2017-10-30 Hearing Transcript - Amendments to PC Rule 9 (Joint Meeting)

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VAN PERNIS: Yes, I'll conclude. The delays are at the Planning Department, not in the public hearings. Public hearings are an integral important right as a public. They should not be taken away and given to a political appointee. Thank you. UNGER: Thank you. Any questions, Commissioners on the Leeward side? Windward side? HENKEL: No. UNGER: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Van Pernis. Randy Vitousek. Please raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth before the Planning Commission? VITOUSEK: Yes. UNGER: Please state your name and where you reside. VITOUSEK: I'm Randy Vitousek I reside in Kamuela, Hawaii. UNGER: Thank you. VITOUSEK: So I'm here to testify as an individual; I'm not here representing a client which is a nice change. And I, you know, just wanted to give some feedback to the Planning Commissions because, you know, I've been involved in SMA issues here on the Big Island for a long time, and I just feel that there's things that can be done in order to make it more efficient and effective and to actually accomplish what the Legislature intended when it enacted the Chapter 205A. And, you know, just by way of background, you know, what's important here is generally under the law, the zoning power of the County comes from the State Legislature, in our case under Hawaii Revised Statutes Chapter 46, and the Legislature delegates zoning power to the County Council that then creates departments and assigns different responsibilities to those departments. The departments then create rules by which they administer the various aspects of land use control that are delegated to the counties by the Legislature. Now, under the Special Management Areas, it's an entirely different structure. The Legislature in Chapter 205A delegated responsibility for managing the Special Management Areas within the counties of Kauai, Maui, and Hawaii to the planning commissions. In other words, it's a direct delegation of legislative authority from the Legislature to the planning commissions, and it bypassed the County Council and the Hawaii County Code, and it's purely a matter of legislative authority passing from the State to the planning commission. And then in that authority the Legislature empowered the planning commission to pass rules in order to govern the Special Management Area, and said that under those rules it has the, the commission has the power to delegate some responsibility for administration to the planning department. And so, what we're here today to do is look at how the Commission is going to exercise the authority granted to it by the State Legislature to administer the Special Management Areas, and particularly, passing rules by which the Special Management Areas are administered, and as a subset of that, delegating certain authority for administration to the Planning Department. And so, what I wanted to start with, and what I started my written testimony with, is that before you can really look at expanding or modifying the authority, the responsibility that you delegate to the Planning Department, you EXHIBIT A