2012-12-12 Board of Ethics minutes

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responsibility obviously comes along with it. I don’t need to school any of you people on that concept. This body is given the ability to define the very words of our Ethics Code— not necessarily the same language, or very similar language, to the County Charter. But clearly our Ethics Code prohibits what occurred at the various public sites. And to me, if those properties, such as West Hawai‘i Civic and the civic center over here in Hilo, amongst others, if they were used for campaigning and electioneering purposes as is prohibited to my reading of the County—Hawai‘i County Ethics Code—I see a clear violation. Now is there mitigating factors? Has there been prior opinions rendered by the State Ethics Commission? Sure. I haven’t read through those yet. I’m at a disadvantage. I read through everything I could find on your Board’s website last night and the night before, but what’s going on here is you’ve got so many protections, equal protection of the law issues happening here. Now if the union went and rented those facilities, which they may have—I’m ignorant of those facts now—then it would have been more of a private function. However, if they were given permission to use those facilities, and the entities that gave the permission were aware that there would be campaigning and electioneering going on, this is all about the knowledge, the foreknowledge of what would be occurring there. I question whether this Board—and again I’m speaking from some ignorance here, as I haven’t been able to review all of your deliberations on this matter—those minutes were not posted up yet. I understand they will be soon. Shoot, I lost my train of thought there, excuse me. I’m trying to bring that back. Oh, the point was whether union shop stewards who are County employees who may have facilitated the use of those facilities, knowing the exact language in our particular Hawai‘i County Ethics Code—were they questioned? Were they investigated as to their foreknowledge of what would be occurring? Did they bring those matters forward to their union higher ups and say, did you guys miss this in a collective bargaining agreement? Because no matter what happens, no two people, or further entities more, can contract an illegality and then expect the court to uphold that illegality. In other words, you can’t defeat codified law by writing a private contract of any sort and expect it to be judicially enforceable. So I think what occurred here was just oversight in the collective bargaining agreement. They weren’t aware, possibly, of Hawai‘i County’s Ethics Code, but that does not negate the fact that Hawai‘i County’s Ethics Code still prevails. Now since you are given the ability to determine what the actual words and language of our Ethics Code means, I would hope that this draft order would go into, since you’re dismissing the case, some new interpretation of what that plain language now means. I think the public is owed that. And I’m going to review all these documents that I mentioned. I hope that they were introduced in an open meeting, these other prior State Ethics Commission opinions. And I will be reviewing those, and if need be, I will put together a private citizen’s group, and I would hope that this Board did all their due diligence and looked into all these matters. There are so many equal protection of the law issues here that it is extremely complicated without knowing who did what and what their foreknowledge was. So I only hope that this Board properly investigated all those matters. Thank you, sir. I have a comment on 5b, the Tiffany Edwards Hunt petition, the draft order dismissing that petition, would be that I would hope also that in this draft order—I tried to review it and I can’t find it anywhere, so it’s not publicly available at this time—I would hope that you put in there your findings, your reasons for dismissing, and then the public will know, did you investigate that one far— excuse me—far enough. The last thing I wanted to mention is number 6, your executive