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First of all, I would like to request that almost everything, if not everything, that is before <br />you, and that has been placed on previous agendas as Charter Amendments be placed on the <br />ballot. The reason for that is this Commission, your Commission, operates every ten years. <br />Many of the things, if not most of these things, should have been corrected on the last <br />Commission. Some of them should have been corrected 20 years ago. If you don't get them <br />on the ballot for the people to decide, it's going to be another 10 years of us struggling <br />through trying to get things to work a little more efficiently. So, I do ask you to get as much <br />of this on the ballot as possible. People on this island are very intelligent and they will <br />understand what is on here. If they don't, they will ask their neighbors. We are a community <br />who talks to each other. We talk story, and I implore you to get these things on the ballot. <br />Let me start out by talking about CA -14. This is for the Legislative Auditor to retain <br />independent legal counsel. This is extremely important, and you are going to hear about <br />legal counsel on more than one of these items. It is important that the Auditor have <br />independent legal counsel, because the Auditor - -who happens to be a woman at this point in <br />time, but it makes no difference - -needs to be able to get an opinion that is not biased in favor <br />of the administration, or the Council. It needs to be independent, and for that reason they do <br />need to have a counsel that is specialized in auditing law. We don't have that among our <br />Corporation Counsel and we certainly don't have it in the County Council. So, when you are <br />looking, as an Auditor, for a legal representative, a specialist, you need a very specific type <br />of specialty in law. That is why I encourage you to pass CA -14 and get it on the ballot. <br />Regarding CA -15, the Land Fund; the people spoke on the last ballot and they said, "We <br />want to preserve our treasured lands." The Mayor and the majority of our County Council <br />said, "We don't care what you said, we are going to stop the funding." To me, when <br />initiative takes up to 10,000 signatures to get something on the ballot, and then the people <br />approve it, that is a mandate. That is a mandate, we work for the people; they don't work for <br />us. When the people say this is the way we want it to be, that should be sacred to all the <br />people in government. Unfortunately, it's not, so I encourage you to put CA -15 on the ballot, <br />and you watch; it will pass. <br />On CA -16, the Initiation of Charter Amendments and Revisions, I urge you to pass this and <br />put it on the ballot. We changed the initiative and referendum process to make it easier for <br />people's signatures to qualify. Not on the ballot, just to get their signatures authorized. They <br />have to sign their name, they have to print it, and it has to bear some reasonable facsimile to <br />what is on their registration affidavit, and the last four digits of their social security number <br />and their birth month and birth day. That is all that it takes to recognize that it is me signing <br />something. Rather than Brenda J. Ford, Brenda Ford should be sufficient, it's close enough. <br />My address hasn't changed in 15 years. We need to make it easy for people to engage in the <br />process. All a petition does is say to put it on the ballot for the people to decide, so we <br />shouldn't make the petitioning process onerous. We need to change several sections of the <br />code to make them all identical and make it very easy for people to sign a petition, easy for <br />us to process it and understand it to get something on the ballot. We shouldn't make people <br />jump through hoops to try to participate in their government. <br />29 <br />