2000-03-08 Charter Commission Minutes

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minutes 03-08-00Page 16 of 35 YUEN: No, there would not be. Nor did I include confirmation of the interim Fire Chief because it should be a fairly short time that you have an interim Fire Chief. For example, if the new Mayor, the old Fire Chief is serving as interim, then, say, one week later decides to resign, the new Mayor gets to appoint an interim Fire Chief. But that’s only going to be until the new Fire Commission appoints the first Fire Chief. Under the current Charter, the Mayor appoints the Fire Chief and there’s Council confirmation, and under the Honolulu - am I wrong on the Council confirmation? I’m pretty sure that they have a Council - Yes, there’s Council, but under the Honolulu Charter and the proposal that you voted on, you can change it, but the way it worked there is no Council confirmation. It’s just done by the Commission. RAY: Yes, right. HIGASHI: I can understand that. If a Commission is going to select - the Liquor Commission, they don’t get confirmed - HERKES: I was just going to say none of the other Commission appointments are approved by the Council. YOSHIYAMA: You’ve got the Civil Service. It’s say confirmation by council, so we’ve got both. HERKES: You’re kidding. IRVINE: Where? YOSHIYAMA: I just read it now. RAY: There are other Commissions that don’t appoint Department Heads that are confirmed by the Council. HERKES: That don’t appoint Department Heads? RAY: Right, like Planning Commission. Planning Commission doesn’t appoint the Planning Director. That’s appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by the Council. HIGASHI: Okay, we need to kind of think about what we want to do there for consistency down the road. YUEN: No, none of the directors that are appointed by Commissions are confirmed by the Council. HERKES: Gary said Civil Service. YUEN: The Commissioners are confirmed by the Council. YOSHIYAMA: Okay, sorry. YUEN: The Commissioners then appoint the director. That’s Liquor, Civil Service and Police right now. HIGASHI: I have one question. In the creation of any department, do they have to promulgate rules and regulations for their operations? YUEN: The Fire Commission will have to promulgate rules of procedure, just like we did, for this Commission, but it’s not that critical because they’re not rules that effect the general public. They still have to go through rule making and the like, but your really difficult rules are rules like Planning Commission rules where they govern what kind of permits you can get, as a member of the public to come in. The Fire Commission will have rules that are just going to be pretty much proforma types of rules. They’ll have to have a rule on when is their regular meeting, where do they meet, where do you send mail, what’s a quorum, but that’s almost an automatic kind of thing. So I don’t think that would seriously delay them getting together and - HIGASHI: I’m going to the point if there are rules, we should allow the Fire Commission to appoint it’s chief and then promulgate its rules, if it gets in the way. Do they need rules before they can have the authority to appoint a chief? The Charter gives them the authority already. HERKES: It says in the thing, ‘adopt rules necessary for the conduct of its business’, so if its business is appointing the chief, file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 03-08-00.html7/1/2011