2000-05-10 Charter Commission Minutes

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Transcript of Meeting of May 10, 2000Page 9 of 62 minutes of your previous two meetings before the Waimea meeting that I took issue to, and both of them come from Ms. Herkes. One of them, she says about spending money for campaigns, and she says ‘do you know how much, let’s pick Chairman Arakaki, spent in his last campaign’, and I brought that up at the Waimea meeting. He spent $71,000 running unopposed. Finance matters a great deal in the County elections, and I didn’t have time to pull the rest of them, but I just picked Al Smith’s, but I’m sure Ms. Leithead-Todd can speak to it, maybe. Mr. Arakaki’s ran 40 pages and I didn’t want to burden anybody with that. But, 60% of his funding comes from West side developers. The rest of his funding comes from the East side of the island, but it’s all – I don’t want to say all, pardon me – most of it is from lawyering firms, planning consultants. It essentially has no small person input. What you’re doing is financing campaigns with contributions from large developers. If you go to a 6-3, this will just burgeon out of control. If Mr. Arakaki can spend $71,000 in a single district running unopposed, you can do the math and see where you’re going to come up with a campaign island-wide and where all the money’s going to come from. It’s just not going to come from $100 from Jim Smith and Sara Jones. The other thing that I would like to state. In here she says ‘and I think a lot of it has’, and she’s speaking again about 6-3, ‘with our elected officials using their lack of power and blaming other people, so they blame other people so that makes it more difficult for government to function. You know how West Hawaii loves to blame East Hawaii for all their ills.’ I find that offensive. RAY: Well, let’s don’t get into personal attacks. If you’ve got some testimony that directly relates to the Charter Amendments, that’s fine. KRIEWALD: Okay. That’s my testimony. It’s in the minutes of your Charter Commission. RAY: I understand that. Okay. Thank you. KRIEWALD: Thank you. RAY: Okay, Councilwoman Bobby Jean Leithead-Todd, followed by Harold Jim and Patrick. These are the last two people signed up to testify, so if anybody else wants to testify, you need to sign up over there. Hi, Bobby Jean. LEITHEAD-TODD: Hi. This past weekend the Hawaii County Democratic Party held its County Convention. The convention was co-chaired by Nancy Pisicchio and myself. We had three resolutions in front of the convention concerning proposed Charter Amendments and we voted on those resolutions. The convention approved a resolution favoring the creation of the Fire Commission. We took a position in opposition to the 6-3 proposal for Council elections and passed a resolution in favor of retaining the nine single member districts. And we also took a position in opposition to non-partisan elections. And that’s basically all I’m here to speak to. RAY: Okay, thank you. Any questions for Councilwoman? IRVINE: Bobby Jean, can you just say a bit about what the vote on the non-partisan, why they’re in opposition? I suppose they are a Party and that might mean why. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 05-10-00.html7/1/2011