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minutes 04-01-00Page 11 of 22
<br />I have put in some changes here, and I’ll try to just let you read those and maybe we can talk at them another time. But, one
<br />of the things is I gave you a list of three things here, the note to the Charter Commission Reviewers. On page 27 of the
<br />Charter, Section 13-1(d), defines officers of the county and refers to persons who have been "appointed" as officers. Okay.
<br />Sprinkled throughout the Charter are places where the Mayor nominates people and then those nominations go to the Council
<br />for approval. Some places it refers to those people as being "appointed". That’s a misnomer, and I think those should all be
<br />changed. I went through this with the County Council at a recent meeting. The Mayor does not appoint people. The Mayor
<br />nominates them. If they are confirmed or denied by the Council, then they must then go through a third process which is to
<br />take an oath of office. Then they are appointed. So that’s something that should be cleared up because of the reasons I put in
<br />there.
<br />Mr. Rudy Legaspi’s currently serving in a job which he says he’s being paid a dollar a year. He retired. I have some questions
<br />as to whether he’s an officer of the County, an employee of the County, what kind of situation that is. And I think that
<br />perhaps that needs to be cleared up some way in the Charter, as to whether people are allowed to work for the County if
<br />they’re not beholden to the County. If they’re not getting a salary, then there’s no way to talk about discipline of such a
<br />person, just in my thought.
<br />And then finally, the term "Board and Commission", sometimes they’re misused, I think, in the Charter. Commission should
<br />have specific jobs such as oversight, like the Police Commission, etc. Boards should be the Boards that actually do work at
<br />administering a department or an area of the government.
<br />HERKES: Mr. Ray, could we ask our legal counsel to please check that language? I think that’s a good point.
<br />IRVINE: Yes, that’s what I was going to say. Although, I was just going to ask Del, where did you get this information?
<br />PRANKE: Which?
<br />IRVINE: That Boards and Commissions have -
<br />PRANKE: Well, I looked up the definition in the dictionary.
<br />IRVINE: Okay.
<br />PRANKE: They’re not a lot different, and sometimes they’ll talk about -
<br />IRVINE: We heard testimony to this concerning our Water Board, or Water Commission - it ought to be Board.
<br />PRANKE: Yes. Well, I think there are some of them that are misnamed, perhaps, and the other thing would be to use those
<br />terms would give some consistency to the Charter.
<br />I want to go on to the definition of ‘maladministration’. This is from Webster’s Dictionary. I didn’t get a chance to check
<br />Black’s Law Dictionary because I was, kind of, busy this week. But ‘maladminister’ is to - administration that is corrupt or
<br />incompetent as that of a public office. That is what ‘maladministration’ means according to Webster. Now, there’s another
<br />definition, ‘administration that is incorrect such as that of giving the wrong drug or maladministering a drug in a hospital or
<br />elsewhere’. So, ‘maladministration’ has a definite meaning and it has a meaning that I think is important to maintain in the
<br />County Charter. I don’t think removing that is going to make much of a change to how our government runs, and I think
<br />keeping it in there is probably important, as I don’t think the idea of making it harder for folks to impeach someone -
<br />Remember, for instance, the impeachment of a President of the United States does not require that everybody in the country,
<br />or that a large number of people, approve that, only the number of people in the Senate, a hundred people, send that over to
<br />the House of Representatives. Well, that’s a hundred people, the same number that we would have to have for an
<br />impeachment here. And I think that’s enough. A recall is a recall of someone who’s elected. That takes a lot of people
<br />because that puts it on the ballot, but an impeachment is a two-step process. Just getting a hundred signatures on an
<br />impeachment petition doesn’t impeach somebody. That only takes it to the Court. Then you have to prove to a judge that
<br />there is reason for impeachment, and if the judge doesn’t agree, then the impeachment doesn’t go through. I think that’s a fair
<br />process, and as I said at a previous meeting, 3% of the entire county, of the registered voters in the county, again, would be
<br />2,100 people and Ms. Jacobson was elected by 2,300 people and Mr. Smith by 2,400 people voting for them. So, 3% is an
<br />incorrect number. I would leave it at the 100 people. If a hundred people sign a petition, then they can go, and they’re really
<br />going to have to go and argue this before a judge. So, I think that’s tough enough situation for an impeachment. Now, I have
<br />added in mine that all officers of the County should be impeachable. If we had this in right now, then we wouldn’t have to
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