1999-08-25 Charter Commission Minutes

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Back ToPage 5 of 60 and bolts of that, was a type of election we have in Honolulu where the candidates run - however many candidates want to apply for that position, either Mayor or a Council seat, run, and to win outright, you have to have more than 50% of the vote so a good 43% of those cities that responded had a system, or type of election, where if you win 51%, 50 or more percent of the vote, you’re in. The next type of election that we found out there were the two highest vote getters, no matter how much they got, the two highest vote getters run off. 30% of the City and Counties had those types of elections. And the last type was winner take all. One election, whoever gets the most number of votes wins, no matter if they get a majority or not. So I guess the way Honolulu patterned its nonpartisan election is as I described first. If you get 50% or more, you win outright. If you don’t get 50%, you go to a run-off with the number two vote getter. The issue was presented to the voters and I have to say, by reading this, it was not - I guess the Charter Commission at that time favored nonpartisan, so it was written - the questions and the rationale were slanted that way. It wasn’t an even handed type of discussion. In this past Charter Commission, we tried to give the pros and cons. I wanted to give the pros and cons. They said, like John Henry Felix said, that partisan politics has little to do with local government. Local government’s about providing basic public services and there’s a quote that sometimes we talk, and I think it’s heeded in the City and County of Honolulu, that "there’s not a Democratic, Republican or Green way to pave a road". And no matter what we’ve been able to do - the council, it’s been great working in this job - we see the council get along and John Henry’s a very important part of that. And when I look at the issue of partisan politics, I think there is a place for partisan politics in government but I just feel thankful that John Henry is able, even though he’s a Republican, because we have the nonpartisan system, to hold a leadership position and I don’t know if that would be possible if we were in another form of arrangement. Before I got asked to come to this conference, I would tell people, it’s great we have John Henry there. He has more experience than all of our Council Members put together, probably, in government. But enough about John Henry. Now, just as to our perspective, working as one of the line departments as Corporation Counsel, we find, and I don’t know if it operates this way on the Big Island, but the way that the City operates does not depend on what party you’re a Member of, the way we see it work everyday. The way the council relates to the Mayor doesn’t hinge on whether he’s a Democrat or Republican. The way the Mayor relates to the council doesn’t hinge on that either so that’s kind of nice, in my position where I have two masters basically. John Henry’s my boss and the Mayor’s my boss and the department heads are my boss. It works for us. I don’t know how it would work in another system, in the prior system, because I wasn’t part of the City then but I can say this system works. That’s all I have to say. RAY: Okay, so I’m going to open it up for questions now so raise your hand. John Santangelo. SANTANGELO: I just want to go over real quick here, some of the facts you gave us. When you said the 100 largest cities, 69 responded, 23% had partisan. What part had non? ARAKAWA: 77%. Of the 69 that responded. SANTANGELO: Of the 69 that responded. Okay. ARAKAWA: And I have this report and I can turn it over to Sharron but I can answer file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 8-25-99.htm7/1/2011