lands. That’s the confusion part that’s sending out the message to the Hawaiians out here that we are second class citizens, third, fourth class citizens. We’re not included in your Charter. That was the language. The language was to help include us and how we can get things done within this county. We sent a letter to the Mayor asking that we be included because about a month ago this question was asked of the Corporation Counsel by Curtis Tyler. Does the County have jurisdiction on Hawaiian home lands? The answer of Gerald Takasi was no. No. And that’s the guy you’re dealing with in your Council, in your Charter. You’re going to make Corporation Counsel, include them – they’re all in here. But the Corporation Counsel says clearly no. We have a decision from Mr. Wurdeman, an Opinion, in a totally unrelated matter, however, he does state this in his Opinion; the Hawaiian Homes Act did not authorize the State or local government to apply a tax lien to Hawaiian home lands. We take away the tax lien to the extent that the real property lien is an incumbrance on the property created by non-administrators of the Act, of the DHHL land. An Act of Congress would be required to attach it to Hawaiian home lands. The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act also embodies express provisions that the Governor – the Governor and the Board of Land and Natural Resources not exercise their powers and duties over lands having the status of Hawaiian home lands. That’s in Section 206. This provision evidence a strong intent that Hawaiian home lands not be controlled by State or local governments, but by DHHL. The disposition of Hawaiian home lands by county tax here would be in contradiction of this intent. This is just one avenue. All I’m trying to lead you up to is that it needs to be included in your Charter. It needs to be included. Are we included or are we excluded? Because the Opinion of Mr. Wurdeman is clear, and your counsel agreed to it because he wrote something about it, that provides the incumbrance authorized to be placed on Hawaiian home lands by officers other than those charged with the admission of such Act shall not be increased except for the consent of Congress. That’s basically where we’re at. This County has no consent from Congress to increase the incumbrance. A tax lien is an incumbrance. A building permit is an incumbrance. A zoning change is an incumbrance. It’s been ruled. It’s senseless for us Hawaiians to come here before you, but we do because we’re trying to work within the system. It’s again a notice. I do know that a lot of you, and this counsel that you have – don’t put this on. Don’t put those Hawaiian things in the Charter. Don’t do it. And if you’re prepared to do that, please sign a document saying that you’re not. Then give it to me and I’ll take it somewhere else. Because, again, I go back to your responsibilities. You said you upheld the Constitution, took this job as County Commissioners to review the Charter, and then again ignore us when we come before you. Trust me. You can all say personally no, that’s not what we feel, but that’s how Hawaiians feel.
IRVINE: Sir.
KAHAWAIOLA’A: Yes.
IRVINE: I don’t think we’re ignoring you.
KAHAWAIOLA’A: Thank you for your thought.
IRVINE: I think we’re doing our best to understand, and it is very, very difficult to understand whether you wish to be part of the County or exempt. I do not feel that I could vote for anything that would not continue to provide Police and Fire protection on Hawaiian homes, and I’m afraid if we exclude you in some sense, or include you in some special sense, that you may lack that help.
KAHAWAIOLA’A: Then may I just say that if it was your intentions to do that, please let us know, so we know how to explain it better, if you didn’t understand it. But to ignore us, to ignore us sends that message. It should have been explained. You got counsel here. He knows absolutely what. This is not his first time sitting here on the Charter Commission. He used to be with the Land Use Commission. Please avail yourselves. Don’t treat us as second class citizens.
JIM: Let me give you some kind of guidelines of the mandatory law, the General Law of this county, the local government. It’s very simple. You turn to Article XII, Section 3. It clearly express the incumbrance. Those are mandated, compelled, by the State and government that you cannot increase the incumbrance without the authority of government. That’s preempt law by Congress, that you accepted it under the Compact on Article XII, Section 2. It’s not something that you have to put on the ballot. It’s something that’s mandatory. Now, if you decide that you – the rumors we have – we find ourselves very difficult to come before this Board because their concerns is about the Native Hawaiians on the Constitution uses of the law of the body political, which you are. You don’t belong to us. The Constitution separates us. Can you come on our land? That tells you no. Can you get a sewer plant come on our land? Right now the County passed a law. They’re going to buy Waiakea’s sewer plant. Hell, they are. The Mayor ain’t signing nothing because he cannot receive no land from Hawaiian homes because your Charter forbid him to even accept the proposal the body political, which is the County police powers. They can’t. They can make a ruling, come before him to the management. He can’t without the incumbrance transferred to him, and it can’t be done. We are not trying, here, to make fools out people. We are trying to let the process to understand it’s impossible without the consent. You are compelled, the courts, this State, are compelled by Congress. Here they’re off right now – I am giving you notice. You are liable to exclude us. Thank you.
RAY: Patrick.
KAHAWAIOLA’A: Yes.
RAY: By the way, we not only did not ignore this, we discussed it at some length at our last meeting in Waimea. We did have an additional correspondence from our legal counsel in regard to this issue, and we did discuss it in full and grapple with it. I apologize if you did not receive a copy of that.
KAHAWAIOLA’A: We did not receive it.
RAY: But we did discuss this at some length.
KAHAWAIOLA’A: Then let me apologize before you because if we had known, we could have responded and maybe not -
JIM: Let me put it this way. Just receive it. Within ten days you’ll get a response.
KAHAWAIOLA’A: We’ll be responding within ten days to it.
HERKES: I think it’s we that should apologize to you that you didn’t get that letter sooner, and I apologize.
KAHAWAIOLA’A: Ma’am, I accept your apologies, with the only fact – forgive me because when we don’t have it, we assume. And when you assume, you make ass out of you and me. So, thank you very much.
RAY: That concludes our public testimony unless we have anybody else that wants to sign up. Moving on.
Minutes Approval. There are no minutes to approve this evening.
Financial Status Report. Our financial status report is the same as it was on 3/31, showing a balance of $72,311.48. In regard to finances, just for your information, we did discuss various scenarios and costs attached to public education and advertising in regard to getting out the proposed Charter Amendments before the election. So we will be looking at that once we have a sense of remaining funds, just what our options are and be developing a final budget in regard to that.
Communications. In our packets today are the minutes which we just received; a communication from Commissioner Irvine in regard to the Department of Environmental Management; a communication from Commissioner Herkes in regard to a Code of Ethics draft; and correspondence, two letters, one from Tom Beach and one from Judy Graham.
Moving into Unfinished Business, Review and Final Vote on Tentatively Approved Charter Amendments. We’re going to go through one-by-one. If it seems a little bit confusing, and we have to, sort of, start and stop, a number of things were under discussion at our last meeting in Waimea, and so we don’t have formal changes in front of us in terms of everything that was discussed, so we’re just going to, kind of, work our way through this, and that’s the process. So, what you’re hearing is our continuing discussion from the last meeting in Waimea in regard to any proposed changes in regard to the 19 proposed amendments. We are also going to be entertaining a vote on a couple of proposed amendments that were not listed previously; one in regard to the Hawaii Redevelopment Agency, and another in regard to language which would mandate mandatory West Hawaii meetings of the County Council. So those are two other items that are coming up. The Chair will entertain a motion to delete items if someone wants to make that motion.
HERKES: Can we amend the agenda to get something else on? I want to put the Preamble on it. Do I have to wait until next time?
YUEN: Yes, it would be better to do so. Yes.
RAY: If there’s an item that a Commissioner wants to move forward that has not been agendized, then our counsel has advised us that we would be better off agendizing it and taking it up at another meeting.
SANTANGELO: Mr. Chair.
RAY: Yes.
SANTANGELO: Question. Would you like a format of taking this as they’re numbered, one at a time, and then accepting a motion for consideration, or not to consider it? Would that be appropriate or you just want us to go helter-skelter and start grabbing –
RAY: Let’s see how it goes. I’ve always been, kind of, a helter-skelter person.
IRVINE: I don’t know about helter-skelter but we might move to get rid of what we think we might be able to get rid of right now. I could see that.
SANTANGELO: Rather than accept – okay. Then I’d like to make a motion, Mr. Chairman.
RAY: Okay.
SANTANGELO: On item 2, Council to include 3 at-large seats –
HIGASHI: Are we going to go from 1 down or just –
SANTANGELO: Well, that’s what I just asked. We’re going to delete things so I’m jumping in there.
HERKES: He’s making an assumption.
SANTANGELO: Yes.
RAY: So, you’re going through with your deletions, right?
SANTANGELO: I don’t know. Excuse me. I’m in the middle of a motion but I’ll retract that, and I was asking for guidance and I thought the discussion between you and Sue said let’s get rid of the things first.
IRVINE: Go for it, John.
SANTANGELO: All right. I move that number 2, Council to include 3 at-large seats not be moved forward and placed on the ballot. I would ask for a second for these reasons: I think that this is something I have supported. I’ve seen, in my own heart, a lot of good that this could do. On the other hand, the overwhelming public testimony opposing this, the lack of understanding, or certainly me being understood as well as others, and the fact that we may well not be ready for this just yet. We have moved into nine single member districts and it seems like we just need to get more comfortable with that. And so, based on a lot of the public, and how I’ve been led to feel, I move that we not include it.
RAY: Okay, do I have a second?
HIGASHI: Second.
RAY: Second from Mr. Higashi. All in favor of deleting it raise your right –
HERKES: No discussion?
RAY: Discussion. Excuse me.
HERKES: I think we all should discuss it. I’m going to change my vote also. I I wanted to get this on the draft so that we could hear the discussion, so that we could hear the testimony. I really am in favor of it but there’s no testimony – I got phone calls from all over the island in favor of it, especially from people in West Hawaii, and I certainly feel that if you can spend $70,000 to get elected in a single member district, the reason given that it’s cheaper to have single member districts is probably not a good one. However, there’s no real support from a lot of people who’ve taken the time and trouble to come and testify before us, and the people who are calling me are not necessarily ones that put it in writing. Some of them were elected officials. Some of them were state officials. But most of them were people that I knew in West Hawaii. But I want to change my vote and vote against it.
RAY: Other discussion.
SANTANGELO: Call for the question.
RAY: Call for the question. Raise your right hand if you’re in favor of deleting.
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
RAY: Okay, we’ll delete. So, we’re deleting; we will not be moving forward the Council to include at-large seats.
MC CULLOUGH: Was that unanimous?
RAY: Yes. Okay, Mr. Santangelo.
SANTANGELO: No, that was -
HERKES: Do you have another one?
SANTANGELO: No, I’m willing to share.
HERKES: I’d like to put on the table the Legislative Research Office as one not to put on the ballot. Not because I don’t think it’s a good idea to reorganize it, but the County Council can reorganize that office anytime they want to. They don’t need a Charter Amendment. Unless they have the will to reorganize the office, they get to live with what they have and we get to live with it also, and I’d love to see a real Legislative Research Audit Office, but the County Council does not want one. I will work very hard to get some Council people elected that can change that office into a research office. But right now, nobody understands what actually happens in that office. It’s probably just as well.
IRVINE: I’d like to second Marni’s motion, although I’m not sure she really made one.
HERKES: I did. I moved to take it off the ballot.
IRVINE: All right. For the same reasons. We need a real internal audit and we weren’t able to turn that office into it so I think we should just remove it.
HERKES: Leave it alone.
RAY: More discussion?
SANTANGELO: Just real quick. I know what some of the Chambers that I sit on, and their facts. They oppose this, and mainly because they misunderstood it, and you and I both sat on the Council. We know what needs to be done and I think Ms. Herkes articulated it quite well. And it is their mess and they’ll have to deal with it. I think it was a good try on our part but there’s more important things, and this doesn’t need to cloud it, so I will be voting against this.
RAY: Any other testimony? All in favor of deleting, raise your right hand.
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
HIGASHI: Mr. Chair, I move to delete number 11.
RAY: Number 11 is the Qualifications of Heads of the Departments of Public Works and Water Supply. This is the amendment that would delete the requirement that those departments be headed by a registered engineer. So if this is deleted, that requirement would stay in place. We have a second?
ALONZO: Second.
RAY: Discussion?
BESS: I have a question. I understand the sense is that we want to reinsert that both of these people be professional engineers, and registered engineers, but are we saying that we’re also going to omit ‘the Director shall have had a minimum of five years experience in an administrative capacity’?
RAY: No, my understanding is that we would delete this one and then in the Department Head Qualifications, which is number 15 on most people’s list, we would add, so it would still say they would have to be a registered engineer, but in addition, they would have to have five years of administrative service.
BESS: All right.
HERKES: Promise.
IRVINE: Yes, with that understanding.
HERKES: Was there a second to that? I’d like to say that I had a lot of input. A lot of people called me from Commissions that had worked under engineers who said help. You need a CPA, you need a Human Resource people, you need something else besides engineers. So I think it’s real important to understand that while it sounds good to have engineers as head of technical bodies, they are not the best people to administer a hundred people in some personnel things – may not be.
RAY: Other testimony? Mr. Yoshiyama.
YOSHIYAMA: Yes, I would speak against the motion. I don’t think we’re shutting the door on engineers, or registered engineers. I would like to see us open the doors to other qualified people. I think that, as Marni said, we are heading in that direction of professional management, and that’s all.
RAY: Other testimony? I’d just say I’ll vote to delete this but I do think it’s a good idea. I think it was entirely misunderstood, and the input I got from people, a number of whom, and in fact, one who had served as Chief Engineer, thought this was a terrific idea. But in any case, I’ll vote to delete it because it has been, I think, so entirely taken the wrong way, and it seems to go contrary towards trying to beef up professional qualifications overall. Okay, so all in favor of deleting, raise your right hand.
HANDS RAISED: Commissioners Alonzo, Bess, Higashi, Irvine, Kurozawa, Ray, Santangelo.
RAY: Opposed?
HANDS RAISED: Commissioners Herkes, Yoshiyama.
RAY: So two votes opposed. So that’s three. We’re on a roll.
SANTANGELO: Mr. Chair. I would have preferred to second this but there was a pause. Don’t do that. Number 12, Impeachment. Would move to delete that. Again, for the same reason. I think it’s been terribly misunderstood, but I have to say that I have been convinced by the testimony brought forward that where I started from probably wasn’t where it is. It really hasn’t been misused per se. It has some pretty good safeguards in it, and again, I would move to delete that.
RAY: Do we have a second?
BESS: Second.
RAY: Okay. Discussion.
HIGASHI: What would be the main reason for deletion?
SANTANGELO: The main reason for my motion was that basically it hasn’t been abused. I think, and I don’t want to wade into murky water, but I felt this last attempt maybe wasn’t the most ethical on the part of the people, but it’s the only time it’s ever been tried that way. Del Pranke brought up the fact that there is a litigation that takes place. It does incur some expense. And again, I think with some of the more important things this Commission’s put their energy into, that what we’re trying to do here maybe be misconstrued as not being in the best interest of the people – that maybe. And I’ve served with this Commission and have respect for how they feel about it, whether they vote it up or down.
RAY: Ms. Herkes.
HERKES: I go back to the fact that we are not the only body that can amend this Charter. If it is abused, the County Council can amend the Charter every year, any time they want to; every time there’s an election, or every two years when there’s an election, so if it starts to be abused then there is an avenue to stop the abuse.
RAY: Other testimony?
IRVINE: I wasn’t planning to vote to just throw this out, but I think it’s probably quite reasonable. It hasn’t been -
RAY: Quite reasonable to throw it out?
IRVINE: To throw it out? Yes. We have had a lot of testimony. I don’t think we’re making a lot of difference with going from the hundred to the 3% if we were voting within districts. If you have to go outside a district, the way we have it written right now, I don’t think I would probably vote for it. I think people should be impeached in their own district, and that 3% is only like 240 people.
HERKES: Maybe we’ll work a little harder to elect people who can instill confidence in us and the integrity of government, that we won’t need an avenue like impeachment.
RAY: I tend to agree. I don’t see it as really that much of a problem, and it’s such a divisive issue, sort of a target, so I would vote to eliminate it. All in favor of eliminating, raise your right hand.
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
RAY: So we’ve eliminated the Impeachment. What about Planning Department Functions/Planning Commission Powers?
HERKES: I move we eliminate those because it doesn’t change a thing.
KUROZAWA: Second.
RAY: Now, we’re looking at two separate amendments. The one, 6 on most of our schedules here, has to do with the Planning Department functions which would eliminate language that would preclude the reorganization and create this idea of a Division of Permitting. So we need to deal with that one first. So, would someone like to make a motion in regard to the Planning –
SANTANGELO: We do have a legal motion on the floor right now, Mr. Chair. Point of order.
HERKES: Was there a second?
SANTANGELO: Yes there was.
KUROZAWA: I seconded it.
HERKES: Okay, sorry.
RAY: Does anybody have a problem with voting on both?
HERKES: I withdraw the motion.
SANTANGELO: Your second has to agree.
KUROZAWA: I withdraw my second.
RAY: Can I have a motion in regard to number 6, if someone would so choose, in regard to the Planning Department functions?
IRVINE: I move that we remove number 6 from our consideration.
RAY: Do I have a second?
HERKES: Second.
RAY: Would anybody like to speak to that?
SANTANGELO: I would like to ask other Commissioners to comment. The reason I struggle with dropping that, and I will cooperate, is we’re asking the people to authorize the Council to do something. It’s not like the people vote and it’s a done deal. It still has to go through the Council. It has to be by ordinance. And so it’s just simply giving a little bit more guidance and a little more leeway for the Council to be involved in the restructuring of the government. So I, kind of, struggle with that and I’d ask for the rationale from others. Thank you.
RAY: I’ll speak to that. In my mind, a future Administration may want to put forth this type of reorganization, and the County Council will be very much involved in that. And if they do want to, then the Council can go ahead and amend the Charter in regard to allowing that to happen. But it’s confusing. It’s putting a confusing amendment forward which may or may not ever be acted on in the future. So for that reason, I think a more reasonable way is if a future Administration would like to reorganize the departments in that fashion, and they need a Charter change, and the Council agrees with them, then they can make the Charter change. Anybody else? Okay, all in favor of eliminating number 6, raise your right hand.
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
RAY: That was unanimous. Number 10, Planning Commission Powers.
IRVINE: I move we remove this from our consideration as well, due to the large amount of confusion on the part of the public about what we were doing here.
YOSHIYAMA: Second.
RAY: Would anybody like to speak to that? We’ve had a lot of discussion and input from our legal counsel. It doesn’t seem to be a substantive issue, and it has caused a lot of confusion. All in favor of eliminating raise your right hand.
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
RAY: Okay, number 10's eliminated. The other items we discussed, and I don’t really have a sense of how strongly people feel about them. Oh wait a minute, one for sure; Number 14, the Board of Appeals. That was connected with number 6, the Planning Department Functions. So I think if we’re going to eliminate number 6, it makes sense to eliminate number 14.
HERKES: I move we eliminate number 14.
IRVINE: Second.
RAY: Can you say which is -
HERKES: Board of Appeals.
RAY: Moving the Board of Appeals. We have a second. All in favor?
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
RAY: Now, the item in regard to the Special Counsel. There was a lot of discussion back and forth on that at the - We just voted unanimously to eliminate moving the Board of Appeals.
HERKES: I move that we eliminate Special Counsel, number 13.
YOSHIYAMA: Second.
RAY: Discussion.
IRVINE: I think it’s entirely appropriate to remove it in light of the fact that I think it was pointed out to us that the Corporation Counsel shouldn’t be the ones hiring the attorneys for the other side, so to speak. That the County Counsel themselves should probably do that.
RAY: That’s really a different issue, but –
IRVINE: No. That was my feeling. I often have a different take.
RAY: Any other discussion on eliminating amendment number 13 in regard to the Special Counsel? This was brought forth by Corporation Counsel.
SANTANGELO: Mr. Chair, is it appropriate for Mr. Yuen to refresh our memory on that for some of the group, maybe, because I see it a little different?
YUEN: Presently the Charter requires that if the County is going to hire any attorneys other than Corp Counsel, that the hiring of that attorney specifically be authorized by the County Council. So Corp Counsel has to go to County Council to request that other attorneys be hired. There are situations where Corporation Counsel is definitely prohibited from representing officers and employees of the County because of ethical requirements of attorneys, and so they simply cannot represent those officers or employees. However, the County is required to provide counsel for them. There are situations where Police Officers are legally required to be represented by counsel paid for by the County, for example. What the amendment would do, if it were enacted, the Corp Counsel, in those situations where they have a conflict of interest, they would not have to specifically go to the County Council for the authorization as long as there had been a blanket appropriation of money for that purpose. They could use that appropriation and hire the attorney on their own authority without going to the Council.
SANTANGELO: Thank you. And that’s where the conflict comes in with me. Former Councilman Ray and myself both sat on Councils that went into Executive Session. We dealt with things like this, I think it was in Executive Session, but it seems so confusing. It’s a matter of a technical thing, and if we have room going out to the people, I would support this being on because it does have merit. But I have seen most people misunderstand this and it is difficult to explain.
RAY: Mr. Yuen, to the best of your knowledge, has this ever been a problem in the past?
YUEN: Well, I don’t know if it’s been a problem. I don’t think that the Council has refused to hire Special Counsel where Corp Counsel had a conflict of interest. I don’t know how much debate and how much difficulty there was in getting the Council to that point, but I don’t think the Council actually refused to do it.
RAY: That was my understanding from Mr. Wurdeman, that he thought this was a problem that might arise in the future, but it hadn’t occurred in the past, if that makes any difference.
SANTANGELO: But just one more question. The reason that I did support this is we had something similar come up to the Council, as you may remember, Mr. Ray, in which we’ve never had pay raises disputed either, and we would have pay raises negotiated through binding arbitration even come before the Council and, as an elected body, we had to vote on that, which meant that we had the right to vote yes or no. And in one case we did eventually vote no which caused a huge problem. I’m totally willing to vote it down but my only problem with it was that should that arise, you need to supply Counsel for these individuals, you need to hire them, and you could get into a situation where we did. Now, if it’s never been a problem – But that was where I struggled with this.
IRVINE: John, the present wording allows the County Council to hire counsel. We’re just saying that the Corp Council may employ Special Counsel.
SANTANGELO: Just to explain. There’s situations in which Corp Counsel can’t defend, but the County needs to defend that person. And they need to hire that attorney. Okay?
IRVINE: Right.
SANTANGELO: So you need to get Council approval. Okay?
IRVINE: Right.
SANTANGELO: If the Council says no, but you’re obligated by law to do it, but your lawmaker doesn’t, now you’ve got a real dilemma.
IRVINE: It says ‘the Council may, by two-thirds vote of its entire membership, authorize –
RAY: But it may not, as well.
SANTANGELO: It may not, and yet you’re still legally obliged to defend these people.
IRVINE: Well, then they’re acting outside the law if they don’t because it says in impeachment cases, that the County cannot defend, etc.
SANTANGELO: Again, I appreciate that, Sue, but what you go back to is if you’ve elected someone to represent you, they have the right to vote yes or no, so you can’t say you’ve broken the law because you voted no. You see, it’s a dilemma, and that’s what this was going to address but I think it’s very complicated and maybe we’ll just let them deal with it.
RAY: Mr. Bess.
BESS: I would speak in favor of this provision. However, in the interest of presenting a ballot to the public that is small enough and has issues that are of true importance – I mean this is an issue that may or may not arise, and given the number of amendments that we are proposing to the public, I am voting to delete.
RAY: All in favor of deleting, raise your right hand.
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
RAY: We’re recording all of this, Jason, if you want to check the record afterwards.
Any other proposals for deletions before we go through?
SANTANGELO: Mr. Chairman, just one little statement for clarification. In deleting these – we’ve deleted quite a few things here, and I think it’s good for the record to show that a lot of this came up because people brought it forward and we wanted to give it a fair and open hearing. And this may well be the result of that fair and open hearing. So anyway, that’s my explanation for going against some of these things.
RAY: Thank you. I think I’ve stated on numerous occasions that nobody really engages the process until they have something concrete in front of them. But we erred in that direction to put it out there even though we knew there’d be a number of changes.
First off, non-partisan elections – And so we’re voting on the proposed amendments as we have previously voted on and established language around. So I’d like to entertain a motion, and then if someone would like to propose an amendment, we’ll take that. So, can I have a motion to approve the non-partisan elections?
HERKES: So moved.
RAY: Second?
YOSHIYAMA: Second.
IRVINE: Discussion. It came to my attention, after reading through this I didn’t realize when we put this in that we were following, I think, City and County wording on this which means that someone can be elected in a Special Election at the same time as we hold our Primary Elections. Maui County wording, on the same thing, provides that if there are only two people running in a winner-take-all election, they would both go onto the ballot at the time of the General Election, when we have like 15% more people actually voting, and I would really like to see us use the Maui County language instead of the Honolulu County. It changes things a bit, but I do have a copy here of the Maui County, that we all have had for a while. But I would move that we insert that rather than the City and County of Honolulu, in the interest of allowing more people to vote.
RAY: So are you moving that as an amendment?
IRVINE: Yes.
RAY: Do we have a second?
HERKES: Well, did we have a motion on the floor?
SANTANGELO: We’re amending the motion so you need to second it.
HERKES: I’ll second.
RAY: Discussion on the proposed amendment.
SANTANGELO: If I’m to understand, Sue, then the intent of this – more voters, but the intent is that in a General there will be people running for all offices.
IRVINE: Yes.
HERKES: No? Chris is shaking his head.
YUEN: I think, if I’m hearing you correctly, if only two file, then that race is not decided at the Primary at all, and they both go on to the General. And if there are three or more running, and one person in the Primary gets the 50% plus one vote, then that’s pau and you’re elected outright.
HERKES: In the Primary?
IRVINE: I don’t think so.
HERKES: So that means we’re back to where we started from.
YUEN: No, it’s a little bit different because the way it was voted on when we first did this was that if you got 50% plus one in the – we’ll call it the Primary for simplicity; it’s not really the Primary.
HERKES: In the first election.
YUEN: In the first election, or the Primary, if you got 50% plus one, you’re elected outright, and you don’t count blank or spoiled ballots. So, the way it was voted on the first time, if there are only two people running, unless they tie, guarantee somebody’s going to be elected outright at the first election. The way Maui does it is if there are only two people running for the office, they skip the first election and they run them off in the General, and I thought that was what the motion was because that’s the way Maui works. But in Maui, and in the way that we had discussed earlier, if there are three or more running, and somebody gets 50% plus one out of those three, then they’re elected outright in the first election and you don’t go on.
HERKES: And that takes them out of the second election, however. It takes both people out of the second election.
YUEN: That does take it out of the second.
HERKES: Well, it takes all three, but you’re not even taking two into the second election, the top two.
YUEN: Right. You can do it, that you always take the top two into the second election. That’s not been what has been discussed.
HERKES: Nobody does that now.
YUEN: Right. Let me look at Maui’s again to make absolutely sure, but I’m pretty sure that that’s not the way they do it in Maui.
HERKES: Sue’s point was a good point, that more people vote in the General Election. You have less candidates running in the General Election.
IRVINE: The bottom paragraph talks about ties in the Primary.
SANTANGELO: But we could go back to what we just deleted too. That’s that situation when you have three or more running, very seldom would you have someone get a majority vote.
IRVINE: Yes.
HERKES: Well, getting 50%, yes.
YUEN: Maui is as I discussed it, and if you – No, I’m sorry. Sue is correct. If there are three or more, they automatically take two into the General. So, if we want to call that, there’s three different ways of doing it.
SANTANGELO: Adding expense.
IRVINE: I just think people -
YUEN: So I then need to ask if Sue wants to make the amendment so that you automatically take two into the General – you take the top two into the General, or do you want to only pass two automatically into the General, if there are only two running?
IRVINE: What if there’s only two running? Why don’t they just go into the General?
YUEN: That’s the way Maui does it.
HERKES: They will. Mr. Ray, do we want to vote on non-partisan and then vote on how?
SANTANGELO: That’s what we’re doing. No, you have to do it this way.
RAY: We have to amend it if we are, and then vote on the motion as amended, if it is.
YUEN: Let me clarify this. I’m sorry. The way Maui does it is that if there are only two running, you don’t have an election at all in the Primary. They both run off in the General and the winner wins in the General. If there are three or more running, they do have an election in the Primary, but the top two go over into the General.
SANTANGELO: Regardless of one getting a majority?
YUEN: Regardless of one getting the 50% plus one. The way the City and County does it is the way that was voted on by the Commission the first time through which is that if you get the 50% plus one, no matter how many are running, if you get that in the first, or Primary, election, you don’t have a race in the second election. If nobody gets 50% plus one, then the top two go over into the General Election.
RAY: So, does everybody understand the amendment? The amendment is to vote, basically, as Chris just described, as Sue introduced the method that’s in the Maui County Charter. Okay, we’re going to vote.
BESS: No, I’m unclear. Can you state what’s in the Maui County Charter again? What’s on the table here.
YUEN: And let me just say one more thing. The way I read Maui, I think their Mayor is still a partisan and their Council is non-partisan, just to throw different wrinkle in there. But what I understand the motion to be, like we had done, we were going to go all non-partisan. The amendment is that if there are only two candidates running for a particular office, that those two candidates will not appear in the first election and they will automatically go to the General, and then the winner wins in the General. If there are three or more candidates running for a particular office, they will be voted on in the first election, and the top two will always go on to the General to be run off, no matter how many more votes one gets than the other.
SANTANGELO: I’m going to speak against the amendment simply because, again, there’s been an awful lot of discussion about money, and I know the 15%, and Sue, we both know that in a Presidential election, you get a lot more voters. It goes up and down, and it’s really up to the voters to get off their can. And having been through these elections, I know what it’s like to go through a Primary and then a General, and if the solution is there, if there’s a majority winner which is what we haven’t had in a while for a lot of things, in the Primary then let it be and I would vote against this amendment and go for the original as we had it. And that’s simply a friendly suggestion though.
RAY: Further discussion? All in favor of the amendment, raise your right hand.
HANDS RAISED: Commissioners Herkes, Irvine, Kurozawa.
RAY: Opposed?
HANDS RAISED: Commissioners Alonzo, Bess, Higashi, Ray, Santangelo, Yoshiyama.
RAY: Okay, the amendment fails to carry. We’re at the main motion in regard to a non-partisan election as we had originally voted on, and I think everybody understands that. Yes sir, you’d like to speak to the main motion?
YOSHIYAMA: No, I want to make an amendment. I’d like to propose an amendment that we delete our proposed Section (e) relating to at-large Council election.
IRVINE: Second.
RAY: All in favor of that amendment, raise your right hand.
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
SANTANGELO: I’d like to speak to the main motion, just real quick. As a Republican, I’ve had my Party beat me to death on not supporting non-partisan, and frankly, that’s probably why I am supporting it. Having served this County, and along with you, John, as a Republican, I felt like that had very little to do with what I was as an elected official. I felt like once you’re elected, you are there to serve all the people: Whether they voted or not; whether they’re registered or not; whether they’re male, female, child or adult; on a County level. On a State and a Federal level, you’re dealing in some very different territory that’s really working in our lives on a different level, but County, or the services, it’s a different type of quality of life, and I firmly believe that partisan politics has no place in it, and I, therefore, support that for that reason.
RAY: Ms. Herkes.
HERKES: I’m a member of a recognized Party that’s also against non-partisan elections, but I am going to vote in favor of it and, during this discussion, I’ve read a lot of stuff on it. I know it’s the most popular form in the United States, and all that stuff, but I’ve been especially interested to watch my reaction in the mayoral race in Honolulu. That is not two Democrats running against each other. It’s two people running against each other. A very highly visible campaign, very hard fought, and I haven’t heard the word ‘Democrat’ once. I’ve heard Mufi Hanneman running against Jeremy Harris, and I like that. I really like that. That gives me a chance to really look at them on their qualifications. I can’t vote for either one of them, but it’s been an interesting process for me to look at that.
RAY: Any other?
IRVINE: I’d just like to say I’m going to vote against this amendment. I’m not a member of a Party like some of the rest of you, but I have come to the conclusion, after listening to testimony and doing a lot of reading, and thinking about it, that it really isn’t a bad idea to have somebody stand on a platform that indicates their basic philosophy that, even on a County level, there are different ways of handling things that have to do with basic philosophy, such as the Green Party. National Parties need grassroots support and it starts at the County level. I just have a feeling that there may be a correlation between non-partisanship and lack of participation in elections at this time nationally, and I’m just going to vote against it.
RAY: Other testimony? All in favor of the non-partisan elections, raise your right hand.
HANDS RAISED: Commissioners Alonzo, Bess, Herkes, Higashi, Kurozawa, Ray, Santangelo, Yoshiyama.
RAY: Opposed.
HANDS RAISED: Commissioner Irvine.
RAY: Show one opposed.
Moving on to the County Managing Director proposal. Do I have a motion to approve?
BESS: I move that we accept the language as proposed except that in our last meeting, we provided for the Office of Management. Is that correct? Rather than Department of Management?
RAY: I don’t believe so. We discussed it.
BESS: All right. I move that we accept the language as proposed with the amendment of Office of Management rather than Department of Management.
HIGASHI: Second.
SANTANGELO: Point of order, Mr. Chairman.
RAY: Yes, I think we need to move the motion forward first.
BESS: All right, I’ll move.
SANTANGELO: Second.
BESS: I’d like to move to amend the title of the Department of Management and change that to Office of Management.
HIGASHI: Second.
IRVINE: Steve, can you give us your reasoning. Is this the Civil Service thing?
BESS: Pardon me?
IRVINE: Is this Civil Service?
BESS: No, it’s not based on Civil Service. It’s just that I know that we received a lot of testimony saying are we creating another department here, and is this an increase in government. And maybe it makes it more palatable to the public, and that’s why I’m suggesting that that be the case.
RAY: Other discussion? Marni.
HERKES: There’s no language in here on outcomes and measurement of performance. There’s evaluation. It may be a little late to bring that up now. I really, kind of, missed – it, kind of, went over my head that we need some outcomes measurements.
IRVINE: Actually, I think that whole Section (d) there is absolutely incomprehensible.
HERKES: Yes.
IRVINE: Verbosity. It comes out of City and County, I think, whereas Maui just uses the first sentence saying ‘evaluate the management and performance of each agency’, period. That’s all they say. I think we could work on the wording in there, eliminating a lot of the evaluation and analysis. An evaluation to me presupposes an analysis has been done.
SANTANGELO: Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of –
IRVINE: We’re not talking on the issue.
SANTANGELO: We’re, kind of, out of order here. We’re dealing with a motion and I think we need to deal with that amendment, and then go to the next one because parliamentary really comes in here. So, personal privilege. Thank you.
RAY: Steve, so you’re amendment is just specifically –
BESS: Merely with regard to title.
RAY: So, Office of Management.
BESS: Office of Management rather than Department.
RAY: And then under 6-1.1, then there would be an Office of Management. Also, Chris, will you refresh our memory in regard to the requirements. Didn’t we also vote to eliminate that last -
YUEN: Well, yes. When this was originally voted on, this language about the professional experience in art and science of management, I put that in by mistake. The Commission had actually voted not to have that in there, so that’s the status.
HERKES: Is that a little personal privilege by the lawyer?
RAY: So, does everybody understand? The motion does not include that.
IRVINE: The art and science.
RAY: Right.
HERKES: In this motion, are we voting on additional changes? Additional change, agency heads, executive powers, on the next page?
BESS: No, that’s separate. Right?
HERKES: Is that separate?
IRVINE: I think that would happen if we voted this in. Right? Isn’t that why we have -
HERKES: No, it’s qualifications of department heads. And that’s why I want to know if this is all in the same -
BESS: I understood that I was only dealing with the first page. Can we vote on the amendment?
IRVINE: We do need to vote on the amendment, right? My question is we’ve got a department of this, department of that, but maybe this would be fine to be an office, although I like consistency.
BESS: I really was responding to the public input.
RAY: Gary.
YOSHIYAMA: I agree with the intent of the motion. I want to know is there any effect of changing that single word, from department to office, other than what Steve put out as the intent.
RAY: Chris.
YUEN: I don’t think it’s different from Civil Service point of view. I think the effect of this is still to create a separate executive agency.
YOSHIYAMA: Okay, thank you.
SANTANGELO: One of the things that does effect it, though, is in department heads, they are appointed by the Mayor and they’re confirmed by the Council. Now, in this case, we were trying to get this Managing Director to be appointed by the Mayor, but confirmed by the Council, wherein the case now as it is in our Charter, the Mayor hires his or her Managing Director. So there are privileges and procedures different in a patronage vs. a department, and I just would like clarification on that.
RAY: My understanding is that it wouldn’t change 6-1.2. The Managing Director would still be appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by the Council.
SANTANGELO: So, we’re writing that into this as part of that amendment.
RAY: Right, that’s my understanding.
SANTANGELO: And the other question that came up with departments was staffing. On the other hand, this Managing Director, once confirmed, is going to serve at the pleasure of the Mayor anyway.
HERKES: Point of personal privilege. Does that have anything to do with the motion?
SANTANGELO: Yes, we’re dealing with departments. Besides being antagonistic, we’re dealing with department head, right?
HERKES: We’re dealing with the Office of Management.
SANTANGELO: No, the motion is to drop ‘department’, Marni.
RAY: I think that’s a valid line of reasoning to know if by changing it to the Office of Management vs. the Department of Management, that if that would have any material effect on how this office, or department, would function. I think we need to understand that.
HERKES: And Chris’s answer was?
YUEN: No.
HERKES: Thank you.
BESS: One of the things that has been brought up in a number of our meetings is that we really want to try to strengthen the Managing Director’s position, and I think the title, by calling it Office of Management, distinguishes it from other departments, and raises it to another status. I want people to look at the Managing Director’s Office as being much different than it is today.
RAY: Does everybody understand that? Okay.
HERKES: Stephen’s motion is just for one page.
RAY: Right. I’m just going through that.
HERKES: Okay. What are you looking at the other page for, then? Let’s deal with one page because I’ve got lots of things to say on changes.
RAY: Let’s vote on Mr. Bess’ motion. All in favor, raise your right hand.
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
RAY: That motion carries. Do we have other amendments?
HERKES: Do you want a change for (d) now; ‘evaluate the management and performance of each executive agency, including the extent to which and the efficiency with which its operating and capital program and budget have been implemented’? I’ve got some wording.
RAY: Let me ask our counsel that. Can we work on that or do we have to finalize that language this evening?
YUEN: I don’t think it’s necessary to absolutely finalize the language this evening. I’d always expected that we would vote this evening on what we were going to do and then we could tinker with exact language. The major substantive changes that were being proposed with the Managing Director were: to give the Managing Director a separate department, which is now going to be called an office; provide for Council confirmation, that’s a significant substantive change; place all agencies of the County under the Managing Director in the table of organization rather than just Department of Public Works and Department of Parks and Recreation. If the Commission votes to make those changes then we can come up with what the exact language would be at a later time. But, to the extent that people know what they want to do right now, then we can do it now and save ourselves some work later.
RAY: I’d rather work on it a little bit.
IRVINE: I think that’s fine but I really think (d) needs some work.
RAY: Yes, we understand that.
IRVINE: Okay.
RAY: That’s what we were just talking about. Are there other amendments then, other than working on the language in (d). If not, all in favor, raise your right hand.
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
RAY: Opposed. I want to call a five minute recess.
RECESSED The Chairman called a recess at 6:55 p.m.
RECONVENED The meeting reconvened at 7:03 p.m.
RAY: I’d like to reconvene the meeting. We’re at amendment number 4 on the agenda, the Fire Commission, and I believe we have some minor suggested changes to that.
HERKES: So John, what are we doing, the executive powers? Additional changes?
RAY: This is on the Fire Commission item. We had several changes. We have informally agreed to make the Commission nine members and representative of the nine Council districts. That’s probably the most substantive change. And then we also had language in regard to emergency services. Do you have that exact language there, Chris?
IRVINE: It was rather than medical services, to put emergency or just plain services.
HERKES: We had emergency and rescue personnel too.
YUEN: I think the basic idea was to just say emergency services rather than emergency medical or emergency rescue, and that’ll cover it.
RAY: Do we need a separate motion for the nine member?
YUEN: Somebody could make a motion for all the changes in a group. There were two other things that were discussed at the last meeting as far as changes. One was my suggestion that I had said that this new department would have ‘any other related functions that may be assigned to it by ordinance’. I wanted to take the word ‘related’ out so that if the Council wanted to give them another function, they didn’t have a debate about whether it was related or not to the other functions and leave it up to them not to do something stupid. And then there was a suggestion – there wasn’t votes taken on this, but there was discussion about taking out the word ‘advisory’ to the Commission and saying that it can have – the only powers that are specified in the Charter are to advise. But if the Council wanted to give it other powers, we would add a clause that says ‘any other powers and responsibilities assigned by law’.
IRVINE: Chris, I think you’re on the Department of Environmental Management.
YUEN: Oh, I am. I’m sorry.
IRVINE: I’m sorry.
YUEN: No, you’re completely right.
HERKES: John, I have that we added, or it was suggested, retired fire person and emergency. Did we not add that? Is that something that’s still out there?
IRVINE: No we did not discuss it anymore. But we did discuss, under 6-4.2, the bottom line, we were told has poor English and we agreed that we’d say, in that last sentence there, ‘in order to achieve this purpose, the Fire Department shall operate in accordance with the following’ rather than have that ‘be conducted’.
HERKES: Right.
BESS: Yes.
HERKES: ‘Shall be managed in accordance’.
IRVINE: I said ‘operate in accordance’, but if you want to ‘manage it in accordance’, that’s all right too.
HERKES: ‘Operate’s fine. Tom Beach had, I thought, some excellent comments in the letter that we got from him tonight. One of the ones was that the Fire Chief must be allowed to respond to the statement of reasons before being removed by a quorum of this Commission. It doesn’t say anywhere in here, or I couldn’t find it, where how many it takes to remove the Fire Chief.
YUEN: It would follow the general rule in the Charter which is that a majority of all the members to which the Commission is entitled are required to take any valid action. There’s a blanket statement in Article XIII of the Charter on that. So if you had the nine members, it would take five votes to remove, and five votes to appoint the new one, as well.
BESS: With regard to the 6-4.5, I’m going to change from where I was last meeting. The language that you provided in Department of Environmental Services with regard to members; ‘consisting of nine members who shall be appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by the Council, one member shall be a resident of each Council district’, we need to put that language in 6-4.5 rather than ‘broadly representative of the community’?
RAY: Yes, I think we had agreed to do that.
IRVINE: Right.
BESS: Okay. We use different kinds of language, but after reading through this thing again, this language that you drafted, Chris, on Environmental takes care of we want them to be a resident, as well as coming from each of the Council districts, and that’s what this language does. That’s not always the case in other Commission language when we’re requiring each of the members come each of the Council districts, but it doesn’t necessarily say they have to be residents. But anyway, I’m just saying I like the language.
HIGASHI: And it should be uniform.
BESS: And it should be uniform throughout.
RAY: Okay. Is somebody prepared to make a motion that includes all the things that we seem to have just agreed on?
BESS: Can I just say one more thing, John? This is in keeping with trying to beef up the power of the Managing Director, and just how important he is as far as administrative function. On 6-4.6; powers, duties and functions, this would require the Fire Commission to submit an annual report to the Mayor and the Council. I think it would be a good idea for us to say that they submit annual reports to the Managing Director, comma, Mayor and the Council.
HERKES: Or maybe just the Managing Director and the Council.
SANTANGELO: We’d better put the Mayor in there.
HERKES: We’re really going to have the Mayor cutting ribbons here.
RAY: How about ‘submit an annual report to the Mayor, the Managing Director, and the Council’? I mean, the Mayor is the Chief Executive Officer.
BESS: That’s fine. Okay.
RAY: Can anybody sum all that up in one magic motion?
HERKES: I’ll try, and then what I leave out, you guys amend it. 6-4.2 Statement of Policy in the last line, ‘Fire Department shall be operated in accordance with the following’.
IRVINE: ‘Shall operate’.
HERKES: And in that 6-4.2 also, ‘emergency services’ instead of ‘emergency rescue’ on the third line. And in 6-4.4 powers, duties and functions, (b) ‘Train, equip, maintain and supervise the force of firefighting and emergency service personnel’. And in 6-4.5 Fire Commission, ‘five’ should be changed to ‘nine’, and the wording inserted from the Environmental Services Policy Statement on appointment of members. And on 6-4.6 powers, duties and functions, (e) ‘Submit an annual report to the Mayor, Managing Director and the Council’.
RAY: Do I have a second?
IRVINE: Second. Well done.
RAY: Discussion. All in favor, raise your right hand.
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
RAY: It’s listed as Department of Environmental Services, so I think we’re looking at the Department of Environmental Management.
SANTANGELO: We changed that to Management already.
RAY: So, it would be the Department of Environmental Management; taking out the word ‘advisory’, 6-5.1; and 6-5.3, taking out the word ‘related’ in the last sentence. Is there anything else?
IRVINE: In 6-5.2, ‘the director will be appointed by Mayor, confirmed by Council, removed by the Mayor. The director shall have had a minimum of five years administrative experience’ is the way we said it at this point. Because we are talking about other Department Heads having a little more specific, or higher, requisite –
HERKES: Qualifications.
IRVINE: Qualifications, thank you, I thought we might add ‘have a minimum five years administrative and environmental expertise’ or ‘administrative experience in related fields’.
HIGASHI: ‘In related fields’. I buy that.
IRVINE: I figured Roland would say that. That sounds fine, ‘in related fields’.
HIGASHI: Second.
RAY: Any other? Chris.
YUEN: If the intent is so that the Council could give the Commission other powers in the future, then you should add a sentence saying, at the end of the section involving the Commission, it would say ‘and any other powers and functions as may be prescribed by ordinance.’
SANTANGELO: But that would be a different amendment, wouldn’t it?
HERKES: ‘Any other functions’, ‘any other powers’?
IRVINE: The last sentence of Environmental Commission, you said to add ‘such other powers as -‘
SANTANGELO: I thought it was, kind of, a done deal already.
IRVINE: We put it in last time but we didn’t make any motions last time.
YUEN: There was nothing actually voted on. All this was just discussed. If you’re taking out ‘advisory’ from the Commission because you want to have the possibility that they would have some real authority later, given to it by the Council, then we need to stick in something that gives the Council the authority to do that.
SANTANGELO: So her motion wouldn’t be just to add that prerequisite to the Director, but also add that? That would be one motion?
YUEN: I thought you were formulating a motion that was covering everything at once.
IRVINE: We were to add that at the very end of this. We were going to add ‘shall have such other powers as granted’, I think maybe, ‘by the Council’. I hadn’t seen the minutes, whatever you said. Is that correct?
SANTANGELO: ‘By ordinance’ or –
IRVINE: ‘As provided by ordinance’.
YUEN: "As provided by ordinance’.
IRVINE: Yes, okay. That was it.
IRVINE: Yes, I did see that word. I have discussed a couple of times, I’ve brought in a couple of statements, a first draft and then a second draft which a lot of you got e-mailed yesterday, but some people just got today when we walked in. It was the statement of policy that would, I think, be placed between Section 6-5.1 and 6-5.2. Wherever it’s appropriate, either at the very beginning or maybe there. ‘The Department of Environmental Management is established to protect, preserve, and enhance our environment by promoting the wise management of our waste for the benefit of current and future generations. The Department will pursue strategies that promote environmentally sensitive landfill diversion, wastewater management, and non point source pollution mitigation.’
HERKES: Do you want a motion on that policy statement, or how do you want to handle this?
IRVINE: Well, I’m moving that we add that.
HERKES: But can you move the whole thing at once?
IRVINE: I did say there also that –
RAY: I think we’ve got a little bit too much on the table here. I don’t understand what this statement of policy says. It doesn’t make any sense to me, so I’d like to look at that separately from the other motion.
IRVINE: Okay. I put it out a month or two ago in, sort of, this form.
RAY: It just seems like, kind of –
SANTANGELO: We’re doing a lot of friendly things and that’s not necessarily considered friendly. That, to me, requires more discussion by itself.
IRVINE: I had the feeling we were trying to get some policy statements into here, and that’s why I –
SANTANGELO: But let’s take the ones you’re doing that are all friendly and we agreed to, and this can be a separate one.
IRVINE: Okay.
RAY: Can somebody state the motion that has included everything but this first, and let’s get that on the table and then we can discuss this separately?
IRVINE: Sure, I’ll do that. Okay, I’d like to move that we put out ‘Department of Environmental Management’ rather than ‘Services’; removing from Section 6-5.1 ‘advisory’ in front of Environmental, it would now be Management Commission; in Section 6-5.2, we would add, at the end, ‘in a related field’; under 6-5.3, we would remove the word ‘related’ in the last line and any other – remove ‘related functions as prescribed by ordinance’; Section 6-5.4, it would become the Environmental Management Commission and added to the very last line ‘and shall have such other powers as granted by ordinance’.
RAY: Do I have a second on that motion?
SANTANGELO: Second.
RAY: And now, Sue, do you want to amend that?
YUEN: No, why don’t you just vote on it and then deal with the policy statement.
HERKES: No, let’s pass this first.
IRVINE: Vote on this and then we were –
RAY: Okay.
SANTANGELO: If we vote on this, aren’t we, kind of, done?
YUEN: No, then deal with the policy – she wants to add a policy – I thought people were not comfortable with the policy statement and they wanted to vote on–
SANTANGELO: But the motion would be to incorporate that into this and the motion right now – okay, whatever.
YUEN: No, you can vote on doing it like this and then she can make a motion to add the policy statement.
IRVINE: Okay.
YOSHIYAMA: I’ve got a question here. I guess I want to address the mandatory nature of this reorganization, so my question, and is it appropriate to talk about this now, or after this vote?
IRVINE: Better talk about it now. How would you make it non-mandatory?
YOSHIYAMA: I think at the last meeting I asked the question how quickly does this have to be acted upon, or implemented. I still have that concern. I’m concerned with transition, or need we address ourselves with transition. I guess it’s, kind of, related.
IRVINE: It’s just part of Public Works that’s going to be spinning off, and the transition would be that the incoming Mayor would appoint someone to manage that section as a separate department, as far as I can see.
YOSHIYAMA: Well, that’s why. I don’t know if it’s that simple. That’s the question that I have, and I don’t want us to say you’ve got to do it without – Should we be providing some transitional language in there, like we do on the Fire Commission? It’s just a question. I don’t want to throw something out there and it’s hanging, and it causes a bunch of problems. I’m in agreement with this department. It’s just are we doing it in an orderly fashion? That’s what I’m concerned about.
HERKES: I think I remember discussions that we had that we thought that this was a really good idea. But it might be something that the Council needed to pass an ordinance and the Mayor needs to give it some powers, and the Mayor needs to buy into it, and so the language should give a lot of leeway because it is a new department. It was something we felt was really important because environmental management is important to us, and it was a statement that we were going to make that environmental management is important. So we put it in the Charter but we didn’t mandate it, and I can understand your concern. I’m not sure how to solve it.
IRVINE: Mr. Boucher, of Solid Waste, and Jiro Sumada – every testimony we’ve had from the engineers and department have said good idea.
RAY: Wait. Marni, we have mandated it in this language – ‘it shall’. So it is mandated in this language. There’s no question about –
HERKES: We don’t have any time on it. It doesn’t have to be, like, next month.
RAY: Okay, and that’s what Gary brought up, yes. But we have mandated it. But Gary’s question is are we leaving it unaddressed and might that create a problem. John.
SANTANGELO: The fear would be that if we mandate this, then how much foot dragging, or whatever, went on. And so then it raises the question do we need to put a specific implementation, it will be implemented by a certain time, be it a two year period, or an eight year period, or a ten year period. Or do we just leave it up to the Administration? Once the people vote this in as an amendment for the Charter, it seems that legally they have to move forward in some sort of a methodical manner, and that’s what I would ask counsel.
RAY: Just a situation that comes to mind – LESA Legislation, which was mandated in 1976 is something that’s brought up every year and, apparently, because it is brought up and it is still being discussed –
IRVINE: We can also vote people out of office if they –
RAY: No, but that’s a very concrete example.
YUEN: We talked about this a little bit, and there really isn’t a great way to solve the foot dragging problem. I don’t think there’s a great way to do it. It does have to be implemented. It’s supposed to be implemented. If this gets passed by the voters in it’s present form, anybody can read it and the Council’s supposed to sit there and, as an early order of business, they have to do a new position classification plan, and the positions are going to be moved into this new department, and this is all supposed to go ahead and happen. If they don’t do it, they’re violating the Charter, which they’re supposed to follow. If you put in a time limit – If you said they should do it in two years, is it any different than if you didn’t say how long they should take to do it? I don’t know that that really makes that much difference. To say you shall do it in two years and they don’t do it, then well, they haven’t done it. The same thing now if you didn’t say how long they should take to do it, they’re supposed to do it. So, I don’t know that much is gained by setting a deadline for making it happen. The other part of Gary’s question, I think, is not just the time line, but is there something transitional that we can say in the meantime. I would expect that the transition issues are the things that would be dealt with in the actual reorganization when they go to the Council. Because just doing this does not move the position in itself, just saying it in the Charter, because we’re not reaching into the department and yanking the positions out. It still does have to be implemented and that’s where the transition is going to take place.
HERKES: And that’s really where we come in. That’s where the voters come in. That’s where the residents of the County come in. That’s where we can push our Mayor and our Council to implement this, if we have it in the Charter. It’s hard to push them if you don’t have it in the Charter. But if you have it in the Charter, it’s up to us to implement it, and I know, John, LESA is out there and that’s up to us too.
YUEN: I think immediately the Mayor can make the appointment of the Director and can appoint the Commission, and then there’s just a technical thing that has to happen as far as certain positions are going to be moved out of the Department of Public Works, and there’s an amendment to his Position Classification Plan.
YOSHIYAMA: I think I just reminded myself of something. It was a creation of a Data Processing Department, right? So, okay, I’m okay.
YUEN: It worked, right?
YOSHIYAMA: It worked.
RAY: Are we ready to vote?
YOSHIYAMA: It’s working.
YUEN: Let me ask about that. Did they pass a follow-up ordinance to move the positions into the Data Processing?
YOSHIYAMA: I don’t recall.
YUEN: It wasn’t a big humbug, though.
YOSHIYAMA: Yes, okay.
SANTANGELO: And the point is, if they don’t implement it, we only need a hundred signatures.
HERKES: That’s right, we can impeach them all.
RAY: Okay, are we ready to vote on the motion? All in favor?
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
RAY: Motion passes. Now, I guess, we’re going to discuss separately Sue’s language in regard to adding a statement of policy language.
IRVINE: Please.
HERKES: I move we accept the statement of policy for the Environmental Services. How about a second?
KUROZAWA: Second.
IRVINE: Well, I moved, you seconded?
HERKES: No, Daryl seconded.
SANTANGELO: It’s a nice policy but we put a Commission in there, and we haven’t even got the Department in place, and I feel it’s inappropriate and wouldn’t support that at this time. I think the Commission’s going to look at that. They’re going to work with them, and I think we’re just trying to do the work way ahead of time. I understand the motivation behind it, but my idea is that we’re trying to put some expertise in an area to deal with a very technical problem, and the policy gets out in some areas that I’m not comfortable with at this time. So, I speak against it.
RAY: Other testimony?
IRVINE: I’d like to just respond to that. I do think this is actually quite a broad statement. ‘Promote environmentally sensitive landfill diversion’. Can somebody argue with that?
RAY: I don’t know what it means.
BESS: I don’t know what diversion means?
IRVINE: Landfill diversion? You don’t know what it means?
HERKES: Recycling.
IRVINE: Environmentally sensitive. That was suggested to me by Mr. Boucher, who said non-environmentally sensitive, to him, would maybe be trying to nuke all our solid waste, or something. That would be, kind of, a poor solution to getting rid of our dumps.
RAY: Well, that’s his interpretation.
IRVINE: Yes, that’s his interpretation, but let’s try – okay – Environmentally sensitive –
PRANKE: Don’t dump your garbage in the ocean.
IRVINE: That sort of thing. It is open to interpretation, right, but I was trying to think of a worse case scenario, but I guess if you want to nuke the garbage, that’s –
HIGASHI: I think it’s nice language but I think to be consistent, we don’t have a policy statement in each part of our Charter so I’d like to have the Commission –
HERKES: We’re going to have.
IRVINE: I was hoping we would.
HERKES: We’re going to work toward it.
HIGASHI: At this point we don’t have so I want to be consistent.
SANTANGELO: And it occurs to me that in the implementation, if you have something that can cause, maybe, some division, it could be counterproductive in trying to set up something. And again, I go back to the Commission. I thought we put the Commission there to be nine people from nine districts that were going to help advise this and create policy, and create that kind of thing.
RAY: My feeling is we’re making a very strong statement by putting this on the ballot, to create a separate Department of Environmental Management. I don’t know, to me, this is just flowery fluff.
IRVINE: It comes from the State of Washington.
RAY: It just bothers me and I don’t know exactly why, but it just doesn’t seem consistent with the way we’re doing other things in the Charter. I think, like I said, by the fact that we’re suggesting creating a whole new department focusing on these issues, that’s a very strong statement.
HERKES: I think that we’ve taken some heat because we’re creating a whole new department, even though we’re diverting positions from other departments rather than hiring new people.
RAY: And I think what John was saying is you might take more heat if you put this statement in.
HERKES: I might take a lot personally, you’re right. But I think also that in that creation of a new department, we have an opportunity to start a trend of providing policy statements for each department, as we’re qualifying Department Managers. I would like to see policy statements for each department. We may not get them in this particular Charter change, but we certainly can work with our Council people to have them implemented one by one. And as we’re doing a new department, this is the time to do this.
IRVINE: Okay, I’ve got an idea, folks. What if we just said ‘The Department of Environmental Management is established to protect, preserve, and enhance our environment by promoting the wise management of our waste –
HERKES: Period.
IRVINE: Period. Maybe management in there.
BESS: You could even shorten it even further by just saying ‘established to protect, preserve, and enhance our environment.’
IRVINE: Okay. It’s mostly dealing with waste, but –
BESS: Well, and then it goes on to say what you’re talking about.
IRVINE: Does that become more palatable?
RAY: That’s not what this department is. You’re, like, saying this is the environmental do-good department to protect our environment.
IRVINE: No I’m not. It’s to manage our waste, yes.
RAY: This is a Public Works Department to handle solid waste, wastewater and maybe some other things.
IRVINE: All this language comes from Portland, or San Luis Obispo, or San Diego, or a couple of other places where I looked it up. And this is the kind of statements they make about their solid waste management areas. But, if we don’t want to have a statement of policy, that’s fine by me.
HERKES: It’s not really fine by you.
IRVINE: That’s true, it’s not.
HERKES: Don’t lie about it. We’re going to vote against it but –
KUROZAWA: I just want to make a quick statement. I actually support what Sue -- I think, in philosophy, I see what Sue’s trying to get at, and I think, especially, since we’re trying to set up a new department, we should give them a statement of policy to tell them what we want them to do. For example, when we set up the Fire Commission, if you look at our last proposal, we have a statement of policy in there, what we want the Commission to do. So, I think it would make some sense for us to give them some guidelines. We can make it very general, but I think not to say anything would just – I mean, what’s the sense. We should actually tell them what we want them to try to do. And if the ultimate goal in the future is to look at the environment, then we should at least consider that.
RAY: John.
SANTANGELO: When Sue brought up some of the other ones, I don’t know how they got in there. Was that through a Charter Amendment? I really feel uncomfortable with this in part of a Charter Amendment. Again, Sue, I supported you very much in this, and that Commission especially, and I feel the mechanisms are there. But if you’ll look, one of the shortest statements in the Charter is the Public Works. It’s a nuts and bolts kind of thing. There’s a lot of nuts and bolts in this solid waste, this wastewater, and in how we divert it, and I think with the Commission in place, getting this thing there, and then having a Mayor and a Council have to work together to implement this, the less barriers and the less that we put in there – and have a little faith that we put in place the mechanisms that will bring that forward. When you mention these other counties, was that what was put through a Charter Amendment, or was that something that was brought in over an evolutionary period in implementing a department? So, I speak strongly against it for that reason, although I support the spirit completely. I’m done.
RAY: First thing we’ve got to identify what’s being proposed, because we’ve talked about the full version and, I think the non point source pollution mitigation is a problem.
HERKES: And I will withdraw my motion. Daryl will you withdraw your second?
KUROZAWA: Yes.
RAY: That’s for the full statement?
HERKES: For the full statement.
RAY: Okay, so, Sue do you want to –
IRVINE: Yes, I’d like to move that we put ‘The Department of Environmental Management is established to protect, preserve and enhance our environment by promoting the wise management of our waste.’ I think we’ll leave waste in there. I think we’re dealing with waste. That’s what we’re talking about. All sorts.
RAY: Yes, I agree. So, ‘The Department of Environmental Management is established to protect, preserve and enhance our environment by promoting the wise management of our waste’ period. We do we have second?
HERKES: Second.
HIGASHI: Sue, are you proposing that this be 6-5.1, to start with that?
IRVINE: I don’t know whether it’s 1 or 2, wherever they get placed. I was looking at the Fire Department. It would be 2 because, Fire, we put organization first, ‘There shall be a Fire Department’, and then statement of policy, so that would be what I suggest. Just to let people know, I haven’t a clue why we have an R&D Department, because it doesn’t say in there why or what their mandate is, and I think it would be nice.
RAY: Are we ready to vote on the motion? All in favor, raise your right hand.
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
IRVINE: Oh my God, thank you.
RAY: We were just scaring you. Moving on.
Holdover of Boards and Commissions. I don’t think we have any additional language to this. Can I have a motion to approve?
ALONZO: So moved.
RAY: Second?
SANTANGELO: Second.
RAY: Are we ready to vote? All in favor?
HANDS RAISED: Commissioners Ray, Alonzo, Bess, Higashi, Irvine, Kurozawa Santangelo, Yoshiyama.
RAY: Opposed?
HANDS RAISED: Commissioner Herkes.
RAY: I’m sorry.
HERKES: I’m going to oppose it, but that’s okay. I can oppose some things.
RAY: So, one vote in opposition, Marni. Is that right?
HERKES: Yes.
RAY: Okay.
IRVINE: I was wondering if we’re changing that, and maybe this has to be at another meeting, but Mr. Wurdeman had said that under 13-4 (g), that Commission members, right now, are paid. This is all part of Section 13, and he had suggested that we aren’t paid and that we should either take that out, or replace with ‘authority to set Board compensation by ordinance’. I wondered if we wanted to – no? Everybody’s just looking at me.
YUEN: It’s a new subject.
IRVINE: It’s not like we could just say this is what we’re going to do to Section 13, which is Boards and Commissions?
SANTANGELO: This is holdover. This is a specific part of the holdover.
IRVINE: Just holdover, okay.
RAY: That’s not anything we’ve discussed.
IRVINE: Okay, it was just something that he had brought up to us, and it is true that –
RAY: He had brought up a number of things that we decided –
IRVINE: Yes. I just thought if we were voting on 13, we could get rid of some of this trash in our Charter at the same time.
HERKES: This is another one that’s caused a lot of confusion, and we had some testimony tonight that there should be – it wasn’t in writing, or I can’t find it in writing, that the Mayor could just write a letter and say he wanted the term to be extended for 30 days, to the Commission because he couldn’t find anybody. And I just think it’s something we don’t need to put in here.
RAY: We already voted on it.
HERKES: All right. Go ahead.
RAY: And you voted against it.
HERKES: Okay, I did. You’re right, and I’m still against it. I’m not changing my vote.
RAY: Safety Coordinator.
HERKES: I move we approve.
HIGASHI: Second.
RAY: Okay, any discussion? Mr. Bess.
BESS: For the same reasons that I spoke to before about Managing Director, on Item (f) ‘perform such other duties as may be requested by the Mayor or Managing Director’, and I would move to amend that provision.
SANTANGELO: Second.
HERKES: We’re taking that out. That’s going. That whole section is gone.
BESS: All right, that whole section. I’m sorry. I take it back. Sorry.
SANTANGELO: I take it back.
RAY: Okay, we’re voting on the main motion. All in favor?
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
IRVINE: Although it was pointed out to us –
SANTANGELO: We just voted.
HERKES: We’re through.
IRVINE: No, you guys, wait a minute. The bottom of that page, it said ‘The Safety Coordinator be abolished’. Somebody tonight, I think, just said should the Safety Coordinator ‘position’ be abolished when we put it on the ballot. Please.
YUEN: We’ll have a meeting to go through the exact ballot language. I want to do a draft and then I want to have the Commission thrash it over so that you’ll all have your input and clean it up so we have a real good comprehensive statement.
SANTANGELO: And, in no way, will we erode the spirit of what we voted on today.
YUEN: Oh, absolutely.
RAY: Department Head Qualifications. We have our existing language. We have the additions in regard to the Chief Engineer and Head of the Water Department, including the language requiring the five years of administrative service. Was there anything else?
IRVINE: Curt Beck, from the Engineering Association, whatever the name of it is, had said to us that, in general, they are using ‘licensed’ rather than ‘registered’ engineers at this point. I think, Chris, you’re looking blank because it was at the hearing in Hilo, and you were not there.
KUROZAWA: Actually, I can probably clarify that a little. I spoke to one of the engineers who’s the president of the Society right now, because I was curious whether this was a National license or a State license, and basically what they’re using is a State license which is a test they take to practice in Hawaii.
RAY: That’s why we don’t want engineers running these departments.
KUROZAWA: No, no, but – So the point being about whether they’re qualified or not. It’s just a piece of paper that they have from the State that they took a test.
HERKES: One of those regulations to keep out those bad boys from the mainland.
RAY: So, I guess the question is do we want to change it from ‘registered’ to ‘licensed’, is that the issue?
HERKES: I need more expertise than – is it Gary? Who’s an engineer here? Who would know? Does Civil Service have that qualification?
YUEN: I can check that out for you, but I would suggest that if you actually didn’t want to change it, that leave it the way it is because I think everybody understands what it is.
HERKES: Okay.
IRVINE: Okay.
YUEN: As a person, a guy, who’s licensed, whatever they call it, in Hawaii. That’s what it means.
IRVINE: I was just trying to be polite to them that have the degrees.
SANTANGELO: But we need a motion, yes?
RAY: Wait a minute. Let’s make sure we’ve got everything included in this. Is part of this motion moving everything, all the qualifications, in Section 13? So to complete that, I think we just need to move the Finance Director.
YUEN: I’m lost now. I thought that that’s 15, all the qualifications. Are we on 15 now?
RAY: Yes, but we also wanted to clean up –
HERKES: We’re on 12 and 15.
IRVINE: No, we’re on 12, 15 – We canned number 12 actually.
RAY: Excuse me. Wait. We’re on 15, Department Head Qualifications, okay? Is what we’re discussing.
HERKES: Those are all in the Charter now under one section, and I know it probably means we’re going to rewrite a whole bunch of the Charter, but to me, it would be much clearer if they were under each department head qualifications that are in 13 point something, whatever they are.
RAY: 13.3, and that’s what I was just bringing up that we discussed at the last meeting. We’ve got everything now in this new amendment other than the Finance Director. Right?
YUEN: Right.
HERKES: So, we would once again have an amendment where the qualifications are separate from the department?
IRVINE: No, they would go into the departments if we add Finance and Deputy Finance to number 15 because the other ones are handled. That’s my impression anyway.
YUEN: Right.
HERKES: Okay.
IRVINE: And I just want to stress that if I’m wrong, I hope we do whatever we can to get all of those out of there.
RAY: Roland.
HIGASHI: In regards to the Department of Public Works and Board of Water Supply, do we move those people into that same category under Department Head Qualifications?
YUEN: No, I think the suggestion was to keep the qualifications with the department. And what we’re trying to do is actually get rid of that section in Article XIII by moving everything in Article XIII to the departments. So, the additional qualifications, that are being proposed to Public Works and Water Supply, would be in the Public Works and Water Supply sections.
HIGASHI: So the idea was that we were going to keep the registered engineer and also add in administrative experience in private or public or both.
IRVINE: Yes.
HIGASHI: Is that the intent?
RAY: Yes.
IRVINE: And that we would move that over to Section 15. I mean, we can vote on all of these at one time?
RAY: That was the idea, yes.
IRVINE: Okay.
HERKES: So moved.
RAY: Do we have a second?
YOSHIYAMA: Second.
RAY: Steve.
BESS: I have a question just on language here. We have, in some places, where a Director has five years related experience in the private or public sector, like in Department of Research and Development. And then in Department of Parks and Recreation we have it ‘or both’, we add on. One, that they should be consistent. Two, I’m not sure that I understand why ‘or both’ is necessary.
SANTANGELO: Well, two of one and three of another.
BESS: So I would suggest that we just have it all as in Department of Research and Development.
YUEN: Actually, I don’t know that it’s necessary to say ‘public and private sector’.
HERKES: In a related field, or in related experience?
YUEN: Just say ‘in a related field’ and then I think anybody would understand. If you don’t say ‘public or private sector’, that’s all there is anyway. They’re either public or private sector, as far as I know.
BESS: I agree.
YUEN: So, it simplifies it a little bit. Just say five years experience.
IRVINE: Absolutely. Wonderful idea.
RAY: We have a motion on the floor, seconded.
IRVINE: Steve’s motion?
HERKES: No, my motion. So moved to adopt.
RAY: Does everybody understand all the proposed changes? All in favor?
HANDS RAISED: All Commissioners.
RAY: Police Commission, number 16. Do we have a motion?
HERKES: Move to approve.
YOSHIYAMA: Second.
RAY: Discussion?
HERKES: I would like a discussion. I’d like to say that the Police Commission has been changed to follow the Fire Commission because we like the Fire Commission wording. There was some testimony tonight that it was different, and it really isn’t. We use the policy statement out of the Fire Commission for the Police Commission.
IRVINE: You’re right, and I think we have strengthened, with our statement of policy, this Commission.
BESS: And I know I’ve stated this before. Again, on language, when we’re talking about the nine members, the language as stated now on Police Commission does not state any resident requirement and we’re going to use the language that we used in the Environmental Management Department.
HERKES: Is that a friendly amendment?
BESS: Yes it is.
SANTANGELO: I have a question, Mr. Chairman.
RAY: Go ahead, John.
SANTANGELO: As I understood our discussion of the Police Commission, we were trying to deal with the ability to have some accountability and oversight of the Chief. But in that first statement where we say ‘review the operation’, are we delving into some deeper water? Are we starting to micro manage? I know we wanted to be able to hire and fire the Chief. I know we wanted to bring accusations, have him answer them without a trial, but have the opportunity to answer them. But in here, we have that where ‘review the operation of the Police Department and make recommendations to the Chief’.
IRVINE: Where is t