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minutes 03-25-00Page 7 of 34
<br />wide issues, but they are single member representatives and on the other hand, I, kind of, have a problem with somebody
<br />outside the district voting for impeachment. So, we’re struggling with that and we’re going to try to come up with something
<br />that’s the most reasonable in our minds, but I think probably the 3% will be lowered. It would certainly be lowered if we
<br />restricted the impeachment signatures to only having to come from a certain district. Then we certainly wouldn’t require the
<br />3%, i.e. 2,000 votes, if they could only come from one district. That would be lowered significantly, but that’s very much for
<br />discussion. So go ahead.
<br />P. MARTIN: Well, in that case I would think it could be either/or. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, so that if you want
<br />to protect single district members from outside harassment, there’d have to be a greater number of people involved. Within
<br />that district, there should be fewer. It should not be an enormous burden on the public to get rid of a corrupt official.
<br />RAY: I agree it should be fewer if that’s the way. Also, as part of this Charter Amendment, in regard to the petition and
<br />number of signatures, we will have to include a section that addresses the procedure for those signatures. So that will be a
<br />whole section addressed.
<br />YUEN: Well, this is necessary if there is a much larger number of signatures required for impeachment than the current 100.
<br />For example, with the 3%, it would require approximately 2,000 signatures. In this case, there needs to be some mechanism
<br />for verifying that the signatures are authentically those of registered voters. With a hundred, it can be done very quickly and
<br />easily. If you have many more than that, the Court system won’t do it. They don’t have the personnel to do this. So what I’ve
<br />written up here would be that it would be done by the County Clerk’s Office in the same way that it’s done for referendum,
<br />initiative, recall, and the like. It basically follows the procedure for those, but a little bit differently. For initiative,
<br />referendum, recall, you have basically a second crack at submitting the petitions if you don’t have enough signatures. The
<br />County Clerk’s Office doesn’t like that, and because this would require quite a bit fewer than initiative, referendum, recall, as
<br />it’s written now there would be one opportunity. The impeachment petition gatherers have to be pretty sure that they had
<br />enough and submit it to the Clerk’s Office for one counting. And basically the life of the signatures is a year. I think those are
<br />the biggest differences between the petition here and the initiative, referendum and recall petition.
<br />RAY: I’m going to let Chris address this next one, too. Yes ma’am.
<br />FORD: I’m Brenda Ford. On this impeachment issue, and the numbers, because there’s a lack of clarify here on the 3% or
<br />1%, or whatever, it seems to me that if the office is a District Office, that it should be, say - I’m just picking a number now -
<br />1% of the people registered in that district. If it’s an island-wide office like Mayor, then it should be 1% of the island-wide
<br />whether they collect it all in one neighborhood or whether they do it island-wide. This doesn’t reflect the fact that it could be
<br />either a district or countywide office because if you said it has to be, say, 3%, that means 3% inside of a district, but the
<br />county has 2,000 -
<br />RAY: The 3% was intended to accommodate signatures island-wide.
<br />FORD: Okay, but it needs to reflect that.
<br />RAY: Yes, I agree.
<br />This next one regarding Special Counsel. This was a request by the Corporation Counsel to avoid a potential conflict that
<br />they thought might occur. Do you want to run that?
<br />YUEN: This was requested by Corporation Counsel’s Office. Ordinarily, all County legal matters are handled by the Office
<br />of the Corporation Counsel. There are times when the office cannot handle a legal matter because of a conflict of interest.
<br />This can happen when County employees are sued both in their official capacity as employees, and as individuals. There are
<br />ethical rules that sometimes prohibit the Corporation Counsel from representing such people. The Charter currently would
<br />require the Corporation Counsel to go to the County Council and obtain an authorization to hire those attorneys. They’ve
<br />found this to be awkward in the past sometimes because of the controversial nature of the issue. If this amendment passed,
<br />this would permit the Corporation Counsel to hire special counsel without specific authorization from the County Council,
<br />however, they would have to operate within an appropriation that was made by the County Council. So, the way this would
<br />work is that the County Council might, at the beginning of the budget year, make an appropriation of X amount of money for
<br />Corporation Council to hire special counsel, and Corporation Counsel could then make those hires in these conflict-of-
<br />interest situations without going back to the Council for the authorization to do that, as long as they had the funds available.
<br />The County Council still controls the ultimate purse strings, and if the amounts required should go over what is budgeted,
<br />they would have to go back for further appropriation.
<br />file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 03-25-00.html7/1/2011
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