1999-08-11 Charter Commission Minutes

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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSIONPage 7 of 33 WURDEMAN: Right. Well, presently we have a line item in every budget for "special counsel" and there is a lump sum there. So we go to Council once a year, at budget time, and we argue for that and they hardly ever raise it. They lower it and we dicker about that and the budget is passed with that lump sum in there. Then as an individual case arises, we go back. To make it even worse, in some cases we’ll go back and they’ll say well, you’re authorized to hire "special counsel" up to $15,000 or something. And then we say okay. So we retain someone and we write into the contract that there’s a cap of $15,000 which always turns out to be inadequate and we have to go back to the Council again and by this time, the case is half way completed and it’s really impractical. I mean, you’ve got a lawyer who’s involved in the case and $15,000 has been expended, trial’s next week, we’re out of money. I mean what are you going to do? You can’t change horses at that point so it’s not a very good system. BESS: Mr. Chairman. RAY: Wait. That’s not quite the way it works. I was on the County Council and been involved in a number of these and it seems that the Corporation Counsel frequently uses the County Council as sort of a leverage or bargaining tool and requests that we sort of be part of this negotiation. In other words, let’s limit it to this and say we only have that much money, or this or that, so that’s more often than not the discussion that I remember but I do think it’s an incredibly flawed process, especially when you get a bunch of new Council people or folks with no experience whatsoever. And I remember the first time I was part of this. I thought what in the world am I doing, trying to make a decision on some of this stuff with no background at all so I think it is something worth looking at anyway. Mr. Bess. BESS: I was just going to suggest - There seems to be two situations where you’re going to go with "special counsel". One is professional competence where the office goes outside thinking that it may need - WURDEMAN: If we ever got into something like an anti-trust case. BESS: Right. And then you’d have to get "special counsel" there and then the other one, the conflict of interest. My suggestion is that the Corp Counsel should have the power to decide whether or not there’s conflict of interest but that there would be the safeguard of Office of Disciplinary Counsel in the event that somebody questioned whether or not you in fact, the guy really was in conflict of interest. It could go to Office of Disciplinary Counsel and then, at least as far as the conflict of interest kind of case, the Council would not be involved at all in that decision, whether to go outside and get "special counsel" other than the budgetary process. WURDEMAN: That would be ideal from my point. Yes. BESS: I don’t have your language in front of me, Richard, so I don’t know what you’re suggesting as an amendment, but I don’t know if, in this section, you want to distinguish the conflict of interest issue from the professional competence issue. WURDEMAN: I saw it as distinguishing between representing individuals and representing the County. Representing the County would be something we would be required to get permission for but we could do it your way just as well and probably have the same result. RAY: Other comments? Ms. Herkes. HERKES: No, I have a later comment on another issue but not on this one. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 8-11-99.html7/1/2011