2012-08-08 Board of Ethics minutes

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Ms. Napeahi said that another issue is that, since she made her complaint, more testimony was given by the people of Puna at another council meeting. Shouldn’t her petition have been resolved before Mr. Ikeda and Mr. Onishi were allowed to vote? She asked whether the council should have waited on the meeting regarding overriding the mayor’s vetoes of the issues she was concerned about, because they may have had biased votes—they would be angry at her for complaining about two men she felt did not do things right. She believes that from the time she made the complaint to today, there could have been biased votes. Ms. Napeahi said that to her, this meeting is like being in a courtroom. She told Mr. Henricks that she had given the Board important information, facts on which to make a decision. Was he saying that the numbers on the list she gave the Board are not correct, or not enough to be considered evidence? Is that what he was saying? Was he saying the numbers are not correct? Mr. Henricks said he had not yet said anything. Ms. Napeahi asked him to answer her question. Mr. Henricks said the Board is not looking at numbers or facts, because it does not have jurisdiction. All the Board is saying is that it does not have jurisdiction. They don’t know who has it, but the Board does not. He said he cannot argue, because he cannot go beyond his capacity on the Board. Ms. Napeahi said that if the Board does not have jurisdiction on the complaint, how is a layman able to make a complaint? Mr. Balsis said that for this particular complaint, it involved the poor performance of two council men. Poor performance is not addressed in the Code of Ethics. Ms. Napeahi said she had been reading things, to see if there was anything that could keep the checks and balances in place. There appeared to be nothing. So where could she go? The behavior of council members has a lot to do with their decision-making. Mr. Dill said he was not disagreeing with Ms. Napeahi and her petition. But like Ms. Schoen said, they are bound by the rules they have to follow. If they go outside those rules, they could get in trouble or be sued. He sees the difficulty of trying to apply the County Code to her petition. In listening to her testimony, reviewing the minutes, and speaking with counsel, there was no applicable section in the Ethics Code. It would violate the Charter to ignore that. This is why he suggested she go back to the council chair. Mr. Yagong was obviously aware of the attendance numbers, since he provided them to her. He is the boss of the County Council and would be the most effective, in his opinion, to deal with a lack of job performance. Ms. Napeahi asked how Mr. Yagong could help her if there are no rules in place for him to do so. Mr. Dill said he does not know what their rules are. However, she could propose new rules for the County Council.