HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION

Transcript of Meeting of December 8, 1999

Hawaii County Liquor Commission Conference Room,

Hilo Lagoon Center

Attendance: J. Ray, S. Bess, M. Herkes (from 5:35 p.m.), S. Irvine, G. Martin, J. Santangelo, G. Yoshiyama, Counsel Chris Yuen

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

And 7 members of the public in attendance.

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

RAY: I’d like to call the meeting to order. This is the December 8th Regular Meeting of the Hawaii County Charter Commission. Present this evening, myself John Ray; Steve Bess; Sue Irvine; George Martin; John Santangelo; and Gary Yoshiyama, and we’re expecting a couple of other Commissioners shortly.

Statements from the Public. We have none. We are expecting Jim Otterson here to speak on the Riverside, California Charter, and the Council Manager form of government.

Minutes Approval. None for this evening. We did that at the Saturday meeting.

And same with Financial Status Report. We covered those at the Saturday meeting.

Unfinished Business. I want to leap frog a little bit out of order, and just deal with Mr. Takahashi and the Finance Department before we get into the Police Commission. Harry, if you could come forward.

Mr. Takahashi has given us a number of suggestions in writing, and been here several times in the past, so we asked him to come this evening in case we wanted to follow up or clarify any of those positions. Additionally, I would like to solicit some opinions from him in regard to the Legislative Auditor Office, and the report we just received from the Legislative Auditor, in terms of how we might improve the efficiency and performance of that office. So, Harry, do you have anything additional, or new, to add in regard to previous comments?

TAKAHASHI: Previous comments, regarding my comments?

RAY: Right.

TAKAHASHI: No, I prepared those comments just for your information. It’s just to show this body some of the inconsistencies I observe in the Charter. Now, I’m not saying we have a real problem. Much of them are potential problems. So, if you have any questions.

RAY: So, we have all that in writing. I think it’s pretty well explained. I think we were hoping to solicit a little stronger opinion, one way or the other, but apparently, we’re not going to get that.

IRVINE: I did have, maybe, a question to help clarify. I know, in Section 13-13, contracts will be signed by the Mayor except as otherwise provided. I think our attorney on the Board here, Steve Bess, had said that we could, maybe, change that by ordinance because they say "except as otherwise provided". Maybe this is a question for our attorney. Should we make anything under $25,000 or, I hate to put numbers in the Charter particularly, but do you have a suggestion as how to implement that, if we do happen to change it, or how to state it?

TAKAHASHI: Yes, probably the Mayor would be willing to pass off on some of the lesser contracts because it’s an awful lot of contracts that needs to be submitted to him for signature. But it would probably be a "may" situation, not a "shall" situation because there may be contracts that he may insist that he review, no matter what the price tag.

IRVINE: Okay.

RAY: John, do you have a question?

SANTANGELO: Just for a point of information, having been involved in that a little bit, maybe you can help us understand. In your opinion, how many contracts the Mayor doesn’t sign?

TAKAHASHI: I believe, right now, it’s just a handful.

SANTANGELO: Very, very small amount.

TAKAHASHI: And usually there’s another provision for him, not signing it, because I think the Council signs the external audit contract. I know there are instances where I sign on some of the agreements where they’re provided by different laws.

SANTANGELO: But basically, the way the Charter’s written right now, the Mayor is the one responsible for all contracts.

TAKAHASHI: That’s right.

RAY: How does the Managing Director figure into this in terms of that signing authority?

TAKAHASHI: The Managing Director will sign when the Mayor is out of town.

RAY: That’s the only case?

TAKAHASHI: That’s the only case.

RAY: So maybe that would be a place to look to?

TAKAHASHI: Yes, it could be, that anything less than a certain amount.

RAY: Well, if he’s the Managing Director, ‘the Managing Director’ of the County, why wouldn’t it be reasonable that the Managing Director of the County have more authority to sign these contracts?

TAKAHASHI: I don’t know. It’s up to this body.

IRVINE: Or Department Heads sign off on certain things?

TAKAHASHI: I don’t know of any that Department Heads would be signing off on.

RAY: We’ve been having this discussion in terms of having more of a City Manager type Managing Director, and clearly that seems like that would be something in their purview, so anyway, we can talk about that. Steve.

BESS: I’d just like to ask Chris, on 13-13(c), except as otherwise provided, be signed by the Mayor. What’s your take on that, what that means? That means except as otherwise provided by law, by ordinance?

YUEN: I think it means by State law rather than by ordinance.

BESS: By State law. Okay, so we can’t play with that at all. All right.

YUEN: No, the Charter can be changed.

BESS: No, I understand. I’m trying to get away from an amendment of the Charter, and to argue that we might be able to do it by ordinance.

YUEN: I don’t know. I think what’s happened is that Corp Counsel has always been very cautious about doing that, simply because it’s not absolutely clear, and then you want the contract to be official, and rather than worry about it, just go ahead and have the Mayor sign it. Is the Mayor still signing Section 8 housing contracts?

TAKAHASHI: Yes.

YUEN: I think that’s actually the biggest group of contracts, like mass group of contracts. These are housing subsidies that are signed between the County and landlords, and there are a lot of those, like in the hundreds. Apart from those, I think that probably - how many contracts is it? Is it really a major thing, a time consumer?

TAKAHASHI: Let’s put it this way. Summer Fun hires are done by contract. There’s two hundred and some odd contracts that are signed by myself and the Mayor, and I sign it twice because it crosses fiscal years. You’re talking about $800.

SANTANGELO: Chris, when it comes to signing contracts, that’s part of the balance of power, Administrative vs. Legislative.

YUEN: Right.

SANTANGELO: So, if you start putting this into ordinance, you’ve got the Legislative Branch, pretty much, crossing over into an Administrative side. But with the Managing Director, who would be, again, Administrative, we might be able to deal with that as the Chairman suggested.

YUEN: I think, even if it were possible for the Council to pass ordinances authorizing people to sign, they would have to be people in the Administration except for contracts that the Council can enter into on it’s own.

RAY: Other questions for Harry in regard to any of his previous testimony? Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: Harry, you talked to us, at some point, about the crunch time with the Legislative session and the adoption, or the submission, of the operating budget. Did you react to Al Konishi’s proposal regarding changing the fiscal year, and the time in which the Council has to adopt the budget?

TAKAHASHI: No.

YOSHIYAMA: He wanted to, in essence, push, like, one month.

TAKAHASHI: I think State law provides for fiscal years for the Counties, if I’m not mistaken.

YOSHIYAMA: So, that was out already. Thank you.

RAY: Anybody else? Sue.

IRVINE: I guess I did have one more question on Section 13-18, still on the same page, 30. You’d mentioned claims. Personal injury and property should be eliminated from this section?

TAKAHASHI: No, no. It should be expanded.

IRVINE: But what if you just take that out and just say "claims"? Maybe this is for the lawyer.

TAKAHASHI: Yes. I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know why specifically to personal injury and property damage, because there are a few incidental claims that could well come along.

IRVINE: It says no action shall be maintained for the recovery of damages for any injury to persons or property by reasons of negligence, etc. If you just took that out, for any injury, it wouldn’t be just property or persons, is that correct, Chris?

YUEN: I have to say that this section is really a dead letter. It just doesn’t have any effect as long as a person files suit within the applicable State Statutes of Limitation. The fact that they have not made a claim to the County Clerk is not going to bar them. There’s overriding Statutes of Limitations that apply. I would say that it is probably not worth troubling the public to actually remove it from the Charter, but it does not actually have the effect that it says in the Charter.

IRVINE: I guess that’s the other thing I was going to ask, about this two years, because there’s not anything about Statute of Limitations, but maybe, it’s just a worthless section.

YUEN: Yes, it doesn’t mean anything.

IRVINE: If we rewrite this whole thing, we can omit it.

YUEN: If we were starting from scratch, you would probably take it out. What happened is that there have been Court decisions that say that there’s a Statute of Limitations and you follow that, and not the Charter.

RAY: Sue.

IRVINE: No.

RAY: Anybody else? John.

SANTANGELO: Harry, what about a bi-annual budget? There’d been talk about that.

TAKAHASHI: I believe that, too, we dropped because we did write up a bi-annual budget proposal at one time, but I think our Corp Counsel indicated that that also violated State Statutes.

SANTANGELO: And because we’re a political subdivision at the behest of the State. Okay. Thank you.

RAY: Harry, I know you received this submittal from the Legislative Auditor’s Office, and we just passed this out on Saturday, and I don’t know if everybody has had time to fully digest it. But since you are here, and since you were a Legislative Auditor in one of your past lifetimes, I thought we might take the opportunity. Basically, the issue that the Leg. Auditor’s bringing up is the way the office functions now in terms of the appointments is subject, pretty much, to entirely political patronage. The Council is elected. They form a majority. They elect a Council Chair. The Council Chair appoints the Clerk. The Clerk appoints the Legislative Auditor. They divvy up the committees, and the Committee Chairs get to pick their staff. The staff, because of that, ends up doing a lot of constituent work, rather than really servicing the committees first and foremost. And then, this other huge issue of serving as an actual auditing department, that whole function, which is pretty much totally ignored, or beyond the capabilities of the Leg. Auditor’s Office in terms of how they function. So, Connie gave us some language, some suggestions, and earlier this evening you mentioned to me the Council Services Office at the City and County; how they function. Is there anything you can share with us in terms of solutions on this?

TAKAHASHI: Having worked as the Leg. Auditor for the County of Hawaii, having worked with several Councils, I feel that a Council needs to have the capability to conduct proper research, as well as proper investigations. However, I would tend to concur with Connie, that the patronage process may hinder the effectiveness of the Office. Now, how do you take the patronage out, I’m not sure, because it’s not necessarily so, that, I think, the Civil Service system will work for the way the office should run, because looking at the Civil Service system, they tend to be very rigid, the staff in the Legislative Auditor’s Office do work in a very broad spectrum of assignments. So, I think that the Council deserves to have a staff that can provide them the proper information, the proper research. The problem right now, I think, all of the staff gets co-mingled and much of the staff actually respond to the Council members rather than to the Auditor. So, it would be very difficult for the Auditor to direct the staff under these conditions. In fact, when I was the Auditor, I had prepared some documentation to provide for six-year terms, however, I believe at that time, I proposed that the appointment of staff would be solicited by the Auditor, and the list would be whittled down and submitted to Council for approval. Just so that, at least, the Council members would feel comfortable with the quality of staff being hired. There were two tiers of staffing; one staffing would not go through that process, would be the patronage positions, which would do the constituency work for the Council members.

RAY: That’s the Clerk’s Office.

TAKAHASHI: They would have fell under the Clerk’s Office. The Community Reports would have been done by the Clerk’s Office at that time. So, the staff at the Auditor’s Office would be pretty much kept to researching work, investigation work, possibly program reviews.

IRVINE: I was just amazed when I read Connie’s letter to us, that at the Legislative Auditor’s Office, they actually do a lot of constituent work. To me that should be entirely over at the County Clerk’s side, where the Council people are, and the Office of the Auditor should be actually auditing programs to see how things should be legislated.

TAKAHASHI: I think that’s a reflection of evolution because when I served as the Auditor, I don’t think my staff did much of the constituency work. We did do a lot of research work, bill drafting. We followed some of the State prepared testimony on behalf of Council members to State Boards, Commissions. We did a few program reviews.

IRVINE: To me, that follows from doing an audit because when you do the audit, you see how the program works, and then you know how to write the legislation, but writing letters to constituents has nothing to do with that, and there shouldn’t be patronage jobs over there, but if it’s a question of either patronage or Civil Service, maybe we should just have a few people in the Legislative Auditor’s Office and hire independent auditors to look at our performance within the County. How does that sound?

TAKAHASHI: That would be very costly, very costly.

IRVINE: Well, we’d eliminate quite a few jobs in the Legislative Auditor’s Office.

TAKAHASHI: True. Because, I think, even some of the other jurisdictions, much of the more substantial work is done by contract with professional auditors.

IRVINE: Well, yes.

RAY: John, you have something?

SANTANGELO: Sure. At the risk of totally stepping all over it, Sue. One of the things I would share, I think, is a lot of times we look at how government is performing, and it doesn’t make sense, but we’ve really got to look at the different dynamics, and one of them is constituency demand. And then patronage government. I think a lot of the aberrations that go on, a lot of the things we don’t feel comfortable about, are brought on by constituents also; what they demand and how a politician who gets elected and has to get re-elected - And that’s what we do as a public. And, a lot of times the public is just as responsible as the political office. I agree with you 100%. I was there and this patronage is used as a hammer, and it is a leverage for use as an individual to get work done and to work with your constituency. Again, I hadn’t thought of the Civil Service side of it, because, again, like when we did certain meetings, and we would go out and do our research, we’d have to do that at night, or, in a case like this lava land, trying to research that to say how could we get the Finance Director off the hook, and all this kind of stuff we were doing. We needed to look at that. We needed to take a broad spectrum and focus attention on it, and a lot of times, when we’d look at audits, then the individual Council member is looking for reports, and looking for other things, and they conflict. And in patronage, and the way it is right now, you don’t have a leader. It is patchwork and it doesn’t serve the public well. But then, I don’t know how, with collective bargaining, if you can take that and somehow allow the cross technology, because people in the Leg. Auditor’s Office are separate from Civil Service, can then be very flexible in how they work, when they work, and what they do.

RAY: John, excuse me. I want to wrap this up. We need to get into the Police Commission. I don’t want to have the discussion, actually, this evening. If you’ve got any more questions for Harry, and I think he came up with some good suggestions - Okay. Thanks.

Sharon, could you come up, and I don’t know who else, Jo-Anna. We’ve had a number of discussions, and participation, and testimony, in regard to the role of the Police Commission. Unfortunately, you folks haven’t been here, and we weren’t here at the last meeting, which was pretty embarrassing. But anyway, thank you for coming this evening. I know this is, kind of, a queer time with everything going on in the Courts right now, and I’m sure you folks feel an awful lot of pressure in terms of, kind of, what happened, and what was your oversight, if any, and how come you didn’t do more, this or that. Would you like to make some comments to the Commission tonight in terms of the role of the Police Commission? Anything you’d like to share with us? We’re searching for -

SCHEELE: We’re searching too. The public has the perception that the Police Commission oversees the Police Department, and that is definitely not the case. We may have the authority. We do have the authority, according to this Charter, to hire and fire the Police Chief, but it’s very difficult for the Commission to get information from the Department. Now, whether this is because of SHOPO rules or just because they don’t want things out - I’ve had a lot of people saying, well, how come, with what’s going on in the Courts right now, how come the Police Commission that was in office at that time, or serving at that time, didn’t do something about it. And, the Police Commission just does not have the authority that everyone thinks they have.

RAY: You read the testimony we got from Corp Counsel dealing with this issue.

SCHEELE: Yes.

RAY: Basically, the argument that they’re making is are you better off, if the public perceives that they come to you, and that action is going to take place, and it doesn’t, would we be better off doing away with that whole process. So, I’d like you to share that with us, how all that works, because there is a lot of confusion.

SCHEELE: I think that there definitely needs to be an oversight committee or Commission, but you’re right, we just don’t get the information. The Charter specifically says that the Chief is supposed to make periodic reports about actions taken on cases investigated by the Police Commission, and we have not even been able to find out that. Once the public comes to us and files a complaint, and then we have our investigator, who is a private investigator, investigate the accusations, and we make a decision based on that, and then we have to refer it to the Chief, and he’s the one that takes the action against the officer. We have not even been able to find out what kind of action is taken. I was very upset about that at the October meeting, and I said some things to the Chief, and at the November meeting we suddenly get a report from things that have happened in the past two years. But up until then, we didn’t know anything. And so, it’s real hard to have the public coming and telling you what they think an officer has done improperly, and we find in favor of the complainant, and we tell the complainant that in a letter – this is the decision that we made, and it’s now been referred to the Chief. But then, it’s real frustrating on our part to not even be able to find out from the Chief what he did. Whether there was suspension or anything that happened, and so, sometimes I feel that we’re deceiving ourselves, and we’re also deceiving the public. Now, whether it needs an education program to let the public know that the Police Commission can investigate these, but the Police Commission can’t do anything about it, I don’t know.

Jo-Anna, do you have anything to add?

J. HERKES: I think that perhaps if we address our Charter Amendment suggestions and changes, that might help as to where we’re coming from, which is, basically, the Charter should have more strength in language so that the Commission can carry out what this Commission was formulated, or why it was formulated, and that is as a civilian oversight, not attached to the Police Department, as you all know, we are not attached to the Police Department. We are independent. We have our own staff, however, our budget is still attached to the Police Department. That’s the one area. And the Commission feels, at this point, that if the language is stronger as suggested, that we put forth, it would help us carry that out and there would be no question with the Police Chief or Corp Counsel as to what our duty is, and not just a perception that the people is thinking that we are handling some areas that are very gray that, unfortunately, in the Charter right now, prohibits us from going further. So, I know that you all had some questions when we weren’t available a couple of months ago, or maybe a few months ago, and I’d really like to address those if you would like to ask them, and maybe clarify what we did here with these Amendments.

SCHEELE: Jo-Anna was the Chairman of the subcommittee that handled those proposals.

IRVINE: I do have some questions. I’m glad, actually, that you’re here tonight instead of earlier, because since that time, we were given a long document on civilian oversight, as far as Police Commissions are concerned, and one of the things that they recommended, rather than having - I think you folks asked for the ability to be more involved in how the Police Department runs. They were just saying, make sure you have subpoena power so that the Police have to speak to you when there are problems, when there are charges, because right now, I’m sure, often they feel like they’d rather not, and there’s no reason why they have to unless it’s been stated that they have to because the Court says so. I guess that was one of my concerns.

RAY: Where do we reach an impasse with SHOPO? How do we get beyond that?

SCHEELE: I’m not sure exactly what all’s in the SHOPO contract, but I know that when I first came on the Commission five years ago, it was even very rare that the officers would come to us. Part of the procedure is when a complaint comes in from a person, our secretary will notify the police officer that this complaint has been made, and send the officer a copy of it, and tell him, or her, when it’s on the agenda, because we want the complainant to come to the Commission meeting, and we would also like the officer or officers to come to the Commission meeting. And, most times, the complainant comes. But, at the very beginning when I came on, the officers didn’t come at all, and part of that was because SHOPO said, you don’t have to talk to them; don’t go there; don’t say anything; don’t do anything, and so they didn’t. I think that, partly due to the work of our investigator, they got to feeling more comfortable with talking to the investigator, and now, in a lot of cases, we have officers coming to Commission meetings, to give their side of what happened, at that particular incident. So, we’re making some progress. Part of where we have the problem is, depending on the decision that we make, if we do find in favor of the complainant, then we still haven’t been able to find out from the Chief what kind of action that was taken.

IRVINE: I guess that led into my second question, which was, it does say in the Charter that you’re supposed to get periodic reports from the Police Chief on the activities of the Police Department, and about actions taken on cases. What would be reasonable? Every quarter? Every year?

SCHEELE: We have a Commission meeting once a month, and the Chief and the Deputy and the Assistant Chiefs come to the meeting. We get crime reports, traffic reports, that kind of thing. These are the same kind of reports that are released to the media, about how many investigations they’ve done, or how many cases they’ve solved. So, we get that on a regular basis. What we hadn’t been getting until this last meeting, was even just the actions on - and part of this, I think - and Honolulu, the Commission knows almost immediately what action the Chief has taken. But we have, I think, this, kind of, conflict going on between the Commission thinking we should have that information, the Chief not wanting to give it, and the Corporation Counsel saying, well, we need to look into this and we need to think about this, and well, we don’t know whether they should have that information because it’s confidential.

RAY: To the best of your knowledge, are the legal issues, or the Union issues, any different in the City and County than they are here?

SCHEELE: Not that I know of. We all operate under the same SHOPO contract. Do you want Jo-Anna to go ahead with what she was going -

RAY: Sure.

J. HERKES: Perhaps, if I may, go back to some of the questions that you had, and unfortunately, we weren’t here to answer for you. I assume that all of you have the proposed Amendments in front of you.

For instance, a question was asked, why we had rearranged the Charter. Honestly, it was strictly a matter of style, no other reason. Another question that was asked regarding legislative matters, the Commission felt that right now there probably is a police coalition, putting together legislative work for this coming session. In many cases, it would behoove the Police Department to come before the Commission, and have the Commission, also, either agree or discuss what is, or might be, good for the County. What the Police Chief and/or the three other Counties think should be legislative work does not necessarily reflect what the community thinks. So, if we have that opportunity to sit down with them, and go through it, all of our members, then we could come, perhaps, to some unity. Not just have our four departments from other Counties decide on what should be legislative input or not. That’s a policy decision, and I think why we did a major change was the difference between policy and administration. We don’t want to be involved with the everyday administration, nor should we. This Commission should not be assigned that, but the assignment, I believe, reads that we should be policy makers. Somehow the Police Chief should be discussing, with a civilian body like ourselves, a Commission, as to what policies should be adhered to. I’ll give you an example and maybe it will be a little bit easier. The Counties have Chambers, and the Chambers are comprised of the Administrative staff, which is normally the President or Executive Director, and a Board. The Board makes policy, and that policy is then administered through their Director or President of that Chamber. That’s administrative work. If there’s legislation to be put forth by that Chamber, then it’s discussed by the Board. The Board has that opportunity to listen to its membership and the Executive Director, or President, then has that opportunity to go forth and either testify with the legislation, or not. And so, I think, if we put it in that perspective, you might understand where we’re coming from. It’s broad policy that we’d like to adhere to, or the Charter would reflect, so that we can carry that duty out.

Questions?

IRVINE: I guess I agree with you, that you folks should be involved with policy rather than administration, but you asked us to knock out the provision that says you can’t meddle in Administration. I just wondered if you were going at it from the wrong way. At least the way I read it, under (b), you said no individual member of the Commission shall interfere in any way with the administrative affairs of the department except for the purposes of inquiry.

J. HERKES: That’s correct.

IRVINE: Now, it did say previously that no individual, or the Commission, as a whole, would do that, right?

J. HERKES: Administratively. That we would not interfere with the daily administration.

IRVINE: Yes, so I had the feeling that you were, therefore, asking for permission to dive into the administrative matters.

J. HERKES: Oh, I’m sorry. Read this as ‘no individual member of the Commission shall interfere in any way with the administrative affairs of the department except for purposes of inquiry.’

IRVINE: But the Commission, as a whole, could therefore, interfere?

J. HERKES: Oh no, I’m sorry.

IRVINE: Okay, because I think that’s what’s in the Honolulu Charter, and is it in ours also right now?

BESS: Yes, it’s in (f).

J. HERKES: Under (f)?

BESS: Yes.

IRVINE: Neither the Commission nor its members, and that means the Commission, as a whole, and the members. I thought you were asking for permission for the Commission.

J. HERKES: No, not at all. Just to make broad policy, because right now, it’s not coming from us, so I don’t know where it’s coming from. I really don’t.

IRVINE: All right. This language is better than yours, I would say, on making it clear that the Commission doesn’t want to be involved in administration.

J. HERKES: I’m sorry. That’s correct.

IRVINE: Well, I’m glad.

RAY: Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: I heard your example, and I also think I heard a crossing over between setting general policy and legislative positions. I think you used that interchangeably. Can you give me some examples of general policy that you’re talking about?

J. HERKES: Broad policy?

YOSHIYAMA: Yes, broad policy. Not legislative, not in the legislative area, unless it’s the same thing.

J. HERKES: Such as reviewing the annual budget. That, perhaps, when we’re reviewing the budget, though the budget may reflect that more monies may be needed for a certain project, and not for another, that the Commission be able to give its views as to, perhaps, for our County, our districts, that our money should be used more wisely in another area. And that would be policy making, so it’s part of policy decision, not administrative decision.

YOSHIYAMA: The Police Department has general orders, and it may sound like some of the things in there is policy. Were you referring to that, any matters contained in the general orders?

J. HERKES: No.

RAY: Let’s just go on around. Steve, anything?

BESS: Let me understand. Right now, under 7-2.2(b), you folks have the right to review the annual budget, and you can make your views known to the Mayor. And I’m a little confused. What you suggested would seem that you have the power to do that right now, under (b).

J. HERKES: It does say that, and you would think that that is what we should be doing, and we’re not, unfortunately. By the time we get the budget, it is so close to it going to the Mayor and it being pau, that we don’t have that opportunity. We have not been involved with sitting down with the committees, or department, and going through the budget step by step. It has been handed to us.

BESS: That’s interesting because it says the Police Commission shall review the annual budget.

J. HERKES: And, unfortunately, when we have questioned this, we get conflicting reports from Corporation Counsel as to how far we can question.

BESS: What are the limitations that the Corporation Counsel has suggested, as far as your review of the budget?

SCHEELE: Well, I don’t know necessarily, specifically, about the budget, but there are a lot of things. We find it very difficult to deal with the Corporation Counsel when, on one hand you’ve got one Corp Counsel person representing the department, and one representing us, and they never agree. And we’ve been told by Corp Counsel that if we don’t do what they suggest that we do, then if we get sued, we’re on our own. And my feeling on that is, first off it’s a bunch of baloney, but secondly, then why do they need any of the Boards and Commissions, if the Corp Counsel is the one making the decisions. But that’s specifically what a Corp Counsel that we had, told us. Our Corp Counsel says one thing, and then the Chief goes and talks to his Corp Counsel, and then we’ve got them - so, I’d like seeing, which is a little bit off, I’d like to see us with either an Attorney General assigned to us, or the Commission having the power to hire their own attorney, and not get caught up in some of this.

J. HERKES: And also - excuse me. Getting back to the budget, there have been times that the Police Department has been asked to cut back their budget. The first area, or one of the first areas, I believe, that they do come to is us. And our budget, I think, is very reasonable, and we could actually do a lot more if we had the opportunity, first, to have our own General Counsel and not use Corp Counsel, and have it budgeted into a budget that we, alone, would be responsible for. I think we would be better served and so would the public.

RAY: Steve.

BESS: So, what you’re suggesting is that (f) be, again I’m looking at 7-2.2(f), where it authorizes you to hire personnel necessary to carry out its functions, that you would include in that, to make sure everybody’s clear, that you would want the authority to hire your own attorney?

J. HERKES: Yes. Right now we do have our own investigator that we contract for, and I think that because there’s a tremendous conflict between Corp Counsel advising the Police Department and advising us, that we very many times butt heads.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: Thank you. I think obvious, that we’re talking about here is the balance of power and understanding that we have a paramilitary organization, and I think sometimes we get carried away thinking it’s all military, and fighting the para part of it, and the Commission is supposed to be bringing in that civilian influence. When you talk about hiring your own attorney, it says hire personnel necessary to carry out its functions, but then, and I understand how the budget process works, so your budget then, a lot of times, what you’re given is, kind of, too late for you to mess with too, right? And this is a way of controlling it. I’m wondering if there’s some way in which you can establish the minimum personnel budget so that at least you know you’re always insured that. Have you talked about that?

SCHEELE: We haven’t, but I would, personally, not like to hire an attorney. I would like to be able to have an attorney, like, on contract or something like the way we have the investigator. We don’t need an attorney sitting around all the time waiting to do something. I’d like to have it where it’s on a contract basis for attending our meetings, and advising us, and when we needed something like that, because that’s the way we have the investigator.

SANTANGELO: I’ll go right to the crux of it then. This is a turf fight, in a way, and we’re just trying to balance this properly. So, it occurs to me, it says in here, that you can hire the Chief, and that you fire the Chief, but it also says under what conditions you fire, and if you’re not getting full disclosure, that makes it very difficult to build a case. Is that right?

SCHEELE: Yes, and we’ve also tried in the past to evaluate the Chief, and Corp Counsel tells us that we cannot do that because one of the forms that we had come up with, some of the questions the Chief went over, went to Corp Counsel and said I don’t think they should be asking me this and this and this. Now, I don’t know when you’ve ever had an employee that told you what ought to be on the evaluation form that you’re doing. I don’t allow that for my employees. We all know that if you’re going to fire somebody, you have got to build a case, whether you’re a private employer or whether you’re a public employer, and so it’s very difficult to do that. I mean, we can

listen to what the Chief says, and tells us that he’s doing, and that kind of thing, but as far as being able to ask certain questions, the Corp Counsel tells us that we can’t do that.

SANTANGELO: When you do a contract, it occurs to me that if you had like a performance based contract, and the Chief that you’re hiring, admits to you what he or she has planned, and someday I hope you do that, and what he or she plans to implement, you have some milestones that you can set up. You can go back and look at that, and evaluate it, and it seems like it then creates a certain amount of accountability.

J. HERKES: And fluidity between the Commission and the Police Department too.

SANTANGELO: So, if you’re dealing with your Chief Executive, and that’s what you were saying, the Board sets policy, and in a lot of cases, sets a budget and then hires a Chief Executive to carry out that policy within the budget, that if you have the sort of string with your Chief, then the reports and other things would be more forthcoming because, again, there’s an accountability to you. You don’t have that now, because it says you hire and fire? Your contract isn’t like that?

SCHEELE: No. We don’t have a contract. There is not a contract. He’s not on a contract basis.

SANTANGELO: So maybe this is something we can look into.

SCHEELE: Honolulu has done exactly that, just recently.

SANTANGELO: I wanted to open that up, and I’ll yield the floor. Go ahead.

BESS: I’m sorry. I was just going to ask, have you been advised by the Corporation Counsel that you cannot hire on a contractual basis under the existing Charter provisions?

SCHEELE: No, we’ve not asked them that.

SANTANGELO: But it occurs to me that if you do have that accountability, it solves a lot of these problems because we’re looking at this saying, don’t you have the right? It’s in the Charter. But, you’re saying, that’s not how, in reality, this is carried out. Because, again, you can be stonewalled, and other things, and you have no way of calling the person on that turf called the carpet.

J. HERKES: And, again, if the language is much stronger in the Charter, then there’d be no question at all to what our responsibilities are to the public, and what the Police Chief and Department should be doing, as well. And, again, it’s broad policy we’re looking at, not everyday administrative duties.

SANTANGELO: Last question. But it occurred to me, if you have this accountability of the Chief, does that solve most of your problems?

J. HERKES: It would get most of our questions answered.

SANTANGELO: Thank you.

RAY: Marni.

M. HERKES: I’m always fascinated by the wording in the Charter, Chris, and maybe you can help a little bit. This was one of the things that I was going to take on afterwards. Why, on earth, does ‘hire the personnel necessary to carry out its functions’ mixed up with ‘except for purposes of inquiry’? Those two ideas just don’t go together. They’re two different - you hire the personnel necessary to carry out its functions, period. Then the next (g) says, ‘except for purposes of inquiry, neither the Commission nor its members shall interfere in anyway’, and actually I’d change the sentence around to say, ‘neither the Commission nor its members shall interfere in anyway except for purposes of inquiry’. I don’t know who starts out sentences with those kinds of phrases, but they drive me crazy. But, I think that that would solve some of your problems. They’ve mixed up two different ideas in one paragraph, and it diminishes both of the ideas. If you said one phrase is hire personnel necessary to carry out your functions, then we can start to expand on what kind of personnel. You’ve already got permission to hire a contract person.

SCHEELE: We hire an investigator, yes.

M. HERKES: And you have a budget, but you don’t have, in your budget, funds to hire an outside attorney?

SCHEELE: No, and when the budget is being reviewed by the County Council, and the word comes down from the Mayor, that departments have to cut their budgets, if the departments are told 10%, then the Chief comes to us and says, and you need to cut yours by 10% too.

M. HERKES: Go back, Sharon. First you started with the County Council, then you started with the Mayor. We all know that the Mayor doesn’t tell the Council what to do, and the Council doesn’t listen anyway. Is it the Council or is the Police Department that cuts it?

SCHEELE: That cuts it? Well, actually, I think it’s probably really the Mayor that says budgets need to be cut.

M. HERKES: Budgets need to be cut. Okay.

SCHEELE: And so, therefore, each department has to start cutting their budgets, and the Chief comes to us, and says, okay, everybody has to cut by 10%, therefore, you have to cut yours by 10%.

M. HERKES: Do you get a choice as to where to cut?

SCHEELE: Well, yes, we do, but our budget is so small anyway, and we’re dealing with several million dollars in the Police Department budget, and we’re dealing with less than $100,000 in the Police Commission budget, to pay for our investigator and to pay for our secretary, and it’s just really out of proportion. I mean,10%, yes. But 10% of $100,000 and 10% of 20 something million dollars is a big difference.

M. HERKES: But that’s mixing apples and oranges. My real question was, isn’t there a way that you can contract out of your budget for an attorney?

SCHEELE: No, not right now, not the way our budget is.

M. HERKES: And it is the Police Chief that says this is the way we’re going to cut it? Well, you’d better get ready. It’s going to get cut again, big time.

SCHEELE: Oh yes, exactly. You’re right.

M. HERKES: Can I ask one more question?

RAY: Sure.

M. HERKES: I think I asked you this before, but I want to bring it up again, on a Department of Public Safety, where we have one Commission and three departments. What would be your feeling of that? That would give you a bigger budget, maybe.

RAY: This is assuming we want to pursue a Fire Commission, right?

M. HERKES: Yes.

SCHEELE: This issue came up a year and a half, two years ago, before the County Council, and I went and testified, partly as an individual and partly as the Chairman of the Police Commission, against that proposal. Unless the County is prepared to hire the Commissioners that would do that because it’s a big job right now, even with the time we spend, preparing the Police Commission meetings, and having Police Commission meetings, that you would almost, I think, have to have full time, paid people to oversee those three departments. Right now, with the Planning Commission, and the time that they put in -

M. HERKES: Let’s go back to the Police and Fire. We have the Police Chief under the Mayor. We have the Fire Department under the Managing Director. That doesn’t make any sense to me, so I’d like to see how we can make it work better. How we can make it run better.

SCHEELE: If you’re going to have it under a Commission, I think that Commission’s going to have to be paid people. I can’t think of anybody who would be willing to volunteer the amount of time it would be necessary to oversee that, plus, I think that those positions, or those departments, are a little bit too diversified to have under one. The Police Department deals a lot with the public. If your house is burning, you are thrilled to see the Fire Department show up, but that’s not always the case with people dealing with the Police Department, and so they have a lot of complaints with the Police, whereas I don’t hear anybody complaining about the Fire personnel. Is the other one the Civil Defense? Is that the other one that ends up under there?

M. HERKES: And then there’s EMS. We can go on and on and on. I’m thinking of it from my standpoint. They’re providing public safety for me, and in that standpoint, it makes more sense if they’re bundled, but it may not make sense in the long run. And also, there’s less chance of creating power towers in that way.

RAY: Steve, you had a question?

BESS: Yes. In listening to you, it seems to me that what you’re saying is that you want to become a policy making Commission; you want accountability of the Chief that’s not there right now; and you want to have more of a voice in the budget process, as well as the legislative process, to the extent that proposed legislation adversely impacts your function as a Police Commission. I’m not sure I understand. This whole issue of the Corporation Counsel and the conflicts inherent in Commission vs. Department, that’s present elsewhere within the County. I mean, it’s been a perceived problem for a long time, and an actual problem for a long time. My question is if we were to provide for those three things; policy making, Chief accountability, more control over budget and legislative process, and so that the Corp Counsel would be clear about what your authority is, would that solve the problem rather than having you to go ahead and have the authority to get an outside counsel. And just as a footnote, let me just say this, and Chris, you correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s not only a function of their budget that precludes them from hiring outside counsel, but the provisions relating to the Corporation Counsel, and the language in there that says ‘he shall be the chief legal officer for all agencies’, and so, there would be a necessity to specifically amend the Charter that would provide them with that authority to appoint their own counsel, under certain circumstances.

YUEN: Yes, under the present Charter, hiring outside counsel requires a vote by the County Council.

SCHEELE: I believe, though, that the Civil Service Commission has an Attorney General assigned to them. There is a Corp Counsel that represents the Civil Service Department and then there is an Attorney General that represents the Commission.

M. HERKES: You think you’ve got problems now.

BESS: I’m sorry that I confused the issue, but coming back to it, am I hearing it right about what your concerns are?

J. HERKES: I believe that you are. As far as legislation is concerned, again, before session starts, there is a coalition that is doing bills now. It’s not a matter of a last minute issue that’s on the table, and where’s the Police Commission, or is the Police Department voicing what the Police Commission and/or the public really wants for that County. So, I think that what I read in minutes past, you were concerned, or someone was concerned about last minute decisions. Well, it doesn’t work that way. The coalition has already started. There’s legislation being drafted for the upcoming session, so it’s not a matter of a last minute decision that are we able to do, or how quick are we on our feet.

RAY: George.

MARTIN: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have, pretty much, a simple question and it relates to, if in fact, you were to get powers, and I don’t really see it being much powers; it’s more following the book that’s in existence. How would you settle a situation where the Chief wants, and you want, as a Commission, how would you see that being settled, as far as sending it for budget review, sending it to the legislators to have it be considered? How do you see that being settled? Who’d have the power?

J. HERKES: First of all, we’d like to have that challenge. I think it is a matter of is the Chief voicing his personal opinion as to how, or what, legislation should be done for policy making, or is he adhering to what the County wants.

MARTIN: What’s in the best interest of the County is what you’re trying to say.

J. HERKES: Exactly.

MARTIN: Again, understood that, but if you have this power, and there’s a difference of opinion, how are you going to settle it?

J. HERKES: Who does the Police Chief work for?

MARTIN: He works for the County, but that’s kind of a redundant question. After he’s hired, isn’t it his department to run?

J. HERKES: To administer policy that had been set, that’s his job. An entity, or a Commission like this one, which I believed the original intent was to set forth that policy, to give him direction. Not to interfere with any officer that, perhaps, my personal opinion, if I said you’re out of uniform and you’re on duty; that’s interfering administratively. But, to set general policy so that we are in tune with what the goals are of our Police Department.

MARTIN: I understand what you’re saying. Possibly, I even agree there should be some movement in the book, as it’s written, to do what you’re saying, but the problem I’m having is how are you going to settle dispute, if it comes to that.

SCHEELE: I don’t know how we’d settle it. I would think that the Commission should be the one who has the final say, as a Board of Directors.

MARTIN: Okay, thank you.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: Again, I go back to, as far as the budget goes, it occurs to me, and we’ve done this with other things in non-profits, one way that that could be fixed is if, through an arbitration process, we got a figure that says that the Police Commission’s budget shall not exceed a certain amount of the entire Police budget. And that way, you’re guaranteed, as you submit your budget, as long as you’re under the cap, and the tendency is to go to the max, and that would have to be set prudently, then you would have a little more control of your ship. But if we go back to a performance based, and I understand what Mr. Martin was bringing up, but just like in the $12 million credit union that I’m president of, we set policy and budget. We hire a Chief Executive. We cannot micro manage any other employee in that credit union, but we look for the flags, we look for the standards, and we look for the performance standards to say are you on track. If not, what’s wrong and how can we adjust it. That’s a policy. And then, that Chief Executive job depends on that. So, the dispute is easily settled. Do it and do it right, or hit the road. And the way you do it and do it right is by these performance based standards, you’ve got a track record that you can then dismiss or renew a contract, and it’s based on something. So then if you have that with your Chief, you’ve got this person’s attention and, it seems like, the rest of the letter of the law, because figures don’t lie, but liars use figures. Sometimes you get rulings that back up a certain fiefdom or something, and it just seems to me that may create more accountability. And, again, it’s awful simple so maybe it’s not the right solution, but again, I bring it back to that because it seems to work a whole lot of other places.

SCHEELE: I don’t know that we have the solutions. We’re here for ya’ll to have the solutions.

SANTANGELO: The question comes back, and you both are nodding your heads, so it sounds like it’s great, but why can’t you do that now, and if not, how can we fix that?

J. HERKES: By listening to our suggestions as to how we can change the Charter. And, this has nothing to do with personalities now. Look all the way up until the next ten years that we can change the Charter again. So, if the language is there and it’s black and white, very clear and no gray areas, which we see right now, then there should be no question as to what the Chief’s responsibility is and what this Commission’s responsibility is to the public.

SANTANGELO: So, if it’s all right with this Commission and the Chairman, and maybe you’re willing, as a Commission, to work with our lawyer and come up with a wording that says how you hire that Chief. Is that what you’re saying? So, if we put in the Charter how you hire that person, that there is a contract that you sign, that it is performance based, does that do it?

J. HERKES: I believe that there is wording now as to qualifications. Is that what you’re saying, for the Chief? Or goals?

SANTANGELO: No, I guess what I’m looking at, as an example, that if I’m going to hire you, Jo-Anna, as my Chief, please submit to me your plan. And how are we going to measure that plan? What is your policy? What do you see the goals and objectives of this Police Department as, and how are we going to measure that? You submit that to me. We negotiate that. We do up a contract. Now, on a quarterly basis, or whatever, we’re reviewing that, and we’re making a record of that. Now, in a case like that, you’ve got this person’s attention. You’re creating a record that allows you to either renew the contract or dismiss this individual. Then, it seems to me, that when it comes to legislation, he’s going to come to you way ahead of time because that’s when legislation’s written, and want to know what the civilian input is, and then plead his or her case as to what the paramilitary needs are, and then you’ve got a working relationship. Again, I’m just looking at what brings you together, and right now, you’re sitting there helpless because you have no tool to bring that person to the table, and that’s what I’m asking. Can you help us with that?

J. HERKES: We’d be very happy to work with your counsel as to language that would help the Commission. We’d be delighted to. That’s fine.

SANTANGELO: And for clarification, if you could clarify and establish a procedure for hiring, be it performance based, or whatever, then that would solve a lot of your problems, and that is what you’d want to work with us on.

J. HERKES: Commissioner Santangelo, for the Charter purpose, I’m not sure all that detail is really necessary. I think with just very strong language as to responsibilities, it can be worked out.

SANTANGELO: Yes, there must be somewhere where that is written down. I have nothing in my mind either. I have no agenda here at all. I’m just trying to work with you. Thank you.

RAY: Steve.

BESS: Not to cut things short here, but I look at the existing language of 7-2.3 and it’s very clear that the Chief of Police is appointed by the Police Commission, and may be removed by the Police Commission at its sole discretion, and under sole discretion, it would seem to me, that you could work out a contract and procedures such as those suggested. I don’t understand why that isn’t the case now, but I think you have the power. Now, I defer to the legal counsel to help us in that regard, but that’s just a comment on my part. The other point is, is when I’m looking at your proposed Charter Amendments, under 7-2.2(b), you say that the Commission will be responsible to set general policy for the Police Department. Then you go on, and you use the existing language. You change it a little bit, but basically, what you’re saying is don’t interfere with the administrative affairs of the department, and then you limit the exception to ‘for purposes of inquiry’, which we may run into some problems with that language because, hey, when it relates to policy making, adherence to policy, accountability, as well as inquiry, you guys should have the authority. Just a comment.

SANTANGELO: And, just a point of information. I have a question to what Steve said. I’m wondering how that relates to the sentence after that when it says ‘any motion for removal of the Chief of Police must contain a statement of reasons and the Commission shall not vote to remove the Chief unless the Chief of Police has been given an opportunity to respond to the statement of reasons at the hearing before the Commission’. I take it you haven’t done anything on this because you’ve never been able to build a case. Why is it that you can’t bring your Chief in and tell him, hey, cooperate or hit the road? Really, how it works in reality, never mind how it’s written, you know how it works in reality.

J. HERKES: To my knowledge, and I haven’t been on the Commission for very long, in order to do so, we need some sort of an evaluation done of the Chief as to whether - I have no idea, personally, if he has not done a good job. There has been no performance - and in questioning this with Chair Scheele, she was advised by Corp Counsel that that was not within our realm, according to the Charter. I believe we even have a letter stating that. That was one of my first questions when I joined the Commission, and it, of course, has been one that’s been continued to why aren’t we doing this. But, in order to call him on the carpet, or say you’re doing something wrong, we would need some evaluation, or something to go back on, saying that answer to this, and I don’t have it, or we don’t have it.

SANTANGELO: So it occurs to me again, that you go back to the genesis, when you hire, you’ve got to have that condition written in. Okay, thank you.

J. HERKES: And not that it’s not done by other counties. I think we might be very unique in this situation, to my knowledge, and that’s only from reading past minutes from other counties, and reviewing what they have asked of their Chief, and how he responds, the goals that have been set. We can’t compare apples to apples because, for instance, the Chief of Honolulu is hired for a five-year term unless otherwise, by the Commission. If he failed to do his responsibilities, they have that power to dismiss him. We don’t have that same ruling with our Police Chief here.

SCHEELE: But, they just recently did that.

J. HERKES: Yes, when there was a change of Police Chiefs.

YUEN: I just wanted to ask a question. Apart from the area of discipline, can you give me examples of questions that you’re not allowed to ask, or not supposed to ask?

SCHEELE: Well, we’re not supposed to ask about what happened to the money in Kona.

YUEN: Okay.

J. HERKES: Are you referring to when we submitted an evaluation sheet that Corp Counsel advised that, perhaps, some of those questions were in a gray area?

YUEN: Yes. And I’m not trying to get anything that is, in itself, confidential.

SCHEELE: No, but I have a form here. One of the things that we had on the evaluation form that we were going to use was it specifically says promulgates policies, procedures, rules, and regulations necessary for the organization and internal administration of the department, and reviews, analyzes, and revises the same. That was something that we were not to ask because it interferes with the administration.

Plans, coordinates, and directs, through subordinate management supervisory personnel, the overall functions and activities of the line divisions. And, we had six of those listed; the Office of the Chief, the Intelligence Enforcement Unit, Internal Affairs, and we weren’t to ask that because that was administrative also.

Directs the serving of processes and notices, both in civil and criminal proceedings. We couldn’t ask about that because that’s administrative. So, I’ve got five or six pages.

SANTANGELO: So, you hire an administrator but you can’t ask about administration.

SCHEELE: Yes.

YUEN: You know, part of the awkwardness of my role as your attorney is that when you ask about whether things need to be changed in the Charter, to achieve certain results, it means that I have to give you an interpretation of what is allowed and possible under the present Charter. I am not a member of the Corporation Counsel Office, and as we’ve heard, attorney’s opinions about things can differ. However, I can give you an example of the way I think things are supposed to work under the present Charter and I think that perhaps the lines are not being drawn correctly.

Let me give an example of some things that are clearly administrative, and which the Police Commission is not supposed to interfere in, just to take a couple of things. The use of sick leave and workers compensation in the Police Department: How much is being used, how the Police Department handles that; there’s really nothing for the Police Commission to actually do about that. Those are administrative matters. However, the Police Commission can certainly inquire of the Police Chief how much sick leave is being expended; how many workers compensation claims are filed; how many are granted; what the trends are in those matters. So, the Commission has the ability to inquire about a broad range of matters within the department, under the present Charter, and I don’t see how the Commission can do its job of deciding when to retain or fire the Chief without inquiring into matters like those kinds of things. I think that a Commission that’s evaluating a Chief of Police, just to take those as matters, might look at those things, and if there were a great increase in sick leave, which is sometimes an indication of morale, or great increases in workers compensation, they could use that as a factor that would be involved in the evaluation of the Chief. The Charter is written the way it is so that the Police Commission does not boss the Chief around on administrative matters, but the Police Commission has to be informed.

Just to give a number of other examples: Where personnel are assigned, or changes of

assignment that are made, are administrative matters. It’s not within the Police Commission’s powers to either direct the Chief to assign people to certain areas, or to criticize the Chief for making those kinds of assignments. But, the Police Commission can get a monthly report from the Police Chief as to what assignments have been made. These kinds of reports, or this kind of information, is actually something that a member of the public could request, and obtain, from the department. They may not be able to make the department compile statistics that don’t exist in a convenient form, but the Police Commission can certainly ask the department to compile these kinds of statistics.

So, that’s my reading of where the line between interfering and inquiry lies. There is a gray area between administration and policy, and I think I’ve tried to pick examples that, to my way of thinking, are clearly on the side of administration. But, I think to say that inquiry is limited, I think, is wrong. But there are some areas which the Commission can’t inquire, and I think these are readily apparent to people. There are some forms of police work that are, by nature, confidential. You can’t inquire about ongoing investigations, use of confidential informants, that sort of thing, and I don’t think that they’re asking to do that. The matter of discipline, I think it’s clear that they have a right to receive a general report from the department as to what’s happened. Whether they have a right to receive a report on individual cases, in private session, I’m inclined, from my basic reading of the law that covers this now, is that they do have that right, but that is a gray area that, I think, is a matter of debate, currently in the Corporation Counsel’s Office, and would probably, if the Commission pressed that, would wind up in Court between the Police Union and the Commission.

SCHEELE: One of the things I said about promulgates policies, procedures, and this is a letter from Corp Counsel to us about what we can do and not do - I said promulgates policies, procedures, rules, and regulations necessary for the organization and internal administration of the department, and reviews, analyzes, and revises same. That was one of our points that we were going to evaluate on, and what the Corp Counsel says in their letter to us is ‘in this regard, the Commission can ask the Chief about what he has done, or what he’s doing about the areas covered in this section, and make suggestions, but the Commission does not have the authority to require the Chief to follow its suggestions, or hold what the Chief may be doing against him by either disciplinary action or poor evaluation scores’. And, that’s kind of what they said in all of - So, yes, you can ask the questions but you can’t hold it against him if he hasn’t done certain things. So, my question, then, is how do you fire somebody if you can’t evaluate them, and have any disciplinary action. You can’t. I would see that he would have a case against us if we just fired him without any evaluation. Employees in the private sector are always going back and suing for being released without cause, or whatever, and that’s how I see this, too. But, every single one of these, there was four or five areas, and that’s exactly the same argument that Corp Counsel used each time. You can ask him the questions, but if you don’t like what he says, you can’t do anything about it and you can’t give him a poor evaluation for it. So, that’s why it’s been kind of hard, whether you wanted to consider firing somebody or not. And we’ve been fighting this battle for at least the last three years.

RAY: Any other questions?

SANTANGELO: Just a statement, Mr. Chairman. Since ya’ll have come here and met this Commission, and have a sense of its mood, and frankly, there are certain things that if you put accountability in the phrase, the public would probably be very open to supporting, maybe before you do leave, Sharon, and before the end of the year, this Commission might want to re-evaluate it recommendations for the Charter, and come back with something now. That’s all I would say. And have more dialogue with our lawyer because he’s very competent in this area.

RAY: Any other questions? Okay. Thank you very much. So, we’ll take all this under advisement and thanks for coming in. I think we understand better the recommendations that you made, and we’ll sit down with counsel and see what we can come up with, and have some dialogue.

Let’s take just a three minute break and let the Ottersons then come on.

RECESSED The Chairman called a recess at 6:26 p.m.

RECONVENED The meeting reconvened at 6:34 p.m.

RAY: The meeting is reconvened. Jim Otterson is here to talk to us about he and his wife’s experience in Riverside, California. I want to thank you for furnishing us with the Charter, and I’ll turn it over to you.

J. OTTERSON: Okay. I’m Jim Otterson, my wife, Norma, back here. We’re very interested in the City Manager type government vs. the Mayor. And I don’t pretend to be a speaker, or anything like that. I don’t have a vendetta against the Mayor here, but it’s just the part that we’re interested in is we have worked under the Manager type government. My wife worked under it for 30 years, and I worked under it for 25 years, and, we do know, pretty much, how it works.

I’m not the type to crusade but the reason why I really got interested in it - we built a pretty fine home where we’re at, and we had to go to the mainland, and when we were gone; we were gone for about three months, and we came back, and there was this huge wrecking yard moved in just two blocks away from us. Well, the first thing I did was I went to the Planning Department in Kona. I went to the Building Department in Kona several times. They showed me pictures of all types of complaints that they had come in. Junk and everything stored, and wrecked cars, and the whole works. And, I can’t think of the man’s name that was there at the time, but he said I want to show you some pictures so he showed me all those pictures of the different areas that needed cleaning up. But he says I’ve had these pictures in here for 11 years. We can’t do anything about it. So, I said, you mean, you don’t have any law to get rid of these things? And, he said we have a law but it doesn’t have any teeth in it. He said what I’m going to do is turn you over to Hilo, the Planning Department there, and so I called the Zoning Inspector here, which it should be a zoning violation because we are in a residential/agriculture area, and whether you have a zoning or not, if it’s in that type of residential and agriculture, they automatically should have the problem removed. But no, that didn’t work. This is going to take just a little time but I’ve got to tell you why I got into this. Like I say, I’m not a crusader or anything like that, no vendettas.

So, then I called the Police Department. I called Public Works. I called the Fire Department because they were burning there at night and putting off lots of smells and everything. So, then nobody had any idea on how to get rid of this. I talked to my Councilman and I’ll leave that as is. And so, the last thing that I did was call the Mayor’s Office. I called the Mayor’s Office, couldn’t talk to the Mayor, but I talked to Bill Davis. I told him who I was and everything, and he says, Jim, we’ll get rid of that for you. I’m glad you called. I’ll get back with you in about a week, he said. He got back with me in about a week and he says, you know, Jim, we don’t even have an ordinance to get rid of that stuff for you. I just couldn’t believe this guy. And he says, yes, we don’t even know how to do it. Okay, you’re a lawyer, right?

YUEN: I think so.

J. OTTERSON: I don’t know whether I told you or not, but I used to work in this type of business. I was a Zoning and Building Inspector for the City of Riverside. So, I said let me tell you how we did it in Riverside. Well, okay, he says, I’m glad to hear that you’ve been in the business. And so, then he said, how do you do it? I said, the first thing we do; we get a complaint, we will call the people back that called the complaint in, of which these people here do not do. Time after time after time I would call. Nobody would return the call, but then he called me back and that’s when he said, you know, we don’t have anything to do that. I says, you’ve got to have. That’s when I told him that’s where I worked. So, he said, how’d you do it, and I said, the first thing we did was to send a certified letter to the people that had the problem, stating what the problem was, and then, I said, you got to make sure you have a certified letter because if you don’t, they won’t accept the letter, and then you tell them what the problem is and how much time they have to get rid of this problem. He said, then what happens? I said, well, then, if nothing happens, then you send them another certified letter stating that you will send the problem out to bid. The City or the County will send it out to bid and the lowest bidder gets it, tears it down. He said, then what happens? Who pays for it? I said, the property owner pays for it. It goes on his taxes. He says, oh, we couldn’t do that. I said, yes you can. So then, he said, I’ll get back with you again in a few days, and let you know what happened.

So, he got back with me and he said, you know, Jim, you’re right. He says, I called Maui and that’s exactly how they do it. So I said, okay, now what are you going to do? Well, he says, I’m going to get with the lawyers. I don’t know if you was on that or not, to get this ordinance through. And big fine on each - It went from week to week. The fine got larger and larger as it went along. But anyway, the people that owned it, I found out later, had mortgaged it up to the hilt and moved. And the guy with the wrecking yard was still there, of course, and I talked to him many times. You know, get this crap out of here. In fact, he came to the house one day - he also does rock work. He builds walls. So he came to the house one day and asked me, he said, I heard that you needed some - I’m not knowing this guy at that time - I heard that you needed some rock walls built. I said, yeah, I do. Come on in and we’ll talk about it. So, he came in. We talked about it over a cup of coffee, and I asked him, I said, do you have any pictures of some of the walls you built. And he said, yeah. I said, can you bring some by? I thought this guy lived in Kona or somewhere. So then, I said, no hurry, but then the next day he came by. I said, come on in and we’ll have another cup of coffee. He came in. He said, I got the pictures, and I said, by the way, where do you live? I said, you didn’t have to come this far. He said, I just live down the road there a piece. I said, you don’t live at the wrecking yard, do you? Yeah, that’s mine. So, I said, hell, man, I can’t do business with you. He said, why not? I said, I’m trying to get rid of you, and my wife, was there. She’ll verify it. And so, he said I’m going to have the zoning changed. I said, no you’re not. And, so I said, I just can’t do any business with you. You’re going to have to go because I’m working on it to get rid of you. I said, you’re in the wrong zoning. You’re in a RA, residential and agriculture. That’s when he said, well, I’m going to get it changed.

Then I get back to the Planning Department. They knew nothing about this new zoning law that had been processed. So, we waited on that, and we waited on that. Well, to make a long story short. I mean it’s a long story. It took four years to get rid of that wrecking yard – four long years, and by that time, a guy over here, on another street over, was putting in another wrecking yard. So, this is when I thought, okay, I’ve told them how to do it. Now, it’s up to them to get rid of it. And all this time, the guy was from Tonga, and he knew that I was the head of the trying to get rid of him. He had people working for him, and I’d go down the road, and you’d have these guys go by me and flip me off and try to run me off of the road. But, I didn’t give up. That long story, it went on for four years.

But anyway, the zoning law that I showed them how to do, it did go through. They

started charging them by the week. They had a huge bill against the property, but then, like I say, the guy that owned it in the first place, had the legal on it, he dispersed and he didn’t have to do anything because he had mortgaged it up to the hilt and just walked off. So then, the bank took it over and they got the bank, and the bank come in and cleaned that thing beautiful, and got rid of 150 cars and cleaned up the oil, the trash, and everything.

Nobody seems to know what the other person is doing in this government. Like I say, my wife worked in Finance and Treasury, and she knows how it’s done there. I know how it’s done in the Building Departments. I know how it’s done in Planning Department, Public Works, you name it. These people have meetings, you know, they all get together and have meetings, and they let one another know what’s going on, what’s going on. And each department head has a meeting once a week, and they get their group together. I told the Planning Director, I says, don’t you people have meetings and let whoever you’ve got working for you, let you know what’s going on? No, no, we don’t do that. I said, you should get yourself informed. Be informed, and get yourself informed. Well, it’s just one of those things that just ground the hell out of me.

You were talking about the Police Department a while ago. Isn’t that what that was?

RAY: The Police Department and the Police Commission.

J. OTTERSON: And the Police Commission. If that would have been in Riverside, it would have never happened. They would have never, never got that far. They wouldn’t have all these suits and everything. It wouldn’t have ever got that far. The Police Commissioner and the Manager would’ve got together, because that Manager, he is the boss. He is the boss of the Police, the whole damn works. The only ones he’s not the boss of is - you still have the Mayor and the Council. The Council is the boss of him.

I was just looking through your Charter here, and the qualifications of a Mayor are nothing. It’s right here. I’ll tell you what he has to do, powers and duties. ‘The Mayor shall be the Chief Executive Officer of the County vested with all the executive powers of the County except as otherwise provided by this Charter. The Mayor shall have the power to exercise direct supervision over all agencies enumerated in this Article, and other agencies as the Mayor may deem desirable. Through the Managing Director, supervise and coordinate all executive agencies of the County except as otherwise provided by this Charter’. Now, how are you going to get some guy, maybe he’s had a little business or something, and he wants to be the Mayor, and I’m the Mayor, and I got the power. Maybe he wants that, but for somebody to run a multi-million dollar business, that you can practically pick off of the street, I don’t understand that.

RAY: Well, the Mayor of New York City, for instance -

J. OTTERSON Pardon me? But, they still have a Manager.

RAY: Well, they do, and so do we, under our Charter, but I don’t think there are any more qualifications for the Mayor of New York City, probably, than there are in our Charter.

J. OTTERSON: Well, you have a Mayor here. You’d have a Mayor. Like I said, I don’t have any vendetta against this Mayor, or anything like that. I know, you’ve told me before, that this Mayor’s doing a fine job. But how can he do a fine job? How can he come in and do all of these things, fresh off of the farm, or whatever? How can he come in without getting all the Directors together and ask the Director, gee, I’m kind of new at this. Could you help me out? And believe me, that’s the way it goes. And, okay, this Director hasn’t really been doing a good job as it is, but he’s going to follow that Director, right? You don’t have to answer that. You don’t have to answer that. And, that goes with all the Directors. So, they’ve been here for years and years and years and years and years, forty years back, and it’s one continuous circle. I don’t know how long you people have lived here. I’ve lived here ten years, but coming from where I did, I can see so much difference here, and I love this place. I love it. The wife loves it. But, as far as the way it’s run, to me, it’s unbelievable.

IRVINE: Sir, I read this Charter you gave us. Were there any qualifications for this County Manager?

J. OTTERSON: Oh, yes.

IRVINE: It says here that the process for selection of City Manager shall be determined by the City Council. That might be done by ordinance, rather than in the Charter, because in their Charter, it doesn’t say it has to be a professional city planner, or anything. I’m looking at the Riverside -

J. OTTERSON: Section 600?

IRVINE: Right.

J. OTTERSON: Okay. Powers and duties. ‘The City Manager shall be the head of the Administrative Branch of the City government. The City Manager shall be responsible to the City Council for the proper administration of all affairs of the City. All department heads and officers of the City except elective officers and those department heads and officers, the power of whose appointment is vested, this Charter and the City Council shall serve the pleasure of the City Manager, who may appoint, suspend’ - Okay, I’m in the wrong place here.

RAY: She was looking for the actual qualifications of the City Manager type.

J. OTTERSON: That’s what I say. I’m in the wrong place.

M. HERKES: It’s not in the Charter.

IRVINE: It’s not in the Charter, I think, and that’s what -

J. OTTERSON: ‘There shall be a City Manager who shall be Chief Administrative Officer.’

IRVINE: It gives his powers and duties but it doesn’t say he or she has to be a certified city planner or anything like that, that I can see, and I suppose maybe the Council had some criteria. Our Commission is looking at the possibility of setting some criteria for our Managing Director. We have a subcommittee on that. If you, or your wife, know whether there were any criteria, our Commission would be interested.

RAY: In other words, what professional standards do they set for a City Manager.

J. OTTERSON: It’s there, I know.

N. OTTERSON: Well, it’s not in the Charter. That’s something that the Council had.

RAY: Right, I’m sure they do. So that type of language would be helpful as far how encompassing or restrictive it is, is something we’d really be interested in.

M. HERKES: Is this something you’re thinking of putting in our Charter?

RAY: Well, we’re looking for language in regard to the Managing Director position.

M. HERKES: Are we looking for professional criteria in regards to the Managing Director in order to put in the Charter?

RAY: I think we’re open to that input, certainly.

J. OTTERSON: It’s there. I just can’t find it right now. I thought I had everything scored.

M. HERKES: I suspect that it’s in an ordinance because the Council gets to play with it every time. This is a City Manager that is hired for how many years? She’s hired for how many years?

J. OTTERSON: Hired for as long as he wants to be there, as long as he does a good job.

M. HERKES: And then the Council can get rid of her?

J. OTTERSON: The Council has the power to get rid of him. Yes.

M. HERKES: Okay. The Council hires and the Council fires.

J. OTTERSON: Yes.

M. HERKES: Okay. How does this City Manager get along with the Mayor? What does the Mayor do?

J. OTTERSON: I’ve got that here, too.

M. HERKES: Well, I can read it. I want your perceptions.

J. OTTERSON: The Mayor, he, more or less, takes complaints. He takes complaints of people that, like for instance -

M. HERKES: And solves problems.

J. OTTERSON: If he wanted to get rid of a junk yard, or whatever, he would take the complaint, turn it over to the Director, or the department, that took care of those. He signs bonds. At the Council meetings, he does the chairing.

M. HERKES: So, he’s the Chair of the Council?

J. OTTERSON; He’s Chairman of the Council.

RAY: Is he a voting Chair of the Council or does he just preside over it?

J. OTTERSON: If there’s a tie with the Council, he’s able to vote. Other than that, he’s not able to vote.

M. HERKES: And you think this works well in Riverside?

J. OTTERSON: Pardon?

M. HERKES: And this works well in Riverside?

J. OTTERSON: Yes, it does. Yes, it does.

M. HERKES: Well, that’s good.

RAY: Jim, is the Mayor sort of a super Council person, or is he elected separately as the Mayor?

J. OTTERSON: He is elected at-large. With Riverside, they have different wards. They have seven wards.

RAY: Seven wards. So, you have one Council person per ward, single member, and then the Mayor is elected at-large?

J. OTTERSON: Yes, right.

RAY: Is the Mayor a full-time position?

J. OTTERSON: Yes.

RAY: So, his position is similar, in terms of time, with the City Manager?

J. OTTERSON: No, he has nothing to do, really, with the City Manager.

RAY: No, I’m sorry. But, they’re both full-time positions.

J. OTTERSON; Oh, yes.

RAY: Now the Council people are regarded as part-time, or full-time?

J. OTTERSON: They’re the same as they are here. They have a meeting once a week and, I guess you have one once a week here. I don’t know.

RAY: Do you know about the compensation? For instance, what the Council people get paid, what the Mayor gets paid, and what the City Manager gets paid? I mean, roughly.

J. OTTERSON: Yes.

RAY: What is that? Just in rough numbers.

M. HERKES: Maybe your wife knows. She worked in the budget - and we keep using he, and I want to start some she things in here.

J. OTTERSON: Here’s the salary. Don’t let this knock you off your chair, now.

M. HERKES: No, we won’t.

J. OTTERSON: City Manager is $12,878 per month.

M. HERKES: Per month?

RAY: So, $144,000. Now, what size city is Riverside?

J. OTTERSON: 250,000. In fact, it’s 250,800.

RAY: And then the Mayor?

J. OTTERSON: The Mayor is $4,000 a month.

RAY: So, $48,000. Okay.

J. OTTERSON: Now, this will, no doubt, go with the amount of responsibility, the amount of people.

RAY: Right. I understand that. And then the Council persons get paid?

J. OTTERSON: Yes, they get paid, too.

RAY: And what is that?

J. OTTERSON: I don’t know what their pay is.

N. OTTERSON: Well, they were getting paid, started 30+ years ago, $200 a month, and then, when I retired, they were clear up to $600 a month.

IRVINE: That was 10 years ago.

M. HERKES: $600 a month.

N. OTTERSON: All they got was just their expenses.

M. HERKES: And they’re elected for two years or four years?

N. OTTERSON: Four years.

M. HERKES: Do they get any benefits? Retirement or anything like that?

N. OTTERSON: No. No. No.

M. HERKES: So, it’s $600 a month and, maybe, per diem or something.

N. OTTERSON: It’s probably more now. I’ve been gone 10 years so I don’t know.

M. HERKES: Oh, they might be up to $800 a month.

N. OTTERSON: No, it was, more or less, for expenses. But if they had to go out of town on a conference, or out of town on whatever, then the City paid all their expenses, and they got mileage, but as far as salary, salary, it was just something.

M. HERKES: Well, we’re underpaying our Manager and overpaying our Council people.

RAY: Any questions?

J. OTTERSON: Yes, any questions?

RAY: Actually, I don’t understand what the Mayor does vs. the Council Manager.

IRVINE: My reading of this is that the Mayor doesn’t really do too much.

N. OTTERSON: He doesn’t.

IRVINE: Yes, I mean, it says, Section 407, page C-7, ‘neither the Mayor nor the City Council, nor any of its members, shall interfere with the execution by the City Manager of his/her powers and duties, or order, directly or indirectly, the appointment by the City Manager, or by any of the department heads, in the Administrative service of the city, of any person to any office or employment, or their removal there from.’ So, they don’t get to appoint. The Managing Director does it all. It does say in here, I think they get together at meetings and talk, like you say, they communicate.

J. OTTERSON: Yes.

RAY: And, as long as you lived in Riverside, it’s always been a City Manager form of government?

J. OTTERSON: No. We lived there all our lives.

RAY: So initially -

J. OTTERSON: Initially, it was a Mayor. That was when the town was, probably, four to five thousand people.

N. OTTERSON: He’s older than I am. I don’t remember.

J. OTTERSON: She’s older than I am. Well, she had 35 years in with the City. I only had 25.

RAY: So, they used to have a strong Mayor form of government, and then switched?

J. OTTERSON: The Mayor that I remember, he would come to work. He’d do a few things and then, pretty soon, he would fall off to sleep and he would have a pipe in his hand, and before he did this, he would, into the trash can.

N. OTTERSON: It’s the truth.

J. OTTERSON: This is true, and ultimately, the fire engine would come up.

N. OTTERSON: True.

J. OTTERSON: Yes, that’s the honest to God’s truth.

IRVINE: That helps for communication. The Fire Chief has to come running in.

N. OTTERSON: It’s the truth. It’s the truth.

RAY: I don’t even know where Riverside is. Excuse me.

J. OTTERSON: You know where LA is, of course.

RAY: Okay.

J. OTTERSON: Well, you know, 250,000 people, that’s a pretty good sized town.

RAY: It is. Right. So, is it like a suburb of Greater Los Angeles?

J. OTTERSON: No. No. No.

N. OTTERSON: Sixty miles east.

RAY: Sixty miles east.

J. OTTERSON: In fact, when I was a kid, I was hitchhiking around, and going to the beach and things like this, I would, sometimes, have to ask - well, like Anaheim; Anaheim was about 35 miles from it, and I would have to ask somebody, how do you get out of this town, and get to Riverside. Riverside? I never heard of it. And it was all orange trees. It was the citrus capital.

M. HERKES: So, it was agriculture?

J. OTTERSON: Pardon?

IRVINE: It was.

N. OTTERSON: It was.

J. OTTERSON: But now most of the citrus groves are gone and mostly all of it is -

RAY: Okay, and in terms of the City functions, do they perform similar - are all the functions that this County does - I mean, they have Police, Fire, Public Works, Parks and Rec?

J. OTTERSON: Oh, yes.

N. OTTERSON: And they own their own utilities.

M. HERKES: They own their own utilities?

N. OTTERSON: They own their own utilities. Yes, yes.

J. OTTERSON: That’s quite a help for them, too.

RAY: Was it always that way? They had separate -

N. OTTERSON: As long as I can remember.

J. OTTERSON: As long as I can remember, too.

RAY: I mean, they weren’t part of a County or something?

J. OTTERSON: Oh, they possibly were, but not since I recall.

RAY: I’m just interested in the evolution of the government. How it all evolved.

MARTIN: Since they started piping water over the hill. I’m serious. That’s when it all came into play.

J. OTTERSON: And, what I’ve always been told, as far as the Mayor was concerned, is when your population gets above 75,000 people, don’t count on the Mayor to be running your town.

RAY: We looked at models all over the country and, unfortunately, there’s not that clear a definition. There are lots of jurisdictions that function very well as strong Mayor, and there’s lots that’s functioned very well, and for a long, long time, as City Manager type.

J. OTTERSON: But you can see right here, what your Mayor has to know. Nothing.

RAY: Well, like I say, you could make that same argument about Mayor Giuliani in New York City, and I think you could, probably, argue that he’s a pretty qualified guy.

J. OTTERSON: Yes, but he has a Manager, though. He has a Manager

RAY: Yes, and we do too. But, I think it’s all in how you use the tools at your disposal.

J. OTTERSON: But, anyway, I sure would like to see you guys put this on the ballot because I have talked to many, many people about this, and, like I say, I’m not - well, in a way it is, kind of, like a crusade, and a lot of people want this on the ballot.

M. HERKES: Keep talking about it. Keep advocating for it. I’m the only one that voted for this, so you keep advocating it, and I’ll keep pushing these guys, and we’ll see if we can’t get it going.

J. OTTERSON: I’m not going to say if it’s a woman or a man, but I talked to a Council person last Saturday and asked her, or him, what she thought of a Manager type government. Oh, no, no, no, we couldn’t have that. We couldn’t have that.

M. HERKES: Yes, but if you’d have asked him, who’s the Kona person, he’s in favor of it.

J. OTTERSON: Yes. And you know what her answer was? She said, well, we wouldn’t want to do that. They’d probably get a Manager from somewhere else. We need these people to get ahead here, and I said, lady, that’s the problem right now. You’ve got a deal going like this; it’s round and round and round, and you end up with the same thing.

M. HERKES: We had that discussion, and some of us decided that we have the talent here. We don’t need to go outside, but, by God, if we need to go outside, we will.

J. OTTERSON: You need some new blood. I hate to say it.

M. HERKES: We understand.

J. OTTERSON: Okay.

M. HERKES: Thank you very much. I appreciate your coming. I appreciate your humor, too.

J. OTTERSON: I appreciate you having us.

RAY: We really apologize for all the mis-connections in the past.

J. OTTERSON: Well, the main thing is I got in and got to get this off my chest.

SANTANGELO: Thank you, guys.

M. HERKES: Keep pushing.

RAY: Does anybody need a little break?

M. HERKES: No.

SANTANGELO: No, pau already. We’re going to go.

RAY: Chris and I were discussing some of the things we talked about on Saturday, and I just want to, quickly, so we’ve all got those in our mind - In terms of the issue of should we put forth a different Council make-up, a mixed single district and at-large seats. If we were to recommend that, some of the things that we need to resolve, as a consequence of that. Have you got those written down?

YUEN: Yes. Just to flesh out the vote that was taken to propose a six single member district and three at-large. I think there are a few further things that have to be determined, to go along with that. One is how would term limits operate on that? Would it be eight years on the Council, no matter what your term was? The second would be when would this be implemented? Would it be implemented in 2002, in which case, if the at-large people are elected on a four-year cycle, then their terms are not in cycle with the Mayor’s cycle, or rather in 2004, at which time they would be in cycle with the Mayor’s? That has some political implications for Council people eventually running for the Mayor’s Office, and having to resign to run if they are in the middle of their terms, rather than at the end of their terms. Then, the Commission has previously voted to put non-partisan on the ballot, and then the question would be how would the at-large, because the proposal that was made basically worked as a multi-member district - As I understand it, there would be three votes cast in the same race, for three at-large members. And so, I presume, that if any one or more got 50% or more in, essentially, the primary election, that they would be elected outright. But then, we need to decide if you don’t elect them all outright, how many get carried over to the next ballot? And really, the possibilities would be, if you still had three left over, you could have three more carried over, or you could have two more carried over, or you could just pick from the top four, and the same thing with being two or one. You could double it or you could add it. These are just decisions that have to be made to go along with the six-three proposal.

SANTANGELO: Just a couple of things. I guess, when Steve brought that up, that there was that discussion that it wouldn’t - I think that the initial proposal, whoever brought it up, was it you?

BESS: No, it was Roland.

SANTANGELO: Roland. That it would stick within the eight-year term. Although, I think it’s interesting to say that you could treat it like a separate office, so you wouldn’t go beyond that part of it.

RAY: I don’t think that was, at all, clear. I think the discussion was that we would discuss that further, and we would also depend on the input we got from the public, going around, and this and that, as far as any decision on that.

SANTANGELO: But in the non-partisan part of it, this model is used in many, many other places. They must be non-partisan. Also, is it only used in a partisan election?

RAY: No.

M. HERKES: Different models are used in many places.

YUEN: We can do this in non-partisan. It’s just a matter of choice. It just needs to be spelled out how many you’re going to carry over to the General.

SANTANGELO: Well, I guess, my point being, that in research, there must be one where it seems to be more generally accepted, and at least starting from there.

RAY: I just wanted to bring those out because we didn’t fully discuss all these things, so you can start thinking about them. I don’t think there’s anything else.

M. HERKES: Are we going to talk about the Legislative Auditor’s report?

RAY: We can. Would you like to?

M. HERKES: I would like to.

RAY: Good.

M. HERKES: I think it’s excellent. I think Connie does some great stuff, and I thought the recommendation was very good. There’s a lot of stuff in there that I didn’t realize was going on.

RAY: So, is there agreement that we’d like to pursue this and, maybe, have Chris get together with Connie, and we could come up with some possible language and scenarios?

M. HERKES: Just like Connie wrote it.

IRVINE: I’d have to look at what she wrote, exactly, but my concern was that we have any of these people in this particular office, answering citizen complaints. I think that ought to all be on the County Clerk’s -

M. HERKES: That’s what we’re going to do.

IRVINE: What?

M. HERKES: We’re going to send it to the Mayor.

RAY: Excuse me.

M. HERKES: I’m sorry.

RAY: That’s not something we’re going to detail in the Charter.

M. HERKES: Yes.

RAY: I think the type of language that Connie suggested -

IRVINE: Covers it? Does it? Maybe.

RAY: That’s not what we’re going to do.

M. HERKES: No.

RAY: You’re not going to put in the Charter that somebody in the Legislative Auditor’s Office is not going to deal with constituent complaints.

IRVINE: No, but maybe they shouldn’t all be political appointees. I had thought, maybe, Civil Service, but Harry Takahashi says that’s not appropriate, so maybe we need a very pared-down Legislative Auditor’s Office.

M. HERKES: Did you read her recommendation?

IRVINE: Yes.

M. HERKES: That’s what she recommended.

RAY: Wait. Let’s don’t confuse the main function of the Legislative Auditor’s Office vs. this whole idea of auditing. What the Legislative Auditor’s Office - they write legislation. They do the research. They write the resolutions and the bills. That’s what they do. That’s the main meat and potatoes of that office. And I think that’s what we want them to continue to do. This whole idea of being auditors is something that, clearly, they need more capability. But how that’s handled is really a separate issue. I mean, they write the legislation. They service the committees. Their people are attached to the committees. That’s the main function. It’s queer because of the name, Legislative Auditor’s Office, and maybe it should be called something else, but that is the main function. In other words, you have two staffs. You have the clerical staff, and they service the constituents’ concerns and correspondence of the County Council. Also, on that side, you have Civil Service staff, which handle the committee reporting and write up the reports and whatever, but that’s all just automatic stuff. The Legislative Auditor’s Office has a very full plate, researching and writing legislation. That’s what they do. Under the current staffing, they don’t have the ability to take on auditing tasks, to any great degree. They’re very busy with the tasks that they have.

IRVINE: Connie says, right here, quote, a significant portion of staff time is spent responding to constituent-related concerns such as illegal drag racing, street light outages, barking dogs, road closures, pot holes, flooding, and so on and on. And that seems, to me, to be totally inappropriate in the Legislative Auditor’s Office.

M. HERKES: That’s because that’s the way the office is set up now.

RAY: Right.

IRVINE: That’s right.

M. HERKES: Let’s look at how we want it set up.

IRVINE: I have to see what she suggested, and whether it -

M. HERKES: She suggested conduct, or cause to be conducted independent post audits of financial transactions, assist Council in the review and adoption of capital operating budgets, assist Council in complying with section 3-16, provide comprehensive research and reference services for the Council, and perform other support duties as may be assigned by the Council. Now I’ve been through, probably, about fifteen hours of testimony by Marian Higa in the last six months. She has an expert staff. I think she’s going to leave with that as her proudest accomplishment, that her staff does a great job. She also, on some of the audits that she does, outsources some of the audits, and that’s a management tool which I see as a possibility here, as far as program review and audits, are outsourcing rather than County employees. And so, I think that’s one thing that might be looked at, not in the Charter, but as a possibility.

RAY: But, are we all in agreement that this is something that we’d like to support and pursue? John.

SANTANGELO: I think that one of the things that might help people here, too, John, is in that Council make-up, there are Civil Service committee people. So it’s not like these committees are without assistance.

IRVINE: Over on the other side, though. They’re not the Legislative Auditor’s Office.

SANTANGELO: No, they’re not in the Legislative Auditor’s Office. But understanding the different components and background for that.

RAY: Okay, but all the Civil Service people do is the recording and the minutes. That’s a full time job, preparing the agendas, all the recording, putting the minutes out. They don’t have anything, whatsoever, to do with writing the legislation.

IRVINE: I understand that, and I really think that writing the legislation and auditing are very closely aligned.

RAY: Right.

IRVINE: Whereas, answering the kind of constituent complaints has nothing to do with this, and it shouldn’t be at the Legislative Auditor’s Office.

M. HERKES: My understanding is that the make-up of the Legislative Auditor’s Office is staff people from each Council person. So, therefore, when a Council person gets a complaint, it’s perfectly appropriate and logical, for me, to refer it to that staff person they have in the Legislative Auditor’s Office and that’s where the problem is.

IRVINE: But they have staff over at the County Clerk’s side, and these Committee Chairs who have staff at the Legislative Auditor’s office, maybe it should not be specifically committee.

M. HERKES: That’s where I think the problem is.

RAY: They’re attached to committees, but there are also Committee Chairs, and the Committee Chairs direct the staff whereas the Legislative Auditor needs to direct and manage the staff more sufficiently.

IRVINE: Right.

M. HERKES: Right. Well, we finally got to the problem.

RAY: So, I think that’s where we’d like to head with this.

M. HERKES: Yes.

SANTANGELO: There’s a lot of sense being committed. But another thing, too, is looking at the qualifications. But, again, we talk about qualifications, and there aren’t any, as it stands now.

RAY: Okay, just so you know. Past Councils have instituted qualifications, from time to time, in the Legislative Auditor’s Office. That’s not something that’s never been addressed.

M. HERKES: So, is this something we need to put in the Charter?

RAY: I think we need to address it in the ways that Connie suggests, and let’s see what we can come up with. But, I don’t think we ought to think that we’re going to totally spell things out.

Anything else for this evening?

We’ve got our agenda set for January, and we agreed at the last meeting that, for now, we’re going to go with the one Wednesday meeting, the second Wednesday of the month at 5 p.m., our regularly scheduled meeting in our rules in Hilo, and then try to get more work done, the next couple of months anyway, in Waimea on Saturdays, so we scheduled on the 15th of January and the 5th of February in Waimea. And, Chris, do you have a sense of, from your standpoint, what we should be looking at timing-wise, to get this thing out to the public, and then have sufficient time to write up everything in detail, and get it submitted?

YUEN: Pretty soon. Because there’s been this commitment for public hearings on a proposed package, that package should really be done pretty soon, I think, because you’re going to have a series of public hearings, and if they want to have time to make any revisions in response to that. I haven’t worked out a time frame, but I would say that, probably, early February would not be a bad time to shoot for, for having that package.

MARTIN: So then we may have to meet a few more Saturdays in the next couple of months.

YOSHIYAMA: In the next month.

MARTIN: In the next month, exactly. I mean, let’s be real, people.

RAY: My suggestion is we keep things as they are right now, and we see where we are, and we’ll have some sense of that after the 15th, but see where we are after that first meeting in February. And if we need to meet the next couple of Saturdays to get some things wrapped up. We don’t have to have all the details done, right? We just need to have a preliminary package to take out, and go, and engage the public. But if we follow the schedule, we did six meetings, so that would take six weeks.

SANTANGELO: Is it necessary to go in that detail, or can we do an East and West?

RAY: We can do whatever we want. We could do four; North, South, East and West.

M. HERKES: Yes, four. Yes.

RAY: I would be in favor of, at least, four meetings.

MARTIN: Minimum four.

YOSHIYAMA: Yes, minimum four.

SANTANGELO: And where would you do these four?

RAY: Kona and Hilo are the two big ones. And North, probably Waimea; and South, I don’t know.

YOSHIYAMA: Yes, hard. Big area.

IRVINE: Yes, Pahoa to Naalehu. We could go to Volcano, halfway in between.

RAY: I would say Naalehu, and Pahala, down there. The Puna people find their way to Hilo frequently.

So, Chris, say we came up with a package by mid-February? So, say we started the end of February, and went till the end of March, or say, got done by March with the public hearings?

MARTIN: Point of clarification, if I may, Chair. What we go with on the public hearings has got to be pretty much what we’re going to present to the electoral to put on the ballot, yes or no, Chris?

YUEN: I would say it doesn’t have to have the exact language, but it should have the details worked out. For example, in this six-three, I think the things that I discussed should be in there. And you want to go with something that people can get their hands around. For example, you don’t want to say, well, we’re going to give more power to the Police Commission. You have to have something, and it may not be that much more work to actually have, close to, the exact language available, as a preliminary kind of draft, because what you’re going to find in changing the Charter is, typically, not very many words are involved, but they count for a lot.

RAY: Say we finish those first public hearings by the end of March. Then, what’s our deadline to come up with the final language that would appear on the ballot?

YUEN: I don’t have that with me, but I can get that to you in a few days.

RAY: I think we’ve got to work backward from that, right?

MARTIN: We had that someplace. What’s his name gave it to us. Elections.

SANTANGELO: Konishi.

IRVINE: Yes, it was August. This is from the County Clerk’s. Al Konishi signed it. It says Charter Commission submit ballot language in final form and digest of Charter Amendments to County Clerk August 1, 2000.

M. HERKES: This is suggested time frame, so he doesn’t have to work too hard.

MARTIN: Well, that, and I think he was making mention about the State.

IRVINE: Sixty days prior to General Election, September 8th, he has to submit Charter questions to the Chief Elections Officer.

RAY: Let’s let Chris confirm that.

MARTIN: Yes, sure.

RAY: But that’s a pretty liberal time frame, if it’s all the way to August, because I think, initially, if I remember way back when, we talked about having it done by June.

MARTIN: June or July, right.

RAY: I’d feel a lot more comfortable if it were done in June.

M. HERKES: I’d caution us to get too comfortable. There’s a lot of work to do. I think we’d better get a little uncomfortable here, and start to move.

MARTIN: Exactly.

IRVINE: I think we are moving, lately.

RAY: We can work longer and harder on those Saturdays, as well.

YOSHIYAMA: I have a concern, John.

RAY: Yes sir.

YOSHIYAMA: In the dates that you’re laying out, I’m getting a little bit nervous because, it seems like, before the hearings we need to get something out for public review, so that when they come to the hearings -

MARTIN: They can already have their suggestions made. Exactly right.

YOSHIYAMA: So, you’ve got to figure at least two weeks, right? Throw it out there for two weeks? And I don’t think we have much room in that scenario for that. It’s very tight.

MARTIN: With what is being said, and I agree, is it possible for some of the things that we’ve, pretty much, had votes on, although not a real democracy type vote where it’s a done deal, but could Chris start writing them up already? I mean, anything that we can start doing now that’s already a done deal, and it would speed along what is being said, because it would look a little bit more professional, not to take your job, of course, Chair.

YUEN: I think, actually, I’ve written up everything that the Commission has definitely voted on, so far, except this six-three Council thing. I wrote up the non-partisan.

SANTANGELO: It seems to me, Chris, with your knowledge, and with the Chair, by happenstance, we’ve worked out a pretty good working thing about the Wednesday, and then the Saturdays. We know that that works real well. To take and just back door it like John said, go from there and just work backwards, and say, if you’re going to take it out, if you’re going to put out a pamphlet, whatever you’re going to do, and give us some suggested dates and time line from back dooring.

MARTIN: Thank you.

M. HERKES: Can I ask you? You’re talking about a pamphlet. Do we have in our budget, the printing for a pamphlet, and the Charter is on a website, and I am wondering if we’re mailing a pamphlet, if we’re distributing one. We haven’t really talked about any kind of distribution of the materials. And two weeks, I agree, is probably what we ought to have it, but it can be two weeks on a website. I mean, there isn’t anybody that can’t get to a library somewhere.

SANTANGELO: Oh, sure there is.

M. HERKES: There probably is, but there’s not that many. But the ones that can’t get to a library are on a computer.

RAY: We did develop that initial mailing list that, I think, we at least want to send out to that - I think it was 140 organizations and groups, and get something out to them with the dates. The same way we did for the public hearings before.

M. HERKES: Yes, okay. Right.

RAY: And I agree with Gary, that that needs to be done at least a couple of weeks, but it will just be a couple of weeks before the first one. It would be six weeks before the last meeting, so you’d have considerably more lead time.

SANTANGELO: I’d like to interject something real quick. I understand Marni’s saying we’re in an electronic age, but it is a transitional thing, and I’d like to see, before the General vote, at least some sort of something in the newspaper, be it an insert, that has everything so that every citizen, through at least the West Hawaii and the Tribune, has access.

RAY: But, Marni’s question is a good one, and we need to look at that final budget in terms of what our leeway is, as far as printing costs. I did have a discussion with the League of Women Voters about a possible participation on something like that.

Can I have a motion to adjourn?

MARTIN: So moved.

SANTANGELO; Second.

RAY: Okay

The discussion ended at 7:37 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Sharron Henry

Secretary-Administrative Assistant