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minutes 03-11-00Page 4 of 17
<br />duty. ‘Maladministration’ is you don’t administer very well. It does not deal with a legal duty and then being in violation of
<br />that legal duty. It would be a criticism, that instead of it being illegal, you would not be performing as one might like you to
<br />perform. Is that clear enough?
<br />GRAHAM: I think the ‘maladministration’ is clear. The ‘malfeasance’ sounds like when you first said it, you were sort of
<br />saying it’s neglecting. It’s more than neglecting or it’s only neglecting?
<br />BESS: It is neglecting a duty.
<br />GRAHAM: But that’s all, right?
<br />BESS: Or, it can be where you have a duty and you haven’t performed that duty as you should perform that duty.
<br />GRAHAM: Well, that sounds real tricky. That sounds more like ‘maladministration’ when you say you should perform it.
<br />BESS: I think if you stay with the idea that ‘maladministration’ is just a criticism, a difference of opinion, as to how one
<br />might administer government -
<br />GRAHAM: Right.
<br />BESS: Vs. where one is in violation of a duty that is clearly prescribed by law, and you fail to perform that.
<br />RAY: The next is Special Counsel. This was a recommendation by Corp Counsel to create a potential conflict. Right now in
<br />the Charter, the Council has to approve the hiring of special counsel, and there could arise a situation where Corporation
<br />Counsel would be required, under bargaining laws and by the Police Commission, to provide a special counsel, and if the
<br />County Council didn’t want to support that, it would put them in an untenable position. Is that right, Steve?
<br />BESS: Yes.
<br />RAY: So, they’re recommending that, if they are required to provide special counsel, that it not be subject to Council
<br />approval.
<br />Board of Appeals. This is one that is connected to the idea of this Division of Permitting, moving it out of the Planning
<br />Department into Public Works, or wherever. So the Planning Department suggested we move the Board of Appeals, and we
<br />decided a place to move it might be Corporation Counsel, and that’s what this suggests doing here. This one is very much
<br />under discussion, whether it makes sense to do this now since we’re not moving the subdivision duties. We’re just allowing
<br />that so does it really make sense to go ahead and move the Board of Appeals yet, if we’re not doing it? And then some other
<br />discussions came about is that if we were to move the Board of Appeals, maybe just from a lease conflict and pure
<br />administrative standpoint, the best place might be to move it under the Mayor’s Office and just have them administer it. It’s
<br />really just an administrative back-up function, is what they need. But anyway, that one’s still very much up in the air now.
<br />The Department Head Qualifications. These are a number of relatively minor changes, just trying to beef up the professional
<br />standards for Department Heads. In addition, the way the Charter reads right now is all the Department Heads’ qualifications
<br />do not appear in that section. There’s a kind of a catchall section in the back of the Charter that deals with a bunch of
<br />Department Head qualifications, and we are going to clean that up, and have those qualifications appear in the Charter with
<br />the Departments. It’s kind of confusing the way it is right now.
<br />Police Department/Police Commission. What we did there is we really liked the language that we got out of City and County
<br />of Honolulu from the Fire Commission, so the bulk of the proposed changes here are really just lifting some of that
<br />descriptive language about the Commission’s standards, how it functions, from the Fire Commission. So, if you look at that,
<br />it’s just similar language to that that we liked. And then the other two additions, (6) and (7), just have to do with reviewing
<br />the department’s operations and evaluating, at least annually, the performance of the Police Chief, and submitting a report to
<br />the Mayor and the County Council, so requiring an annual review. It is no change whatsoever in regard to the authority of the
<br />Police Commission, and we looked at that one very closely because of all the controversy going on, and our strong legal
<br />opinion was that the Police Commission is adequately empowered under the present Charter, that perhaps they just haven’t
<br />exercised that power for various reasons, but that they are adequately empowered.
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