CHC 1979-02-20 - Laserfiche WebLink

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CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, ,Mr. Ga.rcia. . GUEST The Chair introduced Mr. Fred Koehnen as SPEAKER: guest speaker on the various forms of county government. MR. KOEHNEN : Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Fred Koehnen. I was the chairman of the third Charter Commission which put together this infamous document. I 'm sure you are going to get a lot of flack about what is in here. We had a few trials and tribulations in putting it together. Like every document of a constitu- tional nature or like every legal document a good deal of it represents compromise. Compromise of opposing positions. I have no particular ax to grind in appearing before you. As a matter of fact, I didn ' t make any notes other than jotting a few down as I came in here. But I thought it might help you a little bit if we sort of reviewed the history of all of the various Charter Commissions and how this document finally came into being. It may give you a better understanding of what has transpired and perhaps a change in social and political climate today from what existed at thee:: time that the various charters were being worked on. The Act 73 that empowered the counties to appoint a Charter Commission was enacted in 1963. You will recall that prior to that and I 'm not sure of the exact date, but several years prior Honolulu had been granted a charter enabling legislation and it had proceded to come forth with a charter which at that point had been adopted. The neighbor islands were always sort of country cousins. They I think in the eyes of the legislature were not deemed responsible enough to have their own form of government. Indeed if you will look back at the form of government that existed prior to the charter, it was a hodge- podge of special legislation that had been enacted throughout the years. And the organizational form was prescribed by law. Partially by special law. It didn ' t exist on a uniform basis. At any rate, by 1963 the neighbor islands had progressed to the point where they were deemed responsible enough to enact their own local form of government and Act 73 was passed. In 1964 the first Charter Commission was appointed and had as its chairman, Dr. Kaoru Noda who was at that time at the local University of Hawaii , Hilo branch. The idea was to get the charter out in time for the general election in 1964. Realizing that the commis- sion was not appointed or did not start work until 1964, they were on a rather tight time schedule to get it ready to go out with the general election in 1964. -9-