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<br />RAY: Well, his comments are very brief in terms of, you know, what's been
<br />submitted to us here in writing. The only thing that we have referred to in regard to the Charter is
<br />looking at the issue of the mandatory program review, and so anyway. Do you want to -?
<br />CARTER: Exactly. That's the only comment the Police Department has at this time.
<br />And this is Section 3-16, Mandatory Program Review. As it states here in the Charter, at least
<br />once every four years the Council shall critically review every program supported wholly or
<br />partially by County funds, and unless the Council shall favorably authorize its continuation at
<br />current or modified levels, the program shall be terminated. The Council shall adopt procedures
<br />and details to implement this section.
<br />Our problem in the recent past has been this section of the Charter comes out virtually every year
<br />when the Police Department goes before the County Council to have approval of a resolution
<br />regarding marijuana eradication. That is the only time we'll ever hear about this section coming
<br />up. And the problems that we've had in the past is that the Council has wrestled with the problem
<br />of understanding, number one, what is a program? And number two, what is a critical review?
<br />Because of a lack of definition in this area, we've had Council people come back and, you know,
<br />say back and forth, a volley has occurred where they've said, well, how do we know that what we
<br />do here on the Council isn't a critical review, because we air this issue out back and forth, we
<br />accept discussion from the general public on it. So it's been relatively unclear.
<br />Now, although we have this in the Charter on mandatory program review, it does raise an
<br />eyebrow in the Police Department how this is only applied strictly to marijuana eradication. It is
<br />the only program where they want a program review. Obviously, it's controversial because of the
<br />fact of what is occurring, the fact that we do go onto property, we recover marijuana. People
<br />complain about the low flying helicopters, invasions of privacy. And I guess this is the main
<br />reason.
<br />Now, we have a lot of programs in the County of Hawaii. To say that this one program should be
<br />under a critical review, but that's okay, we'll forget about the others, we feel is unfair. Either
<br />we're going to review critically every program, which means every grant that every agency in the
<br />County of Hawaii considers must have a program review. And primarily, what we're doing here _
<br />is, see, we're not directly using County funds. What happens here is that the grants require in-
<br />kind matching, therefore, if we're going to apply for $250,000 grant monies, the in-kind comes
<br />where we match the salaries of the people involved in the program to then fulfill our obligation to
<br />get the funding.
<br />Now, most of these grants are administered by the Attorney General's Office because they are
<br />federal programs, and we are required, under those programs, to submit numerous reports,
<br />quarterly reports, on how we're spending the money, what exactly are we doing, the results of
<br />our operations, so we consider that to be, of sorts, a review. I know it doesn't hold well in the
<br />community because it's like we're reviewing ourselves. Now, we, currently have the Legislative
<br />Auditor's Office conducting a review, and that came under a lot of controversy, as our two
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