CHC 1979-07-03 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Ayes - Sensano, Omonaka, Noes - None Yanaga, Cadinha, Kobayashi, Iwamoto, Absent - Yagong Ishida, Schutte, - 1 Trulson, Sakata - - 10 Carried. RECALL: MR. ODA: Mr. Chairman. For information purposes, except for the typewritten portion, most of the provisions were '-.aken out of the Maui charter. MR. SCHUTTE: Stuart, the typewritten portion, this is your own language that you have put in there. MR. ODA: Right. MR. TRULSON: Mr. Oda. How does the percentage of signatures. . .20%, is that what the other counties have? MR. ODA: They do have 20%. We put in there, who voted or who registered. It is a matter of choice for you folks. 20% is 5% more than the number of people in the Initiative and Referendum. I believe those provisions call for 15% to initiate or refer legislation. Frances and I were discussing the necessity of 20% for recall and the basic reason that I could come up with on the reason why it should be 20% rather than 15% or anything else ( 1 ) it seems like a nice figure (2 ) it should be a little more difficult to recall elective officials rather than initiate or refer legislation. The reason is when-you are recalling and doing away with somebody' s job, the impact of that thing on the individual, of course, is much greater and it is much greater and it should not be an easy process, by nature. It should not be made too simple, otherwise, everybody who is unhappy with you, you know, can initiate something for harrassment purposes. And, yet, there is a necessity for it, i suppose, depending on your viewpoint. The question is, at what point, what percentage is where you find a happy medium , not tomakeit too easy and yet, not too difficult, in terms of the registered voters. MR. TRULSON: Mr. Chairman. It seems to me that if we are going to have recall and a man has been elected to office and there is going to be a recall petition, it should, as Mr. Oda said, not be too easy to do. I would recemmend that 25% of the people who voted, not the registered voters, if you didn ' t vote, why should you be able to sign a petition for recall? It should be those who voted. That is my opinion. MR. ODA: By way of information, Mr. Chairman, for those of you are kind of wondering what the difference between this and impeachment is. Impeachment, as you will recall, is a procedure by which a_ certain percentage of people, a certain number of people, can file a suit in court to remove a public official. That is a court proceeding. Compared to recall, recall is strictly an administrative inhouse procedure -28-