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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSIONPage 9 of 37
<br />But the -, I don’t think we could have gotten through, because we had a lot of discussion, it was very
<br />fair, it was very open, but I think that rule was one of the lynchpins. I think it was just a gentleman’s
<br />agreement.
<br />BETHEA: I think that was it. I had forgotten about that. I had learned from an early negotiation with
<br />Jack Hall, who I thought was a great negotiator and you had a great ability with Jack to move through
<br />things, and it always scared the daylights out of me, but once we had gotten through a provision, we
<br />were through that provision, and then you didn’t try to find some leverage to come back and open it up,
<br />and it kind of made things go. I had forgotten that.
<br />L’ORANGE: No, I think that -. And this one last comment that I was thinking about. Because, I guess,
<br />we had the single member district, we had lots of reporters in the back of the room all the time. And I
<br />felt very strongly that the only person that should speak is the chairperson about process or whatever
<br />was going on, because the reporters come and they want to know your opinion. And I don’t think -, well,
<br />my personal opinion is my opinion is going to be said on the mike, on the floor. I think debating it in the
<br />press the way the Council does some of their stuff is ridiculous. I mean it’s just -, let the chairperson talk
<br />for the Commission on matters of procedure and where you are and whatever and you’ll save yourself a
<br />lot of grief because they try to get stupid answers out of you or -, I’ve observed that. I don’t answer the
<br />press, so that’s a simple rule. But that’s just a personal, you know, prejudice. And I’m good friends with
<br />the reporters, but -. Anyway, that’s all I have to say, sir.
<br />RAY: Chris, anything to add?
<br />YUEN: Well, I appreciate what Pete is saying and now I remember that it did run very smoothly. And I
<br />think that that was the agreement that -, something got voted on and that was pretty much it.
<br />Whenever you’re looking at, whenever you’re starting off with a set of work like this, there are really
<br />three kinds of issues that you deal with. There’s the big, over-arching basic kind of question. In our
<br />Charter Commission ten years ago, this whether to go single member district was a big question. And if
<br />you decide to do that, there is a bunch of other things that you have to do that go along with that. And I
<br />think that the Commission dealt with that pretty early, as I remember.
<br />And the same thing with City Manager. There was some discussion of it at the time. Nobody, I think,
<br />was that -, nobody was really -, there were maybe one or two people that were interested in it, but it was
<br />clearly not going to go anywhere. If that’s going to be seriously considered, then there are a lot of
<br />revisions that need to be thought of that follow after that, and that needs to be done early.
<br />The second kind of change that one makes in a Charter are the things that may be -, that are a little more
<br />specific but they still really make -, they do make a real difference on how things work on the ground.
<br />And to give a couple of examples, at the last Charter, there were changes, the Police Commission. The
<br />Police Commission was given considerably more power to investigate misconduct at the Police
<br />Department. Another example, qualifications of the Planning Director, I believe, and was there another
<br />one that we put in the qualifications for?
<br />BETHEA: Engineer.
<br />YUEN: I think that was -.
<br />BETHEA: Didn’t we?
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