2007-09-12 Board of Ethics Minutes mc

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CHAIR: - -and you're correct. ACHMAT: Mr. Arakaki was represented by Brian deLima, and I had brought my son down as part of a civics project from his high school to see an ethics committee meeting. And we were shocked to see him take over the meeting and basically run it. And so, my understanding is, at the end of the day when the ethics committee hears information, their responsibility is to render some kind of informal advisory opinion, but you don't really have any penalties you can enforce on people. You can't put people in jail. You can't really fine people. You might be able to turn them over to another body, another attorney or maybe even law enforcement in the whole County system. But that —you don't really have any kind of responsibility to be a court as such. And so the whole role of the attorneys is very confusing. Mr. deLima's behavior I'll just outline it for you, because I happened to go this morning and look at it. Mr. deLima spoke for essentially eleven pages of testimony during the hearing. Mr. Arakaki, who he represented, did not say one word. He did not even introduce himself to the panel. He sat there while Mr. deLima handled all questions and handled the entire question of this kind of campaign spending commission question. And I won't belabor, or go over it, but my concern CHAIR: - -And if I could interject ACHMAT: Sure. CHAIR: I agree one hundred percent with you on the Arakaki matter. I don't believe that that attorney should have had that amount of time, and that it should have been handled differently. I agree with you a hundred percent- ACHMAT: - -but it's a little more egregious than that, and I'll tell you why. At the beginning of that meeting, one of your members, Mr. Karl Kawahara, who because of one member recusing themselves, constituted the key element to make a quorum. At the beginning of that meeting, he announced that he was resigning at the end of the meeting, which was pretty dramatic. And also he informed everyone that we had to rush and make this decision about then - sitting Councilman Arakaki, who by that time I think was a three -time serving person, and at the same time, you know, had been chairman of the committee for a number of times. As a citizen, I would think that a person with that length of experience and responsibility, who is responsible for administrating a budget in the millions of dollars, and who has a personal expense of somewhere over a hundred thousand dollars of money that they can distribute, and is a trained professional, should have been able to speak for himself. Why he needed a lawyer to explain to you his understanding of the Campaign Spending Commission rules and regulations, I have no idea. I'm a senior citizen and kind of a concerned citizen. I understand how to work my way through the 4