1999-06-23 Charter Commission Minutes

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Page 11 of 12 TURNER: Right. RAY: Mr. Santangelo. SANTANGELO: Got a couple of things. I’m sure it was just a grammatical but you said reach consensus in which we all agree and consensus isn’t when you agree. TURNER: Well yes, I was taking that to an illogical extreme. Reach some substantial degree of consensus that will work. SANTANGELO: All right. And as far as democracy by tyranny. Again, because this is my pet peeve, I just want to share some of my strong beliefs. It’s to the Republic for which it stands, we stand. Okay? A republic is ruled by majority with consideration of the minority so we too often throw democracy out there but what I’m about and what most of us are about are a republic and as far as the political process, believe me, it’s far too, I get a little defensive, but it’s far too blown up to say that there’s any sort of subversive thing going on to influence us to do things. Mr. Ray is a great Chair. We chose him because of his universality with East and West Hawaii and this whole committee universally, is really trying to do it’s best to get input and anything substantial will come back out to you. Okay? TURNER: I’m sure you are and there are pressures that will abound. SANTANGELO: So thank you. RAY: Any more questions? All right, well if there’s no - TURNER: I’ve one comment I forgot. One specific. I would like to see a consideration of reducing the signature requirement for a referendum and initiative from 15% to 10%. You don’t want to have a frivolous process that has that threshold too low but 15% is a formidable hurdle and it effectively nearly eliminates referendum and initiative. We’ve have one but that’s an awful lot of work. RAY: What about a 100 signatures to move an impeachment? What do you think about that? TURNER: No, I don’t think so. I think the thing to do is to consider scaling it back one gradient at a time. We don’t want to jump to 5% but if you move it from 15% to 10%, we’ll see for ten years if we get inundated with initiatives or if there’s only one or two and so ease our way into that and make it more able for people to have a voice without an undue burden to get your toe in the door and get that out there. Thank you. TOWLE: I have one last comment. RAY: Okay. TOWLE: I want to thank all of you for taking your time and doing this because I do a lot of volunteer work and it’s very frustrating because you have a lot of people out there that say why don’t and why file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-23-99.html7/1/2011