CHC 1979-06-12 - Laserfiche WebLink

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MR. TRULSON: That would be under the Safety Coordinator then. MR. ODA: Under that section , yes. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Under the impeachment of elected officers, Mr. Oda, you have here 100 qualified electors of the county. Would that include the county organization, administration we were thinking about maybe a number that is not enough, but checking through this State Statute all he needs is 25 persons to start impeachment proceedings. MR. ODA: We looked at that very carefully and the reason why I put 100 there was because if you look , you can tell when this impeachment law was passed, initially. It was 1905. Just below the. . .see that L1905 , the last line of this Hawaii Revised Statutes provision. Are you all following me? The Hawaii Revised State Statutes 62-13. The last full sentence in brackets, L-1905 . That ' s the law of 1905 , chapter 39, section 60. That ' s when this statute was passed. I don ' t think the number has ever been changed. MR. TRULSON: Mr. Oda, can we by charter change? MR. ODA: Oh, yes. MR. TRULSON: We can change a revised statute? MR. ODA: Certainly. MR. TRULSON: So our charter, then, supersedes the present Hawaii Statutes. MR. ODA: Let me see, now, it says not less than 25 persons. Okay? So you can make it anything above that so long as it is reasonably related to a valid justification. Now, the reason why we selected 100 is because Honolulu, for example, in its recent charter amendment, passed 500 people for impeach- ment purposes. If you look at the Honolulu excerpts that we included in the rough copy that was given to you. . .signed by not less than 500 qualified electors of the city. Honolulu with a population of 10 times what we have on this island, has 500 signatures required. We have on that proposal right now 100. Now, 100 doesn ' t seem like an awful lot of signatures, but impeachment being a very serious type of an allegation and charge, I don ' t think this commission or any governmental entity should keep it so that any mentally disturbed person can just file a petition for impeachment and put a public official in such a situation where he has to defend himself on a frivolous kind of . situation. So, you make a number large enough so that you have sufficient number of people who are concerned and yet make it at least a little bit difficult so no fly by night group of people who have an axe to grind against a public official can, just because they didn ' t like what he did, file an impeachment proceeding ..._ The question of numbers is a little difficult but it is a matter of judgment of what is reasonable in the county. -17-