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<br />HAWAI‘I COUNTY BOARD OF ETHICS <br />MINUTES – REGULAR SESSION <br />Wednesday, April 9, 2014 <br />10:00 a.m. to 12:34 p.m. <br />County of Hawai‘i <br />Aging and Disability Resource Center <br />1055 Kino‘ole Street, Suite 101 <br />ADRC Training Room <br />Hilo, Hawai‘i 96720 <br /> <br /> <br />Members and Staff present: <br />Bernard Balsis, Vice Chair <br />Arne Henricks, Member <br />Glen Hisashima, Member <br />Douglass Adams, Member <br />Ku Kahakalau, Member <br />Renee N.C. Schoen, Deputy Corporation Counsel <br />Renee K. Lawrence, Secretary <br /> <br />1. CALL TO ORDER <br /> <br /> Mr. Balsis called the meeting to order at 10:01 a.m. <br /> <br /> Mr. Balsis agreed to hear the agenda out of order to allow Bobby-Jean Leithead-Todd to <br />testify regarding unfinished business described as follows: <br /> <br />a.Petition No. 2014-01: Informal hearing of petition by Michael Drutar and <br /> <br /> whether the Department of Finance may find a violation of the Code of <br /> Ethics and sanction on the basis of that finding. <br /> <br />Ms. Leithead-Todd: Good morning. For the record, my name is Bobby-Jean Leithead- <br />Todd. I am currently serving as the Director of the Department of Environmental Management. <br />However, in a prior life, I served as Chair of the Board of Ethics. Then subsequently, was the <br />County Council when we addressed some changes which I had started initiating when I was on <br />the Board to the Code of Ethics. And then, among the many hats that I ended up wearing, I later <br />joined Corporation Counsel and was the attorney assigned as the counsel to the Board of Ethics. <br />During that period of time, I pushed to produce a brochure that we could hand out on behalf of <br />the Board of Ethics and I believe that Board subsequently, after I left Corporation Counsel, <br />actually adopted the ethics guide as material that you could hand out. I was contacted by Diane <br />Noda and basically asked to come and give some of the history and some of the thought that <br />went into our amendments to the Code, and what I was doing when I was on the County Council, <br />we were doing amendments. But I also thought I’d give some perspective as a Department <br />Head. When you have an employee and you’re doing an employee investigation, you frequently <br />will cite to multiple issues that could be a potential violation. For example, we had employees in <br />my department that were accused of misappropriating gasoline. While that’s a violation of the <br />Code of Ethics, it’s also a criminal violation, it’s you know, multiple things, and so if you’re <br />1 <br /> <br /> <br />