CHC 1979-04-10 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

NEW The Chair called upon Stuart Oda, Attorney for BUSINESS: the Charter Commission to present his findings on several items of research requested by the commission: MR. ODA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As requested by the commission, I did some preliminary, very preliminary, research on several areas. One of which had to do with the one man , one vote concept which is talked about at practically every meeting and on the issue of reapportionment. What is meant by general supervision and control of the mayor. The third item being the legality of residency requirements for county council- men. The fourth being the proposed definition of "vacancy. " I would like to stress that nothing that I say here, today, is a final recommendation or anything like that. It is very, very preliminary. Based on brief and limited research. It is merely being given this afternoon to give all of you an idea as to what some of these concepts might mean so that when the comments are being made at the public hearings you might have a better idea as to how that particular matter can be looked at. Regarding the matter of "vacancy.; "--I am going to take this kind of helter-skelter. Backwards , really. On the matter of vacancy, I checked all of the charters of the various islands and no charter, in this state, has a definition of "vacancy. " I suspect that there is a very good reason for it. I also researched in our library, the various definitions of vacancy with regard to public officers. I couldn ' t find one that really fits this situation so I had to sort of "invent" a defini- tion which I 'm not really satisfied to be a complete definition. I suspect that what Mr. Schutte and the others of you who have expressed some concern about what "vacancy" means with regard to vacancy, really means the death or resignation , removal from office of any public officer who is unable to continue his duties because of physical or mental infirmity or a conviction of a felony. Our charter, as Icrecall , does not have any provision for a conviction of a felony being a subject to forfeit your office. Most of the other charters , if not all , of the other counties have a provision for forfeiture of an office resulting in a vacancy if a elected official is convicted of a felony. As you know, a'felony is any crime that results in more than one year in prison or a fine over $1 , 000. Let ' s leave the definition of vacancy sort of hanging until such time that , first of all , you decide you want one; secondly, under what type of circumstances you feel that definition should be applied. Then we can work one out to fit the situation. So far as residency requirements for county council , under the present charter, of course, to qualify under Section 3-3 you have to be a citizen of the United States and a qualified elector of the county for at least two years pre- ceding the election or appointment to the county council. The only other charter that has a two year provision or any other type of residency provision , in this state, is the Kauai County Charter which was enacted back in 1969, just about the time that ours was. About ten years ago. I don ' t know whether they have - 23 -