2000-05-10 Charter Commission Minutes

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Transcript of Meeting of May 10, 2000Page 2 of 62 should be a linear, military-type chain of command so there’s no confusion for the people who are out on the street with their lives sometimes depending upon the fact that they know what their chain of command is. And to set up a Fire Commission that would essentially be the same kind of thing, with no real control, or no real oversight of the Fire Department, would be a mistake. I urge you, still, to put before the voters the opportunity to have the Police Commission and the Fire Commission, if you wish to put it in, appointed not by one person. Have the Police Commission and the Fire Commission, one member from each district, appointed by the Council member from that district and approved by the rest of the Council before they are appointed. The reason being we cut out some of the political influence that occurs when one person appoints the people who are overseeing a part of the government that’s run by the person appointing them. It’s just a total conflict of interest. To give you some insight into this, it’s come to our attention in the last week or so that Wayne Carvalho may have falsified a federal document – a document required to be filled out by someone in the County, and it’s required by Executive Order. This is a document which would allow us to get marijuana eradication funds from the Federal Government, and they have what they call an OJP, an Office of Justices Program, form that has to be attached with this. And that OJP form requires that the person signing it certify three things: (1) that the money won’t be used for lobbying; – and there’s a purpose for me telling you this. I’m sorry. (2) there’s a debarment, and (3) that we try to have a drug free workplace. The debarment is the key. The debarment says that you certify that the person signing this has not been convicted of civil fraud or civil bribery within the last three years. Mr. Carvalho signed this document on the 11th of April. I guess he can’t remember back to December. The problem is we can’t get rid of him, and here’s what’s happened. The County of Hawaii has also been convicted of these things. We may not be able to get any drug control money for the next three years because we can’t get rid of the guy. We need a Police Commission that has clear authority to oversee this, that’s completely separated from the Executive management of the County, and has the independence to take things into their own hands, and not controlled by politics. This is a true fact. This document is now in the hands of the FBI, and they will be looking at it. And, of course, the County Council asked the Corporation Counsel to look into it, but we may have a problem with that. Now, in addition to the problem of getting rid of the person, we’re stuck with the liability of this because we can’t get rid of him, so that brings us to the second thing – the proposed Charter that I told you, which would be the second possibility, is to allow all officers of the County to be impeachable. If we could have impeached Mr. Carvalho, maybe we wouldn’t have been in this position, when we first learned about this stuff some years ago. And impeachment would have been a simple surgical slice, and then we could have gone on. But instead, this thing lingers on and drags on and we’re stuck with this situation which is dragging us down. So I urge you to allow people to vote on the opportunity to have each Commission member on an oversight committee appointed by Council members – only the four oversight committees – and to allow for all officers of the County, not just the elected officers, all officers to be impeached. And I urge you to reject the idea of making the impeachment process more difficult. The idea of an impeachment is to quickly get something to court because an impeachment is like a quo warranto. It goes ahead of anything else on the docket as quickly as it can, so that the judge makes a decision. Now, the judge is still deciding by law whether someone has committed an impeachable offense. It’s not the 100 people signing. It’s only the judge making the decision. The purpose of the impeachment is to allow for a quick resolution to something that might otherwise drag on, as we’re seeing in this case. So those are the things that I would urge you, most urgently. And, of course, from my friend, Mr. Pierson, – I don’t think he showed up. He was going to. RAY: He’s here. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 05-10-00.html7/1/2011