2021-04-15 Leeward Planning Commission Minutes

Home

realized the potential conflict of interest, he and the department decided to rescind the letter. He apologized for the oversight and said he would take full responsibility for it. Director Kern also informed the Commission of his request to the Board of Ethics ("BOE") for an informal advisory opinion. He said that he had just had his final hearing on April 12, 2021 and presented to the BOE the protocols that are currently in place. He described the protocols as follows: he has given his staff a list of his former clients; anything that comes in is reviewed against that list, and nothing that is listed comes to him but goes to Deputy Planning Director Darrow; the department's electronic filing system is controlled so that he has no access to any of his former projects; and he recuses himself from working with any of his former clients or employees for at least a year. He concluded his announcement by saying that the protocols have been working well where the deputy director handling a lot of land use matters and himself being focused more on operations process, such as the launch of EnerGov. He added that with that protocol in place, he should be able to avoid anything like the aforementioned mistake. Commissioner Van Pernis commented that his understanding was that if the head of a department has a conflict of interest, then the staff of that department is also disqualified from handling the matter; therefore, his request for the Commission to consider the potential conflict, concerned both the director and his staff. He asked if Director Kern had asked the BOE whether or not his staff, including the deputy director, could deal with those matters. Director Kern responded that in his presentation to the BOE, he had explicitly stated that anything that he would be in conflict with would be taken over by the deputy director who would then basically act as the director in those cases, with which the BOE concurred as the appropriate thing to do. Chairman Vitousek cautioned against having extended discussion on the matter, as Director Kern was just making an announcement; however, this matter would be placed on a future agenda for discussion once a written report was issued by the BOE. Director Kern said that he was expecting the BOE opinion in writing, which he would submit to the Commission as soon as possible. Chairman Vitousek called upon Deputy Corporation Counsel Jean Campbell to make her announcement. Ms. Campbell introduced herself and said that she represents the Planning Department, the Public Access, Open Space, and Natural Resources Preservation Commission ("PONC"), and other departments and boards. She said that she had made a petition to the BOE for its guidance and appeared before them on April 12, 2021. She said that there are two pending matters before the county, which involve property that she owns in her personal estate planning trust: One is a subdivision application being handled by the Planning Department and the other an application to the PONC. She stated with respect to the subdivision application, which had been filed last summer, that she and Corporation Counsel Elizabeth Strance had discussed the potential conflict during her interview process in January of this year and agreed that although it was unlikely for that approval process to come to their office, if it did, she would be screened from it and another attorney would handle any legal matters relating to her subdivision process. Regarding the other pending matter, she said that she had not been aware that the application had been filed with the PONC until about a week before she started to work in the Office of the Corporation Counsel. She stated that she and Corporation Counsel Strance agreed, and the BOE recommended, that while all the decision-making power regarding PONC recommendations is with the PONC itself 4 Leeward Planning Commission April 15,2021,Meeting Minutes