1999-08-11 Charter Commission Minutes

Home

HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSIONPage 6 of 33 WURDEMAN: And the Police Commission. HERKES: And the Police Commission, or Parks and Rec, or somewhere else and other places - WURDEMAN: The Police Commission, that’s set up in State law. State law also has a provision for firefighters which says that when a firefighter is acting within the course of scope of his employment, counsel will be provided but it doesn’t say how that’s determined, who decides that. Most of the Union Contracts say the same thing. They say course of scope, we provide counsel and that’s fine. I agree with that. It’s proper. But when you get into an argument about whether the gray area, when a person is on the edge of course of scope, that’s when we get into a difficult situation. For example, if the Union would come to us and say look, we think this guy was in the course of scope, we’re going to grieve it. We say no he wasn’t. Then we get into a discussion. Meanwhile the case is moving along. I mean, is the person going to get a lawyer or not and we say, well, all right, we agree with the Union. We’ll provide a lawyer. Then we go to the Council and they turn us down. Then what? Real potential for crisis there. IRVINE: Is "special counsel" something defined or would it be better just to say that counsel may authorize the employment of additional counsel for any matter presenting a real necessity for such employment? WURDEMAN: Well, "special counsel" - IRVINE: Is that a term? WURDEMAN: Is commonly used to mean someone outside the office. HERKES: Just like a special prosecutor. IRVINE: Okay. WURDEMAN: Not as many questions as I thought. YUEN: I have a question. RAY: Mr. Yuen. YUEN: I’m trying to figure out how to do this without, and where the money is coming from, if the Council doesn’t authorize it. Is there some general contingency fund that would be available? The money has to be appropriated for some purpose. I’m wondering if the section could be reworded so that the Council could make an appropriation with the budget for the hiring of attorneys in a conflict of interest situation without a specific matter being presented to it so that that could be then drawn on by Corp Counsel when they felt that they were required to provide an attorney? I think, as is presently worded, you have to go to Council with every specific request and then you get tied up into the facts of a particular case where they may be unsavory to the Council to appropriate the money for this particular employee and I think that is the way it works now. I’m wondering if we found a way to reword this so that in situations like you discussed, the Corp Counsel could go, as part of their regular budget request, to the Council and have a lump sum that would be available for hiring attorneys in conflict of interest situations, if that would alleviate the problem enough? Otherwise, then you’d have to find some other fund from which this is drawn even if you give Corp Counsel the power to hire "special counsel" in these kinds of situations. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 8-11-99.html7/1/2011