MIN CHC 1999-10-13 - Laserfiche WebLink

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• Council meetings and Committee meetings, and that is that beginning in the month of July and continuing through, I believe it was, the month of September, the Council received it's usual Report of Transfers, and these are transfers made in accordance with a portion of the Hawaii County Charter which the Charter affords the Mayor the opportunity to transfer, and not between departments but within departments. And I just wanted to let you know, in three of the transfers, or a number of the transfers that came, that this was subsequent to the approval of the Operating, as well as the CIP Budget; that there were transfers, and this was subsequent to our internal calculations regarding the funded balance, which played a very, very important role in balancing this year's budget, as I'm sure you have read, or at least probably talked to some of us about, over $3,000,000.00 in transfers. Some of the individual transfers were in excess of $500,000.00 each, and 1 stated on the Council floor, so I'm not speaking out of school here, that I felt this was a usurping of the Council's authority. Transfers are really meant to facilitate changes that occur after a budget is adopted but it's not meant to take the place of appropriations, and in my own estimation, there were at least two, possibly four, transfers which were clearly circumventing the Council's wishes not to appropriate funds for certain projects. And I would ask you, please, to consider the possibility of having some language in there, not eliminating the Mayor's right to transfer, should we continue with a Mayor, but to limiting the amount to a reasonable amount, in order to conduct business. I know the Mayor has to make these kinds of decisions, they're very important decisions, and I wouldn't want to take that away from • the Executive Branch of government, but I don't believe they should take the place of the normal appropriation process. And I think you've heard from Mr. Childs with respect to strengthening the authority, responsibility, and if you would call it, the power of the Council. I think he called it 'having a stronger Council', and I believe that this very small change would play a very important role. 111 be happy to answer any questions you might have regarding any of my statements. Thank you. RAY: Ms. Herkes. HERKES: Three questions on all three points. I'II take the last one first. Council Manager. If we proposed a Council Manager operation, would you still limit the amount of money that could be transferred in the departments? You'd still suggest that with the Council Manager? TYLER: Yes. Well, I wasn't talking about a Council Manager. I was talking about a County Manager. HERKES: We have changed the wording here. TYLER: Well, I'm sorry. I wasn't privy to that, but we know it in - •