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RAY: Sue. IRVINE: No. RAY: Anybody else? John. SANTANGELO: Harry, what about a bi-annual budget? There'd been talk about that. TAKAHASHI: I believe that, too, we dropped because we did write up a bi-annual budget proposal at one time, but I think our Corp Counsel indicated that that also violated State Statutes. SANTANGELO: And because we're a political subdivision at the behest of the State. Okay. Thank you. RAY: Harry, I know you received this submittal from the ,Legislative Auditor's Office, and we just passed this out on Saturday, and I don't know if everybody has had time to fully digest it. But since you are here, and since you were a Legislative Auditor in one of your past lifetimes, I thought we might take the opportunity. Basically, the issue that the Leg. Auditor's bringing up is the way the office functions now in terms of the appointments is subject, pretty much, to entirely political patronage. The Council is elected. They form a majority. They elect a Council Chair. The Council Chair appoints the Clerk. The Clerk appoints the Legislative Auditor. They divvy up the committees, and the Committee Chairs get to pick their staff. The staff, because of that, ends up doing a lot of constituent work, rather than really servicing the committees first and foremost. And then, this other huge issue of serving as an actual auditing department, that whole function, which is pretty much totally ignored, or beyond the capabilities of the Leg. Auditor's Office in terms of how they function. So, Connie gave us some language, some suggestions, and earlier this evening you mentioned to me the Council Services Office at the City and County; how they function. Is there anything you can share with us in terms of solutions on this? TAKAHASHI: Having worked as the Leg. Auditor for the County of Hawaii, having worked with several Councils, I feel that a Council needs to have the capability to conduct proper research, as well as proper investigations. However, I would tend to concur with Connie, that the patronage process may hinder the effectiveness of the Office. Now, how do you take the patronage out, I'm not sure, because it's not necessarily so, that, I think, the Civil Service system will work for the way the office should run, because looking at the Civil Service system, they tend to be very rigid, the staff in the Legislative Auditor's Office do work in a very broad spectrum of assignments. So, I think that the Council deserves to have a staff that can provide them the proper information, the proper research. The problem right now, I think, all of 6