MIN CHC 1999-08-25 - Laserfiche WebLink

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• applaud and commend each and every one of you for serving as Members of the Charter Commission. This is not an enviable task but your charge is indeed a very important one because a Charter such as yours, should not be static. It has evolve with the times. I commend you and I congratulate you and I want to thank you for inviting me to participate today. I come from a very interesting perspective, having served as the Assistant Minority Leader of the Council from 1988 to 1990, and having served as the Minority Leader from 1990 through 1992, as the only Republican on the City Council. In 1990, the Honolulu Charter Commission proposed nonpartisan Mayoral and Council elections and I was a very strong supporter of this concept, not necessarily because I was serving as the only Republican on the council and it was a rather lonely experience, because I felt that this would be in the best interest of the City and County of Honolulu. The 1992 General Election results, I think are very interesting. There were 244,493 votes cast; 130,588 voted in the affirmative and in the negative, 113,905. The margin was relatively close. It was only a 5% margin and I think that was, in great part, due to the fact that the public was not as aware as they should have been relative to the various nuances that would result with nonpartisan elections. So if this is a course of action that this Charter Commission proposes, I would suggest that a very aggressive educational program be put into place, not necessarily to support one point of view or • the other, but to make the general public keenly aware of the positive aspects of nonpartisan elections vs. the other course of action. I think we're all very aware of the fact that local government has little to do with partisan politics. Roads, parks, water, police, fire and zoning have very little to do with partisan politics. They're all very basic services. During elections, partisan politics serves only to, in my opinion, distract the voters' attention from the essential issues, municipal issues. Good ideas know no ideology or party affiliation. Good people are not determined by party affiliation. As a Council Member, I can say that I have never given thought as to whether a nominee to a City Board or Commission - whether they are a card-carrying Member of this party or that. I have always evaluated them on the basis of their ability, their experience and their expertise. And as a businessman, I have never hired by party affiliation. I look for the best and the brightest. In over ten years as a Council Member, I have never even asked a prospective staff member as to their party affiliation. After almost ten years with me, my Senior Aide, who's in the back of the room, Ron Boyer - to this day, I still don't know what party he belongs to and it's really unimportant. I believe that today's voters are becoming increasingly more sophisticated in that they are better informed as to the important issues of the day. Citizens, in my opinion, no longer depend on a party boss or a shop steward to tell them how to vote and I have