HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION

Transcript of Meeting of August 25, 1999

Hawaii County Liquor Commission Conference Room,

Hilo Lagoon Center

Attendance: J. Ray, M. Herkes, R. Higashi, S. Irvine, D. Kurozawa (after 3:20 p.m.), G. Martin, J. Santangelo, G. Yoshiyama, Counsel Chris Yuen

Absent: E. Alonzo, K. Balog, S.Bess

Guest Speakers: David Arakawa, Corporation Counsel/City and County of Honolulu, John Henry Felix, Vice Chair/County Council, City and County of Honolulu

And 10 Members of the public in attendance.

The meeting was called to order at 3:00 p.m.

RAY: I’d like to call the Special Meeting, Wednesday, August 25th of the 1999-2000 Charter Commission to order. In attendance today; myself John Ray, Chairman; Roland Higashi, Vice Chair; Marni Herkes, Sue Irvine, George Martin, John Santangelo and Gary Yoshiyama. We expect other Charter Members momentarily but let’s go ahead and get under way.

Item III on the agenda. Minutes Approval. The August 11th minutes which were all mailed to you folks.

HERKES: So moved, approve.

YOSHIYAMA: Second.

RAY: All in favor.

COMMISSIONERS: Aye.

RAY: Okay. Minutes approved.

Financial Status Report. Again, we don’t have everything officially but we have a rough balance of $97,323.29 at this point.

Item V. Communications. The only communication is we do have a letter from the Planning Director, Virginia Goldstein, requesting to come in before the Charter Commission on a number of issues they’d like to discuss so I think we’ll probably agendize that for our next meeting.

HERKES: Mr. Ray, could I interrupt? Would you ask Ms. Goldstein to list the measures that the Planning Department has taken to open up the hearings process for the Planning Commission. I know they’ve taken quite a few measures and I’d like to know what they are.

RAY: So the request is background on any steps they may have taken to - okay.

Statements from the Public. There are none.

Unfinished Business. We are, I guess, in a state of unfinished business in terms of our discussion so we’ll just proceed on to New Business.

Today we are happy to have Vice Chair Councilman John Henry Felix from the City and County of Honolulu here today, as well as his Senior Advisor, Ron Boyer and David Arakawa, the Corporation Counsel from the City and County of Honolulu, to give us some information and to have an exchange of information on what we have agendized as Nonpartisan Elections and I’d like to stick with that discussion initially and then if you folks do want to get into some discussion on some other items that have come up, especially City Manager form of government or whatever, we can entertain that discussion as well. Mr. Felix, do you have any prepared remarks or do you want to just open this up?

FELIX: I do have bullet points and I’ve shared them with the secretary for inclusion in your minutes so I will not read from prepared text but go over salient points that I think will be of interest to all of you.

I’m delighted to be next to my distinguished colleague, David Arakawa, who has the enviable task of serving not only the Mayor but the City Council and I must say that he does an exemplary job in bifurcating himself as a lawyer. Although we have had differences of opinion from time to time, we respect each other and there’s never been any acrimony between us.

It’s a delight to be on the Big Island. My roots are here and my mother was born in Hilo. My grandfather served as a District Judge, Manuel Souza Pacheco. Sounds like a Portuguese name, as well as Albert Mariano Felix who served as a Circuit Court Judge on this island.

I speak from a very interesting perspective, and first I would like to say that I do applaud and commend each and every one of you for serving as Members of the Charter Commission. This is not an enviable task but your charge is indeed a very important one because a Charter such as yours, should not be static. It has evolve with the times. I commend you and I congratulate you and I want to thank you for inviting me to participate today.

I come from a very interesting perspective, having served as the Assistant Minority Leader of the Council from 1988 to 1990, and having served as the Minority Leader from 1990 through 1992, as the only Republican on the City Council. In 1990, the Honolulu Charter Commission proposed nonpartisan Mayoral and Council elections and I was a very strong supporter of this concept, not necessarily because I was serving as the only Republican on the council and it was a rather lonely experience, because I felt that this would be in the best interest of the City and County of Honolulu.

The 1992 General Election results, I think are very interesting. There were 244,493 votes cast; 130,588 voted in the affirmative and in the negative, 113,905. The margin was relatively close. It was only a 5% margin and I think that was, in great part, due to the fact that the public was not as aware as they should have been relative to the various nuances that would result with nonpartisan elections. So if this is a course of action that this Charter Commission proposes, I would suggest that a very aggressive educational program be put into place, not necessarily to support one point of view or the other, but to make the general public keenly aware of the positive aspects of nonpartisan elections vs. the other course of action.

I think we’re all very aware of the fact that local government has little to do with partisan politics. Roads, parks, water, police, fire and zoning have very little to do with partisan politics. They’re all very basic services. During elections, partisan politics serves only to, in my opinion, distract the voters’ attention from the essential issues, municipal issues. Good ideas know no idealogy or party affiliation. Good people are not determined by party affiliation.

As a Council Member, I can say that I have never given thought as to whether a nominee to a City Board or Commission - whether they are a card-carrying Member of this party or that. I have always evaluated them on the basis of their ability, their experience and their expertise. And as a businessman, I have never hired by party affiliation. I look for the best and the brightest. In over ten years as a Council Member, I have never even asked a prospective staff member as to their party affiliation. After almost ten years with me, my Senior Aide, who’s in the back of the room, Ron Boyer - to this day, I still don’t know what party he belongs to and it’s really unimportant.

I believe that today’s voters are becoming increasingly more sophisticated in that they are better informed as to the important issues of the day. Citizens, in my opinion, no longer depend on a party boss or a shop steward to tell them how to vote and I have had some experience with labor organizations having served as the Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO, Unity House, having served with the Teamsters and the Hotel Workers, so I do have a labor background and I say that we have come a long way. And there may be those of you who are affiliated with Labor Unions who would vehemently disagree. My firm belief that people today are voting for candidates based on their stands on the issues and that may be a bit of naivete on my part but that’s how I believe.

A small legislative body such as a County Council with nine members can ill afford to waste time and energy engaged in party politics or attempting to champion certain party planks or party lines for the reasons I articulated earlier. The needs of the people; public health and safety, do not, in my opinion, depend on partisan politics. In a small legislative body, every members’ voice and vote is critically important. The issues that come before the body cross party lines. They can’t afford to "ice" out any member because he or she belongs to the "wrong" party.

Party loyalty or the expectations of party leaders, may put undue pressure on elected officials to deny positions of authority or power to members of other parties. And sometimes members of the "other" party may be the more qualified to hold certain positions.

Nonpartisan elections do not save the City or the County money insofar as election costs are concerned. There are still two elections; the first Special Election, and the second Special Election, so doing this to save money, I don’t think is going to be a benefit. However, nonpartisan elections serve to level the playing field for candidates, allowing all candidates of all political persuasions to go head to head in the first election, and if they prevail, to avoid the expense of the second election.

Partisan primaries tend to cause candidates to need to raise more money because they must compete in a minimum of two elections, the Primary and the General.

As a member of the City Council of Honolulu, and as the only Republican, I don’t think in terms of party politics. I have served as Vice Chair, as Chair of the Budget, Chair of Parks, Chair of Public Safety, virtually in every capacity that has been made available to me and I have worked with all of my colleagues. There is no division as to who is in the majority and who is in the minority, and I have been able to work my legislation through the agony and the ecstasy of three readings, a public hearing, and in most cases, have seen the legislation that I proposed become law, including the Lease to Fee Conversion Bill 91-95. A very controversial bill which the Bishop Estate worked very hard to dump and, I must say, to the credit of my colleagues who are Democrats, we did see that bill through. I think it was a very important bill although there are those who would, to this day, suggest that it is unfair and should not be consistent with the Land Reform Act of 1962, which was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1967 - the Land Reform Act of 1967.

So, I think nonpartisan elections are healthy and I would strongly recommend that you consider them. So with those brief remarks, Mr. Chair and Members of the Commission, I stand ready, able and willing to respond to any questions. Anything that is too difficult to respond to, I’ll refer to David Arakawa.

RAY: Thank you. David, do you want to make any introductory remarks?

ARAKAWA: Council Member Felix has to catch a plane so I’ll try to keep this brief. I also am honored to be here with you, having worked with the City and County of Honolulu Charter Commission over the past little over a year, I know what type of hard work they put in and what hard work lies in front of you folks. Your dedication and your willingness to serve, I admire.

I’m also sitting here next to John Henry Felix who I also respect and admire, and it’s great sitting next to one of my clients who’s not under fire or under investigation here, and is giving good advice to people. Too often when I sit next to one of my clients, it’s trouble but anyway, this is a joy. In fact it’s a good opportunity.

I’ll just quickly go through the nuts and bolts. I think John Henry Felix has gone through the reasons why it was done and some of the effects of it but the 1991-1992 Charter Commission of the City and County of Honolulu put the issue of nonpartisan voting for City and County Offices, the Mayor and the Council, on the ballot. They did this and they did some research.

The first thing they did is a survey of Charter issues of the 100 largest cities in the United States. So they did a survey and that survey is still available but it’s dated. It’s almost ten years old. Sixty-nine of the largest cities responded and the results on this particular issue - they did it on a number of issues they were looking at - on partisan vs. nonpartisan, they found that 23% of the largest cities had partisan elections and 77% of the largest cities in the United States had nonpartisan elections.

The most common type of election, and now we’re going to get into some of the nuts and bolts of that, was a type of election we have in Honolulu where the candidates run - however many candidates want to apply for that position, either Mayor or a Council seat, run, and to win outright, you have to have more than 50% of the vote so a good 43% of those cities that responded had a system, or type of election, where if you win 51%, 50 or more percent of the vote, you’re in.

The next type of election that we found out there were the two highest vote getters, no matter how much they got, the two highest vote getters run off. 30% of the City and Counties had those types of elections.

And the last type was winner take all. One election, whoever gets the most number of votes wins, no matter if they get a majority or not. So I guess the way Honolulu patterned its nonpartisan election is as I described first. If you get 50% or more, you win outright. If you don’t get 50%, you go to a run-off with the number two vote getter.

The issue was presented to the voters and I have to say, by reading this, it was not - I guess the Charter Commission at that time favored nonpartisan, so it was written - the questions and the rationale were slanted that way. It wasn’t an even handed type of discussion. In this past Charter Commission, we tried to give the pros and cons. I wanted to give the pros and cons. They said, like John Henry Felix said, that partisan politics has little to do with local government. Local government’s about providing basic public services and there’s a quote that sometimes we talk, and I think it’s heeded in the City and County of Honolulu, that "there’s not a Democratic, Republican or Green way to pave a road". And no matter what we’ve been able to do - the council, it’s been great working in this job - we see the council get along and John Henry’s a very important part of that. And when I look at the issue of partisan politics, I think there is a place for partisan politics in government but I just feel thankful that John Henry is able, even though he’s a Republican, because we have the nonpartisan system, to hold a leadership position and I don’t know if that would be possible if we were in another form of arrangement. Before I got asked to come to this conference, I would tell people, it’s great we have John Henry there. He has more experience than all of our Council Members put together, probably, in government. But enough about John Henry.

Now, just as to our perspective, working as one of the line departments as Corporation Counsel, we find, and I don’t know if it operates this way on the Big Island, but the way that the City operates does not depend on what party you’re a Member of, the way we see it work everyday. The way the council relates to the Mayor doesn’t hinge on whether he’s a Democrat or Republican. The way the Mayor relates to the council doesn’t hinge on that either so that’s kind of nice, in my position where I have two masters basically. John Henry’s my boss and the Mayor’s my boss and the department heads are my boss. It works for us. I don’t know how it would work in another system, in the prior system, because I wasn’t part of the City then but I can say this system works. That’s all I have to say.

RAY: Okay, so I’m going to open it up for questions now so raise your hand. John Santangelo.

SANTANGELO: I just want to go over real quick here, some of the facts you gave us. When you said the 100 largest cities, 69 responded, 23% had partisan. What part had non?

ARAKAWA: 77%. Of the 69 that responded.

SANTANGELO: Of the 69 that responded. Okay.

ARAKAWA: And I have this report and I can turn it over to Sharron but I can answer any specifics.

SANTANGELO: And then in the Honolulu type of election, anybody gets into a Primary. If you’re in that Primary, 50% plus one or more, that’s it.

ARAKAWA: Right. Automatically in.

SANTANGELO: Otherwise the two top vote getters go into what you would call a General?

ARAKAWA: Correct.

SANTANGELO: But you said there was another type where the two highest - so one election only and the two highest vote getters, regardless of the percentage, were winners?

ARAKAWA: No, two elections. It would be two elections. There’s other places on the mainland that have two elections; first election, they see who the two highest vote getters are, and then they run in the General.

SANTANGELO: Like the Honolulu?

ARAKAWA: No. Honolulu is 50% - if you get 50% plus one, you’re in. If you don’t get 50% plus one, you have to run-off against your number two.

SANTANGELO: So, almost the same thing then. The two highest would move on unless you got 50% plus.

ARAKAWA: Correct.

SANTANGELO: Then the other one was, no matter how many people get in the Primary, the highest vote getter regardless, is the winner. One election, one winner.

ARAKAWA: Right.

SANTANGELO: So it’s just plurality, it’s not a majority type thing?

ARAKAWA: Yes, not a majority.

FELIX: There is one exception. If there is a resignation or removal from office and there is a special Special Election, and it’s winner take all in the Special Election, plurality. That’s the one exception.

SANTANGELO: Thank you.

RAY: Marni Herkes.

HERKES: You guys have been fairly glowing about nonpartisan elections and your experience with them has been very positive.

ARAKAWA: No, I lost the Prosecutor’s election.

FELIX: That’s right, I forgot about that.

ARAKAWA: That’s a joke. That’s a joke. I got a better job.

HERKES: That’s partisan, the Prosecutor’s was. With everything that has a lot of positives, there are some negatives. What negatives do you see on nonpartisan elections? What kinds of things would work better and what are some of the negatives for nonpartisan?

FELIX: From my perspective, I can’t think of any negatives as it relates to my association with the council. There are times that there are negatives associated with my membership in the Republican Party.

HERKES: We all have that problem.

FELIX: That’s the only negativity I have and there are times that they forget that I’m a Republican, or if I support my Democratic colleagues on a controversial issue, there can be a bit of pilikia, but most of my problems have centered around my association with the party.

ARAKAWA: I cheated. I had my staff to research and what happens sometimes, is - let’s put it this way, in some jurisdictions that have partisan local governments, when the party in power, say in Washington or State, whatever partisan party is in power at that time, has special policies or programs that they’re pushing. It’s much easier for the municipality to take advantage of those Federal programs or State programs and sometimes, when it’s nonpartisan and the majority of the council feels they don’t have to honor a certain political party, whatever party’s in power - they don’t have to honor that vision or that government policy. Then they go, hey screw that, we don’t care if the State has all this money, we don’t care if the Feds have this money for us but we don’t - that kind of thing, and then the municipality or the county might lose out on something that they could have benefitted from. I wouldn’t say that I recommend or I’m a 100% behind nonpartisan because as an attorney, there’s always a down side so you always got to keep that in the back of your mind. Say, eh, wait a minute, there’s these down sides. But what I would say is that I’ve seen it work in the two and a half years that I’ve been Corporation Counsel. I don’t know what it was like before. It might have worked better before, I don’t know, but in the two and a half years I was here, I see it work and it may be the type of people we have. It may be a function of the type of people we have. They all get along. They respect each other for the most part.

FELIX: In looking at the period when we had partisan elections, the council operated at that time, pretty much on a nonpartisan basis. I always had a committee to chair. I had an equal voice with the members of the majority party so I must say that my ten year experience on the council has been very good relative to the lack of partisan politics being played on a regular basis and I think that’s a very healthy situation because we work together to enact the best legislation for the people of the County.

ARAKAWA: So it didn’t really make a -

FELIX: It reaffirmed what we were already doing and I think that’s a very interesting observation. It just came to me.

RAY: Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: Yes, just to give me some perspective here. City and County of Honolulu Council Members run from single member districts.

FELIX: That’s correct, nine districts.

YOSHIYAMA: That’s a recent change?

FELIX: No, that’s been in place ever since I’ve been on the council. There was a proposed Charter Amendment to have at-large seats and that was not approved by the electorate. That was in what year?

ARAKAWA: 1991 - 92.

FELIX: 1992, the electorate voted against at-large seats. They liked the concept of nine councilmanic districts.

YOSHIYAMA: And the term is?

FELIX: Four years.

YOSHIYAMA: Four years and you cannot go for more than two consecutive full terms.

FELIX: Yes, I was a very strong supporter of term limits.

YOSHIYAMA: Has that been in place for a while, the four year?

FELIX: In 1992.

YOSHIYAMA: 1992.

FELIX: So the entire council cannot run for re-election in the upcoming election.

ARAKAWA: Doesn’t that pose a problem though, in continuity?

FELIX: No, I don’t think - we did correct that. We did make one mistake in not providing for staggered terms when we initiated that change. However, we have corrected that because in the year 2002, there will be staggered terms. If it ends with an even number, those even councilmanic

districts will have four years and the unevens will have two years and have to run in two years. We had thought of flipping a coin - Thought of a number of other -

ARAKAWA: That would have been too quick.

FELIX: Or the highest votes.

ARAKAWA: John Henry would win every time.

FELIX: He says the nicest things about me. Thank you.

RAY: Sue.

IRVINE: I guess I’d like to play a little bit of devil’s advocate here. I know, Mr Felix, you’re a Republican, who have been kind of nonexistent in the State of Hawaii previously, and you feel you haven’t had a hard time getting along with Democrats, but we do have, in our county, a Green Party as well. Candidates have been elected and they’re feeling very strongly that they won’t find the kind of exposure or representation that they might get if we go nonpartisan rather than having parties. You said it’s cheaper. It levels the playing field for counties not to have parties but I can see where parties could raise money and support candidates whereas you wouldn’t have to raise the money yourselves. You know what I mean?

FELIX: Well, I’ve never received a dime from the Republican Party. Please don’t report that back to headquarters. But I can see your dilemma. You have a rather unique situation here.

IRVINE: I think nationally it’s a bit that way although I have daughters in Portland, Oregon, for example, where the Democratic Party has taken on the environmental issues and makes sure that the crushed glass gets put into the roads and things, for recycling, which we’ve had a problem with here with the Democrats in control, and somebody needs to represent the environment, as far as I’m concerned.

FELIX: And I would agree. I think many of those issues are primarily addressed at the State Legislative level although there are, for example, when we initiated the effort to preserve the Kaiwi shoreline on Oahu, it was an effort that was initiated by now Congressman Neil Abercrombie and myself, so I find myself joining with my fellow Democrats to bring about the preservation and conservation initiatives, leasehold conversion, the preservation of Hanauma Bay and other preservation/conservation efforts. The council, I think, has been very sensitive to those kinds of concerns and it takes on different dynamics based upon different issues.

IRVINE: Well, I’m glad your council has been sensitive to that.

FELIX: We do have our problems however, the bottom line is I think

we have addressed social and environmental issues very well, on the whole.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: In some of our political parties, they have platforms and they have positions, and they have support from other people who supposedly think the same way. A little bit of what David said of that support and those kinds of issues that are like-minded. When you’re running nonpartisan, you are out there by yourself. You don’t have to abide by them, but on the other side, you don’t have those supports and things. How do you get your message out? It would seem to me it would take much more of a campaign to explain your positions and where you are. Does Honolulu have a ballot book? Do they put out anything in writing for elections?

ARAKAWA: Yes.

HERKES: Because if you had ten candidates running for every council seat, you wouldn’t be able to keep track of them. Who puts that out?

ARAKAWA: The newspapers.

FELIX: The media. They do a very commendable job. They do spreadsheets on all the candidates and we have forums at which we can articulate our positions. We have debates. You see, we have a rather unique system on Oahu. We have Neighborhood Boards.

HERKES: Well, we’re going to get into that in a minute.

FELIX: Neighborhood Boards afford all candidates an opportunity to have a forum within which to articulate their positions. There are 38 of them and there are four in my district.

HERKES: I was going to say, it’s not one district, one Board is it? Of course, you have more people.

FELIX: I have four Neighborhood Boards and they all think that they’re Council Members, but that’s okay. It’s very challenging.

ARAKAWA: In those Neighborhood Board meetings, they have the candidates that are running for Senate or Representative or Council up there debating each other. Even Prosecutors. I have to go to Neighborhood Board meetings.

HERKES: Do they take positions in favor of John Henry Felix? We’re going to vote for this man as against another?

FELIX: Oh yes. They’re not supposed to. They’re supposed to be neutral but there are times that they sort of -

ARAKAWA: They don’t take a vote.

FELIX: They don’t take a vote but they do often times show their prejudices.

RAY: George.

MARTIN: First I’d like to thank you gentlemen for coming and sharing with us this information, and because of your wealth of information, John, I’d like to ask a little bit more on what was asked about the Green Party. Do you see a way of avoiding, I think what the concern was, that they wouldn’t get the same shot?

FELIX: I should think they would have a better shot.

MARTIN: That’s what I thought.

FELIX: They would have a better shot. If I were a member of the Green Party, this would be an ideal situation, don’t you think so, David? It’s more than a fair advantage.

RAY: Roland.

HIGASHI: Mr. Felix, in your association with the other counties, I believe the other counties are now nonpartisan?

FELIX: Yes.

HIGASHI: Was Kauai already a nonpartisan in the last election or the election before?

FELIX: I think they followed us.

ARAKAWA: Yes, they followed Honolulu.

FELIX: And they’ve been functioning quite well.

HIGASHI: Have you seen any improvement in their association with their own Council Members?

FELIX: We do have an Associations of Counties, HSAC it’s called, and although I’m not an active participant, our Rene Mansho who is very active in everything, does a very good job in providing for that kind of liaison and from all the reports that she provides us, it’s working quite well. I haven’t heard of any problems related to nonpartisan elections.

HIGASHI: David, are you familiar with what type of system they use? If they use the same system as Oahu in terms of the Primary Election?

ARAKAWA: I’m not sure what Kauai and Maui uses for their nonpartisan elections. And just to get back to something that John Henry mentioned, sometimes it depends on the personalities. It just depends on the personalities of the Mayor and Council and things like that, but I recall being involved, not in an official position but in government, before the nonpartisan elections. It worked the same way. The Republicans and Democrats worked together.

HIGASHI: But you’re not sure what system they use? Whether it’s Oahu system?

ARAKAWA: No.

IRVINE: I have here, at least from the Honolulu Advertiser, Kauai voted in ‘96 to go nonpartisan. They ran their elections in ‘98 as they do in Honolulu, with the 50% plus one and so that’s where they are now.

HIGASHI: Maui, we’re not sure?

IRVINE: Kauai.

HERKES: Maui just did it so I don’t know.

HIGASHI: Okay.

FELIX: And I think we should point out that the Prosecutor’s Office is been nonpartisan ever since that office was put up for election.

RAY: Other questions? Marni.

HERKES: Can we switch to Neighborhood Boards now?

HIGASHI: No, it’s not on the agenda.

RAY: Well, let’s make sure we get all the questions out on nonpartisan first. John.

SANTANGELO: I’d like to go back to what you said originally because as you can see, there’s some posturing here on partisanship and being one of the few Republicans around, John, I never got any money either.

I found myself frustrated on the council because I feel like that’s what it’s about is public safety. It’s about some very basic things and we find, especially in this county, and I’m not real complimentary of this council, of a lot of expounding - a lot of posturing on that kind of basis and not really getting down to the nuts and bolts. The glass thing, again, is something that we’re dealing with here because there seems to be a problem, but that’s State money that came down, and it came through the county, and apparently we’re not handling that well. But, coming back to serving the people about these very basic public safety issues, and roads or solid waste, do you find your council more focused on the job at hand rather than the more philosophical - ?

FELIX: I find that they’re more focused on public health and safety issues rather than on partisan politics issues.

ARAKAWA: That’s the way they are, though, I mean pragmatic.

FELIX: That’s just the way they are. They’re very pragmatic. The dynamics at the City Council of Honolulu is really quite extraordinary because you’ll find different people joining up with unlikely allies to take on this venture or that venture. I think it’s very healthy.

SANTANGELO: I find that interesting. On the council, I felt like once elected, you served every man, woman and child, regardless whether they voted or not, and my record shows that I supported issues Green, Democratic and Republican.

FELIX: That transcend partisan politics.

SANTANGELO: And I worked well with my colleague. I find that if I was to work on the legislative side, very definitely would I be partisan, but the county is not philosophical in that way. We’re not dealing with the kind of issues that are out there and I’m glad to hear you say that.

FELIX: You articulated that far better than either one of us could. That’s right on target.

SANTANGELO: Well thank you and I do thank you for being here.

RAY: Other questions in regard to the nonpartisan. Okay. The issue of Neighborhood Boards has surfaced. That’s not anything that -

ARAKAWA: May we leave now?

RAY: So is that the pleasure of this group? You’d like to explore that? It’s not anything we -

HERKES: I’d like to explore while we have somebody that works under Neighborhood Boards.

HIGASHI: Before we proceed, it’s not an agendized item. Are we violating the Sunshine Law?

YUEN: It would be better if it had been on the agenda but I assume the Commission is not going to vote on it. Why don’t you just go ahead and ask a few questions and then the gentlemen can go.

HIGASHI: Then I think we should agendize it for another meeting so that if people have some opinions, they can talk about it.

FELIX: We’d love to come back.

HIGASHI: I mean even if we discuss it today, Mr. Chairman.

RAY: Okay. We’ll delay that so -

HERKES: He said we could discuss it today but we need to put on a future agenda.

HIGASHI: So if other people want to talk about it later.

HERKES: I would suspect that it’s going to be on several future agendas.

RAY: If you want to briefly discuss it today, that’s fine.

HERKES: I’d like to briefly discuss it because the League of Women Voters is circulating a questionnaire on Neighborhood Boards and I think, or at least I’ve been told, it’s going to be an important part of their yearly agenda, and so I’d like to start a discussion on what it would be like. I’d like to know a couple of questions. How many people does each Neighborhood Board represent? You’ve told us that you interact with them and you have four in your district. You interact with them rather well or sometimes well probably, and sometimes not so well, but everybody on a Neighborhood Board is elected, I understand.

FELIX: Yes, they’re elected by sub-districts so they represent a district within a district.

HERKES: With how many people in each district?

FELIX: It could be 500, it could be -

ARAKAWA: It could be 500, it could be 5000.

FELIX: And the size of the Boards varies quite dramatically.

HERKES: Who decides? The Neighborhood Board Commission?

FELIX: It’s based upon the sub-districts.

ARAKAWA: The Neighborhood Commission does.

FELIX: Yes, there is a Neighborhood Board Commission and it’s based upon population and sub-districts. Neighborhood Boards, I think, can serve a very useful purpose but it can be a double edged sword. I think they have to clearly understand what the parameters of their responsibilities are. Often times, they go beyond communities’ concerns into issues like Y2K, abortion, and it’s almost -

ARAKAWA: Margery Bronster’s -

FELIX: Margery Bronster. I think it can be made very clear what the parameters are and the fact that they are advisory. I had a recent conflict with the Hawaii Kai Neighborhood Board which is a very vocal, well organized Board, on the East Honolulu Development Plan, and the majority of them voted against adopting the plan that I was supportive of, and that every community association in East Honolulu supported, because of the influence of a very strong Chair. The council adopted the East Honolulu Development Plan unanimously, going contrary to what the Neighborhood Board recommended, so I think it has to be made very clear what their parameters are, and the fact that they are advisory, and that isn’t always the case.

HERKES: Who are they advisory to?

ARAKAWA: The government.

FELIX: To the Mayor -

ARAKAWA: It could be State Government, the council. If there’s something -

HERKES: Any government? Whoever asks your opinion, you can give it.

ARAKAWA: I agree with John Henry. It’s a double edged sword. Half of my time on Neighborhood Board paperwork is spent telling them, no, you cannot take a side on this lawsuit. You cannot take a side for the tenants, renters, somebody’s, whatever it is. And so it’s kind of a double edged sword and I’m finding in the area that I live and help the community in, is that our Neighborhood Board, some members of it, don’t represent the community. They were elected. They think they’re God. They don’t talk to their church. They don’t talk to their sports coaches. They don’t talk to anybody. They just decide for themselves what they want to do and they don’t really go back to the community which is what, technically, they’re supposed to do. And they lobby votes for a certain thing and they get the majority of the votes and then they go in and grab whatever they want to ram through so, the Neighborhood Boards do work well and, like John Henry said, they serve a tremendous purpose but it can be a double edged sword. There’s this new thing called vision and I think that’s more representative of what the community wants because the Neighborhood Boards are part of the vision usually, and they listen to the everyday people that come out.

FELIX: And one of the other challenges is the fact that a number, not many, but a number of individuals who aspire to become Neighborhood Board members also aspire to higher office and they often times use this as a forum to further that quest. That’s not all bad.

IRVINE: No, it sounds like -

FELIX: I think you should be clear as to some of the implications of this.

IRVINE: I’m getting the feeling that you do pay attention to Neighborhood Boards even though they are just advisory. This Commission has been told, don’t set them up if they’re just advisory because it is difficult for people to spend a lot of time or energy on something if they think they don’t have any real power to change. But if the politicians then do pay attention to the Neighborhood Boards, then I would say they do have an influence and you’re telling us that they do?

FELIX: Yes, they take a vote. The Mayor pays close attention. Council Members do. The Liquor Commission does when there’s an application for a license in a neighborhood. The Board listens to both sides and takes a vote.

ARAKAWA: I’d say about 95% to 98% of the time, it follows.

FELIX: Oh yes, I would say the only time that I have recommended an action contrary to the position taken by the Neighborhood Board was the Hawaii Kai incident. Just one incident because 99% of the time I go along with their recommendations.

IRVINE: If a Neighborhood Board can go to the State Legislature as well, apparently, and say what they want - Is that right? And they could go to Congress in Washington if they wanted to?

FELIX: They do that, yes. At the Neighborhood Boards, you’ll have a representative from the Governor’s Office, the Mayor’s Office, from the Senate, the House, from Congress sometimes.

ARAKAWA: They’re all there giving reports. They’re on the agenda.

FELIX: At one time, they were putting elected officials at the end of the agenda and about midnight you get pretty tired.

ARAKAWA: And the Community Associations - if you’re a Community Association and you want to be on the agenda - League of Women Voters, or Save Our Surf or whatever, you want to be on the agenda for that Neighborhood Board every single meeting, they’ll put you on the agenda. You’ll have your five minutes or three minutes.

FELIX: It’s the purest form of democracy as I know it. It takes democracy down to the lowest level, which is good.

IRVINE: I guess they do save you folks from hearing from people on Y2K and abortion and whatnot too because otherwise it would be at the County Council, I’m sure, so overall you think -

ARAKAWA: Right. They still come.

FELIX: They come.

ARAKAWA: They come. That doesn’t stop them.

FELIX: They appear.

IRVINE: They’re still a good idea? I mean, you have a positive -

FELIX: Anything that promotes the democratic process, as difficult and as agonizing as it may be, is good. Okay? There are times now I get frustrated and irritated but the bottom line is, it’s healthy. Democracy is not the most efficient form of government but it’s the best that we know.

ARAKAWA: What John Henry said is very true but it’s very important what he said about they have to know their parameters because some Neighborhood Board Chairmen think they’re the Council Member or they’re the Mayor or they’re the Senator.

FELIX: And they can expose the City to liability.

ARAKAWA: They have. We’ve gotten sued.

FELIX: That’s where you have to be careful but I think that can be addressed.

ARAKAWA: Yes.

IRVINE: How?

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: I think we’re interested because we’re searching for something we can put in our County Charter that will expand the democratic process and bring more people in. Neighborhood Boards was one way. Two Planning Commissions was something we discussed at our last meeting.

FELIX: East and West Hawaii?

HERKES: No, North and South. We’re looking our way, how to bring more people into government and make it work. Now, Neighborhood Boards are fairly expensive but you feel there’s a good trade off there?

FELIX: I think it’s a good trade off, particularly on this island because it’s such a large island. I think it would give the grass roots districts a better opportunity because it’s very difficult for Council Members on this island, particular to cover some of these huge districts down here.

HERKES: It’s even more difficult -

FELIX: And to have Neighborhood Boards giving you input - if you use them as a tool for two-way communications, I think it could be very beneficial because of the distances that you have to travel.

HERKES: Okay.

FELIX: I know my good friend, John Farias, served as a Council Member here.

HERKES: He rode a horse, though.

FELIX: His greatest frustration was covering these huge districts that are not that densely populated so there could be a very useful purpose in instituting such a program.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: Do you feel that the Boards tend to understand an advisory vs. a dictatorial?

FELIX: I think they understand but they don’t follow and he (Arakawa) continually reminds them. Yes, he continually reminds them. I think the Commission has to take a more positive stance in that direction. I just think that they’ve been proactive enough and also, training them in the Roberts Rules of Order - the meetings sometimes just go on and on and on. They’re odd infinitum. They do need some training in how to run a meeting and how to follow Roberts Rules. There are some that are extraordinary in the way they’ve run their meetings. I mean, they’re very professional. The Hawaii Kai Neighborhood Board is extremely well run because a Labor leader is the Chairman and they know Roberts Rules backwards and forwards.

SANTANGELO: One of the grass roots that we have here that’s helping a lot with the schools because they’re doing a lot to have to educate the parents on how to conduct a meeting and what consensus and stuff is. That’s really nice. As a sidebar to this. We’re talking about empowerment and one of the things that came up before, like in a sign ordinance or lot areas, and I’m interested in empowerment, do you have any sort of mechanism in your Charter, in your Council, that allows people, in a smaller subdivision, to deal with the signs that are there; to deal with the kinds of things that happen?

FELIX: The Neighborhood Board is the best opportunity. At the beginning of the agenda they have Community Concerns item and that’s when people come out of the woodwork to express their concerns about signs and traffic and whatever is on their minds, and they do come out.

SANTANGELO: So they function somewhat like a design district or something like that?

FELIX: That’s correct.

RAY: Roland.

HIGASHI: When the Neighborhood Board system first was created, there was great interest in the whole system and I knew people who worked in handling that Commission. Has that enthusiasm become less now?

FELIX: Am I still enthusiastic?

HIGASHI: No, is the whole system as enthusiastic about it?

FELIX: Oh yes, they’re becoming more enthusiastic.

ARAKAWA: In his area, yes. I would say the Pearl City Neighborhood Board has seven vacancies - 21 seats - one-third - nobody runs, nobody runs.

HIGASHI: Yes, I was leading to that that I’ve seen notices of people should be applying for this thing and whether it’s losing it’s effectiveness or not -

ARAKAWA: It’s not losing it’s effectiveness.

FELIX: No, I think the effectiveness is there but there are certain districts, not in my councilmanic district because we have four or five people running for every seat, and they send out mailers and they do all kinds of political type things. There’s a lot of enthusiasm in my district.

HIGASHI: So some districts may be strong in their belief in the system and some areas may be weak. Is that the observation?

FELIX: There is one district within my councilmanic district, and that’s Waimanalo, that from time to time, has vacancies but the members of the Board can elect individuals to serve in those vacancies until the next election.

HIGASHI: But they have some districts that the people are just not interested in running for office at their regular election?

ARAKAWA: The Board can fill those vacancies but some, they ask their cousin, they ask their brother and they still don’t fill so you have Boards with a number of seats that are not filled. And one thing I wanted to add too, some of the Neighborhood Boards, it’s who talks the loudest so it may be the community is actually going this way but who talks the loudest and can solicit the votes at the Neighborhood Board gets it his way. Since the Mayor and the Council started this vision process, the community is saying, hey, you guys are not representing us with this vote, and the Neighborhood Boards are now having to be accountable to members of the public, just everyday actual public.

FELIX: The other thing that benefits the process in my district is the fact that we have over 50 Community Associations and they are very active, and they inter-relate with the Neighborhood -

HIGASHI: Is that because you have a lot of condominiums and Community Associations?

FELIX: That’s right. We have Kuapa Isle Community Association. You’re absolutely right and that’s very healthy. That really helps the process.

RAY: Okay, I don’t want to get too far astray on this. This is obviously a topic we’re going to need to agendize and discuss further, and I also don’t want to go into other areas this evening. Mr. Yuen advised me we really should agendize and we can bring these folks back or other folks. Okay? Any more questions on the nonpartisan elections?

FELIX: Mr. Chairman, I just have one comment.

RAY: Sure.

FELIX: If this panel would ever like to look into the area of a Fire Commission. That was my initiative and I would be very willing to come over to address that issue because it has proved to be very beneficial to the Fire Department and the City and County of Honolulu.

RAY: Okay, good. I appreciate that. We’re going to take a three or four minute recess while these folks leave if you want to speak with them, and then we’re going to get the Elections Division in.

FELIX: Thank you very much for inviting us. This is easier than a Neighborhood Board.

RECESSED The Chairman called a short recess at 3:57 p.m.

RECONVENED The meeting reconvened at 4:04 p.m.

RAY: I’d like to call the meeting back to order. There was a little bit of a miscommunication on Statements from the Public. We do have at least one person here who would like to make a statement. Councilman Tyler, come forward, introduce yourself.

TYLER: Thank you Mr. Ray, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Commission. This is my first time here and I misunderstood the Chairman when he said there were no statements from the public, and I just wanted to, first of all, thank you all for serving and apologize for not having been to your meetings but they seem to coincide with our Council meetings which, for various reasons, go on longer than maybe some people would like, and I have to take some blame for that, as Mr. Santangelo knows.

In any case, I wanted to suggest to you that - well, I think we all recognize that the work you’re doing is extremely important for the future of this county and any efforts that you can undertake to further publicize, in addition to the people from the press that are here, your work. It seems to me it would go a long ways in the kinds of educational things that Council Member Felix and Corporation Counsel Arakawa spoke about. And I have spoken with your Chairman about this on a couple of occasions and I just wanted to tell each of you in person that I think you have opportunities here on the island which could very much further your cause and further involve the public, whether by coming to your meetings or actually, to be forming small groups within their communities. And one of these is through the Public Access channel to possibly have your meetings televised. And second, of course, to continue to put your notices in the newspaper, maybe one week before. I know you’ve published a schedule that went on for a number of weeks, or possibly months.

The second would be to put your agenda and your minutes on the County website. The County has a website and you can talk to the Data Systems person, Mr. Gail Rock and I’m sure they’d be glad to try to accommodate this, but you obviously have someone who is very efficient in terms of preparing the agenda and also the minutes, and I think it would be very helpful.

And I would also like to suggest that you rotate your meetings. I was told by the Chairman that the one meeting that you had in West Hawaii, I believe I was out of the state at the time, was very poorly attended and I was quite sorry to hear that, and I can understand your reluctance to spend additional dollars to go to a place where people might not come out but perhaps, if there’s a coordinated effort between the printed media, the television and the internet, this may increase the involvement. I happen to believe, and I think many of you know this and you heard me say this, that the Charter Review Commission’s work and the work being conducted by the Planning Department, in conjunction with the Council and other departments, regarding the ten year General Plan Review are probably the most important work that we, as citizens of Hawaii Island, have before us. And I think both of these projects have the potential, individually and collectively, to further empower, as Commission Member Santangelo said, the public to get involved in what is a once in ten year opportunity. So if I can be helpful in any way with regard to this, because I’m a strong proponent of it, I’ll be more than happy to do so and I thank you very much. I’ll be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you Mr. Ray.

RAY: Thanks. Any questions?

TYLER: Thank you, sir.

RAY: Thank you. Okay, any other statements from the public? Al, could you introduce yourself?

KONISHI: I’m Al Konishi. I’m the County Clerk. Myself and my staff are here to answer questions that you have. I did want to make a statement as a private citizen later though, and I was wondering if I could hold off till after 4:30 because if not, I’m going to sign out on vacation time and make a statement because I really want to avoid any confusion that my statement is strictly my own views, so after our presentation if I could give my statement then, I would appreciate it.

RAY: Sure. Any other statements from the public? Introduce yourself, please.

VICENTE: My name is Dwight Vicente. I’m a natural person. I’m not an incorporation. The issue that Fred Rice is raising about the elections ought to be coming up as a question because apparently there’s two publics in Hawaii and the U.S. Constitution there’s supposed to only be one. So after reading Public Law 103-150, I don’t consider myself a U.S. citizen but I’m still registered to vote. I made Al aware of that. He said that’s all right, you still can vote. So I choose to cast a blank ballot because I view the County and State of Hawaii as being illegal entities of the United States Congress. So I think the election issue ought to be raised. It’s like putting the cart in front of the horse because when Fred Rice go up there, I think it’s gonna switch around where people think it’s the Hawaiians are leeching off the general public. It’s the other way around and that’s how I look at it. The lands still belong to Hawaiians and they’re the indigenous people. And the people who call themselves U.S. citizens are actually foreigners here and that’s the proper perspective to view it at this point in time. So I think they should look into the elections first before even thinking about it.

RAY: Okay, thank you, Dwight. Any other statements from the public? If not, we’ll proceed to -

QUEROBIN: I wanted to speak on the Fire Commission.

RAY: Sure, go ahead.

QUEROBIN: I’ve submitted a written testimony. You should have copies of it. This is in behalf of the firefighters.

RAY: Could you introduce yourself please?

QUEROBIN: Oh pardon me. I’m a retired Fire Captain of the Hawaii County Fire Department. I was a former Unit Chair for this island for almost 20 years. The reason -

RAY: State your name for the record please.

QUEROBIN: Excuse me. My name is Steven Querobin. Sorry about that.

RAY: That’s okay. We should have had sign up forms and we didn’t so -

QUEROBIN: The testimony should speak for itself. The main reason why we’re asking for a Fire Commission is to offer stability in the Fire Department. In my 26 ½ years of service with Hawaii County Fire Department, I’ve been through ten different Fire Administrations and the reason we support a Commission is not to eliminate politics altogether from the Fire Department but to lessen the politics that’s going on right now, to sort of insulate the Fire Department from the everyday politics, and the Chief has more freedom of doing long term planning. The problem we’re having right now is you have somebody - I’ll give an example. Not because he was my friend, but this particular Chief I’m going to talk about had tremendous vision. His name was Chief Smith, Francis Smith. He took us from an ordinary Fire Department into the EMS Services, into air rescue, Air Medi-cal Services, and his vision of the Fire Department - we share the same vision but because of politics, his term was cut short. So what I’m really saying is we’d like to see a Commission not made of experts - when I say experts, so called ex-fire people, but really a citizen review committee, to oversee the Department, the Administration, the Office of the Fire Chief. And we submitted the Honolulu City Charter Amendments in regards to the Fire Commission and it seems to be working well right now, so would ask your support in forming a Fire Commission for our island. If you have any questions, I’ll be more than glad to answer.

RAY: Okay, George.

MARTIN: Steve, good afternoon. Thanks for coming in. I open the Charter in CHAPTER 4: FIRE DEPARTMENT. It states that there shall be a Fire Department consisting of Fire Chief and necessary staff. It goes on to say that the Mayor will appoint and Council will confirm. May be removed by the Mayor. In this present form, do you think that there would be a need to change that?

QUEROBIN: Yes. We’d like to see the Charter Amendment to read that the Fire Commission would appoint the Fire Chief and there’s reasons behind that, obvious reasons.

MARTIN: Thank you.

RAY: Other questions? Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: Steve, I think we have one committee or Commission now supporting the Fire Department, that’s the EMS Commission, Emergency Medical Services Commission.

QUEROBIN: That’s correct. They deal with EMS only.

YOSHIYAMA: I don’t know if it’s a State mandated Commission but it is within the County of Hawaii?

QUEROBIN: The reason for that, I believe, is because of State monies. EMS is like a per diem contract with the County because the State funds the EMS portion so they have - but if a Commission is formed, maybe be a good idea to combine the EMS Commission with the Fire Commission so that there won’t be a bureaucratic overlay.

YOSHIYAMA: That’s where I think I was leading my question because I think there’s some concern of building up of the bureaucracy by adding another Commission. Yes, you answered my question. Thank you.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: Just a quick comment. The health is supplied by the State. I mean they’re supposed to be doing this and they’re hiring us for the MT.

QUEROBIN: That is correct. From when I was there, they reimburse the - let’s say the contract was for, let’s say for X million of dollars and it was on a per diem basis. You got reimbursed for what you spent and if you didn’t spend in that time, you give the money back.

SANTANGELO: But I think the point being that the MT part of it is a State part, that this Commission that we’re considering would deal directly with our own county function of fire.

QUEROBIN: Right. But maybe if a Fire Commission is formed, it’d be a good idea to include a person from the EMS Department on the Commission.

SANTANGELO: From that Commission.

QUEROBIN: From that Commission. I would think so.

SANTANGELO: Thank you.

RAY: Okay. Roland.

HIGASHI: Mr. Querobin, if a Public Safety Commission was formed, would that be something that would be amiable to you? Combining total Public Safety.

QUEROBIN: Are you talking about police, fire?

HIGASHI: Police and fire -

QUEROBIN: I don’t know if I can answer that. I’m not real familiar but I have an idea of how the Police Commission works. But maybe if you combine everybody together, you might overburden everybody. I don’t know. Or it may work. I really can’t answer that. But it may be a good idea, something to pursue.

HIGASHI: You can take it back to your group and can see if that’s something that may be acceptable.

QUEROBIN: What we’d really like to see is a Fire Commission and for years, like the last Charter Review, we went against a Commission. At that time we didn’t see a need for it but as the complexity of the Fire Department grew, and then we see the need for it. It’s not like come to work and sit and wait for a fire today. You need a person in there who can take us into the next century, somebody with good vision and long term planning. I hate to say but I’ve seen plans. I mean plans come and go. I don’t know how many Mayors we’ve had. From Kimura’s time; we had Mayor Kimura, then we had Matayoshi, then we had Carpenter, then we had Akana, then Lorraine, then Steve, so that’s seven Mayors but out of the seven Mayors, we’ve had ten different Administrations. So there was really no long term planning. One Administration would come up with a plan then, for obvious reasons, he’s out of office. Then somebody else would come up with a new plan so we’re like yoyo’s. I don’t think that’s the way to run a department.

SANTANGELO: Continuity.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: That brought up a question. A Fire Commission would be appointed by the Mayor and that would mean that when the Mayor went out, the Fire Commission went out, just like the Police Commissions and all the other Commissions?

QUEROBIN: Not necessarily.

HERKES: Not necessarily, but usually.

QUEROBIN: It will be like any other Commission, maybe one guy be appointed for a two year term, another guy be appointed for a four year term and maybe somebody be appointed for a six year term so that you’d have continuity so it wouldn’t be if the Mayor leaves, everybody leaves. If that’s the case, there’s really no need for any Commission.

RAY: Daryl.

KUROZAWA: I have a question. What’s your thoughts about if a Fire Chief is appointed, what kind of term are you looking at? Is it forever, or is it a two year term or five year term?

QUEROBIN: He’ll be at the mercy of the Fire Commission. If he does his job, he’ll have a job. If he doesn’t do his job then it’s up to the Commission to hire and fire him. This is what the Commission is for. But what it really does, is it lessens the politics, and I don’t want to mention all the politics. But it really makes the Chief, not a free hand, but it gives him more liberty to pursue his goals and also, we have a lot of young people in the department today that will make good administrative personnel but because of the way the Civil system works, they don’t want to come up and take a chance.

DARYL: I just have one short question. So aside from appointing the Fire Chief, what else do you envision the Commission doing?

QUEROBIN: They will oversee the Administration, similar to the Police Commission.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: If I’m to hear you, you’re looking to, any measure at all, put performance standards in there and base this on that.

QUEROBIN: Right. I think the proposal in here states the qualifications for the Fire Chief. If you look on page 2, these are some of the criteria we would like to see happen, and the Fire Chief obviously needs to have administrative skills. It’s also in there.

SANTANGELO: So yes, I agree with you that there needs to be some sort of performance based standard. But you wouldn’t see this Commission being involved in promotions or anything like that?

QUEROBIN: No, that would be the job of the Fire Chief and whatever the panels that they have.

SANTANGELO: Now there have been some grievances over that. Would that go to the Commission or you see the Commission strictly dealing with the Administration?

QUEROBIN: I see the Commission strictly dealing with the Administration, administrative matters. You have provisions for collective bargaining matters so I think that’s a separate issue altogether.

SANTANGELO: Thank you, Steve.

RAY: Other questions? Okay, thank you.

QUEROBIN: Thank you very much.

RAY: Thanks Steve. Let’s move to Item VII.B, the Special Election Presentation by the County Elections Division. Al, can you introduce your staff that’s here.

KONISHI: Okay, thank you Chairman Ray and Members. Thank you for the invite. For the record again, I’m Al Konishi, the County Clerk. May the record reflect seated to my immediate right is Donald Ikeda, Deputy Clerk. Also here from our office is Ed Kozohara who’s, I guess, the Dean of Election guys around the state. He’s our top civil servant and Pat Nakamoto behind Ed. Actually, they know way more than Donald and I do so let’s set the record straight with that first.

RAY: Al, let me make a couple of comments. You know we’ve been, and it’s been widely reported in the press that we’ve been kicking around the idea of a Special Election and something that’s kind of floating over our heads and we’re trying to get as much clarity as possible today, especially in terms of the timing and logistics of considering a Special Election. That was our initial discussion. It was more on a "what if" basis. "What if" we were to be inclined to look at a Special Election, when would we have to do such and such, so I think, at this point in time, since it’s almost September of 1999, what we’re really interested in is the logistics and time frames. If we were to wind up the Charter review and have the Amendments ready to go by such and such a time, how much lead time do you need to schedule an election. And also the Budget, and I know you’ve got some information for that as well, which is another important part of the discussion. But we’re really trying to pin down the time frame considerations as much as possible today to give us a sense of those logistics.

KONISHI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just answer your questions head on. Each one I’ll summarize and then we can get to some of the details. First of all, in terms of time, I believe they took ten months in 1979 to prepare for the Special Election and what happened there was the Charter Commission, I believe, decided right in the initial going that they were going to go with a Special Election. That gave the staff ten months to prepare and I kind of use that as the model for what it takes to put one together. Now, I’m told that maybe we can shave some corners here and there but I caution you that in Hawaii, especially with our experience from the last election, cutting corners is not the way to go because the last thing in the world we want to do is have anybody in the public question the integrity and security of the election. So anyway, to answer your question head on, the last time they had a ten month head start, and like you said, maybe we can shave a little bit of that off but I don’t suspect it would be a whole lot more.

Also, I spoke to some vendors in the business of putting on these elections and they told us straight, that starting, I guess, next February or so, we’re running right into the Presidential Primary season across the mainland. This is the most important county to us, our 120 or so thousand people, but they’re going to be involved in states like California, I don’t know, are there 40, 50 million people, etc. and I have a feeling that when it comes to running our election or doing the California Primary, the New York Primary, we’re going to get lost in the shuffle because there aren’t a whole lot of vendors that do this kind of work out there. So, I guess the bottom line is, if you guys are going to decide to do this, you guys need to decide real quick, in fact, maybe it’s one of those situations where you needed to decide this yesterday.

In terms of cost, the staff has prepared a rough breakdown and it comes out to just under $400,000, it’s, I believe, $394,750. Then there’s a question as to how much the Office of Election, that’s the State Office, would charge us so there may be a little bit more expense there too. If you have any questions about the details of that, that’s why Ed and Pat are here, because they’re the ones that actually do it.

RAY: What I don’t understand is, what do you need to have in hand to trigger the decision to go with the Special Election? In other words, when do we have to have our work done? That’s what concerns me the most. When would we have to be finished with our process and have the Amendments ready to go? Are you saying that we could schedule an election now and have several months, or six months, to finish our work and then plug that into the election? That’s what I don’t understand.

KONISHI: Okay, I understand. Let me ask. When did they give you the questions in ‘79?

IKEDA: In August.

KONISHI: So this was about four months prior to the election. This is Ed Kozohara from our staff.

KOZOHARA: In January, in ‘79, the previous Commission decided to have an election.

RAY: A Special Election?

KOZOHARA: A Special Election. The schedule determined that we were going in November so that’s where the ten months comes in.

KONISHI: But you got the questions four months ahead?

KOZOHARA: Right and we got the questions in about August.

RAY: Okay.

KONISHI: I guess it would also depend on, too, how many questions you had to submit. For example, if you submitted one question, take it or leave it, I guess that would present less of a logistical problem than if you submitted 30 questions.

RAY: I’m sure there are lots of questions to try to filter through this. Roland, you want to start off?

HIGASHI: How long does it take to make the ballot once you get the questions?

KOZOHARA: Let’s say we’re talking about the General Election. We have to submit the questions about 60 days prior to the election, however, the vendor is already selected way in advance of 60 days.

HIGASHI: Assuming we’re using a punch card like the old system which the State still has, which you could probably use without a vendor, once we give you the questions to prepare a ballot, have it printed, how long does that take?

KOZOHARA: Before we go to that question, the punch card system is not the system that the State and the Counties are using right now. We still have the old equipment, however, the vendor that used to service - We’re going into Mark Sense which is the type that we used in 1998.

RAY: I’m sorry, what about the vendor?

KOZOHARA: The technology of punch card voting is not being supported like it was before because, as you know, the punch card system is based on the card. You know how IBM card system - IBM doesn’t do that anymore. It’s all on electronic type of voting, Mark Sense.

HIGASHI: So your answer to me is that the punch card system is not available for use?

KOZOHARA: As far as I know. I guess Roland’s question is we could use the old punch card system?

HIGASHI: Yes.

KOZOHARA: Anything is possible but right now -

HIGASHI: Presently the State does not have a vendor for the next election yet, is that correct?

KOZOHARA: As far as having a vendor, right. The vendor has not been selected yet. The State is moving away from punch card system.

HIGASHI: Right, but it could be used if it was necessary?

KOZOHARA: I think you would have to ask -

HIGASHI: Maybe it’s something that you could get back to us.

KOZOHARA: Pardon?

HIGASHI: It’s maybe something you could answer back to our Chairman in writing, whether it is available or is not available.

RAY: George.

MARTIN: A follow-up question on what Roland is asking. I keep hearing the word the State determines the use of the type of equipment we’re going to be implementing in election is governed by the State. Is that correct?

AL: Generally, the elections are held - I mean, we don’t have separate County elections. Generally we have elections that are held in conjunction with the State so the State has a Chief Election Officer who, in consultation with the Clerks of the four counties, selects a system that is used for the particular election so Mr. Higashi had asked, right now do we have a vendor for, for example, the year 2000 election. The answer is no. And that’s why we’re saying the State because much of the support that we need has to come from the State. And actually it’s not just the State but also there are other agencies that we would require the cooperation from, for example, the Voter Registration files. We don’t maintain them in the County of Hawaii, they’re City and County, right?

KOZOHARA: Right.

KONISHI: So for example, any kind of work we would do with getting list of registered voters available, etc., we would have to work with the City and County of Honolulu on that also. I just want to make that clear. We say the State, the State, because we depend so much on the State with regard to logistical support during most elections. Like on the punch card question, I guess what Mr. Kozohara was saying was that the level of support that we used to have for the punch card system is no longer there. I was going to say that that assumes that we would run it exactly the same way we had in the past. I’m sure anything is possible. You could use the punch cards and somebody could count it by hand, I guess. You know that’s always possible. Whether or not the public would have the same level of confidence in that, I don’t know and that’s what I said earlier about we can cut corners, we can cut a lot of corners but if the public is not going to be confident in that result then I would recommend against cutting those corners, especially now because of the experience in ‘98.

RAY: Go ahead George.

MARTIN: If I hear you correctly, and I’m giggling over here because I wonder if the public has any sense of confidence in the system that we used last time. That’s why I was giggling. As we’re mentioning a Special Election per se, pertaining to the Charter, and I don’t think anybody in this body has committed to it as of yet. We’re in an informal way of just discussing it. If it were a County Special Election, could we not then determine what format we would use?

KOZOHARA: I guess the public doesn’t know too much about what goes on in an election but in past elections, up until the 1998 election, we depended on the State a whole lot. They provided us, the Department of ICSD, I guess it was, used to send people over but with the budget cuts, personnel were not available and we went to this Mark Sense system which is one of the systems that many of the other states use and it’s much less costly. This estimate over here is based on a Mark Sense system. If we go to a punch card, I know it’s going to be more. I know that, automatic. I believe in the previous elections when we used the punch card system, you remember like in the Primary, we had five different ballots and we discarded four. This election over here, with the Mark Sense system, we have all the parties listed on one card. The cost of the card came down tremendously because of this new system. Now if you’re going to go to the punch card, we have to revise this estimate over here, plus I don’t know how we’re going to get the support from the State.

MARTIN: Okay, I hear what you’re saying and I’m not trying to nitpick or anything. Just for my own thoughts here, again, I hear punch card and I hear Mark Sense. Is there any other form that we possibly could use that would save money, would be as efficient, and would be welcomed by John and Jane Q. Public?

KONISHI: There is a system, which to me, fits the bill except for your last point. And there’s a system. It’s like an ATM. You go to the screen. You touch the screen. You register your vote. It’s counted right there. You don’t have to print the ballot, but there’s no paper involved. So, I make speeches all the time to public groups. I use what I call the Lions Club test. I ask them, eh, what do you think about a system - this really sounds great. Then I come to the last one, but there’s no paper and then the room goes silent and so I don’t know if people would accept that and I don’t know if a Special Charter Election would be the place to try it out. I would probably have to recommend against that at this time.

RAY: I want to ask our attorney to make some comments.

YUEN: Just briefly on this question of procedures that George Martin was asking about. There are some State laws on elections that do apply to any kind of County election, including a Special Election. And these are things like; you have to register voters, signing the poll book, availability to vote at a precinct, the availability of casting absentee ballots. A lot of the things you see in the elections that you voted in. The State law does not specify the mechanical system of voting. That, I guess, has just been done by the State Elections Administrator, has picked a system in the past and if the County wanted to buy it’s own equipment to actually cast and count the ballots. That is up to the County but there are some procedures that would have to be followed in any Charter Special Election.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: I notice that the last figures we have available are from 1979 and I also notice that there are, in the private sector anyway, were some fairly extensive improvements in communication tools since 1979. This is 20 years ago we’re talking about and I think that there are ways, when we’re dealing with time lines, that there are lots of different ways that this process doesn’t have to take so long, and I’d like to investigate some of those ways. I think that Mr. Konishi’s question, when he goes out and asks, is probably several years old and I think that Lions Clubs are probably not the best place to ask a computerized question but I think you’ll find a lot of groups, Rotary Clubs included, who feel comfortable with a computerized voting system. They don’t feel comfortable when there are discrepancies in counting them but they do feel comfortable without paper because we’re all looking to do things that way, and I think that there’s a change in people’s attitudes to different ways of doing things and I certainly would encourage the Elections Division to do that, but that’s not saying that I’m in favor of a Special Election. It’s just that I am in favor of looking at different ways of doing it.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: For me, my litmus test is the integrity. Sounds like you can print things and sounds like you can get the stuff out. Looks like there’s a price tag attached to it. So for me, our lawyer brought up some of the points that were germane to me. You’ve got to be able to register voters. You’ve got to be able to at least know that you’ve got the people voting that are legitimate voters, legal, and that’s a whole process unto itself. And I can see how you would not want to have to duplicate that, especially with the Presidential one coming but I do believe that problems have solutions and if we decided to have one, I think you could deal with it. What I want to hear, though, is we should have an overpowering reason for a Special Election because this is going to be an extreme cost. I look at this money and I see about six or eight police officers. There’s just other things we could do with that money that seem to be on a higher priority list with me at this point. But for this Commission to decide, it would seem to me, that we would want to have something that was overpowering that the public would want to deal with this prior to the next election. And so for us to decide that, I think it’s important for us to know what are the real obstacles and not - you know, liars use facts and facts go with liars - just real, real straight forward. It is a lot of work but like what Chris brought up, some of the side bars on the other parts of elections, it seems rather cumbersome. Is there other things that you could give us so that if we were to consider this, and we’re not considering it now, then we’d really know what we were laying on the public?

KONISHI: I’m glad you mentioned integrity because one of your members is Mrs. Irvine who is the Chairman of our Observers group and I would say that one of the most daunting jobs that we have in putting on an election is recruiting people to work at the election. This is the job where the girl goes home and cries almost every night because even though we have people that have done it for years, it’s really hard to get qualified people to come out and work at the polls. Seems like a simple problem. Just call the guys that did it last time. It’s very difficult. Mrs. Irvine’s group provide observers. She can tell you, it’s very difficult. It takes hundreds of people to put on the election properly so that people have confidence in the results. I would say - how many workers we recruit for election?

KOZOHARA: The last election we had about 700 people.

KONISHI: To me, that’s the most daunting aspect of putting on an election and in terms of meeting your thing about integrity, we’ve got to get people from different parties, obviously. We have to get people who will come and observe. We need people that handle the poll book. Like I said, you go below a certain level and you are hitting the integrity issue. You just cannot cut corners below a certain amount so that’s one thing that I would put out there for your consideration.

SANTANGELO: So, it’s the Elections Division - it’s the printing and the mechanism, it’s the logistics, then it’s the workforce involved, and then there’s the expense, the financial expense to go with that?

KONISHI: Yes, and there’s one more consideration. One of the things that - I’m going to turn over the mike quickly to Mr Kozohara because I’m a political appointee. Mr. Kozohara’s a civil servant so whatever he says is less tainted than what I say but one of the things I want to stress is, this will not occur in a vacuum because the election process for the September and November, 2000 election is going to start - I guess the nomination papers are issued in February and so this Special Election would not occur in a vacuum so the time that they spend working on this Special Election means that they’re not going to be spending working on the regular election. Now, I guess I’m going to turn it over to Ed and he can tell you more about the obstacles. Again, he’s a civil servant. He’s been there 20 something years. He comes without the political taint that I guess, me, as a political appointee, might have.

SANTANGELO: For me to finish up, I thank you. This is the kind of informa-tion we need because if it came down to the needs of the people then it has to be a need that supersedes and overcomes all these and then therefore, makes it necessary. And so it’s just really good to know what it is that we’re up against so that we have some sort of standard, so I thank you, Ed. You’re on the right track from where I’m -

RAY: What do you mean by the needs of the people? Can you explain what you’re -

SANTANGELO: I mean, if there’s something that we put up, John - you asked the question so I will answer it. If it was something that we put up that was so important that the public wanted to hear about it. It would have to be something that they wanted so badly that we’d have to overcome this. And I, frankly, don’t see anything on our table that meets that and so it’s good to know the kind of problems that we’re laying on the County, the kind of expenses that we’re laying on the public, before we put something up like that. That’s where I’m coming from.

RAY: Sue.

IRVINE: I think Ed was asked to speak. Did you have something to say before I - I wanted to make a comment, actually -

RAY: Okay, excuse me. A follow-up in regard to the cycle of going into next year elections and how all that would work.

KOZOHARA: I don’t have anything earth shaking to say but after the ‘79 election, which was 20 years ago, I made a critique to my bosses that because of the low turnout and because of the cost, that we should have Special Elections held together with the General, and that was 20 years ago and I still make that same recommendation to this body.

RAY: Sue.

IRVINE: It was mentioned that I have been observing at elections for probably 20 years. I think I was there in ‘79 too. I can’t remember. But I’ve been through the punch cards. I can’t imagine us even dreaming of trying to use punch cards again to try to count elections. We were just praying that the equipment wouldn’t fall apart and that the volunteers who were taking care of it could work with those old cards. People who’d been to college in the 60's and did their punch cards then and they were still trying to use these machines.

The other thing is, I’m not confident without a paper trail, as far as elections are concerned, yet. If we hadn’t had a paper trail for our last election, we would have had the public in real doubt about the integrity of the electoral system.

RAY: Daryl.

KUROZAWA: Just for the record, for the Commission, we spoke, when we first started meeting, about the possibility of doing election by mail, and according to our rules, if we just had a County election, would that be possible or would that be totally -

KONISHI: I don’t believe that’s possible. There was a bill at the Legislature but it did not pass to authorize that.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: I’ve worked in the elections for probably the last six elections, well I’ve worked in them for a long time and I want to compliment you on your training crew. They are excellent and I can’t imagine any of them going home and crying. They sent us home to cry but none of them go home at night and cry. They are really very good. They do it fast. They do it efficiently. They make us shut up. They make us listen and they make us read the books, so thank you very much for that. I just wanted to say that before we went through.

RAY: George.

MARTIN: Question. Take the Special Election out of your mind. Forget about it for a moment.

KOZOHARA: Thank you.

MARTIN: On a serious note, when do we need to be finished for you to place it on the ballot of the next election?

KOZOHARA: More important than that, you’d have to decide the date of the election, if you’re going to have an election, first.

MARTIN: No, like I said, take the Special out. We’re going to the General.

KOZOHARA: Oh, for the General. Sixty days before the -

MARTIN: That’s all you need is 60 days before?

KOZOHARA: Yes.

RAY: So that’s one deadline.

KOZOHARA: Let me clarify that. We have to get the question in finished form to the Office of Elections 60 days prior to the election.

RAY: Roland.

HIGASHI: One last question on election, not Special Election. On the posing of the question the people are voting on, who writes up the ballot issue? We do?

YUEN: This Commission will have final say on the wording of what goes on the ballot.

RAY: Other questions?

KONISHI: A follow-up to Mr. Martin. I just want to remind you because you said what’s the last date that - the Charter states that no less than 45 days before the election, at least two daily newspapers of general circulation - I guess you have to publish a brief digest of the Amendment so that’s another deadline for you to consider. Also, please consider the State just changed the law that says that in the event our Charter is in conflict with this Act 160 passed last year, that we are to disregard our Charter and you have to publish is in the RFD weekly publication. So that’s another deadline to think about.

RAY: Gary.

YUEN: May I just say that we should plan on publishing in the newspaper rather than in the little thing that is only found at the County Building and a few other places.

RAY: Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: We have to make this decision yesterday. You need 10 months’ lead time. This thing going to cost us $400,000. So if you take the time, the commitment of resources, equipment, supplies, staff, money, okay. I guess in any venture you get the start-up costs, you get costs in the middle, you get costs in the end. What I’m trying to find out is, generally speaking, the commitment, the time, the money, is where? At what phases? Can you give me an estimate like once you say go, that’s $400,000 down the tubes already, or what’s the incremental costs and stuff like that? You know kind of where I’m going?

KONISHI: Yes.

KOZOHARA: I cannot give you exact date but, at least, normally we pay for 50% of the ballots several months before the election.

KONISHI: When do we see the whole cost of the election?

KOZOHARA: After the election. That’s when all the bills come in.

YOSHIYAMA: In terms of commitment, and it’s not a dollar amount that I can put on, to go get 700 volunteers, you’ve got to start today and you’ve got to invest a lot of time, right?

KOZOHARA: Right.

YOSHIYAMA: So that’s what I’m trying to get at, so it’s not only dollars but some other stuff. How much effort you’ve got to put in today?

KOZOHARA: Ten months would be nice but I guess we could get by with six. But if the 2000 election wasn’t coming up right around the corner - we’re preparing for the 2000 election already. George should know. I’m trying to get a polling place in Ookala and we still can’t get a polling place. We’re trying to get another polling place in Pahoa and we’re doing that right now.

YOSHIYAMA: At this point in time - I don’t know if this is a question. If, using your time frame, Al, ten months, we would have a Special Election maybe, comfortably in June of the year 2000; say five months at a cost of $400,000. Is that pretty accurate?

KOZOHARA: Yes.

RAY: I think these are the kinds of scenarios and sense we’ve got to get. I’d just like to get this monkey off my back and have a much clearer understanding of what we’re talking about because, in my mind, it’s totally unrealistic but I don’t feel like we’re there yet in terms of having that answer. John.

SANTANGELO: That was my point prior, just to clarify that. There had to be a compelling reason to overcome all this that we would have to come up with and I don’t see that as being realistic either. There was a point in my mind, maybe, but I just don’t see that. We’ve floated a lot of initiatives at this point. There’s been discussion. The public certainly hasn’t come up and said, oh my Lord, we’ve just got to have that before the next election. But I do thank you for at least being as honest as you can, and I think you’ve really tightened it up a bit to where we can have some confidence in it. You were there in ‘79 so how much experience do you have in elections? Over 20 years?

KOZOHARA: 25.

RAY: This body needs to have further discussions but is there anything further from these folks here this evening? Any more information? Let’s make sure we get as much information as we can from them so we can make decisions. George.

MARTIN: Is there any more questions we should be asking?

RAY: I feel like there are but I don’t know.

YUEN: Just so I can have complete clarity on this. You don’t have, right now, machines, a whole system for counting ballots?

KOZOHARA: Are you talking about the punch card system? The support for that is not there.

YUEN: What happened to the system - I read - I kind of remember all these newspaper articles and the complaints about the system we had last time. Are those machines that were rented or borrowed?

KOZOHARA: The vendor had a full service contract for one election. We’ve met with the vendor, not only us but all the counties have met with the vendors. They’ve corrected those errors. Actually there were only two machines which were dump. Others were not malfunctioning.

YUEN: No, what I mean is, those machines are not sitting in the basement of the County Building?

KOZOHARA: No.

YUEN: They’re on the mainland somewhere or -

KOZOHARA: I’m not sure where they are right now but it belongs to the vendor.

YUEN: It belongs to this company and there’s no contract in place to use them again?

KOZOHARA: No, not right now.

YUEN: So before we have any kind of election, unless you have a lot of people sitting and counting ballots by hand, somebody has got to make a contract with some company to actually physically have an election system in place for counting ballots.

KOZOHARA: Yes.

YUEN: Okay.

KONISHI: To follow up on that. One of the things that has happened since 1979, which we have to deal with, is there’s now a State Procurement Code and one of the things that they really slapped around the Chief Election Officer about, with regard to the ‘98 election, was the fact that there was some allegation that he should have done this or that with regard to the State Procurement Code, so one of the things that we’d have to do in putting a system together is going through this whole process with regard to procurement. Four months is the information we have, it would take us to comply with the Procurement Code.

YUEN: And when you gave us your estimate of $400,000, that’s assuming that somebody else has put together a system for counting the ballots, right? That’s not assuming that if the Commission here decided that we wanted to have an election in May and the County had to go and get a vendor, and hire somebody, and then find a way to count the ballots, that would be extra on top of this $400,000. Is that correct?

KOZOHARA: It’s included. The figure for the ballot counting was based on the amount that we paid in 1998 for one election. We’re charged for the Primary and the General.

YUEN: I see, okay.

SANTANGELO: Mr. Chairman, while we’re on the subject, I have one question. If there was this election, who has to go get the money?

KONISHI: Who has to get the money? I guess we do.

SANTANGELO: You’d have to go get the money.

KONISHI: We’d have to go to the Council and ask for the funds because it would come out of our department.

RAY: Yes, those funds are not appropriated so we’d have to -

IRVINE: I guess that was the question of mine earlier too. It says in the Charter that we can decide to throw a Special Election, but does that mean that the County Council has to provide this money or is it up to them? I’m not sure.

YUEN: It means that they’re supposed to. On all these things that are in the Charter - Let me give you a more neutral example. The Charter says that you have a Department of Research and Development and you have a Director of Research and Development. That means the Council is supposed to appropriate money for a Director of a Department of Research and Development. If the Council sits there and says, oh, the hell with that, then they vote nine-zip not to appropriate the money for this, or for a Special Election, then you have one of your classic kinds of governmental impasses and somebody winds up running to court to the judge and say, no they have to do this and no they don’t. And then there’s a lot of technicalities involved in forcing the Council to appropriate money, but the best I can answer you is it means that because the Charter Commission has been given the power to determine that a Charter Amendment or a new Charter can be voted on by a Special Election, and obviously it costs money, they are supposed to appropriate money for the purpose, if the Charter Commission so decides.

IRVINE: I think aside from talking to the clerks, we need to talk to Finance or the County Council about a time line on getting money if we wanted to throw a Special Election.

RAY: Marni.

HERKES: What a lead in. That’s wonderful. I’m going to say this because I want it in the minutes because I want this is writing. If we had an election in June, in January we would have to get an appropriation from the Council. In March, with that four months, we would have to have a vendor hired because that’s a procurement process. I mean not hired, but beginning to talk to because that’s the four months. In April, we’d have to write the ballot because that’s 60 days. In May, to train the volunteers and June, to have the elections. So you will all have that in your minutes and we can talk about it with a time line because I think that’s what we need to look at is what is the time line here and maybe we can ask Mr. Konishi to take it to his staff and start to look at that time line and see what we’ve left out, so we can start to talk about where we really are.

RAY: Any questions? Thank you, and Al, you wanted to make a comment as a private citizen, as a statement from the public?

KONISHI: Yes, and I’m glad it’s after 4:30 so I don’t have to sign out on vacation time.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Ray and Members of the Commission. I just want to make a brief but detailed statement. This is as a private citizen and based on my experience as a Deputy Clerk, Clerk, member of the Chambers of Commerce over the years, and a taxpayer. We’ll keep it real brief.

First of all, these are just thoughts that I’ve had over the years, working in the elections and observing other counties. First of all, I was going to recommend that the County Election should be nonpartisan. I think this is especially true with the post of Prosecutor. I think that voters tend to be more independent today, and I think I’m typical of most voters. I vote for people of both parties, even though I’ve been a lifelong Democrat. In fact, we have more than two parties represented now. We have three parties. So I don’t think it’s as important for people as it used to be. My colleagues in the other counties seem to be quite comfortable with the nonpartisan system.

Also, there are nine council districts and there are six State House districts. As a result, because they cannot be identical because of numerical disparity, we have to print 16 different ballots. We have to print 16 ballot types for use on the island so one of the recommendations I was going to make is, I guess you guys have kicked it around too, some people have kicked it around, this idea of going to maybe six member districts and maybe three at large. And if you guys do something like that, I was going to suggest that whenever possible, if we do go to a six council district scenario, we should try to have them identical to the State Representative districts so that now we only have to ask the taxpayers to print six different ballot types instead of 16. That would bring down the cost of elections.

RAY: Al, just in regard to that.

KONISHI: Yes.

RAY: The terms and single member vs. at large. Do you think this should be any different?

KONISHI: Yes. Well, first of all, I was going to say, I think all council terms should be four years, just say that, but I know what chance that has so I would say that if you’re not going to do that, I would suggest, that in order to give an incentive to people to run at large, I would give those three at least four year terms because of the cost and effort it takes to run for office on an island wide basis.

RAY: Marni has a question.

HERKES: Would you recommend State House Representatives be elected for four years also?

KONISHI: No, I wouldn’t but I think it’s different because that is a bicameral situation just like the U.S. Congress where you have some members serving four, in the case of the State Legislature, on a staggered basis, and you have some that run on a two year basis, being the House Member, same thing with the U.S. House and Senate, whereas the County Council is a unicameral situation. So for example, in Honolulu they have four year terms. I’m not sure on Maui. I believe they also do and Kauai has two year terms. But again, it’s just a personal thought. I think that you get greater accountability if people run every two years but right now, is that what the people need most of all? I think what they need most of all is having people that can think on a long term basis and make plans on a long term basis as opposed to greater accountability. You still have accountability if people have four year terms. They still got to run. It’s just they have a chance to do a little longer ranged planning, etc.

MARTIN: I have a question before you continue. Sorry for interrupting.

KONISHI: No, no problem.

MARTIN: You made mention about running the six instead of the nine, and you thought it would save some monies because of the ballot prints. Have any ideas, a dollar figure, what it would save?

KONISHI: No, I don’t have any idea.

MARTIN: Second question, a little bit off of what I just said, but you made mention about four year vs. two year. Lost my train of thought, confused myself. I’ll get back to you.

HERKES: What about when you talked about six/three. What about six two year terms and three people in four years?

KONISHI: Yes, that’s what I was suggesting.

MARTIN: It’s come back to me. Term limit. Would you still have the term limit that has been imposed by the Charter change, I believe, four years ago.

KONISHI: Yes, I’d do that.

MARTIN: Thank you.

SANTANGELO: Mr. Chairman.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: When you were just talking about the four year term, Keola Childs submitted - Keola really can write, and that was his major concern, was the lack of experience, the lack of knowledge that a two year term turning people over, you don’t have the ability to serve the people in a more professional fashion. Is that kind of what you were alluding to?

KONISHI: Yes, and like I had mentioned in an earlier response, I think two year terms are appropriate if you have a bicameral situation but when you have a unicameral situation, I think, not that we don’t have good people, the burden that we place on them is just really staggering.

SANTANGELO: It’s no reflection on the people at all.

KONISHI: That’s correct.

SANTANGELO: It’s the reflection on being able to understand and work with the system. Did you have a chance to read Keola’s things? Do you know about that?

KONISHI: No.

SANTANGELO: Okay, thank you.

KONISHI: The next thing I wanted to recommend was the deletion of the Mandatory Program Review. The present provision is rather vague on program review and therefore, anytime you have vagueness in the law, there’s room for abuse. And right now, the Council’s rules, I guess Rule 24, states that the "budget review, departmental program review and the adoption process shall be interpreted as meeting the mandate" and yet we have people seeking to impeach, I guess, Councilmen and Mayor because the language of Section 3-16 is rather vague. So since the Council does approve the budget each year, of every department, every program, it’s just again my suggestion, as a private citizen, that you eliminate this because it doesn’t really do that much for us.

The next item I wanted to bring up was right now there are two procedures for removing elected officials. You have recall and impeachment. To sum it up, I think one is probably enough. You have recall which does not require any kind of cause whatsoever, but there’s a safeguard because a large number of signatures are required in a compact time frame. That’s 25% of the persons registered in the last election. The other procedure, impeachment, states that a hundred voters may sign a verified petition -

YOSHIYAMA: Point of order. While I appreciate all these comments, I don’t know if they’re on the agenda.

SANTANGELO: This is a Statement from the Public.

YOSHIYAMA: Yes, a Statement from the Public on agenda items so that’s why I’m concerned. If we’re going to do it this meeting, we’re going to do it every meeting and I can see, if Al was here as a County Clerk, it might be different.

RAY: Yes, why don’t you just get us those things in writing.

KONISHI: Okay, I have it - but I can talk about election stuff, right?

RAY: Yes.

KONISHI: Okay, last one then. Initiative and Referendum. I’ve a bunch of comments on that. We learned a lot in the ‘98 initiative process and it highlighted some areas that I think need to be fixed up. First of all, I want to state for the record that the administrative burden on processing the petition was hugh and it came at the time when we were getting ready for the 1998 elections. And I’d say there are only two reasons why we made it through the process. One was our Civil Service staff just worked incredible amounts of hours doing this, just about giving up their family and home lives and also, I want to acknowledge that the Petitioners Committee was cooperative. Had they not been cooperative, or had they been down right uncooperative, I don’t think we would have made it either. And based on those experiences, I have some suggestions.

First of all, shelf life of signatures. The older a signature gets, the more difficult it is for us to validate because I think it’s been estimated up to maybe 20% of the registered voters move between elections. So they sign the petition, they put their address. We run it through the computer. We see the name but a different address. That triggers a whole different set of validation processes. It takes a lot of time. Therefore, I think, in fairness, signatures should be valid for one election cycle only. In other words, from the day of a General Election to the time you submit before the next General Election, but that should be it because beyond that, it just increases the difficulty to verify it, and who knows, maybe people change their minds in two years. I don’t know. It’s just a suggestion.

Secondly, under our present Charter wording, people get two shots at the petition. They get to turn in the petition and if they don’t have enough signatures, they get to come back with second petition and then we go through the verification process all over again, and not only that, we’ve got to make sure the signatures we’re verifying the second time are not duplicates of the first time. My suggestion is that if a Petitioners Committee comes within a certain shortfall, like for example, 2% or less of what they need, then they should maybe get the second shot. If they’re kind of off, it increases the chances that we’re going to make mistakes or not do it right, etc. Wording, this was a tremendous problem. As much as we tried to be fair in wording, all I did was get people upset with me and everybody thought that I was juicing it for the other side. I don’t know how the heck that is humanly possible but that’s what people thought, and I think that’s just natural because people are passionate about their causes. My suggestion is, on the wording, that it be a committee of four people that writes the question. The Clerk appoints somebody. The Petitioners Committee appoints somebody. They appoint a third party to be on the Committee and the Corporation Counsel is a non-voting member of the Committee and they write the question. Put them in a room. Let them write it. So be it. I think that’s about the only way that I could see that would be fair and efficient in terms of writing the question.

Also, the Charter presently says we need to submit an objective summary on the ballot. We received an Attorney General Opinion the last time that said that we are not permitted to do that. That there’s a State law that says that the only thing you can put on the ballot is certain things, and an objective summary is not one of them. So according to this Attorney General Opinion, we’re not supposed to have the objective summary. And by the way, you think it was bad enough getting criticized on the question, the objective summary was just another issue that people raised as we’re being unfair in the drafting of the question. So my suggestion is just take it out.

Also, I think State law is fairly clear that blank and spoiled ballots should not be counted as a ballot cast but to make it crystal clear, I would suggest that you put language in the Charter to that effect, that again, a blank and spoiled ballot would not be counted as a ballot cast.

Number 5. There’s a typographical error, I believe, in Section 11-6 which refers to Sections 3-9 and 3-11 relating to the passage of ordinances. I think that’s a typographical error.

The last thing is deadline on the last election thing, and that is I think that petitions should be submitted at the latest by May 1st of the election year because there is no deadline in the Charter. Now, there’s a practical deadline because if you work it backwards, all the deadlines that you have on the books now means that if you turn in your petition after July or something, it’s almost impossible to get on the ballot, but the Charter has no deadline so what I’m suggesting, as an individual, is put some deadline in there. I think if you want to be as open as possible to citizen input, maybe May 1st is the latest you could have, but I suggest you have some deadline in there because there’s no sense people turn in petitions, that we’re going to have to process, that can’t possibly make it on the ballot. It’s just an exercise in futility.

That’s all the comments I have as a private citizen on election matters. Thank you.

RAY: Thank you. I just want to make it clear. We’re not discussing or deciding any of these areas this evening so since we had Al here, we just took advantage of it to get this stuff.

KONISHI: Mr. Chairman, I have written material that I’ll submit to your staff.

RAY: Thank you very much. Okay, let’s take a five minute break.

RECESSED The Chairman called a short recess at 5:17 p.m.

RECONVENED The meeting reconvened at 5:30 p.m.

RAY: Let’s call the meeting back to order. I’d like to have a little discussion. I’m not suggesting we have to make a decision this evening.

HERKES: Off the agenda?

RAY: No. It’s an agenda item on the Special Election. Because I think this has so much to do with the course we set in the timing. This sort of represents a cloud over our head in terms of just driving the activity of the Commission so I want to get some sort of sense of what the group feels about this because, in my mind, just logistically, if we are going to consider a Special Election, we need to really pick up the pace here. I think we’re going to have to start meeting all days some Saturdays and really juice this process up because at the last meeting we talked about two meetings a month, second and fourth Wednesdays, and that’s just one meeting in our rules so we’d have a 5:00 meeting on one Wednesday and possibly an earlier meeting. But anyway, under that scenario, I think we’re talking about several months to finish our review of the Charter and then once we do that, going at least on one round of public hearings for input around the island, and possibly some of those meetings during that several months, we can hold those around the island or somewhat, but anyway then, we’ve got another month or so of public review and input, and then coming up with our final Amendments. So, something just doesn’t jive in my mind. If we’re going to think about a Special Election then we’ve really got to pick up the pace or else let’s just decide we’re not and just go ahead on this course. I just want to open that up for discussion because I’m just not comfortable with the idea of a Special Election hanging out there and we’re not moving in a time frame that’s going to accommodate a Special Election. If we want to consider a Special Election and really pick up the pace here, we should decide that so I’m going to open that for discussion. Because right now, in my mind, we’re looking at two meetings a month and kind of moving through this thing on that basis. So like I say, I don’t see us finishing this thing for several months before we go out for the public review.

IRVINE: John, I don’t mind saying right now that I’m going to vote against having a Special Election. I just can’t see, at this point, any justification. We’ve had testimony against. We know that people don’t vote in Special Elections in nearly the numbers that they do in a General Election, and I think it would be unfair to the people and ourselves to try to stage an election prior to the next General Election so that’s my position.

RAY: John.

SANTANGELO: My position is that a couple of things came up. One was City Manager which could hugely impact government and nonpartisan. The City Manager is something, in my mind, that can be taken up by the Council. It’s a policy type thing. We can deal with it here so it’s not like overwhelming and pressing to me. Nonpartisan can be voted on in the next election and take effect the election after. It changes it but it’s not something that I want to rush into so I haven’t seen anything here that’s been proposed that I feel like needs to incur this kind of involvement of people and processes and money, so I have to agree with Sue, maybe for different reasons, but I certainly agree with Ms. Irvine.

RAY: Other comments?

HERKES: Yes. The reason I laid out that time line was to get something going, but I’m not ready to vote on the time line yet because I want that to get in everybody’s hands and everybody’d have a chance to look at it, whether we can do this. Now whether it’s a good idea or not, I’m still not ready to vote. There are some issues that I think could be dealt with better. It’s a major restructuring. As Chris says, we’ve got to rewrite the Charter. I don’t want to present a new Charter to an electorate in an election year. I want to present a new Charter as a stand alone but I haven’t decided whether to do a new Charter yet. In my mind, I haven’t decided whether I want to vote for that or not yet, so there’s some issues that are not resolved and I’m not ready to make a decision.

RAY: Okay. In terms of the process for the Charter review, are you comfortable with two meetings a month and just seeing how it comes out, or do you feel a need to meet more often?

HERKES: I think I’d like to see if that time line is acceptable to everybody, January through June, and if it were, then we’d have to have something ready by February or March, and then we’d have to look at which chapters we did in which months, and I think probably that we would end up doing some all day Saturday meetings in different places. We’d end up doing some meetings around the island.

RAY: Anybody else? Gary.

YOSHIYAMA: I guess I’m coming from the same place as Marni and so I really don’t want to speak to Special Election but I do want to speak to speeding things up. And continuing to take public input, reactions, is great but I’d like to see us somehow working with some meaty stuff, actual proposals rather than this kind of global suggestions coming in. I just think it will speed things up if we can look at something concrete, and spending more time is fine.

RAY: Daryl.

KUROZAWA: I think I agree with Sue and John, actually. I haven’t, on the practical basis, in my personal opinion, I don’t think there’s going to be a hugh need for a Special Election. I haven’t seen any issues so far that may be earth shattering enough for us to do that and it sounds like, on logistic issue, there’s going to be a hugh problem with trying to set that up. The one concern I have is that we try push this too quickly that we may hastily try to make some proposals by January for a Special Election which may not be the right thing. We may have to spend the time we need to on this to give some meaningful proposals basically.

RAY: Roland.

HIGASHI: Mr. Chair, I’d like to pick up the pace and within a month, month and a half and then decide this issue. See what really surfaces and see if there’s an overwhelming public interest, at least, to be addressed right a way but I agree, if we pick up the pace and as Gary says, starting to get some proposals in writing and making some decisions, then I would feel comfortable in making my mind up in a Special Election or not, and getting rid of that question.

RAY: How do you suggest we get more public input, interest, whatever, to get more feedback? We just went through six meetings around the island and had dismal appearance. Hopefully, we can put a little more pressure on the Administration and get more input from them but I think, in our first pass, we pretty much have the things that are most important to the Administration already on the radar screen so I don’t anticipate that we’re going to get anything major from the Administration that we haven’t already gotten. I anticipate we’ll probably get a lot of detail and stuff we need to deal with but I think that first pass we made through the Administration that we, for the most part, probably the Fire Commission didn’t come out of that, and that’s surfaced now as something we’re going to look at, but I don’t sense that there’s anything out there from the Administration. I think it’s more fleshing it out, getting more details, more concrete proposals but I think the stuff we got from Planning and Public Works in regard to the Permitting Department and the proposal as far as the Wastewater Division, but I don’t think there’s going to be anything else.

HERKES: I agree.

RAY: So, all I’m saying is if you’re trying to decide what’s important for a Special Election, I think it’s all on the table right now as far as what we’re going to be discussing. George.

MARTIN: I believe, John, that that’s a personal observation and well taken, but I’d like to speak in part of a Special Election one way or the other. To take a vote now, or anytime within the near future, and say no, we’re not going to do it, and then something comes up a month, month and a half down the road, we’d look kind of silly to say well, we rethought it, maybe we have to do it now. Leaving your options open, I think, is the best thing. There may be nothing and as Gary and