1999-06-16 Charter Commission Minutes

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Page 3 of 11 possibility of the Commission entertaining the idea of doing away with the Office of Mayor and personally, I think this is strangely timed and - RAY: Can I interject one thing? Those reports were incorrect. The Charter Commission has not discussed anything in Commission yet. Individually, different Charter Members have discussed with the press some things they are interested in individually but the Charter Commission has not taken up, entertained, discussed any of those to this point so I just want to make sure you understand that, okay? DAWN: Okay, so it hasn’t been - RAY: So none of that’s on the table. Those were all just possibilities. DAWN: This would of course, involve a special election and I’m wondering where the money would come from for that. I think it would be a very unpopular idea. RAY: The context we discussed a special election in was the sort of "what if" scenarios. What if we were to come up with changes to the Charter that we thought might be substantive enough to warrant a special election. If that were to be the case, when would you have to, what would be the triggers to hold the special election, when would it have to be held, how would that affect the year 2000 election, so it was just purely in that context. Kind of the "what ifs" to try to answer some of those questions and we didn’t get all those answers by any means. DAWN: It seems like it would be, if the idea was entertained, would be just to somehow railroad the 2000 election and be some pretty shady politics according to the public. Anyway, that’s the main thing I’m worried about is that happening. The other ideas sound fairly innocuous but being that the present administration’s time’s up, the eight year time limit for the Mayor and we’re looking at new representation, just even to entertain the idea of railroading that possibility with doing away with the Office of Mayor so the same power group, you know, can appoint a new guy as part of the same power group, the old power group - RAY: Well, just to interject there - DAWN: This wouldn’t go over. RAY: There again and my understanding is, the way that works is the County Council would actually hire the Managing Director so it wouldn’t be that old power group, it would be the County Council would actually - DAWN: Well, you have the existing power group deciding the outcome of the 2000 election. There’s got to be some kind of illegality in that, sir. A flood of law suits. Anyway, that’s about it. That’s all I want to know. RAY: Okay, thank you. Del Pranke. PRANKE: I’m sorry I didn’t get these to you before but there are just four pages that will help illuminate. What I want to talk about is a contradiction in the County Charter in conjunction with the Hawaii Sunshine Law and the section of the County Charter that I want to talk about is 13-20(b). I assume you all have a copy of the Charter so I didn’t copy that. I find that on page 30 of the - RAY: Page 30? file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011