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MR. DRUTAR: Either way. Mike is— <br /> <br /> MR. BALSIS: --Mike, I’d like you to just briefly say—I’ve read the petition. We’ve read the petition. <br /> <br /> MR. DRUTAR: Yes, sir. <br /> <br /> MR. BALSIS: Give us a brief as to what’s going on. <br /> <br /> MR. DRUTAR: I’ve been working for the County for about fourteen months now. I got hired. I was a real estate agent, disclosed in my resume and my application. I mentioned it numerous times in my interview. The Real Property Tax has said that doing real estate, being a real estate agent, doing about four or five transactions a year, is a conflict of interest with being a property assessor. My contention is that Hawai‘i County Code Section 2-84(a)(2) specifically includes me. No officer or employee—employee, that’s me—shall undertake any official actions—that would be doing my job, assessing a property, measuring a house, rating it, bedroom count, bathroom count. We don’t actually assign values to homes. That’s actually done by the administrator of Real Property. We collect the data and then he uses algorithms to come up with the numbers. We do assign values to the land, however. And so I can’t take any official action directly following a business or undertaking in which the officer or employee has a substantial financial interest. So if I’m representing someone and I’m collecting a commission, I would definitely say that is a substantial financial interest. A private undertaking in which the officer or employee is engaged as legal counsel, advisor, consultant—advisor, consultant, representative, that’s what a realtor is. Certainly not a legal counselor, or other agency capacity, which wouldn’t apply because specifically in here agency refers to only other County agencies, as I understand the agency definition in this. I have the right to disqualify myself, and I am just simply saying that I do have—I believe that the right to disqualify is something that is—it protects the County and it also protects the employee. It allows us to have other financial interests, and it doesn’t limit it, the financial interests. So for example I may own a business. Let’s say I own a clothing shop, and I come to work for the County of Hawai‘i, Real Property Tax. And I’m assessing my clothing shop and my competitors’ clothing shops for tax. I should be able to go ahead and do my job and then say hey, boss, I need to disqualify myself from assessing my property. I have a financial interest. Same as my personal property. I need to disqualify myself from assessing my own home. I have a financial interest. And it’s the same for me as a real estate agent. I should disqualify myself from taking an official action on a property where I represent somebody. The County RPT’s opinion is that by assessing a home in Waikoloa Village, I cannot sell a home in Kona, even though I take no official action on that home, even though I’ve never taken one. And I just don’t understand why I don’t have the ability to disqualify myself. They’ve been inconsistent. They do have assessors assessing their own homes, their own personal properties. They say well, we have procedures in place, we check on them at the end of the year to make sure they haven’t changed anything. And that sounds practical to me. It’s a workable solution. If you live on a small island, you’re going to have some overlap. The Code doesn’t say you get the right to have your bosses check your work. It says you must