2005-11-09 Board of Ethics Minutes Regular mc

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DE LIMA: Like any campaign, if you get money over the limit, you are required to refund those monies. And when that donation was received by the legal defense fund, it was disclosed as part of the ethics —the question was, are you governed by the Campaign Spending Commission, because they were told it was no longer governed by the Campaign Spending Commission, because of the fact that they could not raise any monies. But that was incorrect. And I think that the Campaign Spending Commission has sent out letters to all non - partisan, term limits officials, because they recognize that there needed to be some clarification and guidance in this area. So I think that was recently done. I think they're visiting each of the islands and having meetings as well, to kind of deal wit this, quote, term limits situation, because that's what happens. You've got a term limit, you cannot raise any more monies, which was what Mr. Watada thought at the time that he gave that advice to the Friends, but not true, you can raise money to pay off the campaign debt, but you're required to abide by the campaign spending limits at the time of that election. PKO: The query in my mind is whether—is the Commission acting on something today, and do we need to wait for their official decision before the Board can act. I mean, I'm sure the Board members know that exempted from reporting as a gift are campaign contributions, so the whole gift disclosure I guess would have been, you know, should not have been filed if the correct opinion had been given. DE LIMA: Right. PKO: But, so I'm asking, what is the Commission doing today? Will that formalize that? DE LIMA: I've been advised that they are in concurrence because basically I wouldn't have written that letter if I didn't understand that to be the case. So we conferred on the 12th, they concurred with the factual scenario, I submitted the letter indicating the actions of the legal defense fund, what was going to be done and the time line. I spoke to the staff person, Mr. Tanimoto. They're probably meeting right now, and they're going to take action on it. They indicated the staff was going to recommend no fine for this, because it was based on their incorrect information. But the staff is not the Commission. The Commission could do something entirely different, but I don't think the factual scenario that I'm putting forth is any different. Basically, the concept is that — I submitted an affidavit indicating the contents of the letter, so the way I look at is, I think you could this matter, because it is a campaign contribution, and but for Mr. Arakaki's actions of making a public disclosure, you know, he did the right thing, and all those monies are going to be campaign contributions eventually. PKO: So when you report what you reported as a gift to the Campaign Spending Commission, then, after the meeting, their meeting, will you amend his gift disclosure filing? 0