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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1999-06-16 Charter Commission Minutes Page 1 of 11 Back To: Home Page | Table of Contents | Charter main page   HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION Transcript of Public Hearing of June 16, 1999 County Council Room, Hilo, Hawaii     Members J. Ray, E. Alonzo (from 5:23 p.m), S. Bess, M. Herkes (from 5:20 Present: p.m.), R. Higashi, S. Irvine, D. Kurozawa, G. Martin, J. Santangelo, G. Yoshiyama Absent: K. Balog CALL TO ORDER Chairman John Ray called the meeting to order at approximately 5:05 p.m. INTRODUCTION OF CHARTER COMMISSION MEMBERS RAY: This special meeting of the 1999-2000 Charter Commission of Wednesday, June 16th is called to order. I would like to introduce the Charter Commission members present this evening. To my left, starting to my far left: Mr. Bess, Dr. Kurozawa, Mr. Higashi, myself John Ray. Starting to my far right: Mr. Martin, Ms. Irvine and Mr. Santangelo. Oh Mr. Yoshiyama, I’m sorry. Mr. Yoshiyama. Sorry. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS RAY: Thanks for coming this evening. Just to give you a very brief bit of background as far as where we’ve gone and where we are in the process. As mandated every ten years, the Mayor appointed this Charter Commission and it was approved by the County Council in January. This is the third review of the Charter since it was instituted and previous Charter Commissions have proposed a total of 31 charter amendments, 25 of which were adopted. And by the way, some of this background material is in the flyers that we sent out. The informational flyers that I encourage ya’ll to get a copy of before you leave. We’ve been meeting monthly since February and focused mostly, initially on internal organization, hiring our staff. Our Administrative Assistant, Sharron Henry, is here this evening. Her responsibilities are primarily research, recording minutes, communicating both internally and with the general public. Our legal staff, Christopher Yuen who is not here this evening. His chief responsibilities are making sure we operate procedurally in a correct manner, legal research, opinions and drafting proposed Charter amendments which we come up with. Our budget, as appropriated by the County Council to this date, is $130.000. The last Charter Commission spent $113,000 reviewing the Charter. The chief budget items, just so you are aware, are mainly staff and meeting costs. All the costs of going out to meetings and file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011 Page 2 of 11 publicly noticing those meetings. I know it sounds like an awful lot but that’s basically about what it takes to get through this process and have that number of meetings, have legal and administrative staff on board. We have also solicited input, initial input from the various County Departments and we have completed an initial round of meetings where we did get input from the various County Departments. We still have several to go, mostly those connected with Boards and Commissions that we want to hear from at the same time, so say for the Planning Commission or the Police Commission, they have yet to agendize and discuss and come up with recommendations for us. And when they do, we’ll have them in at the same time as the Departments. Some of the initial suggestions, these aren’t all that have come up, to make you aware of, is looking at the language in regard to mandatory program reviews; the responsibilities and placement of the Safety Coordinator, whether that position should stay under the Mayor or whether it should be put underneath Corporation Counsel or Civil Service; the responsibilities of the Police Commission; the establishment of a Fire Commission; expanding the jurisdiction of the Salary Commission to cover all Department Heads and Deputies; looking at minimum qualifications for Department Heads and Deputies; the creation of a separate Human Services Department for elderly services including Office of Aging; transferring the Wastewater Division from Public Works to the Department of Water Supply; the creation of a Permitting Division to consolidate all permitting functions under a Public Works Division of Permitting and now those permits are jointly dealt with in both Planning and Public Works Departments so the thought is for greater efficiency, sort of one-stop shopping to have a single Division of Permitting and then have the Planning Department more focused on planning and the Public Works Department more focused on permitting. Now these are only some of the ideas that have been put forth. None of them have been discussed by the Charter Commission to date. This is just strictly a one-way input so far, just some of the ideas that have been put forth. Tonight we are starting, this is the first of a series of six public meetings that we are holding around the island to get initial feedback from the public. These meetings are scheduled to go through the month of July and we are meeting pretty much the next six weeks on Wednesday evenings at 5 p.m. throughout the island. That schedule is up in the front in the distributed material. During this next six weeks we’ll also be gathering and distributing internally, a lot of background material for the Commission to study to get prepared to go through our formal review of the Charter. In August we plan to finish up our initial review from the various County Departments and in late August or as early as September, begin a detail section-by-section review of the Charter. Everything is publicly noticed. We will be holding meetings around the island so we’ll take our business out around the island and expose the different parts of the island to the Charter review. We don’t have any schedule on that right now. We’ll just see how things move along. When we do come up with agreed upon proposed amendments, we’ll have our legal staff work on the language to move those amendments forward and the proposed amendments will be voted on by the public, at the latest in the fall election of 2000 or if proposed, and we want to put it forward, we could entertain the possibility of a special election prior to that. But in any case, everything will be voted on to the general public. So that’s where we are in the process. Tonight, if you want to testify, please fill in a Registration Form that we have on the desk up there. So far we have four people signed up to testify - five people and we will go through you one by one so please come up to the table and identify yourself. PUBLIC TESTIMONY RAY: The first person to testify, Jesse Dawn. Jesse. Jesse, you can sit if you want. There’s no camera so make yourself comfortable. DAWN: Okay. There was a letter by Mr. Ray in the paper and also a report in the paper mentioning the file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011 Page 3 of 11 possibility of the Commission entertaining the idea of doing away with the Office of Mayor and personally, I think this is strangely timed and - RAY: Can I interject one thing? Those reports were incorrect. The Charter Commission has not discussed anything in Commission yet. Individually, different Charter Members have discussed with the press some things they are interested in individually but the Charter Commission has not taken up, entertained, discussed any of those to this point so I just want to make sure you understand that, okay? DAWN: Okay, so it hasn’t been - RAY: So none of that’s on the table. Those were all just possibilities. DAWN: This would of course, involve a special election and I’m wondering where the money would come from for that. I think it would be a very unpopular idea. RAY: The context we discussed a special election in was the sort of "what if" scenarios. What if we were to come up with changes to the Charter that we thought might be substantive enough to warrant a special election. If that were to be the case, when would you have to, what would be the triggers to hold the special election, when would it have to be held, how would that affect the year 2000 election, so it was just purely in that context. Kind of the "what ifs" to try to answer some of those questions and we didn’t get all those answers by any means. DAWN: It seems like it would be, if the idea was entertained, would be just to somehow railroad the 2000 election and be some pretty shady politics according to the public. Anyway, that’s the main thing I’m worried about is that happening. The other ideas sound fairly innocuous but being that the present administration’s time’s up, the eight year time limit for the Mayor and we’re looking at new representation, just even to entertain the idea of railroading that possibility with doing away with the Office of Mayor so the same power group, you know, can appoint a new guy as part of the same power group, the old power group - RAY: Well, just to interject there - DAWN: This wouldn’t go over. RAY: There again and my understanding is, the way that works is the County Council would actually hire the Managing Director so it wouldn’t be that old power group, it would be the County Council would actually - DAWN: Well, you have the existing power group deciding the outcome of the 2000 election. There’s got to be some kind of illegality in that, sir. A flood of law suits. Anyway, that’s about it. That’s all I want to know. RAY: Okay, thank you. Del Pranke. PRANKE: I’m sorry I didn’t get these to you before but there are just four pages that will help illuminate. What I want to talk about is a contradiction in the County Charter in conjunction with the Hawaii Sunshine Law and the section of the County Charter that I want to talk about is 13-20(b). I assume you all have a copy of the Charter so I didn’t copy that. I find that on page 30 of the - RAY: Page 30? file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011 Page 4 of 11 PRANKE: Yes, it’s titled Records and Meetings Open to the Public and it’s Section (b) and it says ‘All meetings of the council, boards and commissions shall be held in the council room, etc. Where personal matters affecting the privacy of an individual are to be considered, the council, board or commission may, at the request of the individual involved, consider such matters in closed session.’ Now if you’ll look at the handout I gave you. Let me find my -. The first page under Section 92-4 of the Sunshine Law says ‘A board may hold an executive meeting closed to the public upon an affirmative vote, taken at an open meeting, of two-thirds of the members present; provided the affirmative vote, etc. A meeting closed to the public shall be limited to matters exempted by section 92-5. The reason for holding such a meeting shall be publicly announced and the vote of each member recorded.’ When you Exceptions go down here to the , you’ll find no place does it allow for the person who is coming before the board or commission to say I want to have an executive meeting and then they hold an executive meeting. And yet - I’m sorry, that’s on the second page. On the first page that I’ve given you, it’s a copy EXECUTIVE SESSION, of the latest Police Commission Meeting and under essentially all a police officer has to do is write a letter to the Police Commission at this point and say I want to go into executive session. There’s no vote taken other than a voice vote. There’s no discussion. There’s no reason is given for going into the executive session except that the police officer asks for it. That’s not in compliance with the Sunshine Law. Nowhere in Section 92-5 will you find that a person can say I want to go into executive session. It says that a person can say, if the board or commission says we’re going into executive session, the person has the right to say I would rather this be held in open session but the board or commission must make its determination that one of these matters under Section 92-5 in the Sunshine Law allows for them to go into executive session and that must be put into the minutes and a record of the vote made. Taking a voice vote and ayes and ayes is one thing and I guess that meets the requirement of the law but they really should be required to take a vote member by member on these choices of going into executive session. This is an important thing. The very beginning of the Sunshine Law is very specific about the purpose of this is to make sure that the folks in this state are privy to all the information that they are allowed to have or should have to make their informed decisions. Now I’d like to go to the last page of what I handed you and under, it’s actually Section 92-5 and that’s (b) and it says ‘In no instance shall the board make a decision or deliberate toward a decision in executive meeting on matters not directly related’. A lot of boards are doing that. They’re going into executive session. This is the minutes of the regular meeting for the October 11, 1995 Board of Ethics. This is the Executive Board minutes. They covered stuff in here that wasn’t even on the agenda. And here’s the January 10th meeting. These are two that I happened to be able to get a hold of solely because they were subpoenaed in a judicial case which made them public records but there’s acres and acres of notes, of stuff in there that has nothing to do with executive session. We need to get the County Charter into compliance with the state law so that we’re not at some risk, I guess, of being sued perhaps. I’m sorry, Minutes the last page, that was the third page. The last page I have for you is the Section 92-9 . And this is the reason that those reasons must be specific in the minutes when a board or commission goes into executive session. ‘The minutes shall be public records and shall be available within thirty days after the meeting except where disclosure would be inconsistent with 92-5; provided that minutes of executive meetings may be withheld so long as their publication would defeat the lawful purpose of the executive meeting, and no longer.’ We have acres and acres of minutes that have not been vented partly because we have no money and that’s sort of understandable but the other reason is that acres and acres of those minutes should never have been held in executive session in my opinion, and I think somebody should take a look at that but we need to bring this County Charter back into compliance with the Sunshine Law. That’s what I would have to say about that. I have one other thing. I have several other things but I’ve been told that you’ll be back at a later date and I will bring those others up at a later date. But the second thing - RAY: Well, I would encourage you, Del, to bring them up now. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011 Page 5 of 11 PRANKE: Well, I’ll write them out because they’re a little more complicated and a little more - But the second thing concerns the Board of Ethics. If you look in the County Charter under the Section 14-5 Board of Ethics , there is no place designated for the Board of Ethics to be placed in this county. Unlike any other board or commission which has a specific place, it goes under the Mayor’s Office, etc., the Board of Ethics has never been placed anywhere. I urge you to put forth, to allow the voters to vote to put that Board of Ethics under the County Prosecutor’s Office. As currently, five members of the Board of Ethics are appointed by the Mayor, approved by the Council and then those members sit in judgment with the Corporation Counsel giving them legal advice and the Corporation Counsel sending legal advice for any county member who comes before that board, you got the same law firm on both sides of the issue, talking about, fighting, whoever the citizen is who says hey, I think there’s something wrong here and it’s no wonder that in the past ten years, there’s been one case where a person was found to be in some violation of the Code of Ethics. Maybe we are just that good in this county but I don’t think so . I would urge you to put the Board of Ethics under the Prosecutor’s Office or to allow us to vote to do so and two, to change the way the Board of Ethics is chosen. The Board of Ethics should be, there should be a nine member panel. This year the Board of Ethics has failed to meet three times out of six. I believe that’s correct and I keep getting these things that say the Board of Ethics meeting has been canceled because they couldn’t get a quorum of five people. I suggest we have a nine member Board of Ethics and that each member of the district, the person who’s elected to the council in that district shall appoint that member with the entire council approving or disapproving of that member going on the board. That takes this out from under one person, the Mayor really making all the appointments. It’s true that the County Council can deny somebody but that seldom happens. The Board of Ethics should be appointed by each member of the County Council from that district and they may never appoint somebody because they may not be in office when such a vacancy comes but when a vacancy comes in that district, then whoever is serving at that time in that district should appoint that person. Okay, that’s essentially what I had to say. The two things, the County Code - RAY: Okay, any questions for Mr. Pranke? IRVINE: Yes, I do have a question. RAY: Ms. Irvine. IRVINE: Concerning the Sunshine in our Charter here. Is what you wanted us to do was take out that it would happen at the request of an individual involved that we would have an executive session? PRANKE: Yes, that’s totally wrong. They can say I would like to go into executive session but then the board needs to meet but that’s not the way it’s written and most boards have taken it to say okay, the County Charter is what we go by, not the Sunshine Law but the Sunshine Law is a law of general applicability. It applies to all states, all state agencies, all county agencies that hold regular meetings. IRVINE: It sounded to me though, like you were complaining about the way that these commissions here ran their meetings because they’re not really in compliance with the Charter as it is now. You know what I mean? PRANKE: Well, that may be too. Yes, that may be too. I find it very difficult to swallow sometime when we go there and they go into executive session based simply on the fact that somebody asked. That may also be a violation of the County Charter too, but certainly just going in on the request of somebody. They say I would like to go into executive session. There’s a whole lot of paper here but in essence, in one of these executive minutes, the person asking for the executive, or in the general minutes, the person asking for the executive session says he asked Rudy, meaning Rudy Legaspi in this case, told me to ask for it and so that’s what I want to do. They had no reason for it, I mean there was no file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011 Page 6 of 11 specific personal thing. I don’t want to know somebody’s personal information. I think what I was looking for, I’m sorry, 13.5. There’s something in this that tends to - RAY Page 30. PRANKE: Page what? RAY: 30. PRANKE: Yes, that’s records, okay, I’m sorry. There was something in here that I think might have been a technical error. In the second sentence it says ‘Where personal matters affecting the privacy of an individual are to be considered’. There’s a difference between personal and personnel and in the executive, in the reasons for going into executive session, 92-5, it says ‘a board may hold a closed meeting to consider and evaluate personal information relating to individuals applying for professional or vocational licenses’. We don’t have too much of that going on and the Police Commission is not doing that. When they say it’s personal, that’s not quite correct. My name is personal but it’s not private. I think that was meant to say personnel but I don’t know that. I think there’s a typo in there that followed through from, probably from the beginning of the Charter. But nowhere in there does it say personal information. Privacy is considered but personal is probably not a good word to use in there. I’m sorry, I go on and on. RAY: Thank you. Okay, Mr. Martin. MARTIN: Yes, I have a question on - PRANKE: Yes sir. MARTIN: Your concern with the Board of Ethics. At present there’s five members and you’d like to see it increased to nine. Is that what I heard you say? PRANKE: I believe so. MARTIN: And - PRANKE: The main reason for that is because they tend to have a problem getting a quorum. If somebody brings a charge before the Board of Ethics, it can take as much as six months for a citizen to go through the entire process with these folks because they have to meet sometimes, depending on who is the person being charged, that person won’t show up for two or three meetings, it can be problem and not having a quorum exacerbates that situation because, as I said, I believe that three out of the six meetings this year so far have been canceled because of lack of quorum. RAY: Any other questions? Okay, thanks Del. As soon as you can get us input in writing, especially the more detailed issues so that if they require legal research, that would be really helpful for us. PRANKE: Certainly. RAY: Okay, thank you. Next, Julie Jacobson. Councilwoman Jacobson. For the folks that just came in, you need to sign up to testify and also Ms. Herkes has joined us and Mr. Alonzo. Good evening. JULIE JACOBSON: file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011 Page 7 of 11 Thank you Commission members, for holding this meeting. This is a good start on it. I guess it seems a little bit like we have a cart before the horse because we don’t have any particular proposals to reflect on although we certainly have this chance to make some specific input. The only input I’d like to make at this time is just to the one issue of holding a special election and I think just based on the grass roots democracy concept of special elections traditionally have an extremely low voter turnout so what we’d have is an election that would be based on, I’m sure, way less than half of our population, probably a very small fraction. I’ve heard of figures like 14 to 20% maximum come out for special elections and I just think that decisions about a Charter which is a document we will live with for the next ten years, there is no need to rush into a situation like that and I think that we would have a better chance to appropriately educate the public on the issues and then see the kind of turnout we get in a general election to respond to those so I think any particular issues that might come up, I don’t see that there’s any emergency or any health and safety issues that would require us to hold a special election. We also know it would be a very costly endeavor and the cost would increase with providing the proper education to the public because it would require, to adequately inform the public, mailing out voter information. Just expecting people to get information from the newspaper, I think would be a little scanty. I suppose we could have a whole lot of public forums but again in a special election, these kinds of things are not well attended either so I just urge you to put all these proposals forward in the general election for the public to decide. Thank you very much. RAY: Okay. Thank you. Bob Jacobson. Are there any questions for Ms. Jacobson? IRVINE: I didn’t have any questions but I could give her those statistics on how many people turned out in the last special election. RAY: Sure, this is just purely informational. Go ahead, Ms. Irvine. IRVINE: In 1979 we did have a special Charter election. There were 37,606 registered voters at that time. 9,128 votes were cast which meant that 24.2% of the people voted. The regular election that year had a turnout of 78.5%. RAY: Everybody understand that? Okay. Bob Jacobson. BOB JACOBSON: Good afternoon. Thanks for coming and doing this work. I just had a couple of things. First off, I think that Del Pranke’s ideas regarding the Sunshine Law are really important. I think that’s one of the critical things that ya’ll should be looking at. If there’s going to be any discussions of changing any Sunshine Law provisions, strengthen them, don’t weaken them in any shape or form. I think that it’s really important to try to keep people involved in the government as long as there’s some sunshine, I think people are going to have some faith in the process. If there’s any mistake being made, please err on the side of public disclosure. Things can always be fixed up from that angle and I’ve heard a number of different, to change the topic, to a number of other areas that have been discussed and I know that you have not met and you don’t really even know what your agenda, in terms of these items, is going to be but so be it. I think first off, the special election: I really do worry about the fact that as whether we can educate people because you only have to give 45 days notice after you make your recommendations to call for the special election and 45 days to plan for an election, I think any of those who’ve ever run for any kind of elective office, know that 45 days is almost no time at all to educate the public; that 45 days is just a heartbeat really and I think unless there’s some major overwhelming reason to call for the election and I really cannot see it, it would be best avoided. I know that when Julie went over the budget, there’s just file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011 Page 8 of 11 really no money there unless we wanted to rob Peter to pay Paul, cut off public workers or spend money for some other reason, really it would be best to avoid these special elections because cost wise, I don’t know what your past costs were but they were anywhere from $500,000 to $1,000,000, even more. Elections are very expensive so please consider that. Also I’ve heard some discussion about whether you would want to abolish the Office of Mayor. I know some Councilmen themselves have discussed this issue. I think that this is a little bit premature, trying to change this office entirely. If you’re only going to look at that aspect of changing the government, maybe you should look at more things than simply eliminating the Mayor. Maybe you should look at things like, and I’m not really ready to educate you on proportional representation, but things like proportional representation where each vote, like in the European elections or New Zealand even. There are sizable voting blocs in each of these countries that are able to assume some sense of power based on the number of votes those areas get - either partisan or groups, whether it be a party or not but it’s based on the number of votes each ideology gets and I think that’s going to be more sound than simply having an appointed Managing Director which we already have at least one Managing Director that could be appointed so I think that you should be really slow to start fooling around with our form of representation. I think that for the people that put it together in the first place, this is actually a really good Charter. I think you should think hard before you change it much at all. It’s a good document. Secondly, I’ve heard some discussion of changing from partisan to nonpartisan elections. I view this as a really major threat, speaking as a Green Party member myself, I’m just going to be flat out about it. I think it will definitely hurt the Green Party because here we are, it’s a fledgling party. We’ve just now in the last few years, tried to get off the ground. The other parties have been around for a long, long time and to try to change all the rules just when one party is getting some power, I think it would not be really a healthy situation for this county. It would also raise the costs of running for Council because if the Council is going to be appointing this position of Managing Director, instead of being anywhere from $10,000 to $60,000 which some people spend on running for office right now, it would probably be more in the range, to run a successful campaign it would be anywhere from $70,000 to $100,000 because so much power would be concentrated on the Council and so there you would be facing some other major changes. Seems just changing the Mayor is a small thing to a Managing Director but it would have far reaching effects across the whole government of this county. I actually view it as there would still be two parties; those that are well funded corporate-wise and the resident’s party who has very few resources. Thank you so much. I’ll hopefully turn in a little bit better outlines with what proportional representation is and those of you who wish, could contact me. RAY: Just once again to point out, all we do is suggest amendments that would go before the public. We wouldn’t change anything. This body doesn’t have that power, okay? The public does. You do, as a voter. BOB JACOBSON: I realize that. But certainly the weight of this many people making suggestions and then having elections and actually putting your recommendations directly into printed form before the voters, carries considerable weight and you have to admit that. RAY: Okay, questions? Mr. Santangelo. SANTANGELO: I was interested in the comment on nonpartisan because I know while I was on the Council, that came up several times and you talk, say I’m a republican, you talk with a republican, oh, dear Lord, you can’t do file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011 Page 9 of 11 that. One of the things that intrigues me about that and I’d ask you for your input and I was a little surprised by your opposition of that, was we were often saying, in terms of the present Mayor, he didn’t have a majority and these elections didn’t win by a majority. Well, in a nonpartisan, anybody could get into the primary but the two major vote collectors moves into a general if no one gets 50% and then you have a clear majority winner. How do you address that? What’s your feeling? BOB JACOBSON: Well actually, if you look at the nonpartisan races across the United States, there’s almost as many different kind of nonpartisan races as there are forms of government so there’s not any one particular kind. Your point’s well taken. I looked at the first, when I thought about nonpartisan elections, I thought this is an easy solution to things but as you delve into it a little more deeper, other factors come up like campaign donations and funding and the parties are still there and they will still be supporting certain candidates in those power blocs that you all well know exist, are going to be doing the back room support and those efforts that actually usually involve a lot of money, quite honestly because we all know how much these campaigns cost so it isn’t quite as simple as that because initially when I first heard of nonpartisan elections, I went "hey, great" but actually learn as much as you can about them and it’s not such an easy fix as one might think and I don’t know how each of you feel about it but certainly delve into it a little more deep than just looking at the surface of it because there are some complicated aspects of it. RAY: Ms. Herkes has a question. HERKES: I don’t know how I feel about it either but I’m investigating as fast as I can. Are you aware that we are the only county in the state that does not have nonpartisan elections now? BOB JACOBSON: Yes I am. HERKES: And so that gives us some experience with the other counties who have all chosen to go nonpartisan. They have all voted in favor of nonpartisan elections so I’m doing as much homework as I can to find out why they did that. Why the other counties have made a decision that that’s the best way to go so I think there are a lot of us involved in partisan politics in a lot of different ways and I share some of your concerns and I thank you for expressing them but we are trying to do our homework and find out why the other counties have done that. BOB JACOBSON: But certainly before you go into this, there is all these other aspects of it that come into play and look a little bit further abroad than just say, Oahu and Kauai, where really it came up - HERKES: I want to look to Maui really. They just did it. BOB JACOBSON: And I think there are other areas that you should look at also in terms of that. It’s not a simple issue. RAY: Okay, thanks Bob. Kathy Dorn. And Kathy’s the last speaker signed up so if anyone else would like to sign up to speak this evening, please do so. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011 Page 10 of 11 DORN: Good evening. There’s one area of the Charter I would like you to take a look at and that is regarding the initiative referendum process. It would open the doors wider to democratic participation in our government, I feel, if the requirement was lowered to 10% of, I believe, of the registered voters voting in the previous election instead of the 15%. The 10% is still a huge number of signatures of registered voters to gather. It would certainly not ever be done frivolously and yet, it would make the process, the democratic process, available to more people who feel strongly about getting certain issues before the public. And I also want to speak against holding special elections for all the reasons everyone else has. My personal friend, Joe Okita, just told me yesterday, he’s head of the Hawaii Housing Authority for this island and he just came back from serious budget talks in Oahu and he said they’re strangling them with the budget cuts and they expect them to do the same amount of work and provide for the same amount of people on less and less money and he said they were cutting the homeless budget in half. Now these are all state monies coming in, not county monies but the county is going to have to take up the slack somewhere because they are very worried because the homeless population is going to swell, people are going to be camping again on Onekahakaha Beach Park even though they’re not supposed to and the county’s going to have to take up the slack and it just looks so bad to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, I hear maybe it’s $500,000, on a special election. I’m not sure if that’s accurate but that is what I’ve heard. That’s a huge amount of money when the same issues could be put forth to the voters in the general election and like Julie said, there would be a much greater turnout so the results of that election would reflect the people’s opinions more than a special election would. So that’s all I have come to say. RAY: Okay, thank you. Any questions? IRVINE: I didn’t have any questions of Kathy but does anybody have that figure on special election, the amount we were given? I know it was three hundred and something when I first found it and then it went to four hundred or - RAY: I wouldn’t want to say. There are lots of figures and scenarios floating around. IRVINE: Okay. RAY: I was talking to some folks today about the logistics of holding a special election. While you say, well, you could do it 45 days after whatever, my understanding, the logistics are such that to hold a special election early next year, we’d pretty much have to be done in the next month or so. DORN: Say that again. You have to be done in the next month if you want to hold a special election? RAY: There’s a considerable lead time logistically to trigger a special election so I don’t understand that either so I think it may not even be a possibility. SANTANGELO: We should clear something up. We have no intention of finishing up next month. RAY: Yes, we are just getting started. DORN: Alright, thank you. RAY: Okay, thank you. Anyone else to testify? Then that concludes our public testimony. Thank you all file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011 Page 11 of 11 for coming out this evening. ADJOURNMENT RAY: Do we have a motion to adjourn? SANTANGELO: So moved. HERKES: Seconded. RAY: Meeting adjourned. Thank you. The discussion ended at 5:45 p.m. Respectfully submitted,     Sharron C. Henry Secretary-Administrative Assistant       Back To: Home Page | Table of Contents | Charter main page file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011