2000-03-25 Charter Commission Minutes

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minutes 03-25-00Page 2 of 34 years, the Charter can also be amended two other ways. It can be amended by a petition signed by 20% of the registered voters in the last election, and it can be put up for amendment by a County Council ordinance, which actually happens fairly regularly. In other words, the County Council, with six members out of the nine, can vote to put something before the voters. And I think that’s the other important point. Any of these recommendations, whether it be from the Charter Commission, by petition, or by County ordinance, all go before the voters to decide. So all we do is put forth a slate that appears on an election and these will appear in the November election next fall. We have the summary of the 19 proposed amendments, right now, and I’d like to run through those quickly. The first one is non-partisan elections. A little bit of background. Basically this would effect all County elected officials. In other words, everybody would run as a non-partisan. There’d be no party affiliations. The process, in terms of getting elected, and this is subject to however we want to set it up, but we’ve tried to follow the most common models, is that if someone wins 50% of the votes plus one in the Primary, they win outright. Otherwise, the top two folks go on to the General. If the number 2 proposal that’s here, which is to change the Council Districts to include 3 at-large seats, we’ve also proposed language that would address that should there be non-partisan elections and at-large seats. So we have a suggested formula if, basically, the top six voters in the Primary would go to the General. If there were six or fewer, there would only be a General Election. There would be no Primary Election. So, it’s a little bit complex to understand but anyway, you have to anticipate all those things, if this should pass and if that should pass, then this is how it would work. So, in other words, if non-partisan elections were voted on and the at-large seats were voted on, we have to propose language that would accommodate that should both of those happen. As I mentioned, the Honolulu City and County went to non-partisan elections, I think, six or eight years ago. Both Maui and Kauai have voted to implement non-partisan elections, so we’re the last county which still has partisan elections. Rather than go through the pros and cons, and I don’t want to do this in a bias way, we do have a couple of handouts that were prepared by the League of Women Voters. One on non-partisan elections and one on arguments for and against a different electoral systems, i.e. at-large or single member districts, or a mix of whatever. So, anyway, this is a fairly independent organization which just came up with some of the pros and cons. As you’ll see, a lot of the pros are cons, depending on which way you look at it, so they appear on both sides. And one other piece of background, that the City and County did a survey which showed that 76% of the cities interviewed had non-partisan elections, so this is a pretty common way to go. So, that’s the non-partisan elections. The second proposed amendment is to change the County Council Districts from the present nine single member districts to six single member districts and the districts would be the same districts as the State House of Representative Districts. So we have six House Districts, so if this were to pass, you’d have six single member districts representing the House Districts and they would run for two-year terms. As proposed now, there would be three at-large seats, and they would be for four-year terms, and the basic rationale behind that is running and island-wide race, just the expense and time and commitment there, it seems to make more sense to us that they would be four-year terms. We’re struggling with a number of issues related to the at-large districts, and I’ll run by a couple of them with you. Number 1, when would you implement this? The soonest it could start would be 2002. If you started in 2002, two years after the election, the four at-large seats, should it pass, then those seats would not be concurrent with the Mayor’s term. In other words, they’d be running off-cycle, which is, sort of, contrary to one of the reasons why a lot of people like at-large seats is that you’re grooming and training people for island-wide seats, who may run for the Mayor. So it, sort of, runs contrary to that to set up a conflict in that way. One way we could deal with that is to have the first at-large term for only two years, so if people voted in at-large, the first time you ran it would be a two-year term, and then after that, it would go to four-year terms. Another thing we’re struggling with is term limits. In 1996, we voted in term limits for the County Council, four two-year terms. That started in 1996. So if this were implemented in 2002, you’d have Council people who had served six years. So one idea we’ve been thinking about is that we could allow a one-time exception in 1996, that irregardless of the term limits, you would allow anybody that were in the County Council then, to run for a four-year term, which would mean if they’d already been for six years, they would be in for ten years vs. the eight years. The reason that seems to make sense is, presumably, the guys that would want to run for at-large would be people that were more experienced, that had some background, so if you totally eliminated that group, it just seems, kind of, odd to do it that way. So, that’s one possibility that we could do it that way, or we have the first at-large term just be for two years vs. the four years. So, those are some of the things we’re looking at. The other issue, which we haven’t figured out a really clean way to deal with this, is if you did away, if we did away, as voters, if we did away with the nine Council seats, how would that effect the Commissions that are tied to the nine Council Districts, and right now, we have two Commissions, Planning and Police, that the Commissions are tied to the nine Council Districts, and we’re also proposing, as a Charter Amendment, to make the Water Commission tied to those Commissions. So, the dilemma we’ve got is if the nine Council seats were to be eliminated, then those districts wouldn’t officially exist anymore. They would be gone. So, we’d like to keep the geographic distribution in the nine districts, so we’re trying to come up with some language which we hope will work, that could possibly refer to, if the at-large seats were passed, in terms of the Commissions, that they would be tied to the Council Districts as they existed in the year 2000. That’s generally okay. It’s not perfect. It could always be subject to challenge by somebody because you wouldn’t have legally defined districts anymore, so it’s not a perfect way to deal with it, but that’s something, I just wanted to bring your attention, we’re struggling with. But we are definitely not in favor of eliminating the nine district make-up for file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 03-25-00.html7/1/2011