Comm No 0011.01 - Section 13-1 - Definition of Vacancy - Resign to Run

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The Honorable Patsy T. Mink July 11, 1985 Page 4 In Delegate Chong's mind, what was meant by •overlapping* clearly seems to have been those instances when an incumbent to an office with a four-year term sought another office midterm, i.e. after two years. Id. at 709. Similarly, even though he opposed the proposal, De3egate Miller seemed to understand that it applied only to persons, such as state senators and a mayor of one county, who by the duration of their terms and when they began, would be precluded from running without resigning. Id. at 710. Delegate Shon referred to the result which he __.. understood the 'resign to run' provision would prevent as the "switch[ing of) horses in midstream." Id. Delegate Hale seems to have equated the phrase 'begins before the end' to language in the Hawaii County charter which mandates that an office is vacant when its incumbent seeks another elective office during an "off -county election.` Id. at 711. Presently, and when section 7 was adopted, the terms of federal offices are set by section 1, article XX of the United States Constitution. Congressional terms begin and end on the next January 3 after the general election in which the officer is elected. The United States President's term begins on January 20. State elective office terms are specified in section 4, article III for legislators (begin and end at general election), section 1, article V for the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor (begin and end at noon on the first Monday of December), and in sections 13-4 and 13D-5, Hawaii Revised Statutes, for the members of the Board of Education and trustees of the office of Hawaiian Affairs, respectively (begin and end at special election). The terms of elected county officers are even more varied: in the City and County of Honolulu and Maui County, terms begin at noon on January 2, see sections 3-102, 5-101 and 8-102, Revised Charter of the City and County of Honolulu, and sections 3-2 and 7-2, Charter of Maui County; in Hawaii County, terms begin at noon on the first Monday of December, see sections 3-2, 5-1.1, and 9-1, Charter of Hawaii County; ancTon the last working day of December in the County of Kauai, see sections 3.03, 7.01 and 9A.01, Charter of Kauai County. We may presume that the framers were aware of the various beginning and ending dates of the terms for Hawaii's federal, state, and county offices. Nothing in the constitutional history allows us to conclude that the framers intended to distinguish between incumbent state legislators or board of education members or Office of Hawaiian affairs trustees, whose terms begin and end at a general election and who would never need to resign if they were candidates during the last year of their terms irrespective of the office sought, and federal incumbents, the governor or the lieutenant governor, or elected county incumbents who were completing the last year of their terms but seeking offices with terms which begin chronologically before the term of the offices held end. AG Op. No. 86-17