1999-05-12 Charter Commission Minutes

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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSIONPage 7 of 37 RAY: Bob, can I ask you know, you know, what comes to mind when you say that is the City and County with is nonpartisan, Honolulu, and they seem to be, you know, have more discord or more turnover, more change and more partisanship, you know, that this jurisdiction. And it was funny, I was having lunch with somebody today and I was, you know, we were talking about that a little bit and, you know, the -, they brought up the point that maybe nonpartisanship actually leads to less stability, you know, because as, you know, at least with the parties there’s, you know, sort of more of a reason to stick together and keep the majorities together or not. And with the case with nonpartisanship, it seems to be even, you know, more willy-nilly and more fluid or whatever. But, you know, I know you’re a real observer of politics in the State and, you know, City and County is nonpartisanship, but they sure, you know, seem to be in a state of constant flux over there. BETHEA: They do, it seems to me, and maybe it wouldn’t work. RAY: I don’t -. BETHEA: But I sort of think of periods here where you had, you know, just people lined up based on party lines, and people felt like they were kind of forced into decisions that they didn’t want to make out of, you know, basic party loyalty, and we got into this -, well, I don’t know, we got into squabbles about who controlled whatever limited patronage there was available to the County Council, as some of you well remember. But that’s just an observation. I think you have to think through that question, you know, whether -, I’m certainly not positive about the answer. I was also thinking about the public testimony. I don’t think you’re going to have people beating down the doors to testify. And quite frankly, it’s good to hear it, but I don’t know how much of what you hear will actually be constructive. You know, I think you need to listen, but I don’t think that most people that are testifying will have opinions that are based on, you know, sound knowledge of County government and how things might work. So I always thought that you have to go out and you have to listen, and I may be basically in disagreement with Chris on this, but you’re there to do a job to get -, to have better resources than the man on the street and to think about what’s, you know, best for the County as a whole. And so I think you can take, and you need to take into consideration everything that you hear out there. And maybe this is one of the basic questions, but I don’t think you should simply reflect what you hear. I would hope that your job goes beyond that, to try to really think it through and take advantage of the extra information that you have. That’s simply a personal philosophy, and I think probably you ought to solicit opinions on that from these two people to my left. Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know. Did you guys feel like there was some real very valuable things that came out of public testimony? YUEN: Well, I think that the -, from the government people, I think there was a lot of important, you know, information. BETHEA: Yeah. YUEN: From the general public, I think people have -, some people have good ideas, but they weren’t ready to be brought into the Charter or they were things that were a little more specific than what you actually are going to put in the Charter, and people want to sometimes put in things that are more legislative in nature than really the function of the -, the structure function of the government, which is a little abstract. Apart from something like single member districts, which had a lot of interest, political interest from the general public, most of the things that the Commission was looking at ten years ago, like the relative power of the Mayor versus the Council in budget is just not something that the average person is going to come and give testimony about. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 5-12-99.html7/1/2011