MIN CHARTER 2018-10-12 (2018-2020)

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Hawaii County Charter Commission -4 October 12, 2018 The Chair then recalled Brenda Ford, who made the following statement: BRENDA FORD: MS. FORD: I'm Brenda Ford. I would like to start on Communication 1.8, the Conflict of Interest. For many years before I was a Council Member and for the all eight years that I was on the Council I advocated for the Council to have their own legal counsel. Their own attorney, capable of defending them or filing lawsuits if necessary. That was objected to strongly by all administrations and at that time Lincoln Ashida, who was the Corporation Counsel. In every instance the Corporation Counsel reports to the Mayor. If they don't do what the Mayor wants Corporation Counsel can be fired. That is not true of the Legislative Branch. We cannot fire—when I'm referring to we, I mean when I was on the Council—we can't fire the Corporation Counsel or any of the deputies. Therefore, we are at a disadvantage as the Legislative Branch. We need to have our own legal counsel in the Legislative Branch separate from Corporation Counsel. Corporation Counsel represents a body politic of the County. They do not represent to Council. And they give misinformation. How many years did I complain because they kept defining the word "shall" as discretionary. Three judges ruled that "shall" means mandatory, and finally it went to the State Supreme Court and they said in all cases "shall" is mandatory. But the Corporation Counsel kept misinterpreting it deliberately in order to get the administration what they wanted instead of what the people wanted. So please do not do anything except get a separate attorney for the Legislative Branch. We've needed it for decades. You will hear people actually say that we are co -equal branches of government. But that's not true because the Council has no control over the Corporation Counsel's Office at all. Therefore, we are not equal we are subordinate. It's not right. Honolulu has four attorneys on the payroll of their legislative branch for just this reason. I brought many pieces of legislation forward to get an attorney for us and the legislative analyst, I think the position is called, does not qualify because they cannot file suit for the Council if they need to. Moving on to Communication 3.1.1, the Salary Commission. I'm sorry I gave you the wrong number. 7.2, the Salary Commission. I have to take tremendous exception to the existence of a Salary Commission. A couple years ago they've increased raises for the administration and the County Council approximately 30 percent across the board and they have all kinds of reasons for doing it. The worst one I heard was "Oh, well we had to match Honolulu or Kauai or Maui, or whatever." We are not those islands. This was an abomination to raise the salaries of appointed and elected officials to that degree. If they'd given there just maybe three, four, or five percent it would've been reasonable. And they're Page 8