2015-09-09 Regular Session Minutes

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office." So again thank you for the opportunity to respond this petition and I will answer any questions that you may have. Ms. Kahakalau: Thank you. Do we have any questions? Mr. Adams: Of course I do. Thanks to both of you for being here today. If I could ask Chair Kanuha, the leadership award could you give me a little more detail. What was the leadership award? Mr. Kanuha: So they gave me a Legislator of the Year you know. They presented me a Legislator of the Year and at that stakeholders meeting I got the opportunity to talk in front of pretty much a room full of stakeholders and Department of Health, a lot of health service industry professionals. And my reason for being there was to explain what we were doing in pursuit of healthy communities in Hawai`i County. And they wanted me to explain the bills that we were passing, the Mayor's initiatives, healthy initiatives here in Hawai`i County and what we were trying to do to pursue a healthier community and that was the reason for me being there. Mr. Adams: Thank you. In your letter to the Board, you specifically talked to the various sections of the County Code and let me just bring us to 2-91.4 which is the gift provision. In the gift provision itself, I'll put it on the record. "No officer or employee shall solicit, accept, or receive, directly or indirectly, any gift, whether in the form of money, service, loan, travel, entertainment, hospitality, thing, or promise or in any other form, under circumstances in which it can be reasonably be inferred that the gift is intended to influence the officer or employee in the performance of the officer's or employee's official duties or is intended as a reward for any official action on the officer's or employee's part." I'm troubled by the acceptance of the travel when I take a look at the phrasing in 2- 91.4. Specifically, I'm troubled because I think you've identified that at face value the formulation of the bill was accomplished prior to the identification and the offer of attending to receive the award of Legislator of the Year and that's great, that's facts. But when we take a look at this section, it's not the facts of the formulation that are relevant. Right. It's the perception that's relevant and so the reason I'm troubled is because I think that it's reasonable to infer that the gift of the travel could have been intended to influence. It doesn't matter whether it did or didn't, it 18