HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0001.012 2008-2010
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Yoshimoto, J
From: Shawn James Leavey [shawnjamesleavey@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2008 7:03 PM 2008 DEC 1 PM 12 30
To: joshimoto@co.hawaii.hi.us (;OL i i'! .
Cc: dyagong@co.hawaii.hi.us; bford@co.hawaii.hi.us; dikeda@co.hawaii.hi.us; ;GLJN 4' 4 lilll
phoNmann@co.hawaii. hi.us
Subject: Suggesting amendments on proposed Council rule change
Aloha Chairman Yoshimoto,
Congratulations on your new chairmanship. I hope the workload of your new position isn't too much for
your family, as you alluded in the newspaper when the discussions of the new'08-'10 leadership were
taking place. Also in the paper, I appreciate your efforts to streamline the council meetings. However, I
am concerned over your proposal to prohibit councilmembers from asking questions during testimony.
I understand certain members where too liberal in the asking of questions and making commentary, but I
hope some middleground on this issue can be found. I would ask that the necessity to streamline
meetings be balanced with the need for immediate Q&A between legislators and expert witnesses. This
is a most necessary process of fact finding and decision making which is the procedure used in the US
Congress and at the State Legislature when taking testimony from expert witnesses.
As is the case with Dr. Lorrin Pang on Depleted Uranium or Mr. Keoni Wagner on the Airline Industry,
councilors are free to ask as many questions as necessary to understand the respective issues. But I hope
you and your fellow councilmembers will agree that average citizens, as stakeholders and
rightholders, are also expert witnesses in their own right. We come to testify and bear witness by our
own volition and often do not have the time to wait until the end of all testimony to answer specific
points pertinent to the Council.
As it stands, this proposed rule change will create a severe limitation in the expertise the council can
draw on to fulfil its duty of informed decision making. Further, the process of fact-finding will become
very disjointed with lag time between the commentary that triggers a question and the ability to seek an
answer to that question.
I ask that you please consider amending your rule change to preserve this essential process of
decisionmaking while still safeguarding against misplaced dilberations and political grandstanding.
Allowances of a certain number of questions per member for each agenda item or Q&A
time allotments for ranking members are both amendments available as a compromise.
Mahalo for your thoughtful consideration,
Shawn James Leavey
Comm. No. 1.12.
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12/1/2008