2012-09-12 Board of Ethics minutes

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employee’s official position to secure or grant unwarranted privileges, including but not limited to the following: (3) Using county time, equipment or other facilities for private business or campaign purposes. It was also reported that some meeting attendees, afraid of retribution, were discomfited over being lobbied to vote for specific candidates. The purpose of a code of ethics is to promote a high standard of conduct in government. The League of Women Voters of Hawai‘i County encourages the Hawai‘i County Board of Ethics to enforce Article 15, Section 2-83, of the Code of Ethics and prohibit the use of county facilities for campaign purposes. And this is submitted by our two co-presidents respectfully, Donna Oba and Margaret Drake. Thank you. Mr. Dill called up Cheryl King, who had signed up to testify regarding Petition 2012-03. MS. KING: Good morning. As you know, my name is Cheryl King. I live in Kailua- Kona, and I’m the one who submitted this petition. I believe that the county should promote fair political campaigns and elections and ensure that politics does not enter the workplace. Releasing county employees with pay to attend a meeting during which campaigning takes place violates this principle, as well as the Hawai‘i County Code, which clearly states that county time, equipment, or other facilities should not be used for campaign purposes. It is my contention that because these county employees were still being paid their hourly wages when they were released to attend this meeting, they were on county time and should be expected to adhere to the County Code of Ethics. I understand that because of the union contract, these county workers were not breaking any laws by attending a union meeting on county time. That is not the issue. The issue is that they broke the ethics code by attending an event at which campaigning took place, and as county employees, they granted unwarranted privileges to selected candidates who were invited to attend, and they discriminated against the candidates who were not invited to attend this event. County employees who had to listen to the campaign speeches, willingly or unwillingly, were not treating all candidates in a fair and impartial manner as required by the County Code. I felt very badly for the county employees who did not want to have to listen to campaign speeches by union-endorsed candidates they themselves did not want to endorse. It was unethical for them to have been put in this position by both the union and the county, knowingly or unknowingly. It is difficult for them to speak out publicly for fear of reprisals or unpleasantness at work. Unfortunately, I could not find a clause in the ethics code which addressed that situation. I hope that the ethics commission will agree with my analysis that the ethics code has been violated and take steps to ensure that this does not happen again. Thank you. Mr. Dill clarified that the Board would be conducting an initial review of Ms. King’s petition today. He asked her to provide her testimony to the secretary for the record. Mr. Dill called up R. J. Hampton, who had signed up to testify on several items. MS. HAMPTON: My name is R. J. Hampton, and I represent myself. I’m here today because I think today’s agenda is reflective of a serious problem we’re having in our system today. I’m going to first attempt to make some sense of Petition No. 2012-02, and this one has to do in light of strong questionable appearances to the public. Part of ethics is about appearance. I’m here today to say that in the Zendo Kern matter, appearance seems to be very much at issue here. If one was to do the deep reading of