2012-07-11 Board of Ethics minutes

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MS. BUCHANAN: Good morning, chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I’m not too familiar with the Board of Ethics and how you operate on Maui—Big Island. I am familiar how the Board of Ethics conduct themselves in Maui County. I do agree with the testifiers on the reason why they brought forth the petition, and I think I was surprised when I sat down and heard that two councilmembers had recused themselves over what I had interpreted to be a pretty benign petition. Usually the ethics commission deals with a type of fiduciary—I guess fiduciary response on recusal, and so I was wondering if chair could provide me by email the section, or cite the rule, that would apply to the members being able to recuse themselves for anything other than a fiduciary type of benefit. There was not a reason stated in the beginning why the members chose to recuse themselves from the New Business items a, b, and c. And so I did review some of the rules for the ethics commission and couldn’t find something that would relate to that. So how would yourselves, being the Board of Ethics, rule over a recusal of a ethics member, I guess is my question. MR. DILL: You’re requesting the rule section regarding the recusal? MS. BUCHANAN: Yeah, or emailing me, because you have my address, something that I could review, because otherwise it’s the fox watching the henhouse issue. MR. DILL: We can get you that. And just to clarify, and I’ll double check with counsel, it is stated in our rules, the recusal, and the process and the requirements. So we’ll get that to you. MS. BUCHANAN: So did I miss it, or was a reason for recusal stated? MR. DILL: The reason for recusal isn’t required in the rules, but I think everybody here—we’ll get to it when we hear from the petitioner a little bit more. MS. BUCHANAN: Oh, okay. Well, thank you very much. Mr. Dill thanked everyone for their testimony. 3. APPROVAL OF THE REGULAR SESSION MINUTES OF APRIL 11, 2012 Motion and vote: Mr. Heaukulani moved to approve the minutes, Mr. Hisashima seconded the motion, and all members present voted aye. Mr. Dill said that before moving on to item 4, he wanted to place on the record that the Board of Ethics is a voluntary board. He said he believed that one community member from each island district was nominated by the council member of that district to the board, and the county council would need to vote on approving the nomination and the mayor would then need to sign his approval. He asked Ms. Schoen if that was correct, and Ms. Schoen said that there are no district requirements. Board members are chosen from the community and they need to appear before the county council for approval. Members serve a five-year term.