2005-11-09 Board of Ethics Minutes Regular mc

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CHAIR: That's what I want to do now. I want to get back to —now if you'll bear with us, we're still getting back to—Mr. De Lima, Mr. Arakaki, would you please come forward. And do I need to recuse myself for this purpose? The Chair recuses himself KK: change prior to that? CHAIR: . Well we've taken care of those petitions, and we're back to just clarify what Mr. De Lima has found out from the Campaign Spending Commission, so that's—we need to go back to that issue. So Mr. Kawahara will chair. CHAIR KK: Okay, we have before us Mr. Arakaki and counsel Brian De Lima, and I understand you do have some communication? DE LIMA: I talked to the Campaign staff, and they won't be able to give us anything in writing today. The Commission is still meeting, and again they indicated their recommendation is to agree to the procedures put forth by Mr. Arakaki via the letter that I attached. They indicated they are not recommending any fine, but that's a matter for the Commission to decide whether a fine would be imposed or not. But my point is that in any event, they're agreeing that —and this doesn't mean Commission action. The Commission is only going to decide whether there's going to be a fine imposed or whether there's going to be no fine imposed. That's all the Commission is going to decide. What the —the fact that it's a campaign —that you can make campaign contributions has already been clarified by the staff. So I would suggest that you can take action on Mr. Frankel's request for an informal advisory opinion inasmuch as that the legal defense fund monies are going to be returned to the contributors and that the campaign— they're going to be advised that they can make campaign contributions to deal with the matter of the existing campaign debt. And as such, as Ms. O'Toole pointed out, the campaign contributions are not gifts, and as such Mr. Arakaki would not be required to file a gifts disclosure. I think that would be the informal advisory opinion. CHAIR KK: Should the Board —Pat, do you have any input on what he has just said? You know, based uponI'm concerned about alleviating this issue, and I won't be here after today. If, in an extreme situation, I can, you know, have steps taken, so I can be herein the next meeting just for, just for this purpose. But it's a complicated matter for me. WJ: I have a question. Why would the Commission be considering a fine? DE LIMA: The staff is not recommending any fine. They don't think they would, they would make any fine based on the factual, the facts of this case. But the staff cannot speak for the Commission, so the staff cannot say that the Commission would not render a fine, because it's not the staff s decision. The staff can only make recommendations. The executive director can only make 22