2007-09-12 Board of Ethics Minutes mc

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PRANKE: Thank you. CHAIR: I appreciate it. And the three of you will wait till SIRACUSA: - -yes CHAIR: - -till it shows up as an item on the agenda. Thanks. So moving to communications. Members, have you had the opportunity to look at communications- - SECRETARY: - -the minutes. I'm sorry— CHAIR: - -Oh, I'm sorry. I skipped over the minutes, approval of minutes from last session. Have you had a chance to look at the minutes? ACHMAT: I'm not really with them. CHAIR: Oh. But you still wanted to wait? ACHMAT: No. CHAIR: Oh, you wanted to ACHMAT: - -yes. CHAIR: Oh, I —sure. You're- ACHMAT: I'm Alex. Alex Achmat. I'm down today from North Kohala. I'd like to begin by thanking you, councilmembers [sic] for allowing me to speak. I would hope that what I say isn't in any way offensive or comes off as condescending, but at the same time I feel responsible to speak candidly, because I think that's the easiest. And I'm trying to get a couple of ideas across that I hope are going to be simple. I'd like to comment on them and illustrate them mostly from your own agenda minutes. And so - -the issue I'm talking about is the role of attorneys in these ethics hearings. I've had the opportunity now to go to two. I went to two events with Emily Nae`ole, and then in November of 2005, I had the opportunity to sit in on the James Arakaki hearing. And both of those eventsI came away, I found out I was deeply disturbed and troubled, not just by the behavior of the attorneys, but by the behavior of the committee in allowing them to run, really, your meeting. Starting with the first one, the first one Arakaki hearing, which was awhile back, and I think Mr. Joseph is the only one here CHAIR: --Yeah- ACHMAT: - -who was sitting at that time-