CHC 1979-06-05 SUBCOMMITTEE - Laserfiche WebLink

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What about an idea of one of the two at-large, one represent the historical West Hawaii District and one represent the historical East Hawaii? MRS. KOBAYASHI : Would that be constitutional? MR. ODA: Yes, all sorts of combinations are possible. Right now, it ' s residents in the specific 6 districts of the island, and everybody running at-large. What the proposal is then, why not have one person in addition to the 5 , one person run at-large from West Hawaii and one from East Hawaii. The concerns that I think were expressed by some of the Kona residents, were that if you have at-large candidates they are all going to be elected from Hilo. CHAIRMAN ISHIDA: What is the historical West Hawaii division? MR. OMONAKA: Kona, North-South Kona, including Kohala, North-South Kohala, including Ka' u. . . . CHAIRMAN ISHIDA: Ka' u was considered West. If you do that, in essence what you are doing is you still have the strength to retain strict districting. As equal segments. MR. SAKATA: At present now, all 9 councilmen are running at-large. If we go on a 6-3 basis, then we will have 6 of them running from the district and then 3 at-large. Will we satisfy the input that many of ;them have voiced for district representation.? CHAIRMAN ISHIDA: I think the problem that we have is that we don ' t know what the population of the census within that district was when it was originally adopted. I am assuming, of course, when the state reapportioned this county, it was based on population. I 'm assuming that it met constitutional standards. Correct me, Akira, if I 'm wrong, on the 6-3, the present districting of the county, was more based upon historical districts than population, at that time. MR. OMONAKA: Mr. Chairman, in terms of district representation, I think that if you look at our whole setup of our system, the federal government for most of us is so far away and there is very little input you can do, even the problems that we had in the sugar act and things like that. . it is so far away. The same with the State Legislature, if you want to testify on any bill, I don ' t think you will catch a plane or anything to go, but , local government, county government should be as close as possible to the people. So, I really favor a form of district representation. CHAIRMAN ISHIDA: There was one proposal that was given in Ka' u that stated we should double the state representa- tion. In other words, we have 10 councilmen. District #4 would have 2 ; District #3 would have 2 ; District #1 would have 2; and District #2 would have 4. Any thoughts on that? MR. OMONAKA: Yes , too big. . . -7-