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• RAY: Let me ask you this. Let's just take a hand count. Do you think you've got enough information? Have you read enough? Do you understand this issue enough at this point in time based on the information we've got? Does everybody feel like we're pretty much up on what this is all about? So raise your hand if you do. ALL HANDS WERE RAISED. IRVINE: I have one caveat. I think I need to hear from Chris, maybe, what State laws would impact what we're doing. HERKES: No, what State laws would be impacted by what we're doing. IRVINE: Well, one way or another. YUEN: I took a quick look at this. Let me start with an overview. In State law, the State Constitution says that the counties have the right to determine their own structure and how they function on everything except for matters of statewide significance. The first question is, does State law require you to have a Mayor/Council form of government. I don't think so and I would like to make this as a tentative statement because there's a couple of things I still want to look at. I think that the way the State Constitution is set up, and just for my own sense, that the counties ought to • be able to determine the way they want to govern themselves, that if the voters of a particular county don't want to have the form of government where you have an elected Mayor who is separate from the Council and they would rather have strictly an elected Council and an appointed City Manager who has many of the functions that have normally been carried out by the Mayor, I think that the County can go ahead and do that. There are some complications to this. I did a computer search of every place the word "Mayor" appears in State law, in the Hawaii Revised Statutes, and I don't have an exact number but it's something like 44. Just to give you an idea or a flavor of what some of these things are, they range from very minor things to fairly important things. There are many functions and powers that are given to the counties by State law in which the Mayor is given a particular role and in almost all of these cases, I think it can fairly be said that when the State Legislature passed this law and they said "Mayor", they simply assumed that the County would have a Mayor and they weren't saying that you've got to have a Mayor instead of a County Manager form of government. Just to start with the examples, there are number of Boards and Commissions that are set up under State law where it says that the Mayor shall appoint certain members to the Commission. There's an Advisory Commission to the Department of Business and Economic Development. There's a County Arborist Advisory Committee. There's a Commission on the Status of Women. There are several other things. But moving to the areas that are perhaps more serious and need to be looked at very carefully, the County is authorized to issue bonds and the Mayor is supposed to sign those bonds. The State law says the Mayor signs the bonds. We talk a little bit about rules and • 13