2014-01-08 Board of Ethics Minutes

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South Hilo District. The senior appraiser was assigned the South Hilo assignment assessments, which included the area he lived in. The system of checks and balances that I read in the paper, to ensure uniformity and equalize assessments throughout the County, was already in existence when I started. The assessment of each real property employee’s property, along with assessments of several similar properties, were reviewed by the supervising appraiser. The supervising appraiser’s assessments and comparables were reviewed by the district tax administrator. It should be noted that the checks and balances procedure applied to all properties owned by employees, whether it was the principal residence, vacant lot, or income-producing properties such as a rental. The policy prohibiting Real Property employees from selling real estate was in place when the function was still under the state jurisdiction. As an outcome, and this is number six—as an outcome of the 1978 Constitutional Convention, the people of the state voted to transfer the real property function from the state to the individual counties. The transfer to the counties became effective July 1, 1981, with the requirement that all counties be uniform in their assessment practices for 11 years, from the date of the 1978 general election. To do this, the real property provisions in the Hawai‘i Revised Statutes Chapter 246 were adopted into the code of each county. Various rules and regulations, policies and procedures, legal opinions, checks and balances, etc., were transferred to all counties to meet the uniformity in assessment requirement. I believe the general provisions are still in use today. I would like to end my comments by saying that the assessment controls that are in place today have withstood the test of time, and I do not recall one incident throughout my 39-year career when an employee purposely lowered his or her personal assessment in violation of the uniformity and equality provision of the real property law. And that’s my presentation. I’m just saying that the provisions as I saw in the paper have been in place, most of them, before I started to work in 1969. MR. BALSIS: Thank you, Mr. Takai. 3. APPROVAL OF THE REGULAR SESSION MINUTES OF DECEMBER 11, 2013 Motion and vote: Mr. Balsis moved to approve the minutes, Mr. Henricks seconded the motion, and all members voted aye. 4. NEW BUSINESS a. Petition No. 2013-09: Request for informal advisory opinion from the Director of the Department of Liquor Control, to determine whether there would be 2