2012-09-12 Board of Ethics minutes

Home

Motion and vote: Mr. Balsis moved to accept the minutes as distributed, Mr. Hisashima seconded the motion, and all members voted aye. 4. COMMUNICATIONS a. Letter dated 8/31/12 to the Board of Ethics from the State Office of Elections, alleging that a County officer may be inappropriately involved in the operations of the Hawai‘i County Elections Office, and the Board of Ethics’ 9/5/12 response. MR. DILL: Board members, have you had a chance to review the letters and the corresponding request from Mr. Scott Nago for this Board to initiate an investigation into this matter? MR. BALSIS: Yes. Because this is a letter coming from someone off island, and not a direct petition, what sort of action should we be taking? MR. DILL: Well, what I recommend we do—because this does involve our rules and any further proceedings that we might take on this matter will need to be clarified from our counsel, I strongly recommend that we quickly go into executive session to consult counsel regarding our powers and rules. And if we could clarify that in executive session, then we could maybe discuss it further in regular session. We need a motion to do so. MR. BALSIS: I’ll move to go into executive session for the purpose of consulting with counsel. MR. DILL: All right, do we have a second? MR. HISASHIMA: Second. MR. DILL: All in favor? MR. DILL, MR. BALSIS, MR. HISASHIMA, MR. HENRICKS (simultaneously): Aye. MR. DILL: Opposed? All right, we’ll briefly go into executive session and resume shortly. Thank you. 10:20 a.m.: The Board left regular session. * * * * * 10:36 a.m.: The Board returned to regular session. Motion and vote: Mr. Hisashima moved to accept and file the two communications in agenda item 4a. Mr. Balsis seconded the motion, and all members voted aye.