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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION

Transcript of Meeting of May 26, 1999

Hawaii County Liquor Commission Conference Room,

Hilo Lagoon Center

And 4 members of the public in attendance.

RAY: The meeting is called to order at 3:23 p.m. This is the 1999-2000 Charter Commission Special Meeting scheduled for May 26, 1999, 3:00 p.m. at the Hawaii County Liquor Commission Conference Room. Let the record show that in attendance are myself, Mr. Ray, Mr. Higashi, Ms. Herkes, Ms. Irvine, Mr. Martin and Mr. Santangelo. The other members will either be present shortly or are excused.

Minutes. We have no minutes to approve for this meeting.

Financial Status Report. The Financial Status Report shows a balance of $27,465.62 out of the $30,000 appropriated this year.

Communications. There are no communications.

Statements from the Public. There are no Statements from the Public.

Unfinished Business, A, Selection of Commission’s Attorney. We have selected an attorney, Mr. Yuen, who is present here today, and we have successfully negotiated a rate for his contract of $125 an hour in general and $110 for meetings. We will be executing -, anticipating that we’re going to be executing a contract with him for this year for $25,000 to encumber those funds for this year, for this fiscal year, so we’ll be working on that. Congratulations, Mr. Yuen. Thank you for being on board.

Just a note. Chris and I talked a little bit before the meeting this afternoon, and we do need to discuss, at some point, and establish some procedures for as far as, you know, triggering his legal research and opinions and whatever, and I think it would be appropriate if that goes through me, as the Chairman, so in other words, we don’t get, you know, various members saying do this, do that or whatever, so if that’s all right with you. And I already brought something to his attention that I thought would be helpful to us, and that’s this issue of political subdivisions or jurisdictions that I know will come up during our public hearings, so I’ve asked him to, you know, write -. He’s not going to be here, he’s going to be out of town, for the first couple of meetings anyway, so I asked him to write something up so that we can, you know, explain that in terms of State law and County law and what we can and can’t do as far as the County Charter is concerned, so we have that in hand, because that’s something I’m sure that’ll come up and that, you know, I get asked about it, you know, continually. And so we all need to think about if there are, you know, things like that we want to get legal opinions on and address sooner rather than later, okay. Okay. All right.

HIGASHI: So, Mr. Chair?

RAY: Yes, sir.

HIGASHI: So it’s not a free-wheeling thing that people just come up to you and says I want him to research this, I mean, I think it’s unmanageable.

RAY: No, no, no. You know, we’ll discuss it and just make sure that, you know, we agree, right, and then I’ll ask him to, you know, to do the research, right.

HIGASHI: Okay. Okay.

RAY: Yeah. Or he’ll bring things to us that he feels need to be done. Yeah. Okay.

Item B, Selection of Commission Secretary. We have selected a secretary, Sharron Henry, who is also present today, and we’re delighted to have her on board. Hopefully, her contract will be executed very shortly and she’ll be officially on board.

One item we discussed with her that we had never worked out was in regard to communications or contacts with the Commission. You know, originally, we had talked about possibly an office in the County, and then we talked about how the phone system, or have a phone there, call forwarding or whatever, and Ms. Henry has agreed to have call forwarding to her number at home, so she’s going to check that out with the County tomorrow. So, hopefully, you know, we’ll be off and running then.

Additionally, she’s volunteered a file cabinet in her home, a locked file cabinet, which I think makes a lot of sense. I mean, we can -, we’ll certainly -, we’ll have the file cabinet at the County Clerk’s office, as well, but I think having, you know, files at her place of business makes a lot of sense, as well, so that’s -. Okay.

Is there any other unfinished business?

SANTANGELO: Just one point of clarification, John.

RAY: Yeah.

SANTANGELO: So when it comes to issues going to Mr. Yuen, the only things that are going with Mr. Yuen are things that have been discussed here and gone through you?

RAY: Right.

SANTANGELO: Thank you.

RAY: Yes.

HERKES: And is that also true for the secretary, that we should go through you? I told her that was going to be the drill.

RAY: Yeah, I think it should be.

HERKES: I think so, too.

RAY: I don’t think we should have individual members calling her and asking her to do this or that. Yeah.

Okay, one -. I think we can cover this now in Unfinished Business. We talked about the public hearings; that can also be part of the announcements. But, you know, we did distribute this schedule of six public hearings at the last meeting, starting on June 16^th and going on those two Wednesdays in June and the four Wednesdays in July, and we do have all those locations booked as of now. And, additionally, I circulated that initial informational fact sheet that I put together in regard to, you know, the activities of the Charter and just sort of a general notice to get the public interested in the process. And I have gotten some feedback from both Mr. Bess and Ms. Irvine on that, and I think we’ve got it in pretty good shape to go out. And so what we anticipate is in the next week or so we’ll mail that out, we’ll get it out to as many community groups and organizations as we can, publicizing these meetings.

And then I was thinking, as far as the public notice in the newspaper, this is open for discussion, but I was thinking maybe running two sets of ads in both newspapers advertising all the meetings. And do you think to do it at a midway point, or just do the two ahead? Do you have any thoughts on that? In other words, you know, I was thinking we’ll do a public notice that the Charter Commission is going out for public hearings and it’ll have all the dates and, you know, the locations and whatever on them, right, so that’ll run in both newspapers. Additionally, we’ll be sending out notices to a pretty wide spectrum of, you know, community groups, organizations and whatever, and that notice will include, you know, the meeting notice as well as the informational sheet, the informational information in regard to the process.

IRVINE: John, were you talking about a paid advertisement or just the -?

RAY: A paid advertisement is also part of this.

IRVINE: Okay.

RAY: Tell the public -.

IRVINE: Not just the public announcement but -, I mean, I know we pay for those, but were you thinking of something more like a commercial ad, you know what I mean?

RAY: Yeah, a little more like a commercial ad.

IRVINE: Okay.

RAY: Than just a public notice. But, you know, I mean, something along the lines of what they just did for the Mauna Kea, you know, summit, you know, review. Marni.

HERKES: There weren’t any radio announcements for that. I think that’s important. And in something like "Ka‘u Landing," something like -, there’s a weekly thing that I just got. There are things that we have enough lead time to get into print.

RAY: Okay. That’s a good idea. I think we should access all the, you know, the sources we can for -.

HERKES: The "Na Leo" bulletin board, all of those.

RAY: Okay. Maybe -.

HIGASHI: On the radios, we can get -.

HERKES: Yeah, the radio, too.

HIGASHI: Those things as -.

RAY: Public service.

HIGASHI: PSAs.

RAY: Yeah, public service announcements. Okay, yeah. Well, maybe, Sharron, we can start, you know, working on that right away so we can work up a list. And I think, Marni, we’ve got pretty good access to what all those are, right?

HERKES: Uh huh.

RAY: Yeah. So we can get all that information out. Okay. So, did we formally vote on this public hearing schedule and -?

HERKES: So moved.

HIGASHI: Second.

RAY: Okay. All in favor?

COMMISSIONERS: Aye.

RAY: Discussion? Okay.

HERKES: Yes, we have.

RAY: Okay. Okay. Other, none.

New Business, Departmental Reviews. We have Mr. Wurdeman here, Corporation Counsel, and we circulated his comments at the last meeting, so Mr. Wurdeman.

WURDEMAN: Thank you. My comments were a combination of matters of some substance and things that are just sort of tweaking the wording. So in the interest of saving time, I’ll try and limit my remarks to those that I feel are significant.

Also, I -, well, although I did go through the Charter, I intentionally stayed out of the Chapter 10, I believe it is, the financial and budget section, because I deferred to the Finance Department for that one.

So, the first one I have is this Mandatory Program Review. Those of you who have been on the Council know that this comes up often, and the requirement that is presently in the Charter, that every program, which is not defined, be reviewed at least every four years, is a very ambitious requirement and would probably require a staff of 20 CPAs to do it correctly. As I say in my remarks, I talked to the Budget -, the head of the Budget Division, and he claims that from a budgetary perspective, there’s about 200 programs in the County, which a little simple math would lead us to conclude that they’d have to do a program review about every week to keep up.

RAY: Excuse me a second. That’s -, just so you know, that’s Article 3-16 in the Charter. So if you’d refer to that, just in case -.

WURDEMAN: Okay.

RAY: The people want to -.

WURDEMAN: So my recommendation is that this be looked at and relaxed in some way so that it be made realistic.

RAY: Do we -, if you have any questions about that, you know, as we go, Mr. Santangelo.

SANTANGELO: Mr. Wurdeman, in your best estimation, what was the spirit of that being in the Charter in the first place, do you have any idea?

WURDEMAN: Well, I think it dates back to the, to the PPBS is it, system of budgeting, where the last element is the feedback, which is, theoretically, a very wonderful thing. You plan, you program, you budget, and then review, so it’s supposed to go around in a circle and it comes back and everything works, that you evaluate your programs, you implement your programs and then you evaluate them. But in the right organization, I guess, it would be a wonderful thing, but I really don’t think we have the resources to do it as it should be done. And it’s constantly brought up to us that we’re not doing it as it should be done and so it should most likely be relaxed.

RAY: Ms. Herkes.

HERKES: The last sentence says the Council shall adopt procedures and details to implement this section. I don’t know whether the Council has ever done that. Have they ever done that?

WURDEMAN: They put in their rules a statement that the -, you guys can probably correct me on this, the approval of the budget shall constitute the program review.

HERKES: Then it’s being done.

WURDEMAN: Well, if you consider that -.

HERKES: If the Council -.

WURDEMAN: It’s very -.

HERKES: Considers that -.

WURDEMAN: It’s very -, it’s been disputed very hotly.

HERKES: I’ll bet.

WURDEMAN: As to whether that is sufficient, and in my own mind, I doubt that it is.

RAY: Okay.

IRVINE: You know, I -.

RAY: Ms. Irvine.

IRVINE: Yes, thank you. Everything that I’ve read so far in model county charters or the Government Finance Officers Association recommend that some kind of performance measures are in place for county programs or just general organization. It seems to me that you’re kind of throwing out the baby with the bath water to say, well, we don’t need program review when they could set up, very easily, performance measures that are meaningful. I mean, for example, you know, to get things running more smoothly. For example, at Wastewater, where they are apparently billing people for $3.00 fees for dumping, which is the most cost-ineffective thing I’ve ever heard of in my life because, as we all know, it costs way more than $3.00 to send a bill out. So I can’t see throwing out everything, although maybe defining program would help or -.

WURDEMAN: Yeah. Well, the Council has inherently an oversight function, and it should be allowed to exercise that, and it should be allowed to -, I suggest, to initiate program reviews should be within its authority, but to require that every program be reviewed, and what the consequences of not reviewing them are -.

The one that always comes up is the marijuana overflights, and every time there’s an agenda item involving the marijuana overflights, the advocates for marijuana come to the Council in great numbers and scream about there’s no program review. Now, I’ve thought at some length about how you would evaluate the success of the marijuana overflight program, you know, and I don’t know -, I haven’t come to any quick conclusion. I mean, how do you measure it? By the number of plants they pull up or the availability of the product on the street or -, I don’t know.

IRVINE: Any one of those could be used as a parameter, plus the, you know, the social value, say, of not having people stoned on the streets or something like that. I mean, they can take in things other than money. But I bet it would either be financially a good idea or not, and I don’t know which way it would go.

RAY: Ms. Herkes.

HERKES: I think those measurement standards are not something for us to set up but they’re something that we can certainly endorse being set up. And it says once every four years. For 200 programs, that would be 50 a year.

WURDEMAN: Yeah, weekly, roughly.

HERKES: That’s about -, that’s about four a month. And I think that in the interest of budget and time, that there’s probably -, of those 200 programs, number one, that are not necessary, which is what we’re after, not run efficiently, which is another goal that would be a program review, and could be run differently, could be run more efficiently or could even be run by other entities besides the County, which is a touchy subject but one that is not out of the bounds of conversation. And I think where we’re looking for mandatory program review, you’re correct, it may not be something that’s appropriate for the Charter. It may not be something that has to be mandated by the Charter. It should be something that the voters tell the Council that they want done.

WURDEMAN: Well, I’m not saying it’s not a good idea. I’m saying that if you’re going to do it -.

HERKES: Do it.

WURDEMAN: You’re going to have to have some qualified professional people who are experienced in these techniques, and they’re going to have to go out and do an objective evaluation of all these programs and start cranking out these reviews. And we, presently, and to my knowledge, ever have we had that kind of cadre of people who can devote their full time to that kind of thing, program.

HERKES: You can’t review something that you don’t have an evaluation system set up for. If you don’t have an outcome system and a measurement system set up, you can’t review it. That’s the problem with the marijuana program. Nobody’s ever set up the outcomes that they wanted to accomplish. So that gives an opportunity for a lot of nit-picking, a lot of criticism, and that is the problem with a lot of programs is that the outcomes have never been identified so there’s no way to measure the success.

RAY: Okay. Well, I don’t think we need to go any further with this -.

HERKES: Okay.

RAY: Discussion today. I think we need to have other folks here and, you know, certainly people from the Legislative Auditor’s office to, you know, explain, you know, give us their viewpoint who, you know, they are presently charged with this and they are presently charged with an evaluation of the marijuana program, as we speak, right, so, you know, we can have them in and get their view point on that. Ms. Irvine.

IRVINE: Am I led to believe that Legislative Auditor is the one that’s supposed to be doing these program audits at this time, is that -?

WURDEMAN: I believe they’ve been tasked, yes.

IRVINE: Okay.

HERKES: Well, it’s under their section, legislative section.

RAY: Okay. Okay, Mr. Wurdeman.

WURDEMAN: Okay, number two is just basically a semantic matter.

Number three, Special Council, this may not be totally clear.

RAY: This is Article 5-2.5.

WURDEMAN: Yeah, right. The Charter presently requires that when my office hires special Counsel that we get the two-thirds approval of the Council, and I think this is perfectly appropriate when we go out to hire someone to do the things we normally do. However, there are occasions where we are obligated by either collective bargaining agreement or by law to provide individual counsel for employees who get into some kind of a difficulty. And although it has not happened yet, I could foresee a situation where the Police Commission is given the authority to direct that counsel be retained for a police officer, and I could see the possibility that they would so direct, we would go to the Council, the Council would turn us down, and there would be an impasse that would lead to crisis.

So, my recommendation is that the present language be retained for the normal situation where Counsel is hired to represent the County for doing County business, but that those instances where we’re required to hire counsel to represent individual employees be exempted from this requirement.

RAY: Okay. Any questions on that?

IRVINE: Do County Council -, not County Councils but Corporation Counsels usually represent just the County or do they also represent individuals the way -?

WURDEMAN: It’s -, well -.

IRVINE: We do here?

WURDEMAN: You take -. It depends. You take the normal situation, a police officer gets in some kind of a fight, somebody gets hurt. We could represent both the County and the officer, but it has been determined by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel of the Supreme Court that if we do so, the County has to agree to fully indemnify the officer for all damages, including punitive damages, that might result.

Now, normally, counties or cities are not liable for punitive damages which are in excess of other kinds of damages and are designed to penalize the wrongdoer. The conflict exists when if you got one attorney representing both the County and the officer, conceivably, that attorney could argue to the jury, well, you know, if you think it was really bad conduct, I agree with you, it was horrible. You know, this person had his skull fractured, and you should punish the officer by assigning punitive damages and not special or general damages, which would be you’re arguing against your own client. So the determination was made that because of that potential, that unless the County agrees to fully indemnify the officer, we got to have both -, normally, the Corp. Counsel represents the County and an outside person representing the officer. Now, we have, in the past, fully indemnified officers when we fully believe that they were within the scope of their duties, and our preliminary investigation leads us to believe that there was -, that there is a small likelihood of punitive damages, and we go to the Council and they approve that, and we represent both.

But, however, when we do have a situation -, if we had a Rodney King situation in this County, I don’t think we would want to agree to fully indemnify all the officers. I think we would argue that they had stepped outside their -, the bounds of their duties and that the taxpayers should not be punished for what they did, and that Rodney King should be compensated by punitive damages, which would create the conflict, which means you have to have separate counsel.

IRVINE: Would it be clearer if the Corporation Counsel’s office just took care of the County and we mandated private counsel -?

WURDEMAN: It would be clear, but it would be more expensive.

IRVINE: Okay.

RAY: Any other questions? Okay. Mr. Wurdeman.

WURDEMAN: Okay, the Safety Coordinator, 5-6.2, if you look at the Charter as it reads today, the Safety Coordinator has a wide scope of duties, including investigation of all accidents involving anything to do with the County. But, historically, the Safety Coordinator’s office has been very small and, once again, it’s a question of do we want to create a bureaucracy to do these nice-to-do things where there’s been no bureaucracy in the past? So, my recommendation is that the functions of the Safety Coordinator be reassigned to other departments or that somehow that department be geared up to be -, to fully carry out its duties.

RAY: Any questions on that?

WURDEMAN: You guys have gotten together, haven’t you? We’ve had that suggestion before.

RAY: Well, I think this -, what this -. Let’s see, we’ve had the suggestion to make that position a Civil Service position, right?

HERKES: And Parks and Rec, Julie had a suggestion.

IRVINE: Yeah, Parks and Rec said put it under Corporation Counsel’s office.

RAY: And to put it under Corporation Counsel.

WURDEMAN: Well, I’m not saying that. The Workmen’s Comp function, which is a big one.

RAY Right.

IRVINE: Which she talked about.

HERKES: Yeah.

WURDEMAN: In most -, right now, although it’s assigned in the Charter to the Safety Coordinator, my department is doing a lot of it. But in the other counties, to the best of my knowledge, it comes under the Civil Service Department.

HERKES: Workmen’s Comp?

WURDEMAN: They handle that. Because it fits in with the whole idea of safety on the job and training and people get hurt, and you pay for it, but then you try and prevent so they don’t get hurt; it all kind of fits together.

HERKES: I agree.

RAY: And I’m not sure if they’re going to be here, but, you know, we also have -.

HERKES: There’s three people outside.

RAY: Pardon?

HERKES: There are three people outside.

RAY: Okay. Well, I guess we are, so we’ll deal with them, because we have some comments in regard to this position from the -.

HIGASHI: What about -?

RAY: Departments.

HIGASHI: Privatizing a lot of those Safety Coordinator’s position?

WURDEMAN: Well, that’s possible, but I don’t think that’s -.

HIGASHI: I mean workers’ comp is a whole new game now, you know.

BESS: Do you see a problem with the Safety Coordinator being appointed by the Mayor in terms of expertise?

WURDEMAN: No. I would think -.

BESS: I’m not talking about the current one.

WURDEMAN: I would think that, you know -. There’s certainly no guarantee that because someone’s given Civil Service status they’re going to have expertise. I mean, you’ve been in government; you know how that works.

BESS: I’m just -, as worded here, it is not a Civil Service position, right?

WURDEMAN: It’s not, and -.

BESS: And so -.

WURDEMAN: I think we have to -, I mean, I would -.

BESS: I’m sorry, I missed the first part of it.

WURDEMAN: My personal view is that, you know, when we elect a Mayor that -, or whoever the appointing authority is, that we should rely upon them to pick a qualified person.

RAY: Ms. Herkes.

HERKES: Do we -? That bothers me; you can say Marni. Do we need this in the Charter, except for the workers comp? If we moved review process and maintain workers’ comp to Civil Service, do we need Safety Coordinator in the Charter?

WURDEMAN: You don’t need it, no.

HERKES: I mean because I would -.

WURDEMAN: But, you know, if someone was -, and there is a difficulty, too, because, you know, when the wrote the Charter, Chris back here probably knows better than I do, I get the impression that they had -, the vision was that the Safety Coordinator would be kind of a, kind of a -.

HERKES: A Harry Kim.

WURDEMAN: Sort of a gestapo kind -, you know, if somebody gets hurt.

HERKES: So I said. A Harry Kim

WURDEMAN: Somebody gets hurt, and they run out there and they investigate.

HERKES: Okay.

WURDEMAN: And they find that there’s some kind of negligence or unsafe condition, and they just, you know, dictate, fix it, and the problem goes away. But, in practice, it hasn’t worked like that because the Safety Coordinator hasn’t had the muscle to take on, you know, the Chief Engineer, and the Parks Director, and whoever else about problems.

HERKES: And, you know, actually, the Mayor is the one that takes a lot. The Mayor’s the one that’s supposed to direct them. The direction comes from the top down, that middle man, or the Managing Director. We could just move this whole section under Managing Director and solve it, or we could just take it out except for the workers’ comp. I think that part needs to be Civil Service.

RAY: Okay. Well, I think we’ll be having, certainly be having more discussion on this.

WURDEMAN: Okay, 7-2.2(d), the Police Commission. Presently, the Police Commission takes complaints from citizens and they have a private investigator who goes out and tries to find out what happened, reports back to the Commission. The Commission votes and either sustains, that’s the word they use, or does not sustain the complaint. Then the matter is referred over to the Department, and nothing happens or we don’t even find out what happens. Nobody knows what happens. The citizen whose complaint is sustained, I think is given a false expectation that something’s being done. And in this era of collective bargaining and union grievances and all that sort of thing, there’s no guarantee that anything will be done, and I think it’s misleading to the people. So I would -, my recommendation is that that function be removed from the Police Commission.

RAY: Okay.

WURDEMAN: This Water stuff’s all pretty much just semantics again.

Articles XI and XII, Initiative, Referendum and Recall. There are some distinctions, as is also pointed out in the item below, 11-2(c), there are some distinctions between the two as to how to qualify. They are not big distinctions, but there are some differences. And as far as getting signatures and getting on the ballot, I would recommend there be one unified procedure for all these things to cut down on confusion.

RAY: I think that’s something really worth looking at (indiscernible). I’m sure there’s a rationale for all these different, you know, percentages and whatever, different cases, but it sure is confusing to read.

WURDEMAN: And a particular example I point out is this business about blank, spoiled ballots. Well, you count them, you come to your 15%; or you don’t count them. And qualified voter is defined in one of the articles but not in the other. Things like that.

HERKES: Can I ask the -?

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: Our attorney that we’ve hired, how the -, to research how this conflicts with State law, because I think some of this we don’t get to choose. So I think it’s in the State law what -, how you do blank votes and how you identify yourself and, I mean -. When I work in the polling place, all that stuff comes from the State, it doesn’t come from County, so I’m confused as to what we can change and what we can’t change and why it’s in the Charter. Thank you.

YUEN: I can -.

HERKES: Okay.

YUEN: Look at that, yeah.

BESS: Well, Mr. Wurdeman is here. Perhaps you have researched that area. Not that Chris wouldn’t go ahead and research. Her question, her legal question.

WURDEMAN: Why is it in the Charter? I don’t know why it’s in the Charter.

BESS: Or the extent of the conflict with State law, if any.

YUEN: Just speaking generally though, most of the -, most of the stuff that’s in the Charter is within the County’s right to control. For example, whether you count blank ballots or not on a Charter amendment or an initiative, the Charter -. No, I’m sorry. For Charter amendment, there is a State law that talks about when you count blank votes for a Charter amendment, but for an initiative or a referendum, the Charter can specify whether you count the blanks in reaching 50 percent plus one or not. Then there are State laws that cover the State law things. The things like how do you get to be a registered voter, where you vote, those sorts of things are in State law.

The procedures that Richard is talking about, and I don’t off of the top of my head, know or remember why things were set up this way, but things like do you require 15 percent signatures, or if you want to make it tougher, you go to 30 percent signatures. The Charter has the -, that’s not spelled out in State law at all; that’s completely up to the Charter to tell you how the County wants to vote on its own initiatives and referenda.

WURDEMAN: Yeah, I would agree with that. But what I was -, like in particular, 15 percent of the number of persons who voted in the County for the office of Mayor, that’s the present requirement if you want to get something on the ballot. So what’s voting for the office of Mayor, you know, is it putting -? It should be defined. I mean, you can define it anyway you want, but it’s presently not defined.

HERKES: Registered to voted or voted.

WURDEMAN: Yeah.

YUEN: Well, this all -, just to jump in here, this all got a little bit trickier about, I guess it was a year and a half ago with the State Supreme Court had the voting on the -, on whether we were going to have a ConCon. And at that -, I think before the voting was actually done, the State Attorney General’s Office came out with an opinion and said blank ballots weren’t counted in reaching 50 percent. Then it went to the State Supreme Court, and they said that you did count the blank ballots based on the language there which, I think said something 50 percent of votes cast was what was necessary. And they said, well, if you get in there, and you leave it blank, but you stick the ballot in the box, well, that’s a vote cast. And the Charter, just to compare that, I think the Charter or saying 50 percent of a referendum, 50 percent -, I think it says 50 percent of the people voting on the measure, which is a -.

WURDEMAN: Yeah.

YUEN: Little different. And there’s an older Hawaii case that says that’s 50 percent of the people who actually, actually checked something off.

WURDEMAN: Yeah -.

YUEN: They don’t count blanks.

WURDEMAN: The older case went the opposite direction of the ConCon case, which makes one wonder if politics got involved, but I wouldn’t want to say that.

YUEN: But the wording is -, the wording of the two was a little bit different, that went to the -. So, you know, I think I knew what this meant, this 15 percent meant when we had it ten years ago, but in the light of what the Supreme Court said, you know, a year and a half ago, I might want to look at it again and see if it’s become something that nobody knows the answer to now and maybe it needs to be straightened up.

WURDEMAN: Yeah, the whole question when we have one of these drives, and there’s always controversy, and I’ve seen it here, I’ve seen it in Honolulu, as to who, you know -. You got these thousands of signatures, and did they know? Was it explained to them what they were signing? How can that be assured? I don’t know the answer, but it’s a continuing problem.

The next one, it seems like a very small thing, but it’s something that Mike Matsukawa pounced on. On Boards and Commissions, 13-4.

HIGASHI: Wait a minute. Before you move on. On the initiative referendum. In voting, on the last -, on Page 24, designate spaces to mark the ballot for or against. Is that a problem? I mean, it seems to me it was a problem among the voters last time. I mean, is there any way of -? You know, when you write the ballot, and you got to vote for or against.

WURDEMAN: People argue that it’s a problem because like the last time we had a negative kind of proposition where they were going to prohibit something -.

HIGASHI: Yeah, yeah. You were for something, you were against.

WURDEMAN: So you’re voting for means to prohibit it. I don’t know. Arguably, it’s a problem. I don’t know how you get around it. I think the way that’s worded is the last election, the irradiation people and the clerk and myself and the agriculture people all pretty much agreed that it said what it said, and it didn’t cause a great controversy.

HIGASHI: It seems like a lot of people who had written letters to the editor claimed it was a problem. It was a problem in the Hapuna one.

WURDEMAN: Well, maybe not after the election’s over it may be a problem, but I distinctly remember discussing this with Mrs. Cohen at the time, and she agreed it said what it said and that’s how we put it on the ballot.

HIGASHI: Maybe it’s something that we need to look at.

SANTANGELO: Yeah, one of the things I just caution about, I don’t know if it was in a discussion with Chris or at one point, but one of the wisdoms of that is making sure that we know what the ground rules are going in, you know, in every case because if you’re not real clear, then it’s always going to be up to an argument. And I think the way it’s stated, is it’s going to be done this way, whoever initiates it. And, in a way, if you -, for me, as I got into it a little bit more, it seemed okay. It seems fair. Because that way you don’t have all this argument every damned time. If you’re going to go out and get a petition, if you’re going to do an initiative, before you even start your initiative drive, you’ve got an idea what you’re -, what the ground rules are. And it needs to be something like that, you know, so it goes the other way or it goes -, you know, it’s going to be no or it’s going to be yes, but whoever initiates it is the one that’s interested in it and knows what the rules are going in. And that part of it I -, there was, I felt, some wisdom in it and it appealed to me. Thank you.

HERKES: So if you want, if you want -.

HIGASHI: Moving on. I think it’s something that I would want to explore.

HERKES: Yeah, because I -.

HIGASHI: A little bit more.

HERKES: If you wanted to vote against it, if you’re in favor of it, then you rank the petition that way.

HIGASHI: Well, the Hapuna Beach initiative was just as confusing.

IRVINE: It was the same way.

HERKES: Yeah.

IRVINE: And it’s every time that you’re voting for a change that it becomes a problem. On the other hand, it does say down here that there’s supposed to be an objective summary of the substance of the measure. I could have written two sentences that would have made it very clear how you were voting if that was what they wanted on the last ballot.

WURDEMAN: What happened is -.

IRVINE: You’d say you’re voting for a ban on an irradiator. You are voting against a ban on an irradiator. And that would have made it very clear to people. They didn’t have that.

WURDEMAN: In the last election, there was an objective summary prepared, mostly by me but with some other people’s input, and it was sent up to Honolulu to be included on the ballot and the elections people in Honolulu said no, there’s no provision in State law for any such thing, and they wouldn’t put it on the ballot.

HERKES: That’s the confusing part.

IRVINE: They had a -, they had little pieces of paper in the voting booth that explained the other ballot issues, you know, it was separate from the ballot but it was in the booth.

WURDEMAN: No, but we tried to comply with this, and they wouldn’t let us.

RAY: Okay.

YUEN: Let me just -, could I jump in for a second and ask Richard something? Do you think -, is that something that the County would be interested in pursuing in the future? Because my read on that is that the State elections people were wrong.

WURDEMAN: Yeah.

YUEN: That the County has a -, you know, it’s a County election, and the County Charter says you get to put a summary on the ballot. And maybe sometime when there’s nothing pending and so there’s no controversy of people being for something or against something, this could be worked out with the elections people.

WURDEMAN: It would probably take legislation.

YUEN: Is that -?

WURDEMAN: I don’t know why they -.

YUEN: Did they get an AG read on that or -?

WURDEMAN: I don’t know if they did or not?

YUEN: I think -, you know what, I think they did and then the AG was not aware of the County Charter, to tell you the truth. I remember hearing, seeing something -.

WURDEMAN: Yeah.

YUEN: Like that.

WURDEMAN: Al Konishi’s the person to ask. He knows -, he had more -.

YUEN: It may have been, you know, it may have been they just made a mistake on the AG level and totally blew it.

RAY: Roland.

HIGASHI: Mr. Wurdeman?

WURDEMAN: Yeah.

HIGASHI: You know when somebody initiates a petition and doesn’t fail to have enough signatures by an election and they seem like they can carry that petition over to the next election, did you have any time line in here?

WURDEMAN: No, it says, in fact, I’m glad you brought that up. I think that’s a -, that’s a -, something that should be addressed.

HIGASHI: Yeah.

YUEN: I think that -, if I’m not mistaken, I think that was a proposal of the Commission ten years ago but didn’t pass.

HIGASHI: Oh, yeah?

YUEN: This was -, it was discussion that you shouldn’t -, somebody should come in, I’m going strictly from memory, which is, you know, it gets worse with time, but the idea was if you would come into the clerk’s office and say that you were going to start circulating a petition; that started your time running. And then you had so much time to get it done. And I think that’s the one that -, one of the three -, two or three proposals that did not pass last time.

WURDEMAN: The other provision that caused a lot of controversy last time was -.

SANTANGELO: Where are -? Could you state when we do talk about this, just like if it’s A, B, or C that you’re referring -?

WURDEMAN: Eleven-four(c)(1). If signers are not given an opportunity to read the full text of the proposed ordinance and so on, and if the full text of the proposed ordinance or ordinance is not contained in or attached to each signature paper, then the signatures aren’t invalid. I don’t know what that means because people when they pass these petitions around don’t attach the full text of the proposed ordinance to each signature paper. I mean they leave them on the counter in a health food store or whatever and people come in and sign them, right? So I really don’t have any constructive suggestions on that regard but it’s something you might ponder over, is how to make that a meaningful provision.

RAY: All right.

WURDEMAN: Okay, this next one, as I said, 13-4, it’s a small matter but Mike Matsukawa pounced on it. It’s when you have a board or a commission, and some people don’t show up, and they have a bare quorum, and they can’t -, this happened in, I believe, the Planning Commission -, they couldn’t get the votes to either approve something or disapprove it, and so they moved to continue it until the next meeting, until they would have more people, and he claimed that was an action and that they couldn’t do that.

So our recommendation is that action be defined as something dispositive of the matter and not just a procedural thing like continuing until the next meeting. Because the requirement is that to take any action, you have to have a majority of the whole membership. So if you have a nine-person commission, and there’s only five people there, one person won’t go along with the other four, they can’t get a majority for anything, and according to Matsukawa, they can’t even continue the matter until they can get more members in, which is kind of absurd.

Thirteen-four(g) -.

RAY: Wait a second.

YOSHIYAMA: Yeah.

RAY: Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: Yeah, I have a question. Don’t we have some provision or provisions now in law that says that if a board or commission does not act within a certain period of time, you know, it’s like an approval?

WURDEMAN: There was a State law passed -, last legislature was it?

YOSHIYAMA: Yeah. Board of Water and Natural Resources or something?

WURDEMAN: Yeah.

YOSHIYAMA: So in that case, if there is no action, no quorum, then there is approval? I don’t know if we have it in the Charter though, you know.

WURDEMAN: No, we don’t.

YOSHIYAMA: Okay.

WURDEMAN: And in some of the Planning Department’s -, I forget what it’s for.

RAY: I think Mr. Yuen has something to add.

YUEN: No, no, he can finish and then I’ll jump in.

WURDEMAN: There’s one -, do you recall what it is, where if they don’t act within so many days, it’s disapproved? Was that SMP?

YUEN: Well, that’s been -, that was changed in the -, I think in ‘96. There are some, there are some zoning permits, some Planning Commission type permits that -, Planning Department permits, if they are not approved in so many days, they are disapproved, and there are some that if they’re not approved in so many days they’re automatically approved.

State legislature in ‘98 passed a law which applied to some kinds of permits, generally business and development related permits, that would -, that the departments were supposed to set rules that would give a maximum time frame for acting on the permit or they would be automatically approved. That only applies to selected kinds of permits.

Some permits operate -, some permits already had a time frame in the law but it didn’t say it was automatically approved. Give you an example, getting a liquor license. There’s a time frame -, the Liquor Commission is supposed to act within so many days of your application or it becomes -. Before ‘98 it didn’t say automatic approved, it didn’t say what happened, it just said that they were supposed to act on it within, you know, 90 days or something. And now because of the automatic approval, then that’s what happens. If they don’t act on it within so many days, it becomes automatically approved. There isn’t anything that applies to all kinds of actions that says what happens if they don’t -, if there’s nothing taken within a set period of time.

WURDEMAN: The State law is pretty broad , but then it has some major exceptions such as any program that’s federally mandated or federally something else, and that’s how SMPs were determined by the Attorney General not to be -, to come under that law.

RAY: Okay.

WURDEMAN: And I was told the governor opposes that law, promised people he was going to get it taken off the books, but I don’t know.

RAY: Okay.

WURDEMAN: Nothing happened this legislature. Okay, this 13-18 on claims, it’s been in here a long time; it’s unenforceable. The Supreme Court has ruled that we cannot require someone to file a claim before they sue us, so it should be deleted.

Section 13-20, we have some inconsistencies between our open meetings requirements and those of the State Sunshine Law. I think that we should just bring ours into compliance with the State law and say so and let it go at that.

Thirteen-twenty-eight, the Salary Commission. The Salary Commission presently determines the salaries of elected officials. The collective bargaining process determines the salaries of the bulk of the employees. Excluded employees get to have their salaries determine -, or more or less automatically raised pursuant to the collective bargaining agreement, Unit 13. There’s a few of us, such as myself and my deputies, that are left out of this process, and we would like to see the Salary Commission have jurisdiction over those of us who are not covered by any other process.

There’s a couple other small matters, Urban Renewal, the State -, we ran into this problem. State law presently requires the County Charter provide for the abolition and transfer of the power of the Redevelopment Agencies. There’s nothing in our Charter about it, and when the Council tried to abolish our Redevelopment Agency by resolution, we had to tell them that they didn’t have the authority to do so, and it was kind of embarrassing for everyone. So some provisions should be included.

Finally this question of Legal Notice. Several places in the Charter, I think six or seven when I counted, talk about putting notice in two newspapers of general circulation in the County. The State -, last year’s legislature, passed what they call Act II, which said that all notice would be as determined through a process developed by the State Comptroller. The State Comptroller went out to bid. The consortium in which the Tribune-Herald, the Advertiser, Star Bulletin, and West Hawaii Today were involved, the guy got lost and came in four minutes late; the bid was not opened, and we have this Mid-Week publication that you see in 7-11s and around, there’s public notice in it.

We took the position that we were going to follow our Charter and continue to advertise in two newspapers of general circulation in the County. The State went to war with us over that. And this year’s legislature passed a bill, which has not yet been signed by the governor but probably will, that says irrespective of any Charter, ordinance, statute, whatever, we must provide notice in accordance with State law. So my recommendation is that these -, where these things are found, these two newspapers of general circulation, that they be taken out and some statement be made that notice will be provided as required by law.

RAY: Okay.

WURDEMAN: I guess that’s all.

RAY: Okay. Thank you, Richard. Any other questions?

IRVINE: Unfortunately, I do have a couple of other questions. You went past that business about the Police Commission being charged with investigations. Is that something that’s just no longer of any use because of the fact that there will be litigation one way or another?

WURDEMAN: Well, that’s -.

IRVINE: And maybe we should just have -.

WURDEMAN: Just one consideration and the -. Presently, they have a private firm that goes out and investigates and reports, and that report falls into the hands of the people that sue us. But that’s not the main consideration. The main consideration is that they go through great effort and expense to investigate these cases and they -, most of them are not sustainable. But occasionally they sustain one, where they find that the officer committed some improper act. And because their finding is entirely independent of the collective bargaining process and of the grievance process, the Department, what they do, may or may not reflect -. They may do, they may choose to do nothing, they may do something. The citizen never really knows. The citizen is led to believe by the fact that he or she went through this process and got a favorable ruling from a Commission that I’ve been vindicated, but they’re not. So I think it, in this area of grievances and -. It probably, at one time, was a very useful provision, but I think it’s outlived its usefulness.

IRVINE: So you’d leave nothing in its place?

WURDEMAN: Take away that function.

IRVINE: Of the Police Commission?

WURDEMAN: They have some other functions, but I’d take -.

IRVINE: Oh.

WURDEMAN: That one away.

IRVINE: Right. That function and the -, but you’d leave no -. I mean then who would be investigating these problems?

WURDEMAN: Well, the Police Department has an Internal Affairs Unit, and they, they’re supposed to do that.

IRVINE: Okay.

WURDEMAN: I guess I overlooked the biggest one, which is the water and the sewer.

HIGASHI: Saving that for last.

WURDEMAN: Yeah. I know the Water Department’s going to oppose this strongly, but I firmly believe that it’s a good idea, and I’ll tell you why. And the problem is -, there’s three reasons why it’s a good idea. One, we have a hell of a time collecting sewer bills because people -, con-wise people feel no need to pay them because they don’t have the threat of having their water cut off.

Two, federal requirements, conditions on federal aid require that the sewer fund be maintained or be self-sustaining. The rates are presently set by the Council. For political reasons, the Council is not always willing to raise the sewer rates up to the point where the system will be self-sustaining, so they always lag. Hopefully, if it was put under the Water Commission, they’d be less subject to outside pressure to keep the rates at a low level.

And thirdly, the point that was brought out by the Mayor when he was here a couple weeks ago, that sometime in the future, we’re going to have to really look seriously at using wastewater as a water resource, and it would make sense to have, to have the whole cycle under one authority.

RAY: Okay. John.

SANTANGELO: Mr. Wurdeman, in dealing with that particular issue, it seems that in most cases, and this should and probably could be verified, that when you deal with wastewater and you deal with solid waste, you’re dealing with an environmental issue and, generally, these are under one roof, and very seldom, if ever, are they tied where you take wastewater and tie it to water. And it seems to me if we, at some point, you know, we may need to do that, you know, have those two together. Are we, if we throw these two together now, what’s the real purpose of that? Is that a way of collecting bills, or is there -?

WURDEMAN: That’s one purpose.

SANTANGELO: That’s one purpose. Yeah.

WURDEMAN: Getting rate setting out of the political arena because, as I said, sewer rates have -. What are we paying now, $21.00?

IRVINE: Twenty-five dollars a month.

WURDEMAN: Twenty-five? The real cost is 30-something. And as the people over in Kona, who have the private sewer system continuously remind us. And, you know, these things come before the Council, and you’ve been there, there’s a lot -.

SANTANGELO: No, I agree. As far as the rate goes, I agree.

WURDEMAN: There’s a lot of opposition, and people don’t want to pay $26.00 instead of $25.00.

SANTANGELO: That’s a big issue, yeah.

WURDEMAN: Yeah.

SANTANGELO: And we don’t do what’s right a lot of times because that -. But more important, I was just saying -. Okay, I asked my question. Thank you.

RAY: Okay. Any other questions on this? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wurdeman.

WURDEMAN: Okay. Thank you.

RAY: Mr. Ben. Mr. Ben is here, the Director of Personnel for the Department of Civil Service. Michael, thanks for coming.

BEN: May I offer, too, that I have two Civil Service Commissioners also attending, Mr. Bill Thibadeau and Mr. Rick Robinson from Kona.

RAY: Okay. And I guess I’m here to talk about the proposal that I had submitted earlier. Basically, the proposal is to provide for transferring the functions of the Safety Coordinator’s Office under my department, the Department of Civil Service. Primarily, it is a Human Resource function, and it is -, and the functions of the office, itself, is not conducive to being an appointed type position where it’s responsible for major changes in direction -, you know, changes in directions that occur whenever there is a new election. And I think, I believe that’s the basic premise for the proposal.

RAY: And as far as, you know, right -, as far as the staffing demands, do you have any comment on that in terms of, you know, whether the present, you know, manpower is adequate to deal with this? That’s certain been brought up as an issue that it’s, you know, it’s pretty overwhelming for Mr. Sasan.

BEN: I think the -, it’s hard to comment on that without really looking into the nature of the operations. I, personally, feel that, you know, the workers’ comp unit has not been as efficient and effective as it could be, and that’s primarily due to the changes that keeps occurring within the workers’ comp position itself. There’s been a retirement. We hired someone else; that person left. There was another hire, and that person left. And it’s just been -, the last six years, it’s been in turmoil.

RAY: Well, I’m thinking more of the overall issue of safety in the County and, you know, I’ve had talks with, you know, Mr. Sasan. You know, he points out to me that, you know, he really doesn’t have the ability to get things enforced in some of the other departments. He goes over and, you know, he’s basically -, kind of his hands are tied. He’s given up. And they, basically, just don’t pay any attention to him and, you know, whether it’s Parks and Rec or Public Works or whatever. So he makes his recommendations, and then they just more or less do what they want. So from a safety standpoint, you know -.

BEN: Again, from the safety standpoint, the problems being referred to by Mr. Sasan, I don’t think is one that’s related to staffing and the inability to get things done because of staffing. I think, I think it’s the direction that’s being received from topside.

RAY: Right.

BEN: I mean, if you don’t have any authority -. If you got responsibility but no authority, you know, nothing ever gets done and I think, unfortunately, that’s the situation we’re -.

RAY: Right.

BEN: We’re in right now. But part of the interest, too, was to start implementing and developing a safety program which would, in fact, incorporate safety training. There is one position in the office right now under Mr. Sasan, who’s also responsible for safety training, and quite frankly, I don’t know what is going on with the safety program. Early on, with previous directors, we were involved extensively. There were safety committees set up, and we would attend meetings and get safety reports and know what the various departments were doing. But then, again, that was under a different leadership so -.

So, again, getting back to the staffing question, I think right now the staffing is adequate. It’s a matter of how you conduct business.

RAY: Okay. Other questions? Yes.

IRVINE: I guess I was wondering what the staffing is right now and whether -, it’s beginning to sound like there’s workmens’ comp and then there’s safety issues that are all under this department. Is that your impression or -?

BEN: Yes, the appointed position is called the Safety Coordinator, and under the Safety Coordinator there is a Driver -, Driver Safety and Improvement position, there is a Workers’ Comp professional position, and under -, in that Workers’ Comp unit, I believe there’s two or three clerical positions.

HIGASHI: Mr. Ben, if that position is strictly just eliminated, administratively, could those responsibilities be just absorbed by you?

BEN: No. You’re talking about the head position or all the positions?

HIGASHI: No, no, the function, the function of employee safety, employees -, getting employees back to work. I mean workers’ comp is a big function of this office, and workers’ comp is a lot more than having two clerks and then somebody trying to teach people how to drive trucks.

BEN: Without the staff moving over, my department would not be able to -.

HIGASHI: No, no, no.

BEN: Assume the function.

HIGASHI: I’m not -, I’m saying that the Charter is silent, yeah. Would that be a administrative thing that your department could just absorb?

BEN: No.

HIGASHI: Why is that?

BEN: Well, the Charter is silent with respect to the positions, but the Charter isn’t silent with respect to the functions. There is reference to workers’ comp under the duties and responsibilities of the Safety Coordinator.

HIGASHI: So if the Charter spells that the workers’ comp responsibility -. Employee safety, look at is as training employees not to get hurt is more important than trying to treat them to get back to work, but is that something that your department is capable of if given the employees? Is that what you’re saying?

BEN: Normally, yes, but I have not been -, I have a vacant position which happens to be my trainer, and I’ve not been allowed to fill it for the last six years. So, again, you know, training function does belong under my department, but we just haven’t been able to operate. So, again, it’s sort of like giving me responsibility with no authority, you know.

RAY: Okay. Marni, do you have a question?

HERKES: If we put review process and maintain workers’ compensation records for the County under Civil Service, and we probably, from what I’m hearing, would insert a line about training, you already have a trainer position available, and eliminated the Safety Coordinator position entirely from the Charter, which would allow the Mayor to appoint it if it wanted to, but it would not be in the Charter, what ramifications do you think that would have for the County workers?

BEN: I think the move would be a good one because, you know, being under -, it would be, in a long term, ongoing program where we would be able to set our goals long term wise, and we can set the policies and procedures that will not change, you know, with every administration. I think it would definitely benefit the County.

HERKES: Okay. Thank you.

RAY: Okay. Other questions?

IRVINE: We have had other people testifying about this, and it was suggested that maybe the workmens’ comp part go under Corp. Counsel’s office because they have to deal with that for the Department of Labor. Is that a reasonable idea?

BEN: I don’t think so, because as somebody pointed out here, workers’ comp is not just about appeals and appearing before the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board. It’s about a program -, it’s about providing for a safety program, it’s about providing for opportunities to get our employees back to work, you know, and get them, get them healed and back to work and being productive. It’s -, the -, I think the ideas about transferring it to the Corp. Counsel office is basically looking at only the appeal aspect of the program.

IRVINE: Okay. And OSHA has something to do with this office? I mean, are their rules being enforced by our Safety Coordinator?

BEN: The Safety Coordinator, as was mentioned, I think he’s trying to educate our departments for the various OSHA rules that applies, and he’s pointed out violations, but he’s being stymied right now as to compliance by the departments.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: That brings up something else. As a department head, he’s -, as a department head, are you not responsible for following OSHA rules and keeping up on them on your own? Is it the Safety Coordinator that trains you?

BEN: Yes. Right now, the Safety Coordinator is, like I say, educates the department heads about the various rules and, yes, the department head must be in compliance with the OSHA rules. I think, with no due respect to -, undue respect to Mr. Sasan, it’s, you know, just giving us the rules and saying this is it doesn’t tell me much about the rules.

HERKES: Most of us in business have lawyers that do better. Maybe that’s where the Corp. Counsel comes in.

RAY: Roland, did you have a question?

HIGASHI: No.

RAY: All right. Just so you know, we just had Mr. Wurdeman here and, in writing, he submitted to us these comments in regard to the Safety Coordinator. Presently, the Charter imposes upon the Safety Coordinator wide responsibilities, including the investigation of all accidents involving County personnel, vehicles, and facilities, and the inspection of all County equipment, buildings, and facilities. These responsibilities are useful, and should be performed, but to do -, to do properly so, the Safety Coordinator’s office would have to be staffed far beyond the present level. The Safety Coordinator should either be abolished, and the functions be assigned to other departments, or be made a fully empowered risk manager with the authority to carry out his or her duties.

We just went through that comment and discussion, and we’ve received similar, you know, testimony in regard to, you know, we should look at this and do something with it, yeah.

HIGASHI: Mr. Ben, a hypothetical question. If this responsibility was placed under your department, and understanding workers’ comp, you know, is a vast area that -, it’s an expensive area for the County, do you think outsourcing a lot of these specialties would be a wise thing to do for the claims, you know, you get investigations or you get workers’ comp, you get employee fraud. I think it’s highly skilled trained people are in the field today. To get a Civil Service person to do that, I think would take a lot, a long time for him to really learn the ins and outs. Would you be favorable in terms of outsourcing some of those things?

BEN: I think most definitely we could be outsourcing a lot of it. There’s nothing to prevent the current position to be engaging in outsourcing as part of the overall workers’ compensation program, but I still think you need that coordinator, even for the outsourcing portion.

RAY: Didn’t we -, haven’t we been doing that? Didn’t we -, wasn’t there an attorney that was contracted to do a bunch of that work the last few years?

BEN: There was an attorney to handle a certain amount of cases, and I think that contract is over with.

RAY: Right.

BEN: But I’m assuming you’re talking about investigations and claims adjustments and -.

HIGASHI: Yeah, I come from a background that we created HEMIC, which is a new workers’ comp insurance, and I’ve learned a heck of a lot about workers’ comp, and workers’ comp is a big complicated field with a lot of specialists and -.

RAY: Okay.

HIGASHI: Having good employees or having good people doing the work saves the employer a lot of money. But I think in this area, maybe outsourcing would be something to consider.

RAY: Daryl, you had a question or a comment?

KUROZAWA: Yeah, I’m just trying to get a little clarification. Is the problem right now that the Safety Coordinator is not doing what they’re supposed to, or is it that there’s no cooperation between the Safety Coordinator and the departments? Or is it a combination of both?

BEN: I think it’s a combination of both. Worker’s comp, as Mr. Higashi pointed out, is very, very complicated, and you really need extensive training on it. And the same thing goes with the OSHA laws. And, you know, I think it’s hard to find qualified people to assume those kinds of positions. So in terms of not knowing what to do, I think there’s a little bit of that involved, and also the part about that we mentioned there’s no cooperation between the departments.

KUROZAWA: And is the feeling that if you hire someone in the Civil Service, will that totally -, you know, is it going to be hundred percent better that someone’s going to be totally qualified, and would the departments then follow his or her recommendations at that point?

BEN: Well, I think the idea of putting it in a long term program does lend more credibility and more stability to the program, which I think would enhance the program, rather than the changeover that occurs in the leadership of the program.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: Basically changing it from patronage to something that can be a little bit more accountable.

BEN: I believe so, yes.

SANTANGELO: Where you have a job description and there’s a performance base in which you can evaluate it.

BEN: Excuse me?

HERKES: A performance review.

RAY: George.

MARTIN: Yeah, taking it from the position that it is now, an appointed situation, and put it into the Civil Service, what authority would this person now have? Or would you guys write that into the description and the authority be generated from that?

BEN: I don’t think the authority issue would be resolved; the authority comes from topside. But I think you can have -, you can develop authority by having an, you know, an effective program where people start respecting the work that you do. You know, my department is a staff agency, and the departments can take it or leave it. But, you know, as we gain the expertise like we have in all the other fields, you know, they begin to heed our advice. So you would have that kind of authority being implemented.

RAY: Okay. Any other questions? Sue.

IRVINE: Unfortunately, we just created a Department of Data Processing in the last election because they said the civil servant didn’t have the authority to tell the other departments what kind of computers they have to use, and now we’re sitting here saying, well, if somebody were a civil servant, they might have more authority than the appointed person. So I think maybe there’s some other parameter at work here. I mean maybe there’s some other way you get authority than just changing from one to the other.

HERKES: Continuity, I think, is what he said.

RAY: Well, wait a second. Mike, are you going to comment on that?

BEN: No, I wasn’t aware of what was being said about the data processing. I’ll just leave it at that.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: I think continuity was what he said, that continuity would lend stability to the position and would be able to give it a stature that a political appointee may not have.

IRVINE: All I’m saying is that -.

HERKES: I think that was the point that Mr. Ben made.

IRVINE: That we just did the opposite in the last election with the Data Processing. We went from just having a civil servant to having an appointed person and my -, I just had heard that that was why they wanted that, was that this person would, therefore, have more authority or stature with the other department heads.

RAY: I think that was only part of the justification, but that was -, that does ring a bell as being mentioned anyway. Any other comments or questions for Mr. Ben? What I -.

YOSHIYAMA: Yes, I have a -.

RAY: Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: Back to the Commission. Mike do you or the Commissioners have any comment on the composition of the Commission and the number of Commissioners?

BEN: With respect to my Civil Service Commission?

YOSHIYAMA: Civil Service Commission.

BEN: We operate with five right now.

YOSHIYAMA: Yeah.

BEN: We’ve never explored that, but I’ve been comfortable with five. It hasn’t really created a problem. What has created a problem is when vacancies occur and, by some odd reason, I get -, I have -, my vacancies occur two, two, one. In other words, two Commissioners will leave one year, another two another year, and then one will leave at, you know -, so when I have two leaving, I only have three. And then I remember Mr. Wurdeman was telling you about the problems on quorums and what you need to vote, and so when we do have three, that presents a problem in the appeal process because it -, you need all three to agree. But we did not make any proposal with respect to that particular issue.

My Salary Commission is made up of nine, and that’s because of the -, I think -. Well, first of all, the nine is basically to represent the different geographical components of the Island, and the Civil Service Commission isn’t. And that’s because the Civil Service Commission really isn’t representing the geographical areas of the Island. The Civil Service Commission is representing the Civil Service law itself, so it doesn’t lend itself to these nine Commission members.

The Salary Commission, I think the idea is good representing your geographical areas, but the problem is we can’t find Commissioners. For the longest time now, I’ve only had five or six Salary Commissioners. We’ve been unable to fill the vacancies. Nobody wants to be on that Commission.

At this point, could I introduce another -?

RAY: Sure.

BEN: My Salary Commission hasn’t been able to meet because one of the problems is we can’t get a quorum together. But one thing the Salary Commission has been pushing for quite a while now, and Mr. Wurdeman is fully aware of this, is they would like to have the authority to set the salaries for department heads. Right now, they set the salaries for elected officials, and part of the criteria for doing so is looking at the compensation received by civil servants. Now civil servant salaries are set by collective bargaining, and what they see is the civil servants’ salaries pushing against the department head salaries. And the Salary Commission, in turn, because they must take into consideration the Civil Service salaries, therefore, adjust the elected official salaries. So you have the Civil Service salary is pushing from the top and the elected official salaries moving away, and the department heads are just staying there. And it’s always been a political process. And, basically, the last time we made a report, I think Civil Service salaries went up 30 percent while department heads had nothing. So it’s an issue with the Salary Commission and, you know, we weren’t able to put it down in writing because we could never get a quorum, but I feel very confident in telling you that the Salary Commission is definitely -, would definitely like to make that proposal.

RAY: Okay. John.

SANTANGELO: And, Mr. Ben, you say that because -, having been on the Council, there’s so much political pressure, and yet, this is an administrative matter. You’ve got to have the ability to hire the caliber and also -, and retain them, so the recruitment becomes very difficult, as we’re seeing with our engineer, although the -, recruitment and the quality that you get.

BEN: And you need a compensation plan that recognizes and rewards employees, whether they’re the blue collar employees or the executives.

SANTANGELO: But you mentioned with the Council salaries and the elected official salaries, that’s still up to their approval one way or the other, is that not -?

BEN: The Salary Commission sets those salaries, yes, but -.

SANTANGELO: But they have to be ratified by the Council or -.

BEN: No.

SANTANGELO: No.

BEN: The Salary Commission, by Charter, sets the salaries of the elected officials, and there is nothing in there that says it requires Council approval.

SANTANGELO: Well, they should do a better job.

RAY: Sue.

IRVINE: I guess I’m kind of concerned if you really can’t get members. You will have the members when our elected officials then decide that they need a raise, is that when people will be appointed and accept and -?

BEN: No.

IRVINE: Be on your Commission or what?

BEN: I don’t understand the question.

IRVINE: I guess -.

BEN: I’m sorry.

IRVINE: Why can’t you get a Commission appointed? People don’t want to be on it because they’re doing nothing or why? Or do we need this Commission?

BEN: It’s a very touchy issue. It’s political, that’s why. Nobody wants to be in a position of recommending pay raises for department heads.

RAY: They can’t get people to go on -.

IRVINE: Yeah, well -.

RAY: The Commission.

IRVINE: Then the Council, of course, kicked this off to a Commission so they wouldn’t have to do it, but somebody needs to be responsible.

SANTANGELO: Sue, I’m curious. What do you mean by somebody needs to be responsible? For what?

IRVINE: Well, for setting, I mean, someone -. The buck has to stop somewhere on setting salaries, and I guess that’s why they appointed a Commission so that, you know, the politicians didn’t have to take that responsibility themselves and then get elected out of office or -, you know.

SANTANGELO: But they do take it on. They have to approve it.

IRVINE: No. He just said they don’t.

SANTANGELO: Department heads?

RAY: For the department heads.

IRVINE: They have to approve the department -.

BEN: They -.

IRVINE: Heads. They don’t have to approve their salary.

BEN: There is no provision anywhere that says anybody reviews and makes recommendations for department head salaries.

HERKES: I’m looking for it; there’s nothing.

BEN: There’s nothing. It’s always been the Mayor has asked the Salary Commission to submit recommendations and then the Mayor, in turn, submits that to the Council and the Council acts on it.

RAY: But then the Council has to approve those.

SANTANGELO: That’s right.

IRVINE: The department heads.

BEN: Right.

SANTANGELO: Then it’s just a great political football to denounce it because that makes, you know, there’s that perception versus reality.

HERKES: We just went through that.

SANTANGELO: Yeah. Several times.

HERKES: Yeah.

RAY: Okay. Any more questions? Thank you, Commissioners. Anything you’d like to add.

SANTANGELO: Thank you.

RAY: No? Well, thank you for coming. And, you know, this is just the start of our, you know, process so we’ll be marching through the Charter and asking your input later.

HERKES: Can we take a short break?

RAY: Well, we’ve just got Major Carter here.

HERKES: Okay.

IRVINE: Well, so let’s -, can we have -?

RAY: Pardon?

IRVINE: Oh, you think he’s going to be brief, or do we have a break?

RAY: He’s going to be brief.

CARTER: I’ll be brief.

IRVINE: Ten minutes?

RAY: No, no. We’ve got Major Carter here from the Police Department.

HERKES: Well, he’s not going to be brief, because we’re going to ask him about investigations.

CARTER: Hello, everybody.

RAY: Well, his comments are very brief in terms of, you know, what’s been submitted to us here in writing. The only thing that we have referred to in regard to the Charter is looking at the issue of the mandatory program review, and so anyway. Do you want to -?

CARTER: Exactly. That’s the only comment the Police Department has at this time. And this is Section 3-16, Mandatory Program Review. As it states here in the Charter, at least once every four years the Council shall critically review every program supported wholly or partially by County funds, and unless the Council shall favorably authorize its continuation at current or modified levels, the program shall be terminated. The Council shall adopt procedures and details to implement this section.

Our problem in the recent past has been this section of the Charter comes out virtually every year when the Police Department goes before the County Council to have approval of a resolution regarding marijuana eradication. That is the only time we’ll ever hear about this section coming up. And the problems that we’ve had in the past is that the Council has wrestled with the problem of understanding, number one, what is a program? And number two, what is a critical review? Because of a lack of definition in this area, we’ve had Council people come back and, you know, say back and forth, a volley has occurred where they’ve said, well, how do we know that what we do here on the Council isn’t a critical review, because we air this issue out back and forth, we accept discussion from the general public on it. So it’s been relatively unclear.

Now, although we have this in the Charter on mandatory program review, it does raise an eyebrow in the Police Department how this is only applied strictly to marijuana eradication. It is the only program where they want a program review. Obviously, it’s controversial because of the fact of what is occurring, the fact that we do go onto property, we recover marijuana. People complain about the low flying helicopters, invasions of privacy. And I guess this is the main reason.

Now, we have a lot of programs in the County of Hawaii. To say that this one program should be under a critical review, but that’s okay, we’ll forget about the others, we feel is unfair. Either we’re going to review critically every program, which means every grant that every agency in the County of Hawaii considers must have a program review. And primarily, what we’re doing here is, see, we’re not directly using County funds. What happens here is that the grants require in-kind matching, therefore, if we’re going to apply for $250,000 grant monies, the in-kind comes where we match the salaries of the people involved in the program to then fulfill our obligation to get the funding.

Now, most of these grants are administered by the Attorney General’s Office because they are federal programs, and we are required, under those programs, to submit numerous reports, quarterly reports, on how we’re spending the money, what exactly are we doing, the results of our operations, so we consider that to be, of sorts, a review. I know it doesn’t hold well in the community because it’s like we’re reviewing ourselves. Now, we currently have the Legislative Auditor’s Office conducting a review, and that came under a lot of controversy, as our two former Councilmen will know, because the Legislative Auditor’s Office was concerned because they couldn’t nowhere near fulfill all the program reviews that would be necessary if we were to, in fact, adopt this for every department.

But our concern is just strictly this. We probably need to define program, and we need to define critical review. Are we going to require a -, the Legislative Auditor to conduct a review of every single program in the County of Hawaii, which is going to be an enormous undertaking for that office? I don’t think they’ll have the funds. I don’t think they have the staffing to do that.

Now, the people that have come up in favor of this because of marijuana eradication probably want a review such as that would be conducted by the State Auditor’s Office, Marian Higa, because of the in-depth review that they do. We don’t have that capability in Hawaii County. We don’t have the staffing, and I don’t think we have the funds to where we could do that. So we just ask you, the Commission, to just take that into consideration because it comes up every year, to please help us in the definition of what we are going to call that program and what are we going to consider as a critical review.

RAY: Okay. Questions, Marni.

HERKES: I think rather than change the word program, I’d rather come and testify in favor of review, kind of try to change the direction of the County Council, at least three of them. When you accept this federal -, there’s a reason that you want to accept this money.

CARTER: Yes.

HERKES: Do you have goals and outcomes set out as your reason to accept this money? Do you know what you want to do with it, what the outcomes are that you want to get from it?

CARTER: Exactly. And all of that is stated in the program purpose and the entire grant package that we submit, and the Council has that in front of them at the time that we come in.

HERKES: And that is a program review?

CARTER: Well, that’s basically our goals and objectives for that particular program. What happens -.

HERKES: And when it gets through, you do the outcomes?

CARTER: Exactly.

HERKES: Whether you’ve met your goals and objectives?

CARTER: Quarterly reports are required. Those reports are available. They send people down from the agencies that do fund us, and they go through our program to make sure that everything we say that we were going to do we are, in fact, doing. That there are no violations of any phase of the contract or anything that we’re doing is contrary -.

HERKES: So the program review is already done.

CARTER: Some people look at that and say yes. Others say no, that’s not a critical program review because it’s not one that’s being done by an independent agency who is then reviewing what we are doing and they have no connection to the Police Department or to any other federal government agency or whatever it may be.

RAY: Okay.

CARTER: It would be great if you could contract a private company to come in and do that, but I don’t think -.

HERKES: What a waste of money.

CARTER: We can afford it.

RAY: Other questions?

ALONZO: I have a question.

RAY: Yeah.

ALONZO: Talking about marijuana eradication, you know, people that talked about hemp industry here.

CARTER: Yeah.

ALONZO: What are the Police Department’s stand by that?

CARTER: Well, obviously, we’re not in favor of industrial hemp, and we feel that it’s -. This has been studied. The legislature studied this approximately two years ago, and at the time that the independent study that was done for the legislature, it was determined that there was just not a market for industrial hemp in Hawaii. And we have concerns on various aspects.

Just one concern that we have here is that we’ve been taking a look at medical reports coming out, and some of the products that come out would be oil that’s derived from the cannabis plant. We are learning now that tests that have been conducted, and I can provide that material if it’s necessary to anyone, people who use the oil are testing positive in drug screens. And just from that aspect alone, we look at that as a nightmare if you’re going to have, say, someone with a CDL license who’s going to go out there and think that, hey, it’s legal, it’s not -, you know, there is the THC content, the illegal part is within the confines of the law, I’m going to use this. They test positive to -, in the drug screen. How do we define now that it was legal versus illegal?

RAY: Okay, well -.

CARTER: So there are just various phases.

RAY: Yeah, I don’t want to get off on -.

CARTER: Yeah. Okay.

RAY: Talking about hemp. I don’t think that’s anything we’re going to be -.

HIGASHI: We won’t put it in the Charter.

RAY: Dealing with in the Charter.

CARTER: Okay. Please don’t.

RAY: I could furnish you with a couple of thousand pages on it if you’d like so -.

HERKES: Well, and every law enforcement agency in the State is against it so -.

RAY: Well, okay, but that’s not -, that’s not a subject that we’re dealing with here. Roland.

HIGASHI: I have one question, Morty, I don’t know if you can answer this, but under the last section under the Police Department, Administrative Supervision, the Police Department shall come under the general supervision and control of the Mayor. I mean, are you familiar with that section?

CARTER: I’m familiar with it.

HIGASHI: I mean what does that mean? I mean, I’m under the assumption that, reading this section, that the Police Commission is the policy-making department -, I mean, body for the Police Department. Do you think that’s something that’s appropriate or -, looking from the department’s standpoint?

CARTER: At the risk of the Mayor’s Office wondering why we would speak against that, I think the Mayor appoints the Commission, the Commission, of course -.

HIGASHI: Does the work.

CARTER: Exactly.

HIGASHI: It’s spelled out what they do, yeah.

CARTER: I think it’s clear enough as it is right there. Obviously, for various approvals, we do have to have the Mayor’s approval on various forms we submit, if we want to fill vacancies, before we can submit to Civil Service.

HIGASHI: I can understand maybe some supervision, but the control of the Mayor, I mean, that’s something -.

CARTER: Yeah, the terminology there -.

HIGASHI: It’s contradictory what the Commission does and the -.

CARTER: Lends it to be almost a political thing, and I think that’s why we have a Police Chief, not a cabinet appointee so that if -.

HIGASHI: Maybe you can take that question back to the Chief and maybe get back to us.

CARTER: I will share that with him.

RAY: Okay. Marni? Oh, sorry.

HERKES: Touchy subject.

CARTER: Okay.

HERKES: Some of the other testimony that we’ve had has talked about investigations that the Police Commission does, officers that misbehave or that it is perceived that they’ve misbehaved, and that those investigations, the results of those investigations are turned over to the Police Department and they disappear. Therefore, the public perception is that it’s been handled, or that nothing’s been done. What -, how could we do that?

RAY: Okay.

HERKES: How can we change that?

RAY: Before we go too far with this, you know, we really haven’t gotten, you know, the Police Commission response on board for this so, you know, I’d -.

HERKES: So we should wait for the Police Commission.

RAY: Really like to have them here, as well, when we -.

HERKES: Okay.

RAY: Can talk, you know, have this. I mean -.

CARTER: Yeah, I think they can assist you -.

RAY: I think it’s fine to bring that -.

CARTER: In answering what kind of response do they give back to us when they refer an investigation to us.

RAY: Yeah.

CARTER: That their investigator has reviewed and found that it may have merit.

RAY: And, you know, we’ll refer -, these are comments from the Corporation Counsel’s office to us, right, so we’ll refer these to both you and the Commission.

CARTER: Okay.

HERKES: Thank you.

RAY: But I think we should have both here when we -.

HERKES: Okay.

RAY: Have this discussion. Eddie.

ALONZO: Question. Do you feel that the Commission should be at seven or nine?

CARTER: I think nine is very fair. I think having a representation similar to like we do in the Council is fair. I think everybody should have representation.

ALONZO: So you feel that you should have nine, for each district representation?

CARTER: Yes.

ALONZO: The way the Charter is, you have seven.

RAY: There again -.

CARTER: I thought that was -.

RAY: Let’s make sure we get the Commission here to comment on all this, as well. George.

MARTIN: Getting back to 3-16, Mandatory Program Review, again, you know, (indiscernible) being discussed as far as perception, I think that some review should be in place. And like you’re saying, it’s already self-induced, and I happen to agree with my counterpart down there that it makes no difference who’s doing it, as long as it’s done. Taking out some of the words, possibly, do you feel that there is a possibility to have some sort of program review that would suffice?

CARTER: Yeah, I think as long as we can define what extent that review is going to be because thus far what we found is no matter what we do in the way of -.

MARTIN: It’s not -.

CARTER: It’s not enough, because it seems as though because it’s not coming out the way that the opposition would like, it’s not critical enough. So thus the need for the definition of critical or program review or program, I should say, because then we can meet that definition and say we did everything that we were required to do.

MARTIN: So, technically, they’re playing with semantics there.

CARTER: Exactly.

RAY: Okay. John.

SANTANGELO: Yeah, and probably on the same line as George, what was recommended by Corp. Counsel was these reviews should not, therefore, be mandatory but optional when directed by the Council by resolution, and I agree with that. The Council is sitting there with its policy and its overview responsibility. What I’m hearing from you and other people, and we experienced that to the full extent, is that a special interest has picked up on a pin and they’re able to really poke with that. Okay. If we were to remove the mandatory part of it, Captain, Major now, Major Carter, and it’s at the discretion, you know, at the discretion of the Council by resolution, would you feel that would fit, sir, or do you think you’d still be in that same political rowboat?

CARTER: I think that would be fine, providing we still have clarity as far as what that review is going to entail, even if it comes from the Council, because we still have to have that guideline as far as what is needed.

SANTANGELO: And the ordinance addresses that though. It says the procedure shall be set by the Council.

CARTER: I would have no problem with that slight little amendment, providing that we get exact direction from the Council what they want from us.

SANTANGELO: But other than that, you have no other suggestion on how this can be -, besides dropping it altogether.

CARTER: Yeah, because I really don’t think we’re going to please the opposition, no matter what we provide.

SANTANGELO: That’s the point.

CARTER: I think their pleasure will come at the fact that we’ll legalize.

SANTANGELO: Yeah. So we’ve got to take a look at this with that special interest in mind but really for better government, we need to look at the overall process and how it affects all programs and the operation of the County.

CARTER: That’s critical here because of the magnitude of what it’s going to do when you consider every program in the County of Hawaii.

SANTANGELO: Thank you.

CARTER: Every agency.

RAY: Okay. Other questions for Major Carter?

IRVINE: I guess I’d just like to say -.

RAY: Sue.

IRVINE: Once again, which is what I said to the Corporation Counsel, that a lot of the good government stuff that I’ve been reading from the Government Finance Officers’ Association, the National Civic League on Measuring Performance at City Hall, you set up parameters for how you’re going to measure the performance of any given program, and once you’ve set that up, then you don’t really have to reinvent the wheel every time. And maybe this is the one program that we should just set something up and say try it, you know, and it sounds like you’ve really done that. And once you’ve done that, you’ve done the best you can, and there’s just going to be controversy with this one issue. But I don’t think we ought to throw out all performance reviews just because one gives us a great deal of trouble.

SANTANGELO: And it should be pointed out that with some -, with many of the federal programs, the review is looking at was the money spent properly versus outcome-based.

CARTER: Right.

SANTANGELO: I mean, and sometimes we mix the two, and we’ve gotten some people mad over that.

RAY: Okay. Any other comments, questions? Okay. Thank you, Major Carter.

CARTER: Thank you very much.

HERKES: Thank you.

RAY: So, you know, Major Carter -.

YUEN: You almost got away.

HERKES: You just thought.

CARTER: Just like a Columbo trick, yeah. Ask one more question.

MARTIN: That was him asking the questions, as I recall.

CARTER: Yeah, I know. Boy, turning the tables on me.

RAY: Yeah. You know, I don’t think we’ve heard yet, or that we’ve gotten any response from the Police Commission yet, just so you’re aware, so I am waiting to get some response from them so we can schedule, you know, get some input from them and then we’ll -.

CARTER: I’ll try to go out -, I’m not sure where they’re at.

RAY: Okay.

CARTER: What their intent is.

RAY: All right, thanks. And I’ll make sure you get a copy of any other comments, you know, from other departments.

CARTER: Okay.

RAY: Okay. Thanks.

CARTER: Okay.

RAY: Okay. So that concludes our departmental review. So where we are is we are waiting for some boards and commissions to meet. I’m going to go to the Planning Commission meeting, I think it’s on June 4^th. They’ve got, you now, us on the agenda then, so I’ll just be there to answer general questions in terms of the process or whatever and encourage them to engage this topic as soon as possible. And then as I mentioned last time, I totally left the County Council out of the loop, so I’m going to sit down and talk to them about their input. And, hopefully, we can schedule during our public hearings, you know, some of this discussion but -. Any other -? John.

SANTANGELO: Just -, I’d like to get clarity from this Commission and from the Chairman. I think we’ve talked about it, and excuse me if I wasn’t listening, what I’m finding is I’m getting requests to come within the community that I live in, as well as other organizations that might be familiar, and I’ve had a relationship with, to come and speak about the Commission. And at first it didn’t matter. I went out to Ocean View and I says, hey, guys, we’re going to come out here, submit some stuff, and they’re going to put some stuff in about political subdivisions and things like that. What’s our, what is our policy? I’m getting very uncomfortable -.

RAY: Well -.

SANTANGELO: With this.

RAY: Okay. You know, we’re making our around-the-Island tour starting in two weeks or three weeks really from tonight so, you know, we’re going to do a pretty thorough, you know, Island-wide public hearing schedule, six meetings around the Island. So, you know, it’s going to be well publicized and, you know, any help you can give us in terms of networking with any of those groups or organizations would be helpful to make sure they come out to these public hearings. So that will certainly, I think, satisfy a lot of folks.

I think it’s fine for any of us to go and speak to, you know, groups in terms of, you know, what we’re up to process-wise, you know, the kinds of things that have been raised before. I mean, I’ve met with a couple of groups already and, you know, not as a major part of their agenda, but discussed our activities, so I think that’s fine.

SANTANGELO: And that’s what I’ve been doing. But I’ve also been using this little blurb that you gave us, and you said there was some comments on that. Is there any major correction we need to make? Because I’ve been using this.

RAY: There have been, and it basically will be, you know, reformatted and in terms of the editing we’ve gone through in the next few days, so I can give you an updated -.

SANTANGELO: Thank you.

RAY: Copy of that. And it’ll also include these public hearing notices, and that’s what’s going to go out.

SANTANGELO: Okay, so then if I’m -, what I’ve been doing is presenting this. I’ve been giving a little overview of what we’re about and encouraging them to come to those meetings that come within the community.

RAY: Yeah. I just think what I’d be really careful about, and it’s what we talked about before, is, you know, distinguishing, you know, as far as what are things that have just come up as possibilities versus, you know, things that we’ve actually discussed or -.

SANTANGELO: That’s right. Okay.

RAY: All right.

HIGASHI: I think if we can encourage them to come to the meetings would be much more effective, though. Sometimes they talk to one person and think that’s enough. You know, that’s kind of a counterproductive, too.

SANTANGELO: In most cases, they have something they want to submit and, as an individual, I’ve refused to receive it, that the Commission should receive it and, frankly, that’s why we’re coming out there, that this is the forum. But it just, you know, you start to get these, and you start to say, well, I just wanted to touch base again with this body so I know that we’re in sync and I’m not off there running around. Thank you. I’ll keep it close.

RAY: All right. So -.

IRVINE: I was wondering, if we’re going to go out and talk to somebody, should we try to get in touch with you to see if it’s appropriate or get someone else to come with us? I’m kind of with Roland that I, you know -, you don’t want people going flying off somewhere.

SANTANGELO: I don’t need a babysitter.

IRVINE: No, it’s not personal. No, I just -, it’s just, once again -.

SANTANGELO: I know.

IRVINE: Systems that, you know.

SANTANGELO: But I know, if we’re going to go out and do it, you know, either -, that’s why I asked.

IRVINE: Yeah.

SANTANGELO: Because this -, and excuse me if I’m a little strong about this but, you know, we’ve got to have certain personal integrity, and there’s no way that you’re going to imprint that on somebody. They got to have it. If we go off, you know -, if I go off and make an ass of myself or get us in trouble, you’re going to know it, and you’re going to take me to task. So I think -.

IRVINE: Okay.

SANTANGELO: So the question -, my question was, I mean, I think I’m perfectly capable or anybody here, of handling ourselves in something. It’s just are we going to do that? If this Board was to say no, let’s not only -, let’s only send our Chairman, then I’d comply with that.

RAY: Well, you know, I’m not going to discourage you from doing that but, you know, on the other hand, I’m not offering, you know, myself to go out and speak to every group around the Island. I’m going to be at all these six meetings.

But one thing in regard to these hearings, I was going through the notes from the past Charter Commission, and they did divide up the public hearing segment and only had I think three or four people assigned to those meetings, and they welcomed and encouraged, you know, attendance from everybody, but they didn’t expect, you know, everybody to be at every meeting. So, you know, I’d be happy to do that if we want to kind of divide up, you know, geography-wise and assign people, you know, based on where you live to, you know, a certain number of meetings. And then, you know, and of course, you’re welcome to come to all of them. Marni.

HERKES: I think that’s important, because you want to know you’ll have four Commissioners at every meeting. And if we commit up front to be to this meeting, this meeting, and this meeting, and know that we have a little leeway in the other ones, it makes it much less onerous for us, and I think that’s important.

RAY: Okay.

YUEN: I’m trying to remember if we -, didn’t we try to get a quorum at the meetings? I’m not sure. I think it might be a good -, I think people might feel left out if you don’t try to get a quorum at the -, these various meetings.

RAY: I don’t believe you did at one set of the public hearings because I remember there being, I think, three names assigned. You know, I saw a letter, actually, it was from Pete L’Orange to the Chairman in regard to a set of public hearings and it seemed to me there was only, you know, three people assigned. So that was, you know, it was strictly taking information, so I don’t think -.

YUEN: Yeah, I think that’s -, I think that’s right, that you go out (inaudible).

RAY: So there’s no legal -. But how do you folks feel about that? Anybody have any feelings on minimum level of representation, just from a public relations standpoint, how many people should -? Marni.

HERKES: I think four is the minimum number that you should have so that it looks like the Commission is attending.

RAY: How about four plus one, so we’d have a minimum of five, so we try to -.

HIGASHI: I think that would be great.

RAY: Okay. Does everybody have the schedule, because you could -?

HERKES: I volunteer for Kona.

RAY: I can’t do the arithmetic in my head, how we could work this out.

YUEN: I have to go.

RAY: Okay. Thank you, Chris. And I can’t mentally do this, how it would work out, how many people need to be at every meeting.

IRVINE: What if you just say Hilo and then raise your hand if you guarantee you’ll be there?

HERKES: Or say your name so it gets transcribed.

RAY: Okay. You want to go through that right now?

KUROZAWA: John, before you can do that, last meeting we talked about trying to do some business if we have time, and for that purpose, should we try to get at least a quorum or we’re not going to do business at the meetings?

RAY: I think we wouldn’t be making any decisions, it would be -, what I was anticipating is we might schedule some presentations or, you know, input so we’d just be, you know, receiving information.

Okay. All right, for Hilo, do you want to raise your hand if Hilo suits? Or somebody -, you’re going to -.

IRVINE: Susan.

KAMA: Could you keep your hands up, please.

Hilo Meeting:

RAY: Kona.

RAY: Okay. Waimea.

J. Ray, S. Bess, M. Herkes, D. Kurozawa, G. Martin, G. Yoshiyama

MARTIN: We can just show up.

RAY: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Honoka‘a.

J. Ray, S. Bess, M. Herkes, D. Kurozawa, G. Martin, G. Yoshiyama

RAY: Pahoa.

J. Ray, E. Alonzo, S. Bess, M. Herkes, S. Irvine, J. Santangelo

IRVINE: I don’t know where the Pahoa Community Center is but -.

RAY: And Na‘alehu.

SANTANGELO: It’s down by the pool.

IRVINE: Oh.

SANTANGELO: Which one?

RAY: Na‘alehu.

J. Ray, S. Bess, M. Herkes, R. Higashi, J. Santangelo, G. Yoshiyama

RAY: Okay. So we’ve got at least a minimum number. Okay. So our next meeting will be the Hilo public hearing June 16^th at 5:00 p.m. in the County Councilroom.

Do I have a motion to adjourn?

YOSHIYAMA: So moved.

HERKES: So moved.

RAY: Second?

BESS: Second.

The discussion ended at 5:18 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Janet L. Kama

Interim Secretary