CHC 1979-01-23 - Laserfiche WebLink

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powers. We always speak of the American system as having three levels , the Administrative, the Legislative and the Judicial branches always counteract each other and balance each other. I feel when you make a commission form you've got a fourth branch of government. In the case of the Water Board when they came up and told you that they did not want to see any control from the Mayor ' s office on approval from the County Council as far as rates go, I think that the County Council should make the final determination. Because after all the people that are running it and the final tax- payer that is paying it, there must be somebody that is accountable at some point in time to the taxpayer. And that is the elected official . Otherwise you have a commission form who by their action has the forcer ,toeff.ect_!e law, second the rules but nobody can contest it. There is no way that the citizens would be able to contest the rule. It has gbt to be someone to make the approval who is also accountable and that is the elected official. Okay, such as the County Council , county-wide, the County is the one to make the final adoption and I think that is correct. So, I think , one, as far as all three or four commissions go, one, it basically stays the. same, fine, the generalsupervision of control still must remain the same or you might put in coordi .ation or redefine it if you want to. Coordination, fine, a language change. But they must have some kind of coordination or control from the Mayor' s office. Point:= one, for strictly business reasons. Point two, if you are going to think of maybe abolishing a few commissions, put them all as divisio2s. My basic thinkingis that I would go along with abolishing Commissions of Liquor, Civil Service and Water. MR. ISHIDA: Mr. Mayor, the problem, or the concern, as I gather from hearing the other previous departments testify before us as far as the general supervision provision was that they felt it was ambiguous and nobody really knew what it meant. Is there any of that situation as far as the administration is concerned? MAYOR MATAYOSHI : I don ' t know, I don ' t have any problems. There is the feeling that this general supervision and control some of them, as I understand it, and I did talk to the Police Chief about it. Point one, I guess the Police Chief made one comment about this, is that we would be meddling into the administrative areas of the department. And so I called'_him. I have never meddled in the departments operational system and he agreed. But it says the "general supervision and control" may be interpreted that you are going to meddle into that and I can appreciate that in the case of the Police Department, maybe the Mayor should back off for the political . But there must be coordination somewhere. In other words , like this last budget. If he sends me a request for a hundred additional employees , there is no_ way I can fund that thing unless I can raise taxes so we are going to have to cut it -13-.