2014-06-25 Board of Ethics Minutes

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hearing your frustration when you were talking about the other case about trying to work with the immediate supervisor or Department Head of the Department and when this particular incident happened I did contact the supervisor, Department Head, Kiran Emler, who is his immediate supervisor, Ben Ishii, who oversees the Engineering Department here in Hilo and Wally Lau, so, all with no response. I just want to let you know I did try to go through all the avenues so we wouldn’t have to be here today. But with no response, this was my last resort and I know I heard you Mr. Chairman, in the last call, request that his direct supervisor be here today, and I don’t see him here. I don’t know what happened, so I’d like to know why he’s not here. Mr. Balsis: I think that we’ll be fine. We’re going to be looking specifically at the ethics issue, not a performance issue… Ms. Pickens: Yes. Mr. Balsis: …and I think in light of the discussion that we had earlier up here at the Board level, I think it’ll be just fine. Ms. Pickens: Well, he’s not here. Mr. Balsis: No, but… Mr. Henricks: He doesn’t have to be. Ms. Balsis: Its okay that he’s not here, but we have the… Ms. Pickens: No, I was just hearing some frustration on why the managers aren’t handling this before getting to this level. Mr. Balsis: But then that becomes a performance issue and we’re going to leave that aside and we’re going to deal with it specifically as an ethics issue. Ms. Pickens: Okay. So going back to the incident that occurred in December of 2012. Mr. Northrop has already confirmed the statements he made that are in direct violation of the Board of Ethics and I’m just curious, I’d like to ask Mr. Northrop a question, if that’s okay? Ms. Schoen: No, it’s you guys that conduct the hearing. Mr. Balsis: We’ll be conducting the hearing so if you have questions, you know, or concerns, voice them and then we’re going to give this young man an opportunity to speak. Ms. Pickens: Okay. We just don’t know what we did to him that caused him to make these comments about our personal business to the neighbor. What did we do to him and what did he get out of making these comments against us. And this is not the first time he has made comments about us. He made the comment this time, in this particular incident about us to the neighbor but back in May of 2011, I have no business knowing anybody’s neighbor’s business, but he approached me, Mr. Northrop approached me and told me the neighbor’s violations. Where I didn’t need to know that and I had never asked what the neighbor’s violations are. He continued to go on to tell me that the neighbors were in violation of this and this and this. This 24