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HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION
Transcript of Meeting of October 16, 1999
Waimea Civic Center
Waimea, Hawaii
Attendance: J. Ray, S. Bess (after 10:25 a.m.), M. Herkes, R. Higashi, S. Irvine, D. Kurozawa, G. Martin
(after 9:26 p.m.), J. Santangelo, G. Yoshiyama, Counsel Chris Yuen
Absent: E. Alonzo, K. Balog
And 18 members of the public in attendance.
The meeting was called to order at 9:16 p.m.
RAY: The October 16th Special Meeting of the 1999-2000 Charter Commission is called to order. It’s
9:16. We’re in Waimea today.
Following our agenda, the attendance at this time are myself John Ray, Chairman; Roland Higashi,
Vice-Chair; Marni Herkes, Sue Irvine, John Santangelo, and Gary Yoshiyama, and we’re expecting
other members shortly.
Minutes Approval. We have no minutes for approval today. We had a meeting just three days ago.
Same with the Financial Status Report. It’s the same as it was on Wednesday.
Written Communications. None.
Statements from the Public: We have a very open agenda today so anything is open for comment. This is
sort of a mid-term general review, kind of where we stand. So anything you’d like to address is fair
game today. We have two folks signed up, at this point, and additionally, we’re going to have one or
more representatives from the League of Women Votes. They should be here by about 10:00. They
asked to come in and address the Charter Commission on a number of topics today. So, our first signed
up member is Lesley Patton. Lesley.
PATTON: I had a variety, sort of stew, that I briefly wanted to touch on, and one of them is on behalf of
a number of people in Kohala. We did not receive any notification. There are several of us who watch
the newspapers carefully, who get that little tiny, tiny print government bulletin thing that comes for
public notices, and what have you, and last time we had received copies of the agendas in the mail so we
know we were on the mailing list, and this time that didn’t happen, and we, unfortunately, only found
out last night around 6:00 from one of our council people that this was even happening, so somewhere
there was a breakdown. I don’t know where.
RAY: Why don’t we have our Administrative Assistant fill you in on what the notice is.
HENRY: The complete agendas were in Sunday’s papers. I have them at my home.
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PATTON: In which?
RAY: Sunday’s paper.
HENRY: In both papers, West Hawaii Today and Hawaii Tribune-Herald.
PATTON: Sunday’s? Okay. I’ll go back and look at that one.
HENRY: The public notices were in RFD, the little State and County paper, and that was in last
Monday’s.
PATTON: I’ll go back and check because I do try to read word for word.
HERKES: Wait, don’t quit. Let’s finish the web here.
RAY: Then we’re on the web.
PATTON: I don’t have a computer so -
HERKES: The library does.
RAY: So, I just want to go through - and the notices you got last time, and maybe that’s why you
thought you were on that - we did sort of an extraordinary mailing list for the Public Hearings and you
were put on a list in regard to the Public Hearings so that’s why we did sort of an extraordinary list of
about 140, 150 -
HENRY: 300.
RAY: 300 extra notices for the public hearings, so anyway, I apologize for that. Actually, this is the first
meeting we’ve held that’s out of Hilo, I think, since then. We’ve been having all our meetings in Hilo.
PATTON: And I’ve seen in the papers, some notification of Hilo meetings, but didn’t catch this one.
RAY: But we haven’t sent out any specifically to community groups on those.
PATTON: Thank you. My reason for quickly changing my plans and coming over was partly on behalf
of the other people who came last time, and couldn’t this time, because they didn’t know until late, so
they sort of delegated me to listen for everybody. Most of you were here last time when we came over
and so, we were looking primarily for follow-up discussion on some of the ideas that we had presented,
in terms of the nonpartisan elections, in terms of local incorporated governments in the communities,
whether it be Kona, as a city or whatever, to do local items. I mean right now, the County sits down to
discuss whether a street in Kona should be named such and such, and that’s something that is taking up
County time, that quite easily a local government in Kona could do. And in terms of County Managing
Director, or whatever the term wanted to wind up being, and in terms of having Commissioners for the
Planning and the Water Department directly elected. And we are here, I am here, for these people to find
out what has happened in the meantime. What other people’s reaction around the island has been to
these ideas, and where it stands now.
RAY: Well, we may, or may not, touch on some of those subjects today, and I could probably chat with
you personally to give you a little more of a complete sense on where some of those things are, or not,
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but I think it’s fair to say that except for one, which is the nonpartisan elections, which we’ve indicated
in a straw vote, or preliminary vote, that is something we’re going to move forward, the rest of them are
all in a state of preliminary discussion right now. So they are still part of a general discussion. Marni.
HERKES: I want to comment also. Thank you for coming today. We try to get as much out, and we are
one of the first County entities to have all of our minutes on the web. As you say, you don’t have a
computer. Other people do. They can print them out for you. You can have copies of them. I mean
they’re huge because they’re verbatim, however, you will find that the nonpartisan elections were
discussed, but also, that local governments - League of Women Voters is coming here to discuss
neighborhood boards today. Local governments have been discussed, and even more so, the Managing
Director type of form, Council Manager, merged government. I mean we have examples of that of about
10 or 15 different places in the United States that have those kinds of governments, so we’re continuing
on all those discussions; all of those things that you brought up. So I want to assure you that we are, but
I want to encourage you to go through the minutes and see what the discussions are. We’ve had some
very interesting presentations by Honolulu City and County, but also by our Planning Department and
our Public Works, on a permitting branch of Public Works, which will change a lot of things in our
County government. So I encourage you to look through those minutes, as onerous as it is sometimes.
Thank you.
PATTON: I’m used to political slogging.
RAY: Next, Bill Graham.
GRAHAM: John, can I pass out a handout?
RAY: Sure.
GRAHAM: My name is Bill Graham. Thank you for coming to Waimea. I just passed out a piece of
material that was circulated in 1990 when a lot of us in the community helped to bring about the change
from at-large voting for County Council, to single member district voting for County Council, which is
what we have now, of course. But I have heard that there is some interest in this Commission to try to,
let me say, dilute the effects of the change that was made in 1990. In other words, not go back to the
original at-large, but take one step back in that direction, and I think that would be a mistake. I think that
would be detrimental to the interest of the people on this island, and I looked over some of the materials
I had from 1990, and this sheet, kind of, seemed to sum up the issues and concerns that were driving us
to try to move this county into single member districts. And when I look at each one of the seven points
on this particular sheet, I feel like if you were to go into some kind of hybrid situation where some of the
members of the Council would be elected island-wide, in addition to specific problems you would create
by doing that, such as having certain members on the Council be, sort of, super members compared to
others, in some respect, because of having spent more to get elected, having a larger, sort of, base which
they represent and all, I think that would be detrimental. But in particular, I also think, if I look at each
one of seven issues, it seems to me there’s a detrimental effect on every one of them by you going back
and diluting what was done in 1990. So, I’m just here to present this material, let you look it over, one at
a time, on these things, and see if you don’t agree that that would be the case. And I also feel like the
people did speak in 1990, and what they wanted, even though it was a very close vote, and there’ve been
a number of issues brought before the electorate since then to change the terms, and all kinds of things
about the County Council, I think that there’s some times when you just have to take your hands out of
the stew a little bit and let things be. I know there was a bridge book I read years ago that I thought was
such an interesting book, and it was essentially talking about all the really clever bridge players, and
there’s a certain kind of bridge player that always gets in trouble because he just tries to make something
interesting out of every hand, even though lots of hands, you just got to play them straight away, so I
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feel like don’t stick yourself into that pot of having to tinker and tinker and tinker every time. I,
personally, have been on the island since December of ‘71 and I feel like the political climate in the
Council, and involvement of the Council members with their communities, is much better since the
change in 1990 than I remember before. Like in North Kohala, where I live, our last two Council
members who’ve been elected under single member district, both John Ray and Leningrad Elarionoff,
we see them in Kohala. Previous to that, when our Council member was elected from a larger district,
we didn’t see them. So I just am encouraging you to please not try to stir this pot one more time. It’s
been stirred a lot, and I feel like it’s in a good situation now, even though, clearly, there’s things you can
criticize about how the Council works.
I don’t have any other issue I want to speak strongly on. I know you all are taking up nonpartisan
elections. I know that’s important but I don’t feel like I have any solid, important information to pass
along in that respect, or any strong views of my own, so I’ll leave that alone for you guys. Thank you.
RAY: John, you have a comment?
SANTANGELO: Well, just a small dialogue. Having been on the Council and served with John, and
been a person that’s always voted for single member districts, and from Ka’u, I kind of understand that.
Of course, Ka’u’s district, or at least the Sixth District, is a hundred miles long. But this is what I
experienced. And in a single member district, we’ve had time to experiment and I think it’s appropriate,
and again I want to voice strong support for single member, but I think it’s appropriate to re-evaluate
and see can things move forward. One of the things that the Chairman warned us about in the beginning,
was perception. And if we look at this six mokus, going to six single member; they’re still single
member, not at-large, but single member, and three at-large. How does that look to the people? I just
want to add a couple of things, of my experience on the Council. What I experienced, among certain
Council members, was almost head hunting, or trophy hunting. That, in that district, there was a
situation in a non-profit in which a large, very expensive vehicle was being lobbied for, in one particular
part of the island that was totally inappropriate. It was to pick up kids from school who’d gotten sick,
and get them home, that didn’t have that ability to do that. You don’t need a 19 or 18 passenger van. A
station wagon would do. And that money was being, kind of, tried to be curried out of another district
that was fairly poor. So I paid attention to some of that. As a Council member from Sixth District, I took
a lot of pride in combining forces with two other Council members in one area to get a soccer field. In
combining monies up in, say, Kona area, to get fax machines or copy machines, or some sorts of
computer equipment to help the police track domestic violence. I went out of my way to work with other
Council members, and John Ray was one of those that was very supportive and helpful in guiding me in
that. I didn’t find that that was the case. Okay? So I was very resistant to this proposal that really hasn’t
had a lot of hearing on this Board yet, and I just ask you, if you could, to look a little more into that
yourself, and possibly open your mind, because your kind of input, a person that feels the way you do,
and I felt that way also. If you would look in it in a closer scrutiny, possibly you could give us a little
more input because it’s important to take a look at things and say, okay, the single member does work
well. Now we get very expensive campaigns, say in Hilo or some place where you have like a real small
block of property that makes up a whole Council member, compared to a 100 mile area that I had to
campaign in. On the other hand, we’re looking at better government, and we would not want to dilute
the representative style of that, but sometimes being a County, and not being able to create political
subdivisions because it’s at the permission of the Legislature right now, we’re not able to create more
home rule, so how can we balance this total territorialism that’s so small in certain areas compared to
how can we, kind of like, level that out. And I’ve been giving this an ear myself, to try to reach a
balance in that. So I just offer that as information, as my insight to it, and be real open to input because I
think the public’s perception is going to be very important to this. Remember, we only recommend. It is
the public that votes on it. But I thank you for your input.
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GRAHAM: I think when I was listening to you, I could catch what you were saying fine, but I have a
hard time pulling from what you said, a real thrust, like these particular examples you were giving, when
you were on the Council. Can you sum up the thrust of what you were saying with that as to how we
might want to change the Council districts?
SANTANGELO: Rather than being focused on the benefit of the greater population, which is what this
is about. Now I can get into a political thing here, a soap box, especially on Council. This is not some
philosophical megaphone. You’re there for roads. You’re there for quality of life on a very basic level,
police, fire, park, like that. So I’ve found that it was difficult, among some very hard working Council
members - I found it difficult to feel, in fact I did not see, where we were really taking issues that were
very important to the quality of life that effected the whole island because to get elected, you were
always trying to impress, you were always trying to come back to that electorate, that small electorate,
and I think that that’s important, and we’re talking human nature here. But when you look at the broader
picture, we’re there as nine members. We were there as nine members for the benefit of this entire
community. That meant South Kona, that got ignored tremendously, and it was important to try to focus
the Mayor’s attention over there on some parks and stuff; or outer North Kohala, where we could get
Family Support Services up there, as was being done in Ka’u. And again, it was in some of these very
vulnerable areas, we found very much being territorial. Again, coming down to impressing your
electorate, having something to show your electorate that you’ve been busy, because we always get hit
with this ‘you never do anything’, so it was that kind of thing. So, with a six single member moku,
where it’s larger, it’s the Kona, it’s the Ka’u, it’s larger but you’re voting only within that so it’s a little
larger than a nine member single member district but it is not the island-wide thing, and then having
three at-large. Maybe, maybe, there’s a balance that can be created there, and that’s the concern.
GRAHAM: Okay.
SANTANGELO: Did I make that clear?
GRAHAM: Yes, I’m getting it better. Just a little bit of a response to that to serve two things. When
you’re talking about the balance, I think, both, in our Federal government and in our State government,
the balance is achieved by the President representing all the voters, and then we have the Congress
which is single member districts around the country, so you have the balance of the local issues, which
Dan Inouye and these guys are dealing with, and also the national issues. We have the same thing here.
The Mayor, island-wide, and the Council members, and in fact, I believe on our island, I mean those of
you who have been on the Council know better, probably the Mayor has even a little more power vis-a-
vis the Council than the U. S. President has vis-a-vis the Legislature. So I feel the body, as a whole,
voting certainly has its place with the Mayor’s election already. The other thing, I think, is more specific
which was a real issue back when we were not single member districts here, places like Kohala and all,
you get in a situation where one urban area like Hilo, all the politicians would have to cater to Hilo
because that’s where the bulk of the votes was coming. So, essentially Hilo’s interests could dominate
the island. Maybe in the future it’ll be Kona’s interests. I don’t know that. I’m not complaining about
Hilo but just the centralization of power. If you go three island-wide districts on the Council, now we
have three districts just in Hilo, and two in Kona. Three just in Hilo. Probably if we knock it down to six
individual districts, you’re going to have only two in Hilo, then you also have three island-wide, so
again, if the island-wide districts are mostly controlled by Hilo, five out of nine are controlled by Hilo.
Control is a strong word, of course, but essentially you’re pulling back to the same problem we had
before.
SANTANGELO: And, mind you, my dialogue with you is simply to bring information and get opinion,
but again, we go back to that and right there, there was maybe a little bit of talk of territorialism.
Remember, we have got a census coming up right now.
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GRAHAM: Right.
SANTANGELO: And these districts are going to change drastically, and we haven’t talked about this
much, but in this six single and three at-large, you’re not getting rid of single member districts.
GRAHAM: I understand. It’s just diluting the impact of single member districts, that’s what I’m saying.
And you’re increasing the island-wide impact.
SANTANGELO: But your opinion is very important and that’s the only reason that I entered into this
dialogue. I don’t want to lobby for anything specifically because we haven’t even talked about it, but
thank you.
GRAHAM: Sure.
RAY: Just so you know, and for the record, we have not formally taken up this discussion yet, but we
definitely will be, and members have expressed their interest in introducing something along those lines,
and that’s one of the models, the three at-large and the six single members, so I think it’s appropriate.
And like you say, everything is on the table today, so that’s as good a thing as any to talk about. Sue.
IRVINE: I guess I just wanted to say that we have had quite a few ideas along this line, and one of the
suggestions was to have two-person single member districts, dual member districts, rather than just one
person representing each district. I think the suggestion was four districts with -
RAY: Yes, Keola Childs came up with four districts, two members of each district, and one at-large.
IRVINE: I know the League of Women Voters is coming in with something to say about that later this
morning, too. I don’t want to destroy home rule. We’ve worked to get a little more here. I guess you feel
strongly that it is working. Sometimes I feel like if you just have one representative that you can talk to,
it disenfranchises people that just don’t get along with that individual person. The other thing that we’ve
been talking about, and I can’t say whether we’ve talked or whether these are letters that have come to
us or whatnot, but out there are all sorts of ideas about electing, say, the Planning Commission, the
Water Commission, the Police Commission. Transferring Police and Ethics Commissions over to the
Prosecutor’s Office. Turning the Police Commission into a Public Safety, which would include Fire and
Police.
RAY: And Civil Defense.
HERKES: And Civil Defense, and Emergency Services.
IRVINE: And Civil Defense and Emergency Services, which are already under Fire, I guess. We may be
coming up with some more Commissions and maybe we should go to electing some of these officials.
Maybe we should elect out County Corporation Counsel, or something like that, that would give people
more chances to vote and be heard, personally.
HERKES: Your eyes are getting wider and wider and wider. I encourage you to read the minutes.
RAY: Sue, are you finished?
IRVINE: Yes.
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RAY: Marni, did you have something to say?
HERKES: George wants to go first.
RAY: Okay, George.
MARTIN: Thank you. First of all, I apologize for being late this morning. On your statement about a
hybrid, and I believe that some of us have discussed this, as our Chairman has indicated, not possibly
officially, but if there was a hybrid, as Sue was indicating, I think you’d have more accountability
because a six-three, six single districts, three at-large, same number of people, the six would follow the
State House of Representatives boundaries so you would gain some, and possibly lose some, here and
there. But when it comes to a situation where you need to touch up on something in your district, you’d
have two people to talk to, and it makes it a lot easier for individuals, I think, from the public to address
certain situations. So, with that in mind, it’s not as bad as what you’re saying, but I do hear what you’re
saying about taking away from what was the intent in 1990, and I don’t think we’re trying to do that.
What we’re trying to do is what is being said on that side, better government, if at all possible, and that’s
going to be the intent if, in fact, we do take it up in that manner.
RAY: Bill, sure, if you want to respond.
GRAHAM: Yes, thanks. Just one thing I wanted to say when I started, and I do think I understand you
guys well, where you’re coming from and that sounds fine. When I talk about diluting these things, if
you make the districts larger, or if you have two people from every district, then the districts get twice as
large. When you’re running for office, you walk the districts if you can, right? Well, you can walk the
district now. You can’t walk the district if it’s twice as big.
MARTIN: Sure you can. It takes you a little bit longer.
RAY: I think we understand the point, yes. Marni.
HERKES: I think I mentioned to Lesley that we have something like 15 models of government. One of
the other models is the six-three model, but out of those three at-large, one of those ends up being the
Council Chair and the Mayor. And the Mayor with the CEO in the County. So we have a whole bunch
of ideas to play with here that are expanding our minds, and I think we’ve set out to do something to
make government a little bit more responsive to the people, as well as more accessible. We have a hard
time getting people for Boards and Commissions, as well as more efficient, so I think that in that
discussion, we’re all open. I’m amazed, and I’m really pleased, that we’re all open to a whole bunch of
different ideas, not using personalities of people that have been in, or not using models that we have.
The National League of Cities has a lot of different models and we’re getting a lot of information from
them.
GRAHAM: Good. Thanks. My only important thing is to try to pretend that you have, still on your
board, the guy that wrote the bridge book, you know. Just keep him there as one guy to listen to even if
he’s not there.
HERKES: We’ll remember that. Don’t get too far out there.
RAY: Bill, since you’re here, and I know you’ve probably paid more attention to County government
that most citizens, and been very much involved in the planning process, you got any comments on City
Manager form of government vs. Mayor? The most common model is Council Manager where the
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Council basically hires a City Manager type who’s the Chief Executive Officer of the County, and so he
falls under the control of the County Council. You have any personal feelings on that? Have you thought
about that much?
GRAHAM: No. The only thing that comes to me is that part of the idea is to break the political nature of
the animal and to bring it to a more professional nature, I think. One obviously gets a skeptical feeling,
like I’ll bet they can be turned into a political animal anyway, even though you structure like this and
that. I don’t know that for sure. My only thing would be, as much as possible, try to look at where else
it’s been done in the country, and where it’s broken down, and where it’s been successful, and what’s
the differences.
RAY: John, you had a comment?
SANTANGELO: Just real quick, a quick comment. We came right down to that again. It’s beyond me,
that if you have single member districts, why you only have, quote, one person to talk to. It takes nine
votes. It takes five, and in some cases, six. Why aren’t we talking to those people? Because you don’t
elect them, and that’s why this trophy thing. Again, I’m only talking about what I saw that was flawed in
it. There’s a lot of good about being a servant leader within your community, and being able to be
elected. The difference between a President and a Legislature, and even our Legislature, and it’s what I
liked about the County Council because, I guess, I’m just a trench, get muddy, kind of jerk, but it’s close
to the people, and you will see your Council member far more frequently than you will see a House, a
Senate, a Governor, a President, or anyone else, and so, there is that, just trying to balance that. I worked
with Laurel Decker on Solid Waste. We had many meetings up here that had to do with the County, and
frankly, if someone in my district was talking about a Public Works thing, I sent them to Dominic
because he was Chair of that. We should be working for the whole island, and as long as it works that
way, I’m just saying I saw it break down a bit, and I’m curious, and I thank you for your input.
GRAHAM: Well, I thank you all for all your dialogue and all this attention to my thoughts. I don’t want
to hold you up too much.
RAY: Okay, thanks Bill.
HERKES: Go on the web.
RAY: Virginia, are you ready to go ahead and segue into - We have representatives here from the
League of Women Voters, and before you got here, I explained that we have a wide open agenda so
everything’s fair game to talk about, as far as what’s agendized.
ISBELL: Sit in the pit?
RAY: If you’d like to sit on the other side, that’s fine, and the microphone to please use for recording
purposes.
ISBELL: No, no, I don’t mind sitting right in the firing line. Actually, this is better because I can hand
you things that I have.
RAY: Okay.
ISBELL: For the Chairman, I actually made a different color.
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RAY: Virginia, I would like you to use the mike and introduce yourself and get it all.
ISBELL: I will. This is for you because it’s a different color. It’s nicer paper. All I could find was a
couple of sheets of that. But this is our statement. Good morning. Good morning. Hi, how are you,
Chris? Seems like I know everybody.
RAY: Virginia, I saw Helene Hale poke her head in outside.
ISBELL: Yes, they’re lost. They’re all wandering around because -
RAY: Would you like to wait a couple of minutes and see if we can gather them up?
ISBELL: Maybe Don can go out and - well, actually, I have this to give to them because I figured they
wouldn’t find it.
RAY: Let’s just take a couple of minutes break since they’re close by. Let’s see if we can round them
up.
RECESSED The Chairman called a recess at 9:50 a.m.
RECONVENED The meeting reconvened at 10:00 a.m.
RAY: Let’s reconvene our meeting. Virginia, would you like to introduce yourself and have the floor?
ISBELL: My name is Virginia Isbell. I’m a resident of Kealakekua on the Island of Hawaii, and I’ve
lived here on the island for 40 years. I’d like to read a prepared statement, if I may.
RAY: Sure.
ISBELL: First of all, I want to thank you for allowing us to be here today. We have a General
Membership Meeting, as you know, going on.
Aloha. My name is Virginia Isbell. I’m President of the Hawaii County League of Women Voters. It is
our pleasure to participate in this Charter Review Workshop.
The Hawaii County League is made up of two units: West Hawaii and East Hawaii. Are you surprised?
No. These units meet on a regular basis monthly with General Membership meetings combining the two
units, usually in Waimea. Today is our calendared General Membership Meeting and we appreciate your
allowing us to take this time to present our united views.
It should also be noted that the League is nonpartisan and provides numerous services to Community
Associations for their annual meetings and issues. This includes counting their ballots and providing a
non-biased/neutral and credible body for accurate results.
For the past year, the League of this County has been actively studying various issues regarding this
county and its Charter. We support the following:
1) We support Neighborhood Boards;
2) We support nonpartisan elections for Mayor and County Council.
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3) We support Vote-by-mail provided there are strict safeguards to protect against fraud.
The League has also discussed the Manager/Council form of government with the Chair of the Council
taking on the "role" of Mayor at official functions and there was general support; we did not have the
opportunity to send out a ballot on that because we needed more information, we felt. However, we did
not go into in-depth.
The League did have lengthy discussions regarding a change in representative districts which included
single member districts with at-large members as well. There was absolutely no support for that concept.
All we did was get into why it’s not good and why we like the system the way it is, so there was no
support at all.
We have, as our primary initiative, the creation of a comprehensive and informative "Voter Information
Pamphlet". Individual members of the League have selected an elected official who is expected to run
for re-election as well as persons who have indicated that they intend to run for office. These persons
will be sent a Questionnaire which the League has developed. The information received back will be
documented in the "Voter Information Pamphlet". We have styled our "Voter Information Pamphlet"
after the County of San Diego, which we believe best exemplifies such a wealth of information.
The League encourages the Charter Review Commission to include a proposed Amendment to the
Charter which requires this County to provide a "Voter Information Pamphlet" for both the Primary and
General Elections. Such an Amendment should also allow the County to work with non-profit,
nonpartisan organizations which may be willing to do the research for such an informative piece.
There’ve been numerous requests in past years to the election officers of the state and county to provide
a comprehensive "Voter Information Pamphlet" and the excuse has always been that it would require
more positions to do the research and would be cost prohibitive. We believe that a partnership between
the county and non-profit organizations can make this proposal a reality and come under budget.
Please note in the sample Pamphlet I have here, and this is from San Diego, that there is a thank you to
the "Soroptimist International of San Diego", and they are thanked for their involvement in the election
process. Let me show it to you. Right here, at the bottom, there’s a Soroptimist insignia and I was
shocked to see it, and I thought, whoa, they’re right with us. So, anyway, they were very involved and
they helped to get volunteers, as well.
We also believe that Hawaii County could show the way for the state to provide a "Voter Information
Pamphlet". But in the meantime, our residents in this county should have the advantage of having
information on candidates for office, proposed Amendments to the Charter, proposed Amendments to
the State Constitution and general information on voting.
We thank you for this opportunity to provide our input on the important work you are doing, as you’re
also volunteers, for the future of the county and the Charter. If we can be of service to you, please feel
free to contact us.
At this time, I’d like to pass this over to you and have you - one at one end and one at the other. That’s
the San Diego - it’s a neat little booklet. I learned a lot about San Diego County just from that. But I also
wanted to show you what we have. This is our dummy copy. This is Hawaii County, and it’s based on
that. I’ll let you look at it. And it’s back, it says "Vote for Hawaii", "Aloha, Don’t Leave Home Without
It". No, no, it doesn’t say that. We have here, how the sample ballot would look, and what the Table of
Contents would be like. I’m waving this around. And this would be a picture of the candidate and what
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their little comments are, and we would not amend their comments, or change them. We would only
shorten them if they were too long, because they’d have to fit on this page. Those, as you notice, some
of them are half pages but we feel we’ll give them a full page. And it’s newspaper print. It’s cheap to do.
I’ve gotten some estimates on it. The real work is in getting it print-ready and getting all the information.
And the League is well on its way in preparing it so if you have any friends in the County Council, we
think it’s time for them to commit to funding the mail-out and the simple mailing, or the printing of it,
because it could be done on bulk rate, and it would be very reasonable. All they’d have to do is take a
look at how much money they spend on advertising in newspapers for the elections, and all the other
things that they pay for that could be put into this kind of a thing. And so, thank you very much, and I’m
open to questions, and I’ve also asked other members of the League to be here, who may want to add on
to what I’ve said, or may have something as an individual. The statement I’ve made for you, on what we
have approved, is what we have actually voted on.
RAY: Just a little bit of clarification on the pamphlet. Did you have a cost estimate on that from printing
and mailing?
ISBELL: I asked for some written. I’ve gotten some oral but I don’t want to use hearsay because I’ve
learned that if it isn’t in writing, it’s not worth repeating, and so, we are in the process of getting some of
those now. Even the estimates I heard were very reasonable, and I know, looking at some of the
newspapers and things that are put in by the County and the State, there’s an awful lot of money spent
on elections.
RAY: Because we do have a budget to address, as far as the Charter Amendments, so maybe we could
combine or incorporate in some way.
ISBELL: We’d be happy to help you.
RAY: Have you discussed this and gotten any advocacy from any individual Council members to come
up with the funding?
ISBELL: Yes, we have.
RAY: So, you anticipate that the County Council, or members of the County Council, are going to
pursue this?
ISBELL: We know it will be introduced. We don’t know for sure because we’re trying to get all of the
information before it creates a problem, and if you have all your homework done, and the information, it
just subdues any big antagonistic things about how much it’s going to cost. So, we’re very careful about
it. We want to make sure we get all our ducks in a row and find out what it would be printed in the State,
and the prison also, as you know, has a printing press, so we’re looking at maybe asking - they don’t
print money, of course, but we have to look at what is the most reasonable way to go, but we want to
keep it in the State.
RAY: Okay, and I’m sure we have some other questions. George.
MARTIN: Thanks, and appreciate you folks coming and participating in our format. I guess it’s your
format too because the dates coincide, yeah? Specific questions on your neighborhood board proposal.
Would that be advisory, or what type of format would that be, or would you expect to see, if it were to
be taken up?
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ISBELL: Well, we had different discussions on this and there is a question on whether it should be
advisory or should have some authority to make decisions. The Planning Commission, as you know, has
some authority even though some of us question whether that’s correct or not, but I think one of the
things that there was a great concern about is that it be funded so that they are elected, like Oahu. That it
is just not a volunteer appointed thing, but they have to run for it, and that way you get a lot more
interest and participation, I believe. And what I’ve found on Oahu is even when you have a very
important meeting in the Legislature, if there’s a neighborhood board meeting, they go to that first, and
they come to things later because that’s how much they hold it in esteem. Just so you know.
MARTIN: Number 3, you made mention about a Vote-by-mail. I’ve been in support of that for quite
some time. I think it’s a great idea. I think it’s something that we could work with. You made mention of
safeguards. What do you see necessary to make something like that work?
ISBELL: A lot of high technology. You have to have a machine that can scan a signature and determine
whether it’s a fraud or not, because the signature’s on the outside of the envelope, so that you don’t
know what the vote is on the inside, but the outside has to have the signature of the person who does it.
We have a wonderful video, by the way, we’d be happy to share with you. Have you seen the videos on
Vote-by-mail? How it works?
RAY: I haven’t. I don’t think we have.
ISBELL: It was an eye opener for me because I didn’t know what it really meant, but it means that
everybody votes by mail. You don’t have polling places, and you just have to make darn sure that the
person who is able to vote is the one that’s voting. But I’d be happy to get that for you.
RAY: We’d appreciate it.
MARTIN: Perhaps we’re probably going to need it down the road sometime. With the single member
district changes that, not so much have been proposed, but discussed, and not so much in-depth until this
morning - with the change from nine specific single member districts to six, and then three at-large, you
indicated there was a lot of non-support and possibly even disapproval of that idea. I’m not going to ask
why but you see, our situation for doing it is better accountability and the intent for this body, from the
onset, was to better government, and by making that specific change, the government would be bettered
in that now that you have three, possibly four, people that you can talk to, because you voted for four
people. So anytime that there’s an issue that comes up, instead of speaking to your Council member,
who may be in support of what you have, but the other eight aren’t, you now have four people that you
can possibly talk to. You don’t lose your single membership because we’ll follow the State House if, in
fact, something like that were to come up, or some line like that, so you’d still have your single member
districts but you’d have more people that you could possibly talk to, and better your chances of getting
something across.
ISBELL: Well, that sounds good on paper, but the reality is that I’ve lived through both. And the County
had at-large, people from Hilo voted for people from Kona that we didn’t vote for, and they got into
office and so, consequently, it was a lot of resentment, and that is one of the reasons we went to single
member districts. The same could happen in the future. As Kona’s population grows, we could control
who gets voted on in Hilo, and I don’t think you’d like that either.
MARTIN: Well, it’s a democracy. You’re going to vote for the person you want as long as you have an
opportunity. I understand what you’re saying, though.
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ISBELL: I didn’t finish yet. The other part is that as a Legislator, I also was in when the Senate was at-
large, and the island here, everybody ran for the whole island. What happened is that we found that it
was better to have single member districts, and of course, the Senate has two of the single member
districts each. It was because people felt disenfranchised. They wanted someone they could say, that’s
the person we voted for from this district, and he needs to listen to us. And what it does is it allows you
to really focus in. As a Legislator or an elected Council person, you’re focusing in on your district, but
when you get into the County Council, you vote as a whole. You vote for everything, so I just cannot go
along with single member districts, personally. I couldn’t find anybody that really wanted to change the
system except for, maybe, having one person run at-large, and that person would act as Mayor. And that
was the only thing that we came up with. There was no agreement.
RAY: Thank you. Marni.
HERKES: Good morning, again. We’re using the future as guidelines, not the past. We’re entering a
global economy, a global scene where County government is effected as well as State government and
National government, so we’re not thinking about how things necessarily worked in the past as much as
we’re thinking about what it’s going to be like in the next ten years, because this is what we’re writing
the Charter for. In that mind set, we’re looking at what other counties are doing, what other things
they’re are doing. In the National
Association of Counties, the Council Manager is one of the most popular forms of government. Seems
to work the best in a lot of different areas. In that, you touched on the single member districts, and the
six-three, and having the - One model that we have, the largest vote getter is the Mayor, and then the
Council hires the Managing Director, but we have something like 15 models that we’re working our way
through, kind of looking at what would work best. I think our major goal is to make government more
efficient and more responsive to the public so that we can have more involvement, especially with
Boards and Commissions which has been a universal. But we are now on the web with our minutes, and
we’d encourage all of the League of Women Voters to go and look at our minutes, to look at what we’ve
been discussing. Wednesday, we discussed the Department of Public Safety. We discussed having the
Police Department, the Fire Department, the Emergency Services, all under one department with one
Commission. I don’t know whether that’s something that’s good. I know other people try it, then they
move back and forth. But, that’s a discussion, so we would encourage all of you to really look at the
discussions that we’re having and see what information you can give us.
ISBELL: Okay, thank you very much. I’d like to respond to that. First of all, your comment about we
have to forget the past, look at the future. I’m saying to you that the problem we’ve had is that we have
not learned from the past, and if we’re not going to look at the past and learn from it, then what is it all
about? We’re only talking about ten years, too. In ten years, your Charter will be amended again. We’re
not talking about something that’s 50 to 100 years, and it’s forever, but we do have to move very
carefully, and very slowly, on the type of change that you’re talking about. If you’ve got 15 different
models, and one hasn’t come out clearly as the top one, then obviously, everybody has a different idea
on what representation really means. But I would certainly be thinking, also, about what you can sell to
the public. Are they ready for this? Do they hear it the same as you? When it comes to the vote, you’ve
got to get this passed through on a vote, as an Amendment to the Charter, and so it has to be presented in
a way that is acceptable to the local people. But they have long memories, except for certain things.
MARTIN: Point of clarification.
RAY: Marni, are you finished?
HERKES: Yes.
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MARTIN: Just a point of clarification, if I may. The Charter is our Charter, per se, the County, not just
this committee up here, so the statement that you made that our Charter will be re-looked at in ten years,
you’re correct, but it’s everybody’s Charter, not just ours.
ISBELL: That’s why I said you’re going to have trouble getting it through. You’d better have the right
way of presenting it because you’ve got votes that are going to be the total public, not just here in this
room. What you pass here goes to the public for vote.
MARTIN: Yes, well again, clarification. We’re not going to pass anything here. All we’re going to do is
present it to the voters and they will make the final decision.
ISBELL: You are passing something to the voters. You’re not going to pass something that you don’t
agree on, so, I don’t understand where you’re coming from. I think, you may need to be out there in the
public a little bit, as John has been, and I have been where you are, and you John. When you’re out there
in the public, you get a real sense of how they feel and what’s going on, and if you’re presenting
anything that’s for change, it’s got to be presented very carefully, very well, and very well thought out.
RAY: Let’s continue on around. John.
SANTANGELO: Virginia, I appreciate the support for the Voter-by-mail. I’m going to tie this back to
something in the end because I want to, kind of, put it all together with one thought. The fraud is the
issue. I, personally, in a campaigning strategy, used absenteeism, absentee vote, as a campaign, and I
found the State really kind of thought each time someone succeeded at it, it seemed like they redoubled
their effort to eliminate it. This might be a good way because you need the participation of people. The
two things that always bothered me the most, personally, when I did it, was where do you draw the line
of responsibility. Sometimes I struggle with the web. When it’s too dang easy, where do you show the
effort to get up and to be a part of something, and so I struggled with that, and getting an absentee ballot
to people was where I finally decided. But, also the fraud was a really important issue, so I support that,
and just bringing up the technology really is good.
When you talk about your pamphlet and you said you wouldn’t edit it. Having been on both sides of
submitting information, a really good rule that I liked, was we’re going to take X amount of words and
we’ll take your statement, and when we get to that word, we’ll stop. That’ll get people to condense it,
you know, because so often, if you do take a sentence out, you are amending it, and so one magazine
just flat told us that. We’re going to just put it in there. It’s going to be in this font, this size, and when
we get to that number word, pau. It was kind of neat.
ISBELL: Before you go on, just to let you know that the candidates all know that the only thing that we
will do is shorten it. We will not change it, so if it gets -
SANTANGELO: So you start at the top or the bottom.
ISBELL: Yes. Probably the top, but the questions that we’re asking will also be put into a slot like, how
old are you, what’s your full name. You have to tell on your - when you’re applying to run for office.
SANTANGELO: One thing that I’d ask the League to do, because I struggle with this nonpartisan.,
being a Republican, I’d go back to my party, oh, you can’t - baloney, I really support nonpartisan on the
County level. As you know, in the Legislature, it’s very partisan because you’re in the more
philosophical - Anyway, your body could help, and I’d ask you to think about forums, because with this
single member district issue that just came up, one thing I noticed here, and it’s my observation and I
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may be wrong, but it’s perception, and it’s information. I’m cursed by two things; one was I was
educated as an engineer, or electronics and I’m a male, so I think a certain way. And generally, it’s
dealing with these facts and I’m very linear, and I never dealt well with perception, and yet, that is the
reality in politics today, and I see a lot of bad things being done in the absence of solid information. And
so, some of these issues that are emotional, I think are best served if some group, like yourself, would
present a fact-finding, or a fact-sharing, forum in which both sides could kind of be brought out because
with this single member thing, this body really has yet to really take it up, so there hasn’t been a real
clear discussion of all 15 models, and therefore, there shouldn’t be something coming forward. And we
already had a discussion once with someone and we won’t go into that again because it’s redundant. But
I’d ask you to consider that for whatever issue comes up that’s kind of like that. It would be really great
to have a body, such as yours, that is so responsible in that area, to have some sort of information
dissemination thing. Thank you.
ISBELL: One last thing. If you’ll notice in that pamphlet, there’s also a place for rebuttal on issues and
it’s given totally independently as if, you know, here’s an argument for it, here’s an argument against it,
and then what somebody thinks about it. So, what you might want to do is take a look at that. I’m going
to leave these two with you so that you can - One’s a primary and one’s a general.
RAY: Roland.
HIGASHI: Virginia, this voter information package. Could the League prepare a proposed Charter
Amendment, what section, exact wording, and then we can take it from there? Right now, it’s kind of
loose. If the League could do that, I think we could be more focused on exactly what we’re talking
about, and consider that.
ISBELL: Well, we can’t do it until you pass something that’s going to go to the voters. Is that what you
mean, before they go to the voters?
HIGASHI: What I mean is something for us to really consider, to act on. Right now, it’s a loose thing,
and exact wording could be important.
ISBELL: Instead of just saying we support this, you want it put into Charter language type?
HIGASHI: That’s correct. If you could research the Charter itself, the section, and do that, we’d
appreciate that.
ISBELL: You want us to write your bill. I’ve got to think about that one because that’s a full-time - I’ve
been there, done that. I know what you’re talking about.
HIGASHI: The other thing is, in the Vote-by-mail, I think we need to have an Amendment to the State
Election laws. We did pursue that in a cursory manner for doing a Special Election, and that was not
allowed. I suggest you take that to the Legislature and get some support on this, at least this Board, or
having Vote-by-mail.
ISBELL: The reason that I brought it up is because that was a Statewide issue, and the State League of
Women Voters approved Vote-by-mail, so the State League, they will be pursuing it. I brought it up to
let you know that that’s one of the things that we will be working on. But, the Vote-by-mail, we feel,
will give a lot of people an opportunity to vote who say they’re too busy or don’t have time to look at
the ballot, or when they go to the voting poll, they really haven’t thought it through, and that sort of
thing. So, the Vote-by-mail is basically going to be a -
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HIGASHI: As long as we understand that we are not going to consider Vote-by-mail by this board.
ISBELL: Yes, but you’re aware of it, though.
HIGASHI: Yes we are.
RAY: Gary.
YOSHIYAMA: I have a question regarding "Voter Information Pamphlet". The League’s specific
proposal is to make an Amendment provision in the County Charter. My question is why the County
Charter other than some other route?
ISBELL: Well, because it’s like your constitution, and it’s allowing you. The State Constitution says
broad statements, this is what you’ll do, this is how it will be. The County Charter’s also a broad
statement, and what we’re saying is you should allow this to be, but I also put in there ‘required’, but
you can change that around to allow it to happen. But if you don’t have it in there, it just never happens.
You pass an ordinance. It’s just an ordinance. But you put it in the Charter, it’s in the booklet.
Everybody has a handle on that. To find an ordinance, you’ve got to go leafing through a whole bunch
of paper, so I just feel that’s a proper place for something that is so important that it makes every voter,
who’s voting for people throughout the island, as well as all these Charter Amendments, informed, so
they know what’s going on.
Incidentally, there is one other thing that I’d like to just bring up briefly. I have been an advocate for
incorporated cities, towns and villages for several years because I think that’s one way we can overcome
this idea that you have to split this island asunder, and I got an Attorney General Opinion, which I will
share with you, that says that it’s basically got to have a neighboring legislation on the State level, and
we were pretty sure of that, it just took him a long time to do it. Took us four years to get an Opinion,
just to let you know. But, we think that that’s something you might want to consider should that ever
become enabled, that the Charter might address that.
RAY: Gary, any more comments?
YOSHIYAMA: No.
RAY: I’ve got a couple of things, Virginia. One, in regard to neighborhood boards, and you don’t have
to answer this today, but I’d like to have more of a sense of your polling and your participation from
communities. I’m very active in the Waimea Community and I don’t recall this at any community
forum, being brought up or discussed, and I think, Waimea’s probably, arguably, one of the most
cohesive, if not the most cohesive, community on the island, and this is not anything that we’ve ever
discussed at the Community Association or any other forums, or whatever, so I’d like to have the sense
that that’s taken place, and especially in communities where it’s very easy to bring up and discuss these
kinds of things, and get more of a sense of island-wide, what the participation was because, quite
frankly, I personally, and I don’t think any of us have heard much support for neighborhood boards.
ISBELL: Well, you all should join the League of Women Voters.
RAY: Okay, so I think we need some convincing there. We do understand it. We had representatives
from the City and County, that came over and spoke, basically, pretty positively about it, and gave us a
lot of background. So I think we understand how they work and whatever, but my sense is this group
doesn’t feel much of a public mandate, or support, for neighborhood boards from the communities we
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represent. That hasn’t been my individual experience, and as a Council member, it also was not my
experience that this is something that - so anyway,
ISBELL: Well, just to respond to you. We don’t pretend to represent every community, but we do have
members from every community, and we represent the League. This is League of Women Voters’s
stand. This is what we voted on, but as far as going out into the community, now you’re asking us to do
your job. Public forum really belongs in your arena, and I’m looking at the public here, and you’ve got a
really good representation from the League, and this is the public. And we sent out ballots and they were
sent back, straight to the Hilo Post Office, and so they were counted at meetings. We never even looked
at them until that point, so it wasn’t one person doing this. It wasn’t just me. It was the League of
Women Voters, and we have several in Waimea and Waikaloa, by the way. And we don’t know who
responded because we just get them in an envelope and they don’t have names. We didn’t ask them to
sign them, so I have no idea of knowing, except that we received a lot of them. And if you want us to
have a public forum, I’d like that in writing, if you would, please, and how you would support that for us
because having a public forum, and taking on the role of what some of this stuff you’re doing, we might
be able to attract a different set of audience too, little less informal, perhaps, but we’d be happy to help
you in any way like that.
RAY: Well, we would very much welcome your help and participation in discussing any of these issues.
And like you mentioned, the overall advocacy and presentation of the public is going to be what’s going
to carry the day, so I think we’re all going to have to work together to make any changes.
One thing, and I’m going to give you the information on this. We have had a pretty interesting model
from Lexington, Kentucky. It’s a city and county.
ISBELL: On Council Manager?
RAY: Yes. And they have a hybrid situation. They have, what they call, a Chief Administrative Officer,
which the comparison to the private sector is the Mayor is still the CEO, the Chief Executive Officer,
but the Chief Operating Officer is more a City Manager type. Now, that person still is part of the
Administration. He still is hired by the Mayor, but the criteria and the approval by the Council. It’s
much more tied clearly to a professional City Manager type. And I’m going to give you this information,
but the other one, since we were talking about neighborhood boards, another thing that they utilize is
that they have an Office of the Citizens Advocate, and the Council members individually appoint
someone to be on the Citizens Advocate Board. And it’s a formal Board that meets as an island-wide
Citizens Advocate Board, as part of the process.
ISBELL: Is that like a complaint department? It sounds like it’s a place that you come to complain, but
do you get anything done?
RAY: I don’t know.
ISBELL: What can they do?
RAY: It does deal primarily, the description, with complaints, abuses, irregularities, but also
recommends substantive or procedural policies. But anyway, we’re just looking into that, so I wanted to
mention it. I’m going to get you a copy of this. We’re having these made up.
ISBELL: Yes, that sounds pretty interesting if it’s -
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RAY: Like I said, it’s an interesting hybrid. It might be a way for us to instill more professional
management and, sort of, head in that direction vs. a whole scale eliminate the Mayor, and then we
move in that direction, and if people like the way it’s heading, then that might be the direction we take.
Also, one other thing. You pointed out that this is a ten-year process, but as you’re certainly aware,
Charter Amendments can be brought forward at any time, by the County Council, and by the general
public. So it’s not necessarily just every ten years.
ISBELL: Yes, we vote on your Amendments all the time. I’ve seen some of them fall flat on their face
and some of them make lots of hay.
RAY: Okay, any other comments? Sue.
IRVINE: Yes, I’d like to just say one thing. Although John indicated we haven’t looked too much into
the idea of neighborhood boards, we do have a very good study from the Honolulu League of Women
Voters that was passed out to all of us, about neighborhood boards, and we’ve had some input, then,
from the City and County on that. But, I think neighborhood boards, we’re talking about empowering
people locally, with something like that, and some of the other ideas that have been brought forth to us
are the possibility of, like, electing some of our Boards and Commissions, Planning or Police
Commission. Maybe moving these Commissions around to be under independent Prosecutor’s Office,
rather than where they are. So there are ideas out there that would -
ISBELL: Maybe we should be electing Police Chiefs too.
IRVINE: Well, Police Chiefs, or elect the County Attorney.
ISBELL: So that we can get rid of them when they’re -
IRVINE: We’ve heard lots of different ideas, and that’s one that’s been brought to us.
ISBELL: You’re right. You know, there is another thing on neighborhood boards. It’s not just
neighborhood board for zoning, but for all matters, including public works. There are two different
kinds, but we did not define that because some people were not real sure about what that really meant.
Just so you know, there’s broad -
RAY: Any other questions for Virginia? If not, thank you very much.
ISBELL: Thank you very much. It’s been a joy. I enjoyed it. Thank you.
RAY: Now, Helene Hale has signed up to speak, and if anybody else in the audience would like to
speak, there are sign up forms over here on the end of the table. So, Helene is the last person signed up
to speak, so we’re going to take a short break after she presents to us.
HALE: I would just like to say that I’m speaking as an individual. I am a member of the League, Vice
President really, and I agree with the League positions as outlined by Virginia. I’d just like to explain to
you that the League
hasn’t gone into all these questions that you are faced with, because we have constraints of our
membership and we have a very strict process. We have to study an issue for a while before we send out
information to our members to get their input and their vote, and we have to have meetings. And we
have had a meeting on neighborhood boards, and we did have your head of your neighborhood board
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executive come to us. It was organized by Marni Herkes, who’s a member of our League too. And so, at
any rate, but my opinions are just based on my own experience as a former member of the old Board of
Supervisors and member of the County Council, and I’d just like to remind you of what Virginia was
saying, and that is, that whatever you recommend, you’re going to have to really explain to the people
because, in the final analysis, your Charter is the Charter of the people, and has to be voted upon. And,
maybe, most of you aren’t old enough to remember, but I was on the old Board of Supervisors when the
first Charter was presented to the people. And you may not know, but for two elections, the Charters
were voted down by the people. They didn’t accept any form of government except the Board of
Supervisors, so that’s just something to remember, that everybody is not going to agree with everything
that you put forward. But, I’d also like to point out that under the old Board of Supervisors, and I’m sure
you’ve done your homework on this, we had three Supervisors from West Hawaii, which was Kohala,
Ka’u and Kona; and three from East Hawaii, which was Hamakua, Hilo and Puna, and in those days, it
was very unequal because in Kona we had, maybe, one-third of the population that they had in Hilo, and
so the Hilo people were really gung ho in those days to change the system. But, the Kona people kind of
liked having three. It was not a one person/one vote, but even with that, it was difficult to get the people
to vote in the Charter idea. But, in the old system, the Board of Supervisors was really an administrative
board, but the Chairman and Executive Officer was elected at-large. The only officer in those days was
elected by the whole island, and as such, the Chairman and Executive Officer functioned as the
Chairman of the Board of Supervisors and also as the full-time Executive of the County, so when we
tried to explain to people, we’d always say Mayor in quotes because in Honolulu it was called a Mayor,
but in the neighbor islands, it was called Chairman and Executive Officer. I’m just pointing that out
because in our discussion in the League, and I hadn’t really thought this out before, but in our last
meeting where we were discussing the six-three and your ideas of changing the composition of the
Council, I was very much against the six-three, although at one time, I was for six-three. But, I was not
for the three being elected for four years. I was for everybody electing two years. The difficulty with the
six-three, where three are elected for four years, is that you have three Councilmen who are really
unequal, and they have undue influence because on the election years that they don’t have to run, they
can interfere in other elections and that, I think, is a dangerous precedent. If you’re going to have six-
three, I think it has to be equal; two years, four years, whatever you want to agree with, and I am very
much an advocate of two years. Although I was on the County Council when we were elected for four
years, I presented several amendments to the County Council for two-year terms because I felt that we
should have district representation, although, at that time I was living in Hilo, I could empathize with the
Kona people and the rural people who felt that Hilo had undue influence, and so I was a very strong
advocate in those days for the two years and for district representation, and I still am.
But, I want to present an idea that we haven’t had time to study or think through, but the more I think
about it personally, the more I think it’s a good idea. If you have six districts, like you’re proposing, and
you tie them to the House Districts, you might end up with a canoe district, like we did before, when the
first time, when Maui, and that wouldn’t work for a county, so that would mean you’d still have to go
re-district on a Council basis. So, I would like to suggest that you consider the idea of having eight
districts. Eight single member districts for two years and that you have one person who is elected at-
large. That way, that person could be Mayor, Chairman of the Council, or whatever you wanted to put it
in, but would vote only in case of a tie. Four, four would be eight. You might have a tie so the Mayor
could vote in case of a tie. It’s an idea I want to throw out because the more I think about it, the more I
like it because one of my real concerns, the difference between the Board of Supervisors and the County
Council was, the Chairman, under the old Board of Supervisors, represented the whole island, all the
people, was elected by the people to be the Chairman, whereas under the Council system, the Chairman
of the Council, who gets a little more money and has a little more power, is chosen by the Council,
which, in my opinion, it’s just exasperated the division between Republicans, Democrats, Independents,
or whoever you have. Whoever could get five votes.
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RAY: Helene, can I interrupt you? Let’s assume we’re going nonpartisan, okay?
HALE: Okay, if you’re going nonpartisan, you’re still going to have what they have in Honolulu, which
is nonpartisan. You’re going to have five people who elect the Chair, and that means that there is a lot of
back door hanky panky. I’ll give you this Chairmanship, I’ll give you that Chairmanship, you be for me
for Chairman, and I don’t think that’s good government. I really don’t.
RAY: How about the dynamic of the person who is best able to lead, and pull together that Council,
because you really eliminate that dynamic.
HALE: But that person -
RAY: I’m assuming it would be more non-political in nature, but personally, I like the Council being
able to choose the person they feel is best able to pull together and lead the Council vs. - anyway, I just -
HALE: Okay, I know, and most of the people that are in the majority of a Council like that system. I’ve
been in the majority and I’ve been in the minority, so I’m looking at it from both sides, and I’m just
giving you my own personal opinion, based upon the difference between being elected by the people
and being Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, and being appointed by the Council and getting a
Chairmanship of a Committee thereby. So, I don’t think it’s necessarily the person who best leads. It’s
the person who gets five votes, if I recall. If you have five votes, you can do what you want to, and that
is not necessarily the person who can best lead. The person who can best lead is the person who
represents all of the people of the island, and not just one small district from the island, who’s going to
be Chair. And that’s another thing to consider. I’m throwing these ideas out for you to consider and I
don’t expect - I haven’t even been able to bring them up in detail enough to convince our League to
adopt them, but nobody seemed to find a great deal of fault with the idea, but we just haven’t studied it.
But I’m bringing this up. Elect your Mayor at-large, and that Mayor can be Chair of the Council, to vote
only in case of a tie, much like the Vice President does, votes in case of a tie in the United States Senate.
But, anyhow, I really feel that we need single member districts and I’m really against having four-year
terms for some and two-year for the other. If you’re going to have six-three, then it should be equal.
RAY: So, would that person be the Mayor, or the Council Chair, or could be either one?
HALE: Could be both. That’s what they were in Honolulu under the Board of Supervisors. They were
called Mayor. On this island, they were both, but they were called Chairman and Executive Officer.
So, the other idea is I would like to say, personally, I think a County Manager is a good idea in principal.
I think, basically, we sort of have a County Manager system now, under the Managing Director. Bill
Davis is basically a professional administrator, and that’s what he’s doing, and he’s appointed by the
Mayor rather than by the Council. In these systems that you’re studying on the Counties, the County
Manager’s appointed by the Council, not by the Mayor, so that’s another thing to consider. And I think,
under the previous Mayor, when Susan Labrenz was the Managing Director, she really ran the County.
Bernard Akana didn’t run the County, you know. She was the professional administrator. So County
Manager is good in principal, but I’m not sure it’s an idea you’re going to be able to sell to the people of
the island. So maybe you could strengthen the Managing Director’s position, and you’re not going into
so much of a change.
I’d like to know what your web address is. You said you have a web address.
HERKES: hawaii-county.com.
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GRAHAM: Is that all lower case, Marni?
HERKES: All lower case. www. The Databook is on there. All of you should know it. Everything that
you ever needed from the County is on hawaii-county.com. Our agendas are on it, our minutes. We have
a whole thing on it, but everything’s on there. Sharron’s got it all on there. We’ve got a very efficient
administrator that puts it on.
YUEN: It’s a .gov, though. We’re not fancy enough to be a .com. We’re a .gov.
HERKES: Oh, .gov, I’m sorry.
RAY: Did you hear that, the correction to the web?
HERKES: It’s .gov, g-o-v, not .com. Sorry about that.
RAY: Helene, you’ve got more?
HALE: Yes, one more. I’d just like to say that I am a great advocate for elections. To me, democracy is
that you’re responsive to the electorate, not to other politicians. I’d like to tell you a story. When I first
got into government, on the Board of Supervisors, back in the 1950's, I was one of two Democrats, and
there was five Republicans, but my attitude, as a former teacher, which I had been, I guess, was to ask
questions. I wanted to know why this and why that and why the other, and one of the Republicans came
up to me and says, Helene, why do you always ask so many questions? Why don’t you just go along?
You know, we’re all in this together. And I looked at him and I said, you know, I’m not in this with you
at all. I’m in this because the people elected me from West Hawaii, and to me, that’s always been my
philosophy, but I have found that once people get in power in an elected position, they join the club, and
the club is either the five or the four, whichever side you’re going to be on. You’re in that club, and I
really get disturbed by that because, to me, the principal of the United States is basically a democratic
government; one person, one vote, and we should be responsible, so if you’re considering such a thing
as a Police/Fire Commission, which, I think, has been discussed and is worthy of your consideration. I
haven’t got a very good opinion of it. I mean, I don’t have a good idea as to whether I’m for it or against
it, but I don’t like the idea of Commissions being appointed by the Mayor and approved by the Council,
because they don’t represent the people. They represent the appointing authority or the majority, and
therefore, I would like to suggest, if you’re going to have a Police/Fire Commission, you elect them.
Elect the Commission, and then let them appoint the Police Chief and the Fire Chief, or whoever else,
Public Safety perhaps. It could be a Public Safety Commission. It could be Civil Defense too. But
whatever, I would just like to leave you with the idea to please think of the people, a democracy, and try
to make our government, which has gone more in the direction of the people, since we’ve had single
member districts. I think we’re much more concerned with listening to people from all over the island,
and so those are my ideas.
RAY: Marni.
HERKES: Sharron, I have a memo from you of September 24th that says ‘Check out the calendar on the
County website, hawaii-county.com. ‘
HENRY: That’s the way I get it, .com. and that’s the way -
HERKES: Okay, change everything. Now, where did Mr. Graham go? I don’t know whether that’s right
or not. That’s the way I get it.
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RAY: Try both.
HENRY: I’ll reconfirm that, but I’m getting it under .com.
HERKES: I’m going into it under .com too.
RAY: Are you?
HERKES: Yes.
MARTIN: Somebody will catch it and bring it to our attention. We’ll be -
HENRY: It is .com according to our DP Department.
HALE: If you’re not government, then you’re commercial.
HERKES: Well, we are. And I have another question.
RAY: Okay, let’s come to order please.
HERKES: I need some help from the Commissioners, as well as from Helene, and I think, now in our
County Council, how many people does each Council person represent? Is it nine thousand?
RAY: It’s about 13, 14,000.
HERKES: 14,000?
RAY: Under the last census.
HERKES: So if we did eight Council people and say, maybe our population might jump to 150,000, that
would be just about the same number. Would it be less?
RAY: It would be less, proportionately. I mean, you have to divide that excess plus the increase in
population. So it would be a little more. It wouldn’t be terribly different.
HERKES: Yes, and that’s where I’m coming from. How many persons can a Council person represent
effectively?
RAY: Just speaking personally, there’s an enormous amount of difference between representing Hilo
and representing, say, Ka’u or Kohala, in terms of your effective representation, just because of the
geographical -
HERKES: I’m fairly aware of that, Mr. -
RAY: So, if you work in Hilo, it’s duck soup compared to working in Kohala, and having to commute to
your office in Hilo, and having to go to Waikaloa, going up to Kohala. It’s an enormous amount of
difference, so I don’t know what you could do about that.
HERKES: Well, I don’t think there’s anything to do about that, but I was just looking at the numbers of
people, if you went to eight Council persons. I’m not stuck with nine either. I know that Lexington has
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15 or 11.
RAY: Twelve.
HERKES: Twelve. They have a bigger number and that’s what -
HALE: Well, I’d say I see nothing wrong in thinking of more than nine, but all I’m saying is single
member districts and electing the Mayor and the Chairman of the Council, that’s basically what I’m
concerned with. And I’d like to make one more comment that if you had neighborhood boards, they
would be smaller than that district and it would be a way for the Council person to get input from
different areas, too.
HERKES: So it would be more than one.
RAY: George. We’re just going to go around.
MARTIN: Thank you. Ms. Hale, in concept now, if there were to be a proposal put forth for a Managing
Director/whatever it may be, how would you see that person being put into the position?
HALE: If you’re going into nonpartisan, you know, one thing depends on another to so much extent. If
the people vote for nonpartisan, then I think the Council ought to probably be the person to elect that
Managing Director, because the Mayor then is more of a ceremonial position, and chairs the Council in
terms of breaking ties, but is not really the administrator, could speak for the people. I mean, I think in
that case, to some extent, it’s like it was in the old Board of Supervisors, even though I was Executive
Officer and full time, everything I did had to be approved by the Council because they were still an
Administrative Board, so the Chairman, or the Mayor, or whatever you want to call it, has to be in tune
with the rest of the Council, and has to be responsive to all the various districts. To me, that was the one
thing, I think, our system was improving over the present system, although I agree with one person, one
vote, and we should not have had three from West Hawaii and three from East Hawaii.
RAY: Steve.
BESS: Helene, your idea with regard to Police/Fire Commission, having them elected. How far would
you go with that? Do you see that other Commissions ought to be elected as well?
HALE: Well, those are really two of the more important Commissions. Let me put it this way. Civil
Service Commission could be appointed because you’re bound by State law anyhow, and there’s not that
much discretion. Other Commissions that you have, like Planning Commission, there again, I think one
thing depends on another. If you had neighborhood boards, with an advisory opinion, I think it would
help the Planning Commission to make better decisions. But, let me put it this way, as a final thing.
There’s no perfect system. You’re dealing with people. It’s the people you put in that are important, not
the system. You can have any system and have it good, if you’ve good people. You can have the best
system in the world and if you don’t have good people, the system isn’t going to be any good, so in the
final analysis, you’re dealing with people.
RAY: John.
SANTANGELO: Hi, Helene. When you said, could we sell this to the public, when it came to City
Manager. It’s not for us to sell anything. I think it’s for organizations, like yourselves, to look into it, and
other organizations that do represent bodies of people, and get the information, and again, we go back to
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information. City Manager type of function is very, very, very successful in the United States. It’s
almost a 100 years old. It’s in thousands and thousands of counties. So it’s not an experiment. It does
work. You’re right, though, I think that maybe we have to take this in steps. The reason that I personally
like the City Manager, and please don’t shoot me for this statement, but we tend to be electing, having
been in the process, I see how your perception, among the people, or their perception of you, how
another individual or group can warp or aberrant that perception in the elective process, has a selecting
people that aren’t qualified in some instances, or have such special agendas, it’s unreal. So just because
we elect people, doesn’t mean we do the right thing, but we’d better hold on to that. So, when we elect
Council members who are setting policy, to me, I’m saying, let’s put that power there, then, so when
you come to a Commission as important as the Police Commission, I personally, struggle with electing
with those unless you leave their names out, and they can’t campaign, and you just put up their
qualifications. Because in an instance like that, you’re trying to get people who know what the heck
they’re doing. Now, if you elect your County Council, and you say this is where we put our emphasis,
and you change it - remember, we went from everybody at-large to everybody single member. That was
one huge leap, and then we start talking about something in between and we resist that. But we did go
from one extreme to the other. If we elect our County Council, and we want to strengthen the Council
balance of power with the Mayor, maybe having these Commissions nominated by the Council
members, and voted on by the Council, dilutes the Mayor’s ability to, kind of, fix agendas through his
appointments. You understand what I’m saying? You have nine pools of people vs. one person’s pool.
But just because we elect, doesn’t necessarily mean we do the right thing.
HALE: As I said, we haven’t really studied this issue, and I’m just throwing this idea around to consider
election. I’m not necessarily, at this point, advocating it, but I am very much of a basic philosophy that
election process doesn’t always work. I got beat, so I know. But, I still think it’s the best system that the
world has ever developed.
SANTANGELO: For representation. And Helene, I bring that up to you because you’ve sat here and
spoken from experience, and having been there and done that, I can see that, and you’re very open and
fair minded about this, so again, I’m not trying to convince you. I’m trying to get more information, but
that’s the whole thing. The other thing is when nonpartisan, which I totally support, because you’re
right, but I also agree, that the Council is capable of electing a leader, and let’s go to Honolulu, and
someone said nonpartisan doesn’t disappear all the in-fighting. They’ve had three Chairs in the last few
months, but what they have been doing is, through public pressure, they have been changing leadership
to more accommodate what the public is telling them. And in a way, I kind of see that as a very
beneficial outcome.
HALE: Remember, however, that in Honolulu, that Chairman, whoever it is, has been elected by only a
small group of the people. It doesn’t really represent the whole island, and that is my concern. The Chair
should be a person who represents the whole island, not just one district, and also, by having the Chair
elected by district Council people, you tend to choose a Chair from Hilo, because it’s easier. It’s very
difficult for somebody to be Chair who lives in Kona, so you know, if you’re from the other islands, you
ought to consider that it would be an advantage to your out-of-Hilo people to have the Chair represent
the whole island, not just one district.
SANTANGELO: And so, just a couple of other things, Helene, just real quick. Again, you hit the nail on
the head because you talked about at-large and representing everybody, and then you talked about small
groups of people, and that sort of thing, and that’s what we’re trying to balance. One of the reasons I like
County Manager is because you are, through a nine people process, trying to scrutinize in hiring a
qualified individual to deal with these complexities, and you know what that’s like. On the other hand,
you hit on something that’s been brought up by other people on the Commission, is taking the Managing
Director’s position and rather than leaving it almost at a patronage type of model, changing that to be
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more of a professional, and go at this in steps, and that may well be -
HALE: I have no objection to the Council getting a professional person. All I’m saying is I think it will
be an easier idea to sell if you don’t change, in the Charter, Managing Director. Instead of making it
appointed by the Mayor, appoint them by the Council and give qualifications. We have qualifications in
the Charter for some positions, but not for all.
SANTANGELO: The thing that scares me is I’ve been told that if we change it to that, we’re pretty
much rewriting the whole Charter. If we do that, and the public rejects it, we basically have wasted a lot
of time, and frankly, there’s good things -
HALE: It all depends on how you present the Charter, and remember, I was in the Con Con, and that
was a big debate. You voted for all of them, or else you picked out some to vote against. And people
picked out some to vote against, like changing the Board of Education to nonpartisan. People voted
against that in the Charter, so I think it’s very important how you present this. You don’t have to vote
the whole Charter up or the whole Charter down. You can vote for certain pro or cons on certain issues,
and your County Manager, whether you call it a County Manager, or whether you call it a Managing
Director, the only difference between it is that you have qualifications for a County Manager, so write
qualifications in your Charter. In the Charter, we have qualifications for the Chief Engineer and for other
people. Make qualifications for the Managing Director and you’ve accomplished the same thing.
SANTANGELO: Thank you, Helene.
RAY: Roland.
HIGASHI: Helene, in the Board of Supervisors, does San Francisco still use that same system? And how
is that working?
HALE: Yes, but they are a combination. It’s a municipal government, too, much like Honolulu was,
under the old system. Honolulu, even in those days, was an incorporated city, and it still is, and as
Virginia pointed out, she thinks we ought to be incorporated, but that’s something new. It’s another
subject. It’s a City and County, and that’s the difference between Honolulu and the rest, the City and
County of Honolulu, and always was.
RAY: Marni.
HERKES: Thank you for all your comments. I think that one of the processes that we’re trying to sit up,
and you mentioned people, that the process is not perfect, but I have a personal philosophy that if we set
up the good process, we can attract good people, and I think that through the years, our Charter has
gotten pretty muddied with such as having the County Band in the Charter, and a few things that special
interests have liked to put in the Charter, and maybe we’ve gotten a little away from governance, and if
we set up the really good process, I think that’s really a good way to do things.
HALE: I agree with you, basically. That’s why you’re here.
HERKES: Yes, is to do a different thing, and I thank you for your comments.
RAY: Sue.
IRVINE: Just one quick question. I know you’ve been involved in County government for a long, long
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time, and therefore, have seen what goes on on the mainland. In talking about electing Boards and
Commissions, do they do that, generally?
HALE: Special districts. Remember when we had our thing in Kona under Marni, they had people
electing townships, special districts, water districts. You know, maybe you ought to consider electing the
Water Commission.
HERKES: Yes, elect all kinds of things.
IRVINE: Corporation Counsel.
HALE: Yes, they do have special districts all over. You know, the one thing, because we’ve always
been a top down from the monarchy days kind of government, and there’s more of a growing feeling,
and I think that’s why we have more and more dissension today on many of the decisions, and why
people are turned off from government, because the fact of the matter is, that now people feel from the
bottom up the decisions should be made, and not from the top down. But, we still have that psychology
of everything has to come from the top down, and we’re learning it doesn’t always work. People are
getting very upset about that, in some cases, about some decisions that are being made from the top
down. Take the prison, for instance, as one example. So, I think if you’re going in that direction, you’re
going in the right direction, to give people more power to have some input into government. Then we
will improve the system, and they’ll only improve it when average people get concerned about what’s
going on on the local and state and national level, and feel they have some real input into it.
RAY: Steve.
BESS: If I understood you correctly, the way you would select the Managing Director, assuming we
beef that position up, and using the existing structure, that the Council would be the one selecting. I’d
like to hear your thoughts about why you feel that that would be best vs., say, the Mayor or the person
elected at-large, nominating a Managing Director and then confirmed by the Council.
HALE: I have no real feeling, one way or another, about that. Either way would be all right, as long as
you have qualifications.
BESS: Okay.
RAY: All right. Thank you very much, Helene, and we have one other speaker.
HERKES: Can I make one comment? I’ll probably get in a lot of trouble with this but because we talked
to a lot of people, and this is mostly League, we haven’t had a lot of community input. I, especially,
appreciate the Hawaii Tribune-Herald sending a reporter, and the Tribune-Herald’s been present at
almost all of our meetings, and I want to just say that I think that is a public service that they’ve sent
somebody, and we haven’t gotten real good press coverage in West Hawaii on the Commission
meetings. Thank you.
HALE: I’d like to thank you for listening to my weird ideas.
MARTIN: Well, thank you.
RAY: Thank you. We have one other speaker signed up. Sandra Scarr. Then we’re going to take a little
break after this.
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SCARR: I will be brief.
RAY: No, no, I don’t mean to rush you at all. Take your time.
SCARR: Hello, my name is Sandra Scarr. I live in Kailua-Kona, and I have been here, on the island, for
the last two and a half years, so I’m really quite a newcomer, but I have gotten involved in some
community organizations, and I am a member of the League, but I am here speaking only for myself.
Virginia prompted me as I came up. She said tell them who you are. Well, I spent most of my life as a
Professor of Psychology. I came from the University of Virginia to here, after serving a couple of years
as CEO of a large company, so a bit unusual in that regard, but I really have two principals I would like
to propose to you, to keep in mind as you are considering any specific change in the Charter. I think
there are really two things the public will care a lot about. One is that the more the government you
propose can inspire confidence and participation from people, the better off we’ll be, and that
confidence and participation are correlated, but they don’t necessarily go fully hand in hand. And I have
to agree with many of the things that Helene Hale just said, and she was very eloquent on some of these
matters, that when people feel they are influencing a decision, they have more confidence in it. So,
participation does matter in that regard. But the second principal I’d like to propose to you is the
government needs to be run like a successful, private enterprise activity. It should not be a bloated,
inefficient administration, and in having served in both sorts of organizations, let me tell you what the
difference is. Universities are largely run on a government model which is just protecting whatever turf
has been captured before, and bloating the payrolls to the extent possible to maintain the people, and not
the functions, you know. I won’t go on, and this is very old hat, and it’s tiring to hear. Corporations are
not run that way, of course, as many of you know. I suppose all of you know. Corporations are
constantly changing entities where the form follows the function. You get done what you need to get
done with the people you need to do it, and these are constantly changing bodies. Now, I recognize that
Civil Service law will effect the efficiencies that you can create, or will determine that you can’t create
them, but there certainly should be some inspiration to create greater efficiencies where it’s possible to
do so. So, the principal really is that the government should be a lean, mean organization where people
have confidence, and the government structure should be one that inspires their participation and their
confidence, that their opinions, their decisions are being well represented in whatever considerations,
deliberations, and decisions that are made. Thank you.
RAY: Thank you. Okay, and thank you all for testifying. We’re going to take about a five minute break
right now. Thank you.
RECESSED The Chairman called a recess at 11:10 a.m.
RECONVENED The meeting reconvened at 11:28 a.m.
RAY: So that’s all the public testimony, and on the agenda, we pretty much have a wide open agenda,
and I was really thinking more of the general review of the Charter, and a discussion I’d like to have
today in some length is consideration for developing some sort of an overall philosophy, or approach, to
what we’re doing. At least, maybe, informal guiding principals, and also, equally as importantly, and I
think this was brought up by some of the members testifying today, to develop a package, if you will, or
kind of what’s driving what we’d like to do in the Charter. There’s certainly two levels of changes; (1)
there’s a lot of just bookkeeping stuff every ten years you go through, and you pick up the stuff that
needs to be changed, and this and that, but in terms of overall changes, sort of the flip side of if it’s not
broke, don’t fix it, what are we trying to fix. And I think Keola Childs’ testimony was interesting
because he took that approach. What’s broke in his mind is the balance of power between the Mayor and
Council, and so he recommended all these changes to address that. The, sort of, theme or philosophy
that I sense that more of us are interested in, and working towards, and it’s interesting that our last
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speaker kind of addressed this, was creating a more efficient, professional type of government, and that
seems -
HERKES: Responsive.
RAY: Yes, responsive. So, anyway, I just want to, kind of, open the floor to that discussion because that
seems to be driving, certainly, a lot of the discussion around the City Manager type. But, does anybody
else have any thoughts on that? In terms of how we want to handle the review today, I’d also like to get
some sort of a sense of the larger issues that we can identify that we’re interested in, that we really want
to focus on, that we need to get more information on, and start, at least, gathering that information and
getting ready to deal with some of those. For instance, Council terms and the jurisdiction. We haven’t
scheduled anything on that, and we need to think about that. Overall, the whole Legislative Branch of
government we really haven’t gotten into, and in regard to the Legislative Branch, we did have some
input from the County Clerk. Actually, most of his input was more general and personal, in nature, his
recommendations in the Legislative Branch. But I have had a couple of meetings, just so you’re aware,
with the Legislative Auditor, and I have requested, in writing, input from the Legislative Auditor in
terms of her thoughts on how that office functions, and the discussions we’ve had, actually, over the
years, between myself and the person in that job now, is the same sort of thing, how to create more
professional position there. The Legislative Auditor’s Office is the office that writes the legislation, and
arguably, we should have the best qualified staff, and whatever, and right now that office is subject to
just total political patronage. I mean, you could have just a terrific staff, with great qualifications in
Planning and Finance and whatever, and they could be here today, gone tomorrow. You could lose all of
that. We don’t have professional qualifications there, so that, to me, is an office, if there’s something we
could come up with to beef that up, would follow in line with this whole idea. But anyway, Marni.
HERKES: Is that something that would come under a CEO operation Council, or would that be - What I
actually started on paper, but I don’t have it with me, is an organizational chart for County government,
to do it differently, and I think one of the first things I’d like to discuss is are we rewriting the Charter,
or are we amending current Charter. And that, to me, is major to make the decision as to whether we’re
going to make major changes. There’s some conversation, and some of us are looking at a rewrite rather
than just amending the Charter.
RAY: I’m personally intrigued with this Lexington, Kentucky model, and -
HERKES: It’s a rewrite.
RAY: No, it’s not a rewrite. They initially started out with a Council-appointed Chief Administrative
Officer, and they’ve since realized that that didn’t work as well, and it didn’t make sense in my mind,
and now the Mayor appoints that office, which, to me, makes more sense because you’ve got the Mayor
appointing your Department Heads, and he should also be the person hiring the Chief Administrative
Officer. But I think what we do want to do is to tightly define that position so that we get more of a City
Manager type in. That’s just my personal feeling, rather than a wholesale change, getting rid of the
Mayor, and having a Council Manager form of government. That’s how I personally feel, so in my
sense, we’re not looking at a total rewrite of the Charter. We’re looking at using the existing Charter
framework and, basically, beefing up the Managing Director position. Ideally, in my mind, making the
Managing Director a more predictable City Manager type.
HERKES: Okay.
MARTIN: But it would still -
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RAY: But, that’s just me.
HERKES: But that’s a discussion that I think we ought to have here before we start.
RAY: What does anyone else feel about that? John.
SANTANGELO: I agree with that, again because of the sell job.
RAY: Because of what?
SANTANGELO: In terms of the ability to put something before the electorate that has a chance, but I’ve
been a politician so I’m always looking at what are the chances of something rather than the merit. But, I
feel real strongly about having qualifications. But also, I’d like to look at other things in conjunction
with that, that balance power. And one of the things that has come up a lot is how Commissions are
formed. But I’d support the beefing up, at least putting qualifications with the Managing Director, and
getting a more professional in that role.
RAY: I’d like our attorney to chime in at any time if you think we need any direction in terms of
addressing this question of what we’re talking about. In terms of what was just said, does that, in your
mind, represent anything, or would you characterize it as rewriting the Charter or more working within
this same framework?
YUEN: What you and John Santangelo discussed would not require a major rewrite of the Charter. At
one of our first meetings, I said that going to a Council/Manager form, where you either eliminate the
Mayor or you have only a ceremonial Mayor, and you have an appointed Manager that really has all
these executive functions, that that changes the whole thrust of the Charter, and there are lots of things
that need to be changed in order to do that. If you want to put in qualifications for the Managing
Director, that’s a one paragraph kind of change. If you want to expand the role of the Managing
Director, there’s a split in the Charter, right now, between departments that are under the Managing
Director and those that are not. Actually, only three, I think, Parks and Recreation, Public Works and -
IRVINE: Planning.
HERKES: Planning?
YUEN: No, Planning is not under the Managing Director. I’m trying to think of -
IRVINE: Oh, under the Managing Director, we have -
YUEN: I don’t think Planning is. Let’s see here.
IRVINE: Public Works, Parks and Rec, Fire.
YUEN: Fire, yes. If the idea is to expand the powers of the Managing Director, that kind of split can be
thought through and, possibly, changed. And those kinds of things can be made without wholesale
changes to the Charter. The thing that is significantly different about the Lexington Charter, as far as the
overall function of the government, that relates to this question, is that the Mayor sits as a member of the
Council, and votes in case of a tie, although that’s a little bit strange because they have 12 members
elected single member and three who are elected at-large, so you have 15 members, and so you only get
a tie, I guess, when somebody doesn’t show up or goes to the bathroom when they’re voting. But, in that
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respect, it’s like the old Board of Supervisors system that we had in the County of Hawaii where it
wasn’t called the Mayor, it was called the Chair. Somebody was elected Chairman of the Board of
Supervisors and had many of the present functions of the Mayor, but actually sat there and presided over
all of the meetings.
RAY: Can I say one thing in regard to that point? The relationship I would like to see stronger, or makes
more sense to me, is the relationship between the Managing Director and the Council vs. the Council
and the Mayor. In other words, as a Council member, and if we had a strong City Manager/ Managing
Director type, that’s the person I would like to work closely with as a Council person, and I’m not
suggesting that person sits on, as a member, of the Council, but that person participates more in the
County Council deliberations vs. the Mayor.
HERKES: Makes sense.
RAY: And I’m not sure just how you do that, but that, to me, that’s who you’d want to relate to in terms
of what you’re discussing as a County Council person on a day to day working of the Council.
SANTANGELO: John, to follow up with just that last statement or, at least, with the Managing Director.
I liked the County Manager thing when I began, and one of the things that has wooed me a bit over to
this modifying is I personally would like to be a part of something good and change a lot. On the other
hand, I’m just wondering if it isn’t possible for us to look at this in stages, that we can set the stage for
the next ten years. That we can leave minutes, notes, that instruct them, take a look at this, we’ve
changed it this far. Maybe after that, you can take it that next step. And the main thing, again, I go back
to, is do we have someone who’s dealing with that operating budget, that’s dealing with this County on
that part of it, that has the expertise, and has, at least, qualifications in that area, and balancing that
power between the Mayor and the Council. So, again, I’m willing to take it in stages. So, that’s really
where I’m coming from and I don’t need to say any more. Thank you.
RAY: Steve.
BESS: Sue, did you have something?
IRVINE: It’s something that John started talking about a while back, and that’s what are we trying to
fix, and you mentioned that Keola Childs had given us testimony, feeling that the County Council
needed to increase their power vis-a-vis the Mayor. Is that a perception that’s true in this Commission? I
mean, those of you who have been on the Council, were you frustrated by the Mayor having to appoint
everybody or, say, the Corp Counsels being appointed by the Mayor, and then having to serve the
County Council as well? Is there a problem there?
RAY: I would say that’s very much my opinion. We have an extremely strong Mayor vs. Council form
of government.
IRVINE: Okay.
RAY: How problematic that is, I don’t agree with a lot of Keola’s suggestions, and a lot of it boils down
to who is in office, but, yes, in terms of managing the budgets and how all that’s written, and in terms of
appointing all the Commissions, whatever, the Mayor controls the money is what it really boils down to,
and Councilman Tyler was in the other day and suggested that we look at modifying the ability of the
Mayor to transfer monies over a certain amount, even within departments, because he pointed out that
literally millions of dollars get transferred, and whatever, and it’s a way, in his mind, that the Mayor can
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circumvent the Council participation. But, yes, I think it’s true. How much of a problem it is - From a
business person’s standpoint, I like a strong CEO. You know, I like being able to go to the man and
being able to have things happen. As a Council person, it was certainly frustrating, and so I have mixed
feelings about it but it is very much an issue, and I think, overall, confidence and participation by the
public in government is an overriding concern in regard to this, and I think that’s why we do get a lot of
resentment towards government, is it seems like the Mayor can pretty much do a lot of things at will.
IRVINE: Well, I think this perception is out there and I think maybe it could be solved, and this is the
idea that’s come up recently is the possibility of electing some of our Commissions, and they would be
there for independent - or even elect our Corporation Counsel, who would then serve both the County
Council and the Administration, as an independent body. It would dilute things a little bit and the
Mayor, then, wouldn’t have to worry about so many appointments which, at this point, seems to be too
much for one person to come up with Commissioners.
SANTANGELO: Sue, when you talk about -
RAY: John, let’s keep this in order.
IRVINE: I’m pau.
RAY: Okay. John.
SANTANGELO: This was just mentioned earlier when we got into a small discussion on that. I think
it’s really important to look at the reality of how things work, so when you say elect a Commission, you
need to really take a microscopic look at who’s going to run, who’s going to be a champion in those
campaigns, and are you going to get the results you’re looking for versus if we strengthen the Council.
Again, instead of taking that huge leap from total at-large to total single, and this is where I’m falling
heavily on, is having the Council, even this Council because you do it for ten years, not for a couple of
months, be the nominating body. So all the Commissions, we make them up as nine, and each Council
member has a pool of people that they’re nominating, and the Council, as a whole, is approving, because
the Mayor, not just this Mayor, but any Mayor who comes in, has an agenda, and is looking to get
something done, and I have watched these - because as a Council, you can only reject, so you’ve got to
keep rejecting until they finally bring somebody that you like. Well, that doesn’t happen that way. But if
we had the Council appointing, or nominating, as individual single members, and then the whole
Council approving, I think you nine times increase the pool of people and I don’t see how you would set
a kind of agenda on a Planning Commission that you could set now. And so I think the goal here is to
make it open and participatory, and have results coming out of these Commissions that the community
has confidence in, and that’s where I’m falling in on. That does start to balance the power. And this
elected thing, we don’t elect properly all the time and so we have to be careful about that, because of
who gets involved in campaigns, and who champions them.
RAY: I just want to follow up on the Council appointment. Part of Keola’s formula to implement this
was getting the Council terms back to four years because that’s really problematic. It’s problematic in
my mind in terms of this whole issue of balance of power. That’s a huge advantage to have the Mayor in
four-year terms and the Council in two years, but in terms of Commission appointments and whatever,
have you thought that through? How that would work if you’ve got two-year term Council people?
SANTANGELO: Yes. To me, John, it does not matter if this Commissioner’s going to sit for four years.
It’s just that the Council member is the nominating person pulling them out of the community. If that
Council member turns over and that Commissioner’s there for two or three more years, when that
becomes vacant, it’s the next Council member that’s putting it in the pool. It shouldn’t matter. I don’t
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see how we’re best served by tying it to that term. It’s just how does this function go. So the four-year
term, for me, is another discussion, which I totally agree with you on, but I don’t think it impacts on this.
It’s just how do we get them nominated.
RAY: George.
MARTIN: I guess my concern on the Managing Director is, again, accountability. I hear great ideas and
I think, in concept, it’ll work, but where’s the accountability to whomever appoints this individual?
Once it becomes an appointed situation, even if we write into the Charter some guidelines as to
responsibilities for the individual, it’s going to become political, and that worries me. If there was some
fail safe measure to rid us of the politics that’s going to be involved in it, and it’s not. It’s impossible.
And I agree, Sue. Then I’d have no problem with it, but until that, I have some concerns and
reservations about it under any format that we’re looking at.
RAY: Okay. But versus what we have now, which is totally political, totally discretionary - I mean, the
Mayor can literally hire anybody as the Managing Director -
SANTANGELO: Or nobody.
RAY: And just willy nilly or, I mean I’m just saying.
MARTIN: Yes, I understand that, too. And to put into the Charter some guidelines to what we expect of
the Managing Director, and if we leave it in the same format, then no problem, where we’re trying to
guide them. But then we start taking away from the individual’s ability to do their job, like I believe I
heard you say about Corp Counsel. If you read what Corp Counsel’s responsibilities are, it’s only to help
out the County government and so, to have somebody elected in that position really doesn’t make too
much sense.
IRVINE: Well, right now the Mayor appoints him though, and so he doesn’t -
BESS: But he’s confirmed.
IRVINE: Yes, he’s or her.
MARTIN: Well, that too, but I think his main function is to take care of the County agencies, and that’s
it, not you and I.
IRVINE: No, it’s the County Council as well, though. He’s answerable to both.
RAY: Okay, but I think, to me, the question is do you want somebody running a two hundred million
dollar a year business with 2600 employees, dealing with very complex issues today in terms of solid
waste, waste water, whatever, that’s not a professional manager, experienced in that.
MARTIN: No I don’t, John.
RAY: And the reason these big line departments, Parks and Rec, Public Works and whatever, these are
the areas that any qualified City Manager deals with routinely, can bring in state-of-the-art expertise in
terms of how these things are organized, how these things are managed. We haven’t had anybody
working in this County, maybe never, that’s had any expertise in solid waste.
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HERKES: We’ve hired consultants, however, for thousands of dollars, and you don’t listen to them.
RAY: Yes, but we adopted an integrated solid waste plan, whatever, that’s never been implemented.
HERKES: We don’t listen to them. You elected people.
RAY: But we’ve never had anybody, and I’m just saying, if you brought in a City Manager type, it’s a
given that they’d have an enormous amount of experience, exposure and expertise in these kinds of
things.
HERKES: Is it a given that the Council will listen to them? No, and that’s the problem because we
brought in Brown and Ferris. We brought in tons of people.
RAY: Wait.
HERKES: Well, he just started on something that really irritates me. We spent millions on consultants.
RAY: Wait. The problem has not been the Mayor.
HERKES: No, it’s been the Council.
RAY: I mean has not been the Council. No, the problem has been the Mayor.
HERKES: No, (indiscernible).
RAY: Marni, I was there. Okay? I was Chairman of the Public Works Committee. Okay?
HERKES: I was on the Landfill Site Committee.
RAY: The problem has been the Mayor. The Mayor has not moved forward this agenda at all, in fact,
he’s blocked it from moving forward. The Council, on numerous occasions, requested, in writing, for the
Chief Engineer to come to the County Council to address this issue and they didn’t even come. They
didn’t even show up.
MARTIN: No need to.
RAY: So, it is not the Council that has not tried to move forward on this. So, anyway.
MARTIN: Okay, back to my concern, if I may, John. It’s the individual who becomes this person, and
how they become this person is what’s concerning me. Will we have, in it’s present form, nine member
single districts, the accountability, as a person from Hamakua, to deal with that person? That’s my
concern. If we can address it, then no problem, but as of yet, I haven’t seen that.
RAY: Steve.
BESS: I am very much in favor of a professional manager, but one of the concerns that I have is that it’s
one thing for the Council to be involved in the selection of that County Manager, but if we start to look
at that manager as being beholding to the Council, that that Council is, in effect, an Administrative body,
such as Helene was talking about earlier, I have a real problem with that. You should really be looking
at the Council as a Board of Directors, and you’ve got this CEO. And look, the details, the management,
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you don’t have anything to say about it, Council. I would hate for the Council to be interfering in the
daily affairs of government, making it impossible for the Managing Director to be efficient.
RAY: And I think it’s interesting that the Lexington model moved in that direction. You didn’t get this,
but a change that they made is in regard to the appointment of the Chief Administrative Officer, is that
that position is now appointed by the Mayor, approved the Council, and reports directly to the Mayor.
They found, I think, for just those reasons, that it was very unwieldy, and from an Administrative
standpoint, especially with the Mayor appointing the Department Heads, that it didn’t make sense for the
Council to be the guy’s boss that was the Chief Administrative Officer. So, I think that’s a model that
now makes even more sense. But we’ve got a tremendous resource of this guy who Sue got the
information from, who was a member of the original Charter Commission, and he served on two
additional Charter Revision Committees. He’s a Council person at-large for this jurisdiction and he’s a
personal friend of Sue’s, and is very accessible to us in terms of understanding this. So, I don’t have a
clue how a lot of this really works, but we’re going to get that information.
HERKES: Let’s bring him up.
IRVINE: As I said, he’d probably love to come out this winter.
HERKES: Does he work for an airline? That’s how we got the township people?
RAY: Excuse me. I was thinking that this week that I’m going to give him a call the first of the week,
and I’m going to ask him if he might be interested in coming out. I think he’d be a terrific resource to
come out and talk to us.
HERKES: And we could have a workshop on just how his government works, and also, I know that
you’ve had lunch with Randy MacDonald, and I talked to Randy MacDonald, who was a Council person
in Eugene, Oregon, and they had their Police and Fire Commission, or Departments, merged. Then in
another election, they un-merged them. Now they’re moving back to merge them again. But in the
Department of Public Safety, talking to him about how that works and things, and he lives here. He’d be
happy to provide input on the reasons for that and how that might work, and anything else that Eugene
might have done that’s interesting.
RAY: Gary.
YOSHIYAMA: I would agree with us talking to some expert but I would suggest that we look at video
conferencing first. And if that is insufficient, that maybe we can spend some money to get somebody
over.
IRVINE: They might bring themselves over. I don’t know. I mean, we could invite them. They can stay
with us if they want.
HERKES: Maybe Lexington will pay for them.
IRVINE: That’s true, too.
YOSHIYAMA: I did want to speak on that County Manager concept. I don’t know what I would be in
favor of but I certainly am in favor of more professionalism, some kind of beefing up of the
qualifications, no matter what form that we take, and to me, it’s not a matter of balance of power. It’s
not a matter of one body, be it Legislative or Executive, meddling into the affairs of the other side,
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because I don’t think we’re going to get rid of that. I think if we hire a County Manager the Council will
still try to influence that person’s decision, but however -
RAY: But, I think if you create much more credibility and professionalism in that position, say you take
an issue like solid waste, and you’ve got a guy coming out here from Indianapolis who’s got 20 years’
experience in solid waste vs. somebody in our Public Works Department who has zero experience in
solid waste. There’s a huge amount of difference in who the County’s going to listen to.
YOSHIYAMA: Oh yes, I agree, John. What I’m saying, we’re not going to get rid of it but we’re going
to make it better.
HERKES: Yes, and that’s probably the most that we can hope for.
RAY: Steve.
BESS: One of the things, when we started off this discussion, John, you were saying, hey, look, we need
more professionalism in government; we need it to be more responsive, and linked in with
professionalism was the idea of efficiency, which obviously, follows. But one of the things that was
pointed out to me, when Jiro was testifying, when we were talking about centralizing the permit process,
that, and granted the sensitivity that there are bodies in positions and what have you, however, it was
very interesting to me that there was never any discussion about reduction, or that there would be greater
efficiency with the same number of people. And, just a couple of thoughts out there about what this
Charter Commission ought to be doing. I think one of the perceptions of government is its size. I mean,
is the size of government out of proportion with the private sector? And I think it is. And, to what extent
should our functions being performed by the government, that really should be performed in the private
sector, rather than the public sector. I think that thought is out there as well in terms of people looking at
the way government is functioning now.
RAY: My sense is the most realistic way for us to address that is to concentrate on a more efficient,
service-oriented government rather than a change. And we’re a growing economy, we’re a growing
island, and hopefully, the cost of government won’t grow as rapid a rate. Rather than changing and
doing away with things, if we make things more efficient, arguably, things will get more in line. Gary is
a great person to speak to this, representing more labor in terms of his profession, and I don’t know what
you’re comfortable sharing, and whatever, but I don’t see the reduction in government as being a goal
that we want to undertake.
HERKES: I feel very strongly that that shouldn’t be a goal, but go ahead.
YOSHIYAMA: I guess I would disagree with Steve. Where I would come from, Steve, is that I believe,
for one thing, that there is so much for government to do. I mean, even from the Council standpoint,
from the Executive Branch standpoint, there are so many projects and tasks to be done that they’re not
getting to. So, if we were to combine some functions, we would get rid of people, or would we put them
in more useful jobs so they can get these things that are on the books for years, like fixing up hundreds
of miles of roads, that kind of stuff.
BESS: I see.
YOSHIYAMA: So, it’s a reallocation rather than hey, if government is too big for what they’re doing,
they’ve got plenty jobs.
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RAY: Marni.
HERKES: I want to finish. Going back to talk about our Mayor, who is very strong and has been in
government for a long time, so he understands the system, and that’s part of this whole scenario, is
understanding how the system works. But he’s also a person who is fiscally sound. Our County has run
very well financially while he’s been in charge, both on the Council and as Mayor, and I think that
concerns me in the future, not having somebody that’s fiscally sound. We’re perfectly capable of
electing somebody that doesn’t have that fiscal background, and I think that’s the important part of the
performance of a CEO, of making sure that that fiscal background is there, that somebody understands
how bonds are floated. Somebody can negotiate bonds. They understand the bottom line of the County.
They understand how things operate and they’re probably more in tune with the private sector in a
horizontal operation, rather than a vertical operation. There’s no reason that the Executive Branch,
Administrative Branch can’t operate horizontally, as well as, now they’re kind of vertical. I think that, in
that same time span, the Mayor’s a very action oriented person. He would rather do something than talk
about it. It gets him into a lot of trouble, and it’s not something that we all agree with, or maybe we
would put out there, as a requirement for a Mayor, but I think it’s important to recognize that that action
has moved us into the forefront of the State, and it’s been kind of a shock for a lot of us in business to
be, all of a sudden, in the forefront of the State. To have the highest room rate, to have an economy
that’s moving forward, to be supportive. And all the neighbor islands are in that. So I think it’s
important that we really look at where we’re going in the future. How we’re going to operate. We have a
head of steam. We need to really look at how our government can support that head of steam, and how
we look through the future, controlling that head of steam, rather than having it control us, and that’s the
runaway thing.
I think that the one thing that I want to see for all of the positions that we put in the County Charter, is
performance reviews. All of the programs, that we ought to write them in. This is an excellent, in fact I
think I’m going to use some of it in the Chamber, but it’s an excellent document, and I think it’s
important, in everything we do, we look at what are the kinds of performances that we expect out of
these people, and how do we monitor them, and what are the repercussions if you don’t do it. And I
think that’s where we’ll get some accountability from our government officials.
RAY: Mr. Takahashi did address that to some degree so we need to be clear about that. It’s not like the
County’s totally unaware of this and not - John.
SANTANGELO: I agree with Gary on certain points. One of the things that I’d love to see change in
government, and I don’t think it’s our purview here, is, again, the sharing of technology, where
somebody can move from one desk to another more freely, and that would come, I’d imagine. But,
again, the City Manager, or the Council Manager, or the Managing Director, can have performance
based standards applied to it, which takes a bit of this politics out of it. In talking about more efficient
government, first of all, I think we need to find out pretty soon what we’re going to do so we can get it
done over the next so many months. What about patronage government? Is there anything we want to do
with that? Like, one of the things I liked about the City Manager to begin with, was that all of a sudden
these Department Heads were no longer appointed by an elected official, and that took the politics out of
that. But what about within the Council? What about within the Mayor? Is there anything we want to do,
looking at patronage, or is that out also? Because we can lead by example there.
RAY: I have asked for input from the Legislative Auditor’s Office in regard to that issue, specifically for
that office so we will be getting some input. And I have no idea but I know she shares my concern with
how it works now, but what we’ll be getting out of that, I’m not sure.
HIGASHI: What are you talking about?
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IRVINE: Connie.
RAY: Staffing in the Legislative Auditor Office. Beefing up the qualifications. Maybe addressing the
continuity of the staffing there, because now they’re all political non-civil service. They’re all political
patronage.
IRVINE: Everybody under Connie is non-civil service?
RAY: Yes. There’s one person in that office.
SANTANGELO: And it’s another one of those examples where you have, like the Managing Director,
tremendous ability to have things done right and yet, through the political process, maybe not have the
clout there that you need.
IRVINE: I know the office well. I had no idea that they were not civil service, other than Connie.
SANTANGELO: It comes down to the fractionalization to where, again, it’s kind of like tow the line so
you can really be totally undermined in your ability to serve your district and the public by the resources
that are you are restricted from, or given access to, and we talk about better government. Thanks.
RAY: George, do you have something to say?
MARTIN: Yes. I think restriction on what you’re talking about, John, is possibly sometimes self-
induced, but that’s beside the point. You touched upon, again, the politics of the individual Department
Heads, and drawing back to my concern, it’s still there. If the Managing Director, or whatever we want
to call it we go to, they still would appoint these individuals, so the politics would still be there, in a
round about way, but it would still be there.
Touching upon what Gary said about the Union side of what Steve brought up, I think that efficiency,
and I agree with him, that it’s got to be looked at, but it’s usually not the workers. They’re willing to do
it, and probably capable of doing it. It’s at mid-management, or possibly upper management, that stops
them and stymies them. And if we have control here to make the change that is necessary to allow them
to do their job, then yes, we should be doing it, and I think that’s what we’re talking about.
RAY: Are you ready for a break?
HERKES: Well, I want to say first that we keep talking about attitudes of workers, and really, we’ve
instilled those attitudes legislatively, and I think that’s what we need to look at. The policy makes the
behavior and when the behavior starts to change, the attitudes change, but it’s important to recognize
that it’s the policy that the Legislature and the Council instills that will change behavior, one way or the
other, for good or for bad. So I agree a little with George. I agree a lot.
BESS: I know we’re all ready to go to lunch but the whole idea of setting up very clear standards for our
Managing Director, to what extent should those clear standards be brought down to Department Head
level, and should we be trying to define those positions as well, with an eye towards increasing the
professionalism in government, and building the kind of work force that you’d like?
RAY: That’s very much in our purview, and we’ve discussed it to some degree, and the Charter
Commissions have routinely looked at those, so I think we will review those. John.
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SANTANGELO: Just to throw some of the things I’ve read in here, with Managing Directors, George.
When that’s performance based, that person’s job, he or she, has got to perform and they’re choosing a
team that gets that done, and in some of these counties where they’ve used a Managing Director, the
political entities have changed over time and time again, while a particular manager went on and on
because of that person’s ability. Some of these counties have had this for, what, 75 or 60 years, and have
had six or seven directors. So, these directors aren’t just instantly changed. They’re performing. They’re
doing their job well, and political bodies are coming on board. So, just by historically looking at this,
you see that they’re working in a certain way that takes away some of the fear, and again, I go back to
‘compared to what’. And, compared to what we have today, almost anything we do with this Board in
the way it’s talking, is better than what we’ve got. Thank you.
RAY: Okay, let’s break for lunch.
RECESSED The Chairman called a lunch recess at 12:10 p.m.
RECONVENED The meeting reconvened at 1:24 p.m.
RAY: Let’s call the meeting back to order. We were still in a general discussion over the general
direction or philosophies, or whatever. Does anybody want to contribute to that discussion anymore at
this point?
YOSHIYAMA: I would, in fact.
RAY: Okay, Gary.
YOSHIYAMA: It’s pretty interesting stuff that I heard today from Helene Hale, and the government is
set up top down rather than bottom up. I thought that was pretty good, and I thought that fit in well with
the next speaker who talked about confidence and participation. I agree with you, John, about
professionalism, accountability, and efficiency. And the other one that I’m concerned with, trying to fit
all of this together, is representation. I don’t think I agree with many of the people who came before us
wanting so many elections. I guess I’m troubled. How can we be efficient, yet, and have our leaders still
be accountable. If we get everybody involved, it won’t be efficient, yet, on the other hand, we want
representation. We want government to be responsive, and I don’t know how to address that. How far do
we go? I don’t have any answers.
RAY: Okay. Anybody?
IRVINE: I guess I had one comment about what Gary just said. Helene was talking about top down and
that in other jurisdictions lots more people are elected. I’m willing to concede to Steve Bess here, that
electing the Corporation Counsel probably wouldn’t be a good idea because it is hard for people to know
the qualifications of a lawyer, to practice good law. However, on Boards and Commissions, maybe we
could add an elected element that would let people feel a little more empowered, and make these Boards
and Commissions more distinctly separate from the Administration, or whoever’s overseeing them.
RAY: The other suggestion versus electing the Boards and Commissions and John, you want to follow
that that since you -
SANTANGELO: Again, sometimes it’s what are we reacting to or responding to, and most of it seemed
to bring up this lack of confidence, and so I go back to the Council appointment type thing, because then
if we got the single member district, and that member is active in the community, then I think there’s
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more of an attachment, and at least, as an experiment for a certain period of time. And this discussion
was earlier, Sue, but when you talk about electing certain Commissions, I think it’d be apropos or
prudent to think of which Commission, and who would be the ones running for those offices, and who
would be the advocates of those campaigns, and the Police Commission is one of those. You know,
that’s a heavy duty one. How many cops would you have running? How many cops would you have in a
campaign? And you may well get something elected that you’re not wanting, where if we’re electing
Council members, we’re paying attention to that, and they’re appointing, we have an accountable person
to go to, and I think, it’s disseminating it more, and it does bring it closer to the people, and we’re
getting the job done at the same time because the other eight have to vote on it, and hopefully, we’re
looking at this individual as having the qualifications and the open mindedness. And then, with nine
different people doing that, I think you’ll get the mix. Because right now, again, saying how far away
from what we have do we go. Right now you have one individual making all the recommendations and
the Council can only reject, so that the pool is coming from a specific philosophy, so that’s my main
thing to that.
RAY: Marni.
HERKES: I think I agree with some of what John said, that we don’t have to elect all the Boards and
Commissions. We can be selective, and we can also reorganize Boards and Commissions, and we’ve
talked about that. Appeals, Corporation Counsel, Public Safety. Those kinds of things where we have
policy making bodies that have Commissions attached to them, and the rest of it is appointed or goes
under the CEO, so I don’t think we need to look at all of the Boards or Commissions. In fact, we’ve
talked a lot about different Boards and Commissions, or different structure, so I’d like to say that when
we talk about electing, or appointing, that maybe the discussion here is what are we going to keep and
how are we going to reorganize it, and then we figure out how we get the people in.
RAY: Well, we’re into that discussion. There’s no reason not to pursue it a little bit. We mentioned
Police and Fire. We don’t have a Fire Commission but if we were to have a Commission, and I think,
arguably, by far, the other most substantial Commission, by far, is Planning, of course.
HERKES: What else?
IRVINE: I did look through the Charter and come up with the Commissions that were mentioned, as far
as I know. If anybody has something else, they could add it. There’s Civil Service, has five members;
Police, nine members; Planning, nine members; Appeals, seven members; Liquor, seven members;
Ethics, five members; and then, of course, there’s the Special Charter and the Reapportionment, which -
RAY: Okay, Water Commission.
IRVINE: Yes, Water, nine members; Salary, nine members; and Pension, five members. Oh, there’s a
Liquor Adjudication Board of Appeals, or something, which is little, but -
RAY: In terms of the most active, highest profile Commission, there’s no question it’s Planning.
IRVINE: Right.
RAY: Since they have permitting powers. They have tremendous powers vested in the Planning
Commission. And that’s another issue that needs to be discussed, as well, in terms of the powers because
it operates differently in different jurisdictions. On Oahu, they’re advisory only. But certainly, they have
a tremendous amount of power in terms of granting permits, so the Planning Commission is, by far, the
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most substantial day to day, active type Commission. And then, I think, Police and Fire, arguably, would
follow behind in terms of you know - John.
SANTANGELO: So take the Planning Commission as one of those to look at. The reality of it vs. the
theory. I know, from having been on the Council, planning is a money thing on this island, and so, do
we want -
HERKES: Is a what?
SANTANGELO: It effects a lot of money. And so, where would be the interest? If we’re going to have
people running for an office, where does that money come from, for an election, and what’s the end
result? And, if it’s for a volunteer position, a non-paid position. Now, if we have these individuals, again
I go back to the scenario of the Council appointing, or at least nominating from a district, then you’re
getting nine representatives from nine different districts, and then you’re building a volunteer Board that
comes together and starts to develop policy with different philosophies. I would fear for better
government, and again, that goes back to better participation. If we took a lot of these Commissions and
made them nine, you’d have more people involved and you’re empowering your Council member,
which makes those races important. Let it happen there. And with the Planning Commission, I think
we’re best served through the nominating process vs. an election process because I do worry about that.
I mean, I would worry.
HERKES: Is Planning a Council function? Isn’t Planning an Administrative function?
RAY: Planning, I would say, yes. Permitting, isn’t that more what you’re asking about?
HERKES: Well, I’m asking about the Council. Planning, to me, is a policy making body. We get mixed
up in our Planning Commission, and they may not be all policy making now, but they are a policy
making body, and in the structure, I look at that under the Administration.
SANTANGELO: And again, please understand where I’m coming from. They’re not answerable to the
Council once they’re in that position, but how do we come up with putting a body together that is
representative of the people? It’s administrative, but do you go back to a Mayor, who then is single
handedly nominating these individuals, or do you allow that to come through the Council, let that go
together. Then they become autonomous. They’re not answerable again, and their term could be, maybe
more than the Council. That’s the only point I bring up, and how you feel about it is - I mean, I’m not
really attached. I’m just saying for discussion, this is how I see it.
RAY: Chris, do you have anything to add? Any thoughts?
YUEN: No, it’s not a legal question. I think you can legally have an elected Planning Commission, or
you could change it to appointed by the Council members. It’s really what’s a good idea, and it’s
completely up to the Commission here to make that decision.
RAY: This is, by far, the decision of greatest consequence so I think we really need to look long and
hard at this, and get considerable amount of input, not only from other Commission members, but from
the Administration and the Planning Commission itself. George.
MARTIN: Yes, just asking you, Sue, a question. You had all the Departments down there that had a
Commission. Did you mention Water?
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IRVINE: Yes.
MARTIN: Okay. I think Water would probably carry a little bit more precedence than Police and/or
Fire, if we had one because they, too, set forth money matters, yes, with the pay rate. So, that one there
is really important too, but I don’t want to touch it. Just bringing a point of clarification.
RAY: Sue.
IRVINE: I can see what John’s saying about having the County Council come up with these appointees,
and doing it in an appointed manner rather than electing. To me, it’s all out there as a possibility. But the
other thing we need to look at is, then where these Commissions sit within the County once they’re
appointed, and I really did feel, the other night, that Del Pranke’s suggestion that Ethics and - What else
did he want? - to go over under the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
RAY: Police.
IRVINE: Yes, Police and Ethics. Commissions that really need to be independent from the agencies that
they’re overseeing.
RAY: Okay. If you’ll remember the comments from the agencies there, where they felt that that was
addressed. You remember the Police -
IRVINE: Yes.
RAY: Okay, I’m just reminding -
IRVINE: Yes. Okay, yes, but as a practical matter, I mean, we’ve all been reading the paper, and there’s
a problem.
RAY: Well, I don’t know that that’s the same argument.
MARTIN: It’s separate and different issues, I think. And it’s got to be kept in that manner. I hear what
you’re saying, but if you heard what the body, per se, Police Commission, does, has nothing to do with
what’s in the paper right now. It wouldn’t be in the purview at any point anyway, so to move it to the
Prosecuting Attorney, I don’t see where it makes sense.
IRVINE: I wonder if - See, policemen are individual residents of this island as well as policemen.
MARTIN: Sure.
IRVINE: Would one of these people have felt comfortable going to the Commission with a problem?
MARTIN: Okay, I see what you’re saying but I think that what you’re not hearing is that the
Commission has no play on it. Even if you took it to the Commission, it’s not their body to do what is -
IRVINE: It was to look into complaints from citizens. Now, that policeman is a citizen that sees a
problem going on. At this point - And well, there’s the ‘Code of Blue’, also. They don’t want to rat on
other officers or something, but if that Commission had been outside the Police Department. If it had
been over at the Prosecutor’s, or somewhere else, would one of these policemen, who was saving notes
from people on these hiring things, been willing to go to them and say, you know, I’m very
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uncomfortable and I think something needs to be done.
MARTIN: Maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe I’m mistaken with what the Commission is actually supposed to
do, Police Commission. Legal Counsel, I’m turning to you at this point. Would it be in their privy to
take under advisement, somebody bringing up something like that, and have any power to address it? At
this present time, who appoints the Police Chief?
IRVINE: It says receive -
RAY: The Commission.
HERKES: And who appoints the Deputy?
RAY: The Chief.
MARTIN: The Chief. So, Chris.
YUEN: Actually, a lot of the related material - I don’t know if people remember there was a big flak at
the Police Commission over some of the stuff that led up to what is coming out in the Court case in
1988. The formal powers of the Police Commission are really just about limited to hiring and removing
the Chief of Police. They advise on Police/community relations, and they have this investigatory - they
can take complaints and issue a decision on complaints about police officers. If the Police Commission
felt that there was something drastically wrong in the Police Department, the Police Commission could
launch an inquiry. They are allowed to inquire into matters, and this was what was going on in 1988,
before Chief Paul resigned. A number of police officers who were being disciplined, or thought they
were going to be disciplined, turned the tables on the Chief by going to the Police Commission, and
there was hearings being scheduled, and then Chief Paul resigned. So, in that sense, the Police
Commission presently does have some oversight function. The specific things about the promotional
exams. Had those been learned about by the people who didn’t get jobs, in the time frame that this was
actually taking place, it could have been the subject of a Civil Service grievance, or a Union grievance,
which would have gone through the grievance channels, and the Police Commission would not have had
any role, and would not have been allowed to play any role, in changing the promotions or saying that
the person had a valid grievance. That would have had to have gone through those other channels
because, by the way the Charter is set up, the Police Commission is not supposed to interfere in anything
to do, certainly, with promotions and raising people up. What they can do is they deal with the Chief,
and if they can inquire, they can find out what the facts are. If they’re unhappy enough with what’s
going on, they can fire the Chief.
RAY: John.
SANTANGELO: Maybe I’m not sure that we all understand, at least, or that I understand what the
‘Code of Blue’ is. But, basically you have a paramilitary organization that has to deal in a particular part
of society, and they have a code among themselves, and that code isn’t written down anymore than it’s
written whether we’re gender correct, or religious correct -
HERKES: Do you really want to get into this?
SANTANGELO: But, when it comes to the Police Commission, and that was the whole thing, I
understood it’s the public to the police type of arbitration, and it really isn’t involved in that part of it,
and so I asked the Major, at the time, and I feel the same way, unless it’s really important that we put it
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under the Prosecuting Attorney, I really don’t care which way it goes. As long as it’s operating properly,
they didn’t seem to care how it came about, as long as they did their job. But, understanding that it’s not
an Administrative. It doesn’t get involved in like this police cheating, was the only point that I wanted to
make.
RAY: Any other comments on that? Okay, well, we’re trying to get a handle on this overall issue of
Boards and Commissions, and clearly, there’s been some sentiment expressed, you know, address them
overall under the heading of public confidence and participation, and trying to improve both. So, does
anybody have any suggestions on how we do that? We’ve, I think, identified the more significant
Commissions that might be considered for some sort of a change in terms of how they’re created, either
by direct election or by appointment by the Council, and there probably are other scenarios that we’re
not aware of, as well. Marni.
HERKES: The things that I outline are Planning, Public Safety and Water, as being the three important
Commissions, that were policy making bodies, and those would be the three, if I were looking at an
elected body, those would be the three that I’d look at, but I’m not really saying that I want to elect all of
them. I’m just saying that they are the most important to focus on. The Civil Service, Salary, and
Pension, all are Administrative things, and maybe somebody else can help as to what those would go
under. But, seems to me that at a management level, they would all go under some department. And the
Appeals and the Ethics are probably under something else, maybe the Corp Counsel. Maybe that’s what
they go under. And then I’m left with Liquor sitting out here somewhere, and I don’t know where to put
Liquor. But, that’s kind of what’s in my mind, and I’m just going to throw that out, so people can, kind
of, look at that structure, and see whether that works.
SANTANGELO: But one of the ways, I’d say, looking at it, and very similar to Marni’s, but if we could
take a look at these - Let’s just say, we’re going to appoint. Dialogue and decide how it’s going to
happen, and also, on the other discussion is what are we going to elect, so that we just go through and
know, okay, we won’t elect that, put them in the appointed. No we’re not, yes we are going to elect that,
and then work with that. So, kind of dividing out what do we want to be elected, what do we not, and if
they’re not, how, and if they are, how. And go through the process with each one.
RAY: Okay. When you say elected, you mean elected by the general public.
SANTANGELO: Yes, or some other form, but that’s what I mean.
HERKES: I was going to say, what other form did you have in mind?
SANTANGELO: Yes, really.
IRVINE: Maybe nominated by the - yes.
SANTANGELO: There might be another form, you know, but yes, I’m thinking of the general public
because that’s all I’m aware of.
RAY: Any other discussion on this?
HERKES: Gary. I’m looking at Gary for Civil Service.
YOSHIYAMA: I don’t know if it’s a significant factor, but as we throw these various Commissions out
on the table for discussion, if we look at - Police Commission hires the Department Head.
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IRVINE: Civil Service too.
YOSHIYAMA: Civil Service, Water, Liquor. They have that additional duty besides administrative, and
I guess, of policy making. They hire directly their principal manager or whatever. And then the proposal
that was put forth to us on Fire Commission was the same, hiring the Chief. I just throw that out there. I
don’t know if that would be significant in our determination of who gets appointed, by whom, or who
gets elected, in the Commissions.
RAY: At our next meeting, interestingly enough, we do have the opportunity to get direct input on two
of these Commissions because we have Department of Water and Water Commission scheduled, and I
also wanted to try to bring in Police Commission, Police Department, and Corporation Counsel, who
wasn’t there at the last meeting. So, we can go over the areas that we weren’t able to address in the last
meeting. In other words, the specific suggestion from Corporation Counsel in terms of the purview of
the Police Commission. We want to have the Police Commission there to respond to that, and
Corporation Counsel. So that would certainly be a good opportunity that we can dialogue with those
groups in terms the make-up and how those Commissions are appointed, or elected, or whatever. Okay?
HERKES: Okay.
RAY: Any more general comments? And if we don’t, this may or may not work, but I was thinking if
we just all pull out our Charters and start from the beginning, page 2.
HERKES: Okay.
RAY: And just kind of run through it. There’s some areas we’ve dealt with, almost entirely for now.
There’s some that we’ve dealt with partially. There’s some we haven’t dealt with at all. And just kind of
go through and do a review and give us all a sense, collectively, of the challenges ahead.
SANTANGELO: There’s one area that I’d like us to pay particular attention because of what’s going on.
But, we have two ways of removing somebody from office, an impeachment that has -
RAY: Well, let’s wait till we get there.
SANTANGELO: Okay, because that’s important to me.
RAY: Unless you want to bring that up in the context of some larger - let’s just get there.
SANTANGELO: Okay.
RAY: So, looking on page 2, ARTICLES I and II, I think we summarily passed judgment on those.
ARTICLE III, the Legislative Branch, we really haven’t dealt with at all, so there’s a significant area.
We’ve gotten very little input from individual Council people. I’ve been surprised, especially, and we
have solicited it on more than one occasion. Section 3-2, the Composition and Terms, we’ve started to
discuss that, and so we need to continue that discussion, and get a sense of where we’re headed there.
IRVINE: John, I know you care about the length of the term for the County Council.
RAY: I’ll address that. Yes, I feel very strongly we’d be a lot better with four-year terms, and I don’t
think it makes any sense to bring it up.
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HERKES: Sue wanted to bring something up.
IRVINE: Yes, I was just going to say, that particular idea was defeated by 59% of the vote last time, so
it’s hard.
RAY: Yes, right. As much as I’d like to see it, it just doesn’t seem worth bringing it up again.
IRVINE: Okay. That’s what I was thinking.
RAY: I’ll reserve final judgment until we put together a package, and if there’s some way it makes sense
in the context of a larger theme, then I’d like to be able to consider it.
IRVINE: Yes, sure.
RAY: Gary.
YOSHIYAMA: So, those of us who belong in the 41% still would like to discuss it.
RAY: Great.
SANTANGELO: And those of us in the 41%, from experience, would like the other 59% to, maybe,
understand why, especially if us 41 don’t intend to seek office again, or whatever, you know, that have
been there and done that. Could we somehow put some information on the table that starts to show why
this may or may not be good, and frankly, government itself is kind of showing us a lot of that. I mean,
take a look at what we’re getting, time after time, and how it’s just slowly eroding to a -
HERKES: We may have, yet, one year terms if it’s -
SANTANGELO: Frankly, Sue, I’d like the six month term right now.
HERKES: Sorry, Mr. Chair.
RAY: So, that’s obviously a discussion which we need to have in more detail. The member that
expressed some initial interest in this, Mr. Higashi’s not here, but I think the sooner the better we take
this up and kind of knock it out, the composition and terms.
The nonaligned elections we’ve expressed positive, or straw vote, in favor -
HERKES: Where does that go?
RAY: It will come in -
MARTIN: Way in the back.
HERKES: I think so.
RAY: It will also effect some of the language in here, if we -
Removal of Council Members.
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SANTANGELO: In 3-4, we did have that housekeeping.
YOSHIYAMA: Yes, Harry Takahashi.
SANTANGELO: Yes, from the two to four year, that if it stays four, you’ve got to clean that part up at
the bottom.
IRVINE: Right, the last paragraph.
RAY: Right.
SANTANGELO: And we knew that, right?
RAY: I don’t mean this to be an -
IRVINE: Comprehensive.
RAY: In-depth, line by line, thorough review, so if something does jump out -
SANTANGELO: So, in the removal, John, that’s where I have a bone to pick in that the impeachment is
supposed to have a reason behind it, but almost no requirement to get a public support, where a recall
doesn’t need a reason but you need a certain support, and I, personally, would like to see a discussion to
say where do we want the emphasis. Is it on the reason or is it on the community support, and I weigh in
on community support, so I’d like to see recall and I’d like to see us get rid of impeachment because of
the abuse that it’s subject to. I may be wrong, and I’m open to be changed, but if we’re going to remove
somebody from office, I think that I would like to see a broader base of support in the community rather
than a knee jerk. And like this latest attempt, you had people from one district, in a single member
district, which sure didn’t want it single member when we want to impeach, try to impeach other
persons’ Council members. They didn’t even vote for them and they were trying to pull them out of
office, so I’d like to see that discussed. Thank you.
RAY: Any response to that? That’s clearly one of those high profile hot buttons you’ve got to be real
careful with strategically, in terms of what we come up with. If the public gets a sense that we’re trying
to take away their powers and ability, and whatever - For instance, if you’re looking at the four-year
term, or whatever, you sure wouldn’t want a couple suggesting four-year terms with doing away with
impeachment.
IRVINE: But John, I think impeachment and recall and whatnot, we use a lot of different language
concerning these things in our Charter, and it’s rather confusing. It’s the percentage of voters that this or
that. There are terms in there that aren’t consistent that, I think, maybe the Corp Counsel, or somebody,
told us we ought to be more consistent on.
YUEN: There’s a little bit of inconsistency in the Recall, Initiative, Referendum and the like. On
impeachment, I think, as a lawyer, I have a sense of what they were getting at in the Charter, but I think
the standards could be more accurately written. I think the impeachment in this case, where you have a
Court do it, you’re having a judge having the possibility of removing somebody who was elected by the
public. It’s a legal question, and it’s really limited to cases where there is some serious abuse of power,
some serious failure to perform responsibilities that are set out in the Charter, or either criminal or near
criminal kinds of behavior. I think that if that’s the intention, and I think that was the intention, the
language could be tightened up a little bit. The word ‘maladministration’ bothers me a little bit in there,
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which makes it sound like the judge could get rid of the Mayor for being a lousy Mayor. You know,
unemployment is up, the budget didn’t balance, just sort of sloppy - you know, that’s not the point of
having an impeachment proceeding. I think you need to keep a way of having impeachment in those
specific situations where there is actual illegal conduct by the public official so that you don’t actually
go through an election to get rid of them, the person has embezzled money or something like that. So,
that can be tightened up.
RAY: Okay.
BESS: With regard to that impeachment, I’d like to ask Chris if he would address that, and provide us
some language, because I like it keyed to illegal conduct, that he suggested, so that if you could provide
an Amendment. I so move.
IRVINE: Second.
RAY: Where is it?
IRVINE: Page 26.
BESS: I’m sorry. 26. It’s 12-2.1.
RAY: I’ve got it. The other thing that I was kind of shocked at, and I guess I’d read this but didn’t have
it in the back of my mind, was the requirement of only a 100 votes. Voters seem to - make a pretty low
threshold.
IRVINE: I’d certainly like to hear what other jurisdictions do on that. It sounds terribly low to me, and
here’s one of those words ‘qualified electors’ where sometimes we use other words in the Charter
meaning, I think, the same thing, under Recall.
RAY: What was the issue? Was there a legal issue in regard to voters not in Council member’s district?
SANTANGELO: It wasn’t so bad, the Mayor, but with the other Council members they threw in with it,
you can’t impeach someone that you weren’t involved in the election, apparently. That was the -
HERKES: You can’t?
IRVINE: No, that’s what they said.
HERKES: Where does the - That’s not -
SANTANGELO: That’s what the Court said.
MARTIN: That was a judge’s decision.
HERKES: Is that a State law?
IRVINE: Yes, the Court said that. That’s why they threw it out.
SANTANGELO: District 5 could not impeach District 6's representative.
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IRVINE: That kind of thing.
SANTANGELO: What?
IRVINE: Well, it doesn’t have to be a law. I think it was just -
YUEN: Is that just something that somebody said, or -
HERKES: The judge.
MARTIN: Riki May.
SANTANGELO: The judge, Riki May.
YUEN: No, I mean, where did you get that information that -
IRVINE: In the paper.
MARTIN: Out of the paper. That was her decision. From the Tribune-Herald.
SANTANGELO: But in the example of being open to new information, then, if impeachment is such
that it’s illegal where there’s been, like, an unlawful act, then maybe you don’t need a lot of signatures,
but you need to really beef up the understanding that this isn’t just because you don’t like the bugger.
That it has to be some legal thing.
RAY: Let me ask Steve this. If we did tighten the legal issue in regard to, what I think, you’re looking
at, do you still feel that the 100 qualified voters is too low a threshold, or if it had to be more of a legal
issue, does the 100 voters seem reasonable?
BESS: The thing is is that I’m as concerned about requiring more than 100 voters because illegal
conduct is something that you can put your hands around and define it.
RAY: Right, that’s what I was trying to get at.
SANTANGELO: The public might be more understanding of that, too.
HERKES: But, this doesn’t say illegal conduct, it says malfeasance, and it says bad judgment, and it
says mismanagement, so I think that’s where I have a problem with it. If it’s illegal conduct,
impeachment goes before a Court, and all you have to say, and all I would want in impeachment, was
that a judge decided that an elected official acted illegally. I need counsel.
YUEN: Well, that is the sense of it. I mean, I’m sure that’s what it means, but the word
‘maladministration’ in there bothers me, and also the malfeasance and nonfeasance is not doing
something that you’re required to do by the law. Not submitting the budget would be nonfeasance, but I
think the word ‘maladministration’ concerns me, and I haven’t worked on this, but I think if I do work
on it, we’ll come up with a better idea of what the standard for the judge taking the step of removing,
and actually impeaching and removing the Mayor would be, and clearly it’s meant to be some kind of
fairly serious transgression by the Mayor. It’s not meant to be - as I say, the word ‘maladministration’ -
that sticks out there. Malfeasance, we lawyers would understand to mean illegal conduct and
wrongdoing.
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HERKES: Illegal.
YUEN: Not necessarily criminal, but failing to do something that is required by the Charter, not carrying
out some kind of action.
HERKES: Or doing it differently.
YUEN: Right, right.
SANTANGELO: But again, my concern comes from the harassment tool. Even in this latest move, and
whether I agree with their agenda or not, it cost time, anxiety, and it -
HERKES: Money.
SANTANGELO: Money. Now, if we come back to somebody who’s done a frivolous thing and let them
pay the bill, fine. But you have many Council members that had to worry about this. You had an
Administrator who had to worry about and it, and then all the money and the Court, and all that. So, as a
harassment tool, that’s where I was coming from.
RAY: Let’s move on here. Let’s vote on that motion to have our attorney to pursue this. All in favor.
COMMISSIONERS: Aye.
RAY: In regard to the organization of the Council, I’d like to wait until we get some information, some
input, from the Legislative Auditor that I’ve requested on that.
Next Sections, 3-7, 3-8, any? Okay. 3-9, 3-10, this is all Legislative process stuff. 3-11 same. 3-12.
IRVINE: 3-12. I have something.
RAY: Okay, yes. Sue.
IRVINE: I just say, get the Section 10-5 in sync, according to Finance.
RAY: Okay, that was an issue that Mr. Takahashi brought up in regard to the process. We have a
number of items that Mr. Takahashi brought up that I wasn’t really clear on what his advice or direction
was in some of them.
IRVINE: I guess I’m not sure either.
RAY: Okay, well, we need to look that again. That’s in 3-12. That last paragraph starting "if any
appropriation bill is presented to the Mayor".
SANTANGELO: That was about he couldn’t put it back in, or something. All he can do, if they took it
out -
IRVINE: That may be what he was trying to -
HERKES: Well, it’s a line item veto.
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RAY: Okay, now this, I think, falls in, kind of, the overall context of some things Councilman Tyler
brought up and whatever, and I think we need to have that overall discussion of the Mayor vs. the
Council, and how the whole budgeting process works, and put it in that context, and look at it in that
light, overall, right? How all this stuff would work in terms of a balance of power between the Mayor
and the Council. So, we will request a little more information from the Finance Department, and
continue to explore that.
3-13. 3-14. 3-15, the General Plan.
IRVINE: I think we had some testimony on that under 3-15(c) "Amendments to the general plan may be
initiated by the council or the planning director." I think Bill Graham had said he thought that that was
over-meddling with the general plan, or gave too much leeway to the Planning Director. I don’t know if
anybody who’s been involved has any opinion on that.
BESS: Well, I personally don’t see a problem because whether the Planning Director initiates the change
or not, the Council has still got to act on it so there’s a check on it.
IRVINE: All right.
RAY: Mandatory Program Review. That’s a big one. We’ve had a number of people weighing in on
that, and there again, I want to wait until we get - the Legislative Auditor has been embroiled in the
latest exercise in regard to the marijuana eradication program, or whatever, so I asked her specifically to
comment on this in writing, so I want to wait till we get that. John.
SANTANGELO: I have a comment. In this program review being mandatory, I really feel that Council
members are there as policy, check and balance with the Mayor, but if there’s something that needs to be
investigated beyond the audit -
HERKES: Beyond the what? Auditors?
RAY: Audit.
SANTANGELO: Beyond the general audit. However they come up with it. They, themselves, as a body,
can then initiate a program review for a specific reason and therefore, you’d have the policy maker that’s
trying to be prudent within the budget and within the policy. Saying that this mandatory program really
has opened itself up for a lot of meddling, I think we have to look at where’s the public’s best interest,
and is that being served, and I think the Council has every ability to carry that, and protect the public in
that way, so I do have a problem with this and I just want to bring that viewpoint up for discussion.
RAY: Chris, when did this section get put in? Do you know?
YUEN: The Mandatory Program Review?
RAY: Yes.
YUEN: Well, it didn’t come with the last Charter ten years ago. It’s been in there a long time and
Richard Wurdeman, I think, gave a very good history of where this is coming from philosophically. It
comes from a budgetary reform process in the late 1960's. The PPBS system and the zero-based
budgeting system, with the idea that all government programs would be periodically reviewed and
justified. As I think that most people that are in government know as a matter of fact, next year’s budget
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is based on last year’s budget, and I think that as he mentioned, and I think that most people are aware,
that program planning budget system has never actually been implemented, by the fact that it takes a lot
of attention and a lot of thinking things through from scratch, and nobody’s ever gotten down to doing
that. But, this mandatory program review idea is basically part of that, and that, at some level, you are
going to look at your programs over a certain period of time, and evaluate them, and decide if you are
going to continue them or not, rather than everything being just, well, last year we spent $800,000.00 for
this program and so, next year we’re going to spend $815,000.00 for this program. In a nutshell, that’s
where this came from.
RAY: Sue, did you have a comment?
IRVINE: I think we’re going to have a hard time getting it passed the public, to throw out something
that sounds as good as mandatory program review unless we come up with some performance based
measurements that will be implemented within departments, so that then there’s no big thing about
doing a program review. It’ll be continuously reviewed and when the County Council wants
information, they’ll be able to know how many people get permitted, and this and that, and how satisfied
these people are.
RAY: George.
MARTIN: I happen to agree with Sue that to even ponder the thought of removing this from the Charter
would be detrimental to everybody’s health on this Commission. So, what do we do with it? Is there a
way to fix it? I don’t know, but as being said by Sue, is there another thing we can implement that will
take its place and satisfy, and actually do what it’s supposed to do. And as Commissioners, I think that’s
what we’ve got to look at, possibly again, with Counsel’s guidance on this particular issue.
RAY: Marni.
HERKES: I think when we talked about this before, I talked about the Maui budget. That their budget is
put in a form. And ours is a little bit too, our County Report, with goals of departments, and they never
really report on how they did. They don’t do input measures, output measures, outcome measures,
efficiency measures and service quality measures, and this is in the performance review, so if we start
with this performance review, and we make every department, especially the ones that are elected, fulfill
what are your input measures and what is your outcome, what do you want to accomplish, and then we
look at those goals and objectives at the end of every year, then we can figure out whether they’re
performing accountably. And admittedly, you can slide the words a little bit and you can make them
dance a little bit, but you’d have a bottom line there for Boards and Commissions, and departments, as
to how they set up their goals. I think Research and Development does that very well. They set up goals,
and procedures to reach those goals, and then they report on them.
RAY: Other comments? Okay, I’m not sure, but I agree that this a political mine field
HERKES: I don’t think it is.
IRVINE: Only if you replace it with something that will -
HERKES: Only if you want to grow marijuana, and I’m not interested in growing marijuana.
SANTANGELO: We’re in Economic Development now?
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RAY: Okay. We’ll get some good input from the Legislative Auditor in terms of the people that had to
do it.
3-17. County Reapportionment Commission. That trigger any -
MARTIN: Yes, it does, actually. Just by looking at it right now, and reading the second page on it, and
when it’s supposed to be implemented, it’s in 1991 and every ten years after that. Now, it’s going to be
an issue if we do begin to look at reapportioning our Council make-up as we know it, in that if we want
to go to six-three, or whatever format we’re looking at, other than what is in it’s present form, we’re
going to have to make some reapportionments, and this becomes -
HERKES: Wait, wait, wait. We don’t do that.
MARTIN: If we wanted to put it on the Charter for vote, what do you mean, we don’t do that?
HERKES: We don’t do reapportionments.
RAY: No, he’s saying if we wanted to change the Charter in regard to reapportionment -
MARTIN: Not too much reapportion-
RAY: Is there any -
MARTIN: This would fall into it, wouldn’t it? I mean, we’re lagging one year, is what I’m saying. We’d
have to change the date to have them look at it, if in fact we were to put something in the Charter to
make a change on our Council make-up as we know it now. Instead of nine individual districts, we went
to six-three. That’s all I’m saying, unless I’m reading it wrong. And you being from Kona, would
probably know more than me, so no problem.
HERKES: I don’t read that. That’s what I’m saying.
MARTIN: The year 1991 -
IRVINE: It would be 2001.
HERKES: We don’t have an election until 2001.
RAY: Excuse me everybody. The six-three combination would be accommodated in the State
Legislative Districts, right, Chris?
YUEN: Currently, you could do that but you would have to go on and have a clause that said what you
did, if you didn’t have six legislative districts anymore, because of a decline in the relative population,
or an increase in the relative population. As somebody mentioned here, we could wind up with a canoe
State Representative District, and then, probably, what you’d say is you would instruct the
Reapportionment Commission to try to follow the district representatives lines as closely as possible, but
they would have to make some kind of an adjustment to come out with, with that number, because if the
County here has a bigger proportion of the State’s population, we may reapportion to seven
representative districts some day, and -
HERKES: We’re the only other county, besides Maui, that’s gaining in population.
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MARTIN: Not to use that number, but I used that number, what about the other concept that Helene
brought up with eight-one. What I’m saying is that if we do put up a proposal to the public at any point
in time, to change what is in it’s present form, this is going to have to be addressed. The dates don’t
coincide.
RAY: Yes, we would have to address it. Okay?
ARTICLE IV Executive Branch. I don’t think we’re talking about any real changes there right now. Are
we? Some housekeeping stuff. There was a typo in (f).
BESS: We do have the issue of Advisory Commissions.
HERKES: No, because we can still do that.
RAY: I don’t think there was any discussion about removing the Mayor’s role in appointing Advisory
Commissions.
BESS: All right.
RAY: I don’t believe so.
BESS: I don’t either.
RAY: This is just a quick pass through. Okay, ARTICLE V.
IRVINE: I was wondering, before we get off IV, we’ve said that under Section 4-5 Powers and Duties of
Agency Heads, it’s sort of a carte blanche. Everybody gets a deputy assistant and a private secretary.
That’s under (a).
SANTANGELO: Private Secretary is Civil, though.
IRVINE: Well, I don’t know.
YUEN: No, the Private Secretary to the a department head is not Civil Service. It’s appointed.
MARTIN: It says right there, exempt from.
YUEN: They don’t all have them, though. They have not filled that position in every instance. The way
this is set up is that there are some, and it’s not in my mind right now, some of the departments that the
Charter specifically says that you have a deputy, and those the Council is supposed to fund the deputy.
That’s understood, really, exactly say that. Some of the ones, there is no required deputy, and the
Council may, or may not, at it’s discretion, fund the deputy position. Finance is an example. Currently,
you do have a Deputy Finance Director because the Council did fund it. I know that one of the proposals
that was not enacted of the 1990 Charter Commission was to say that you had to have a Deputy Finance
Director, because the Charter Commission felt that you really ought to have one, whether or not the
Council felt like they wanted to hire one. But, now it is at the discretion, that particular deputy and some
of the others, are at the discretion of the Council.
HERKES: Isn’t that what Sharron’s under? Isn’t she one of those private secretaries?
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YOSHIYAMA: No.
HERKES: No.
YOSHIYAMA: That’s an old position.
RAY: Yes. Let’s leave that for now. ARTICLE V. Executive Branch, the Mayor and Staff Agencies.
Election and Term of Office, we had some discussion on that.
MARTIN: Is it realistic to move the Mayor to a two-year election?
SANTANGELO: I don’t think bad form is made better by more bad form. I don’t care what the
perception is.
IRVINE: I was wondering. Did Chris, or someone, tell us, under Section 5-1.2, it was not legal to
require that someone live in the County for a year prior to the election?
RAY: I don’t remember that. Do you?
YUEN: I don’t think I ever said that. I don’t think that’s true, either. I think you can make them live
there.
IRVINE: I wonder where I heard that? Okay.
RAY: Under 5-1.3 Powers, Duties an Functions, (a), that’s an area which we have discussed in regard to
the possible creation of an enhanced Managing Director position, and how all that would work. In other
words, we might consider shifting some of those duties, so that’s something to keep in mind, because
right now, the Mayor has direct supervision, under the Charter, of all the following departments,
Corporation Counsel, Finance, Planning, R&D, and then the Managing Director. Under the Managing
Director falls the Public Works, P&R, Fire, so that’s something we’ll explore as we get more
information on that structure.
SANTANGELO: In 5-1.2, I thought it was interesting when it was brought up that last sentence where
you remove the word "full". Can we correct that?
HERKES: I think we at least have to discuss it.
SANTANGELO: If you remove the word "full" so that the Mayor may not serve more than two terms of
office, but shall not serve more than two consecutive terms, it doesn’t matter if he resigns in the middle
of it or not, he can’t be re-elected because he would be serving consecutive terms, would he not? Does
that not catch the spirit of it?
HERKES: Ask the lawyer.
IRVINE: That wouldn’t fit it if he came in the middle of a term.
RAY: I think what I’ve heard is that we would like to address this situation, and maybe we can ask Chris
to look into language to do that so it’s very clear under the Charter that the Mayor can’t serve more than
two consecutive terms, so create the elimination of a loophole, if possible, okay?
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IRVINE: Should we make a motion for that right now? Just ask him to do it?
RAY: Just ask him to do it. Anything else in Chapter 1?
BESS: (c) raises the same issue.
SANTANGELO: What does?
BESS: (c). 5-1.3.
RAY: You mean just as far as -
BESS: Managing Director.
RAY: Yes, so we’d have to correct anything that would be effected by that.
Vacancy in Office. Was there anything that needed to be corrected in that?
IRVINE: Yes.
BESS: If we are going towards the Managing Director, beefing up, and then we have the Mayor
submitting the operating budget and the operating program, that too needs to be looked at, huh?
RAY: It needs to be considered. Actually, I still would assume that the Mayor, or the CEO, would be
submitting the budget, but with, hopefully, more input from the Chief Administrative Officer, and that
would be in the preparation of the budget, rather than -
BESS: And maybe that should be reflected in the language, that the Managing Director would have that
kind of authority, that he’s in the process. Anyway, it’s just a thought.
HERKES: I was kind of going down all of those and putting Managing Director or Mayor and I put that
under Managing Director.
RAY: Under the Lexington Charter, under the Powers and Duties of the Chief Administrative Officer, in
one section there, is to recommend to the Mayor the annual operating and capital improvements budget.
As a duty of the Chief Administrative Officer.
Page 8, going on. Vacancy in Office.
IRVINE: Third paragraph. If the vacancy occurs more than two years before the end of the term, and 60
days or more before the next regularly scheduled election, the Council, shall through the clerk,
immediately issue an election proclamation. But if it’s less than 60 days, it’s between 60 days and two
years. It’s not spelled out properly.
YUEN: Let me comment on this. It’s not completely spelled out, and it could be completely spelled out,
but it actually quite clear that you never have an election for a vacancy in office except at the time of the
regularly scheduled elections, and it was always like that, and it was not changed when it went to two-
year terms in 1990. One of the things that tells you that is that the person’s elected successor begins at
12 noon on the first Monday in December, following the election. I can tell you that I prepared a draft
for the 1990 Charter Commission which would have, in the case of a recall, set out a time frame when
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you would have another election to fill the vacancy, like 270 days, if it was more than X number of
days, and that was not adopted by the Commission. The intent of this is, in the case of a Mayor, your
election would always be at the time of the regularly scheduled election. That’s September-November
elections. If it happened, like with Bernard Akana, where he passed away well before the first two years,
you would have the election at that two-year period, and if it happened after the two years, then the
Managing Director fills in until the term expires. The Charter has always worked that way, and I believe
there is nowhere in any of the State Elective Offices, a provision for a true Special Election. That is an
election held not at the regularly scheduled time. If the Governor gets elected, and dies a week after
being sworn in, the Lt. Governor fills out, actually I believe, the entire four years unexpired term. But,
this could be absolutely spelled out in more ways than it is, but that is the way that it works.
RAY: Does that work for you guys or do you want to pursue this further, as far as clarification?
YUEN: I could explain this in writing, perhaps a little bit better, because there are a number of things
that tell you, and I understand, and when I read this over, I understand why there’s this question, because
it doesn’t say what happens when it’s less than two years. It doesn’t say in so many paragraphs. It does
say it in other little sections, that if you put it together, that’s what it means, and this was discussed, and
there’s a record of what this is meant to mean when it was enacted.
IRVINE: Is this what Steve was using as a loophole or something, to resign and run?
YUEN: I can’t speak to what somebody was planning to do or what ideas somebody had.
IRVINE: Okay. No, I know. But, I just know that there’s a question right now of the possibility of the
Mayor resigning and then running again, because he hadn’t served a full term.
YUEN: This is different. This has to do with if you have a vacancy in office, and you had a Charter
election. I guess the only time that I know of when you have an election that is not in September,
November of the even numbered years is the potential for having a Charter Special Election, but there’s
a clause that was in the old Charter that is not in the Charter now, but I can show you where it still
actually works that way. It previously said that if you had a vacancy in office, in the Office of Mayor,
the Managing Director, and the person appointed to fill it in the case of Council, would hold that
position until the next State or State and County election, and a Charter Special Election would only be a
County Election, so you never had a provision for piggybacking, filling a vacancy in a County elective
office on the back of a Charter Special Election. And you never had it, and you don’t have it now.
RAY: Okay?
IRVINE: Yes.
RAY: Chapter 2, Corporation Counsel. Mr. Wurdeman furnished us with some suggestions and our
attorney prepared, and distributed, I think in this past week, language to address 5-2.5 Special Counsel,
so I think we had, from Mr. Wurdeman, on 5-2.3, there was an additional sentence that said Corporation
Counsel may delegate any professional legal duties of his office to his assistant or deputies, and he asked
that that be put in. And then on Special Counsel, that’s 5-2.5, our attorney has prepared language, so I’m
assuming those are all okay and we’ll go with those.
Term of Office. I’m only bringing this up because we did have written testimony from Mr. Childs in
regard to the term of office in respect to the balance of power issue, and I don’t think that’s the way to
address it. Does anybody else feel like that’s something, the term of office, they’d like to fool around
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with? Okay.
Chapter 3, Department of Finance. I think we need Mr. Takahashi here. The qualifications were put in,
right? They’re in another section? Yes, it says on page 28, if you read the top of that under the
Appointment Section, it does say, on the top of page 28, that first sentence, The finance director shall
have a minimum of five years of training and experience in budgeting or related fields, or at least three
years experience in a responsible financial position. So, that’s the qualification language that’s existing
that we need to decide if that’s sufficient, or to our liking.
HERKES: Why isn’t that under Department of Finance? That language?
RAY: I think it should be.
HERKES: It would be a lot clearer, for me, if Department of Finance had it in Administrator and a
description of their Administrative qualifications under Department of Finance. And the Deputy Finance
Director. It just confuses the issue.
SANTANGELO: The ability to get all the information in one place.
HERKES: In one place. So you have a Finance Department and there it is.
YUEN: Well, we did that in 1990.
HERKES: You moved it?
YUEN: No, all those qualifications that now are in 13 something, were put in with the 1990 Charter
Commission. I think we had this same discussion about whether they should be in one section or put in
each individual section, and I think that the decision was, and I can’t tell you why, but it was to put all
the new qualifications in this one section.
HERKES: The new qualifications?
YUEN: Yes, because previously, before the 1990 Charter, some of these did not have formal
qualifications, like the Finance Director, the Planning Director, and the Managing Director, and the Fire
Chief, there were no qualifications listed. So these were all new in 1990 and I wish I could tell you some
great reason why it was put all in one -
HERKES: Probably expediency.
YUEN: Probably. In 13-3 instead of individually in each section.
HERKES: So, now we can move them, right?
RAY: So, two different issues; (1) where we put them, and (2) what their content is. It makes a lot more
sense to me, in terms of being able to read this thing clearly, to have them in the sections.
HERKES: Especially if we put performance review and we’re going to change the qualifications. We’re
going to upgrade some and administrative descriptions more, and those kinds of things. I think that
makes more sense.
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RAY: I guess the only caveat would be when we come up with our final package, or preliminary
package, or whatever, what it looks like, how complicated it is, and we don’t want to make things more
confusing than possible, or whatever, I know, as a final document, it would be a lot more readable and
clear to have it that way. It’s like why in the world would you stick it back there, right?
So, looking at the Finance Director position, does anybody have any thoughts about the qualifications as
written? This does not require any degrees, from either the Finance Director or the Deputy Finance
Director. It just says minimum in budgeting or related fields of three years in responsible financial
position. I got that from running a pizza restaurant, right? Seriously, though -
SANTANGELO: And with that in mind, but we did, we dealt with bond, bond rating, a whole bunch of
things, and it seems to me that you might want your Finance Director to have certain qualifications.
RAY: This is a big budget.
IRVINE: Yes, but there are people at Finance right now, Dixie Kaetsu, for one, who’s not a Certified
Public Accountant.
RAY: That’s not what I’m saying. I bet she has a degree, though, in Accounting.
IRVINE: She has a degree, certainly.
RAY: Harry has a business degree, a BA in business, or whatever. So, I don’t think it’s practically
speaking, a problem.
IRVINE: We just don’t want to get too specific by way of -
HERKES: I want to get real specific. As I said, this is a real concern for me with somebody that has an
expertise to handle money. I think you need accountability, and I think you need experience, but special,
you need a lot of training and education to do this kind of stuff, and I wouldn’t mind having CPA and/or
an MBA.
SANTANGELO: The Deputy Director could be more like a lesser, because that’s more administrative.
HERKES: Well, I’m talking about the Director.
SANTANGELO: Yes, the Director has a lot of responsibility.
RAY: Okay, why don’t, individually, you guys think about that and see what you might want to suggest,
or bring to the table.
BESS: Well, one of the things on that. I agree with the idea of trying to professionalize government, and
what have you, but what we could do, Marni, is, if we were to insert degrees in there, or equivalent
training and experience, and then that would take care of the person who doesn’t have that kind of -
HERKES: Well, there are very few people out there now that don’t. You know the computer industry is
the only that’s filled with non-college graduates.
RAY: By the way, I don’t think, as far as other Hawaii County Charters, I don’t think they have any
more stringent qualifications than this. I may be wrong, but anyway, we’ve all got those, Kauai, Maui,
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City and County, we can look at.
In the Department of Finance, I think most of Harry’s recommendations came to do with financial
procedure not under the department.
Planning Department. The qualifications for the job are the same place and it does, at least, refer to a
degree, or a degree in Planning. Take a look at that. The Division of Permitting would trigger changes
here in regard to subdivision language, and whatever. And, the 5-4.3 the Planning Commission, is a
significant subject of discussion among ourselves, and the general public. We’ve gotten lots of input on
different possibilities there from separate Planning Commissions, East and West Hawaii, jurisdiction,
how they’re put into office, so I guess that’s going to be a continuing discussion. I don’t feel like we’ve
really settled anything.
SANTANGELO: Section (d).
RAY: Section (d) under there.
SANTANGELO: Adopt rules and regulations having the force and effect of law. Just wondered if
anybody had any comment on that?
HERKES: Pursuant to subdivision zoning. That’s the rest of that sentence.
IRVINE: You know what? They’ve already amended.
HERKES: They already did something to that.
IRVINE: Yes, it was amended in 1998, the Planning, so if you’re looking at what’s here, it’s -
SANTANGELO: What does the Amendment say?
IRVINE: What do you want to know?
SANTANGELO: They still have the power.
IRVINE: I couldn’t find where you, actually -
SANTANGELO: Shoreline and -
IRVINE: Under Section 5-
SANTANGELO: 5-4.3(d)
IRVINE: Section 5-4.3(d). Conduct public hearings.
HERKES: No, adopt rules and regulations.
IRVINE: This is the 1998 Amendments. They did a bunch.
RAY: And what are you -
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HERKES: You cut yours up. That’s why we don’t recognize it.
IRVINE: Well, I cut it up and put it in here, but I got this when we first got our stuff.
HERKES: This was November 3, 1998.
IRVINE: Yes.
HERKES: Review proposed subdivision and zoning ordinances and amendments thereto and transmit
such ordinances with recommendations thereon through the mayor to the council for consideration and
action. Same thing, no?
? Where were you there?
HERKES: (c). 5-4.3
IRVINE: Recommendations. Under (c), it does have that, right.
HERKES: It’s just more confusing.
RAY: Chris.
YUEN: What John was saying, the old 5-4.3(d) is now out, which I find - I’m going to have to ask them
why they did that. I’m sorry I can’t tell you because it puzzles me a little bit because they do still adopt
rules and regulations, having the force and effect of law. For example, the shoreline setback is a
Planning Commission regulation. It’s a power that’s given by another State Statute. I’m not sure why
that was done. I’d have to check on that.
RAY: Maybe because it’s addressed in the State Statute? I was on the Council. I should remember, but I
don’t remember.
IRVINE: Let’s all get on the same page, anyway.
RAY: In regard to the powers of the Planning Commission, I don’t sense there’s support for changing
that and giving those powers to the Council. In regard to how the Commission is appointed and/or
elected, or whatever, there’s certainly some interest in looking into that, right?
HERKES: Right, and I was kind of wondering. It’s geographically aligned now?
RAY: Yes, it’s nine single member districts.
HERKES: And so that would change if it went to representative districts, and the changes, when I was
kind of looking around, in my head, I was going well, we talked about East and West Planning
Commissions, and I wonder about four Planning Commissions, which would geographically be
neighborhood boards. It’s basically what they’d be, but I don’t know whether that would work either,
but I’m just kicking it around.
SANTANGELO: I’d like to put in a plug from the mainland. Traditionally it’s been North and South.
MARTIN: You know, talking on that four vs. two vs. one. That’s what Kevin brought up with this
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discussion, several times. That if you allow for a split, and go to two, East vs. West, not so much first,
North vs. South, then what’s going to stop the other individual districts from saying we want one here
too, specifically for us? At some point in time, where does the powers lay and how are we going to, if in
fact, separate them? Where do we separate them?
RAY: What I’ve heard is the main area of focus, though, is how the Commission is appointed and/or
elected, is really the area we’re interested in exploring, right?
IRVINE: I would agree with that.
RAY: So that discussion will continue.
Chapter 5, Department of Research and Development. There are no qualifications there.
HERKES: What do we think of as qualifications for that?
IRVINE: It’s extremely difficult but that’s one of those departments that has, in the past, been quite
political. I think, although, now we’re seeing real results oriented work.
RAY: I would say under the current head, it’s probably one of the more respected departments in the
County.
IRVINE: Right, that’s what I mean.
HERKES: But we all remember riding a donkey, don’t we? So there’s some -
RAY: Okay, let’s keep moving. Chapter 6, Miscellaneous. We’ve already dealt with the Safety
Coordinator position. We had input there, and Board of Appeals, we’ve dealt with that.
HERKES: Did we take the Clerical Pool out? Have we voted on that?
MARTIN: You were talking while he was passing it over.
RAY: Okay, let’s go back. Start at Chapter 6. I don’t believe we’ve had any discussion on the Clerical
Pool. I don’t have any comment, one way or the other.
IRVINE: I think our attorney said that if we pulled it out, it would look like we were trying to change
something, even though it could have been done by ordinance in the first place, so I was willing to leave
it in Charter.
YUEN: I’m sorry. I missed something. I was puzzling myself over the last thing, rather than the Clerical
Pool.
RAY: We did have some discussion on this. Do you remember? I don’t remember.
YUEN: Yes.
RAY: Okay, well, I don’t think it was anything we need to dwell on.
Safety Coordinator, I think we’ve covered.
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Now Board of Appeals. That’s an area that we made a preliminary motion on, and we’re going to be
getting more input, right?
HERKES: Yes, and that has some new language also.
SANTANGELO: And again, I’d just like to add that with the Boards and Commissions, if we’re
considering having nine single districts, there will be nine people on each one of these, and I know, with
some of the Commissions, they were saying they’re having trouble getting nine people there to do
something. Maybe we should consider that.
RAY: Okay, that’s something different. What we’ve discussed is where we place the Board of Appeals,
and the suggestion was we’d move it under Corp Counsel, and take it out of Planning. That is the
preliminary decision that is on the table without any input from Corp Counsel.
HERKES: These guys are going to learn to come to meetings.
RAY: Anyway, what John is suggesting, I think, that the membership be increased from seven members
to nine. Is that what you’re saying?
SANTANGELO: (indiscernible).
RAY: Okay, so that’s not a discussion we’ve had. We did discuss, I think, on the Pension Board, which
is just five members that I think the thought was why increase that to nine, so I don’t think we have
across the board consensus that we want to increase all these Boards and Commissions to nine. And we
didn’t ask that, which was unfortunate, when the Board of Appeals was there.
SANTANGELO: My response to that, John, would be then if we were going to
do something where the Council did appoint, as a way of balance of power, then make it applicable to
the ones that they would do that with, like which one was that? Which one you said was five?
IRVINE: Pension.
RAY: But we weren’t discussing having those appointed by the Council.
SANTANGELO: Right, so, leave that alone. It has it’s own way of going.
RAY: So the Board of Appeals, your saying in your mind, that’s okay with seven.
MARTIN: Who would do the appointing, though?
RAY: The Mayor.
MARTIN: So you’d leave that one under the Mayor? I think that’s what John is talking about, and I tend
to agree with him. If you’re going to have one system, like we discussed just a bit earlier, which is going
to be where, and it will fall under the nine, and every Council member, if it were to go to that, would
have an opportunity, but in this case, you don’t.
BESS: If you look at the function of the Board of Appeals, it’s really much different than, say, the
Planning Commission. I mean you’re reviewing the record to determine whether or not the Chief
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Engineer may have been in violation of law, that kind of thing. I’m really not very concerned about
having all of the districts represented because you’re basically looking at his action and seeing whether
or not that action conformed with law.
SANTANGELO: Again, it’s that perception of participation. If this is not better served, if there’s no
conflict by having the Mayor appoint someone that’s going to oversee his or her appointee, then no
problem, but if you want another body appointing so there’s more of a balance of power, and I don’t
pretend to know all of it, but that’s where I’m coming from. It’s how we better serve.
HERKES: Mr. Chairman, the new wording for the Board of Appeals, which Sue pointed there was some
new wording, talks about membership shall be representative of the community, persons with
backgrounds or expertise in broad areas of planning and construction shall be given preference. So they
did broaden the description of who’s on it, but they also added, this is (b), conduct hearings in
accordance with Chapter 91, Hawaii Revised Statutes, and with this Charter. Now, Chapter 91 is a State
Law and Regulation, and I think that, in the next two years, three years maybe, a lot of things are going
to come up under that. I’m not sure what the Board of Appeals can do about it, but I’m kind of thinking
that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have representation from each Council district on that.
RAY: Well, if that happens, they can do it. All right?
HERKES: Yes, easy.
RAY: I guess what I’m saying is the Council would still have the ability, I mean, these last changes
were made, they were administratively created, but put forward and voted on by the Council, so that’s
something we need to keep reminding ourselves of, that’s also a process which the Administration can
bring forth in response to situations like that, like a change in State Law or procedure.
ARTICLE VI. Executive Branch. Managing Director. I think we’ve already discussed the areas that
we’d be looking at there. And then, of course, the Chapters that fall under that, would also be subject to
the potential reorganization of those powers.
Under Chapter 2, Department of Public Works. 6-2.1 Public Works is calling for a Chief Engineer.
There’s been some discussion on that, whether that is necessary, and in fact, we just went through kind
of a dilemma, in the County, over that which seemed to point to that possibly not making a lot of sense.
This being more of an administrative position, and we had to jump through all kinds of hoops to come
up with a Chief Engineer to fill that, and arguably, the functioning Deputy would have been fine,
remaining in that position. So, any thoughts there?
MARTIN: Yes, I think what you’re touching upon was driven home when Jiro came to us and spoke,
and I believe I asked the question of him, about this, and he wasn’t qualified because of that fact, yet he
was doing an outstanding job at the time, with no complaints that I could find very deeply, but didn’t
look that hard. So, it, again, bewilders me to have somebody on board, willing to do it, and yet they
can’t because of a criteria like this. I guess I’d like to see it removed, but if we do go to a different
format of Managing Director, would that Managing Director have the authority to re-implement, or
make his own criteria, because he, or she, is the one going to be making the decision. So, is it not
redundant?
RAY: Under the model, George, that we’re looking at right now -
MARTIN: Oh, the one that you have and we don’t.
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RAY: Yes.
MARTIN: Just a point of clarification here.
RAY: The Mayor would still appoint the Department Heads, not the Chief Administrative Officer.
Under a more pure Managing Director form, they hire, but under the Lexington model, the Mayor
appoints those, so that’s why it was inconsistent for the Council to be hiring the Chief Administrative
Officer when the Mayor was hiring the Department Heads. We can always mix and match, and suggest
anything we want, but that’s the model they go with. So the Mayor would still be appointing the Chief
Engineer, and of course, calling him the Chief Engineer. Right there, is something we need to address if
they weren’t necessarily an engineer. But I think the issue we need to focus on now is does the Chief, or
head of the Public Works Department, need to be a registered professional engineer, and we’ve heard
arguments on both sides. Clearly, the department automatically has a registered professional engineer, as
part of the department, and I think we’d still need to come up with a description of what the job
requirements would be. John.
SANTANGELO: I’d be more in favor of removing that qualification because if the Mayor wants to
appoint there, and he and she decides that’s a prerequisite they want, then they can have it. But with it
here, they have no choice. And in the case of what we just went through, we saw that anybody that can
fill that position was making so doggone much money, that it was just impossible for them to give it up
and serve the County for that length of time. And, then it comes down to administrative. I think we need
an Administrator, and not all engineers are good Administrators, but we might be able to find a lot of
Administrators that can do the job and don’t need to be engineers. I’d be in favor of taking a look at that.
IRVINE: I was just wondering, from our attorney, does the Engineer’s Department have to put stamps,
you know, this is a registered engineer’s stamp, on approval for subdivisions and stuff, that you’d have
to be an engineer to be the head?
RAY: You just have to have that capability in the department. The head of the department doesn’t have
to do it.
MARTIN: Right.
IRVINE: That’s all.
YUEN: No, actually, I think that there’s an exemption in State law for engineers. You have to have an
Engineering Degree, but you don’t have to be a registered professional engineer, and I think that may be
why some of the people in the department, who’ve been there a long time, they are engineers. They have
the degree, but they’re registered professional engineers with the State licensing, and they’ve been able
to do that because there’s such an exemption in State law.
MARTIN: I think also, like Jiro indicated, it’s the way you come about getting your engineering because
he is technically an engineer, but through the military, not through an accredited college, and therefore,
the criteria doesn’t meet, as Chris is saying, possibly the State need.
HERKES: Mr. Chair.
BESS: I was just going to suggest that (1) I’m not hung up on the fact that the guy being a Chief
Engineer. I am hung up on the idea that the person ought to be a good Administrator, and so, perhaps,
we can use some of the same language that we were going to use with regard to the Finance Director,
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but in terms of an MBA, or it’s equivalent, with training and experience. That’s what I’d like to see
happen.
HERKES: This also says, the duties and powers, as prescribed by ordinance and shall be exercised and
performed. What does the ordinance say? I don’t know what the ordinance says, as far as duties and
powers go. I can’t make a decision on whether the person needs to be an engineer until I know what the
ordinance says, as far as the duties and powers of the department.
YUEN: The ordinances that relate to Public Works are specific to powers and functions that they have,
like the building code and the grading ordinance that’s specific. That’s what this -
HERKES: The engineering things.
YUEN: Right. And so, the grading ordinance says that you submit your plans to the Department of
Public Works and they stamp them, and the building permit says that the Department of Public Works
goes and approves your buildings, and it doesn’t have something that is over-arching and says what the
Chief Engineer does, and what the deputies do, and that sort of thing.
RAY: So, Chief Engineer. My sense is that the mood is we remove the -
MARTIN: John, excuse me. The only thing I see is the word ‘registered’. I think that was the criteria. If
we remove that word and leave everything else the same, it’s okay.
BESS: Then it wouldn’t take into account the person that isn’t an engineer that might have a terrific
administrative ability with no engineering background, and he might be the best person for the job.
MARTIN: I hear that. I hear what you’re saying, but then it would become a difficulty, if he has
absolutely no background in engineering. I don’t know.
HERKES: So you want some engineering background?
MARTIN: Basic. I mean that’s like saying I’m going to become a mechanic but I don’t know what a
9/16 wrench is compared to a 13 millimeter wrench. How are you going to do that?
SANTANGELO: Because you’re administrating a large department, and you’re
trying to see that the mission is carried out and the departments are doing their job. It’s a certain
accountability. I think Jiro explained to us that he didn’t feel that it required any sort of engineering
experience and that, in fact, I think his words were, he felt what makes a good engineer, in actuality,
makes a bad Administrator because they’re so rigid.
MARTIN: Sure.
SANTANGELO: And so he was saying, let’s -
MARTIN: But I didn’t hear him say that it didn’t need the engineering philosophy, at least. I don’t
remember him saying that. He possibly did, though.
RAY: Certainly, I think you would assume they would have management experience in a related field,
so it’s not like -
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MARTIN: So, again, it comes down to what I read there -
RAY: But, I agree with John or Steve, I think. I don’t see an Engineering Degree necessarily being
important, so they may or may not.
MARTIN: Sure. So, the last sentence is the Chief Engineer shall be a registered professional engineer.
RAY: So we would take that out.
MARTIN: If you take out ‘registered’ he still has to be a professional engineer, and the word
‘professional’, I think, is all encompassing of what you’re saying, John, in that he has some knowledge
possibly, or he has the ability to do certain things.
HERKES: Shall be a professional manager.
MARTIN: Exactly. But it doesn’t have to be registered. Registered was the key to Jiro’s problem. That
he didn’t have that.
RAY: No, I think he’s saying that he doesn’t need to be an engineer at all.
MARTIN: At all?
RAY: Right. Is what’s on the table.
MARTIN: That’s a difficult one, then. I don’t know.
RAY: Let’s leave that one and see what other language we can come up with in regard to the
qualifications.
Chapter 3, Department of Parks and Rec. We had submittal. The Director of P&R did suggest language
to us. You probably don’t have it handy right now, but she did submit language. If I recall, I think it was
in related fields, personnel management. This is a great big department. It’s one of the two big line
departments. Lots of people. Lots of employees. Big budgets. We can look to that.
Section 6-3.4.
MARTIN: Don’t touch that one.
HERKES: I can hardly wait to get into that one.
RAY: County Bands. Do you recall what Ms. Tulang, she recommended taking County Bands out of
P&R, but didn’t she recommend putting them under the Mayor?
HERKES: Why do we have County Bands under the Charter?
IRVINE: Because Honolulu has the Royal Hawaiian Band in their Charter.
HERKES: That was chartered by King Kalakaua and it’s like Hawaiian Tel, you can’t touch it. That was
chartered by King Kalakaua also. That’s the difference.
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RAY: Just to get a little straw vote here, why don’t you raise your hand if you’re in favor of taking the
County Bands out of the County Charter.
HANDS RAISED: M. Herkes, S. Irvine, S. Bess, J. Ray.
SANTANGELO: A comment. No, no, I don’t mind but I don’t think that’s what they were saying. They
were taking Bands, taking the "s" off.
IRVINE: That’s right. She wanted us to do that and I’m looking for her testimony.
SANTANGELO: County Band.
HERKES: I can tell you what the testimony is.
SANTANGELO: Because with the County Bands, that’s creating division and derision, and she’s saying
if it’s one band -
IRVINE: Right, that’s one of -
MARTIN: One conductor, one everything. That’s exactly right.
HERKES: So, tell me why we have a band in the County Charter.
RAY: John.
SANTANGELO: Because it’s very entertaining.
BESS: Thank you, John. Next.
HERKES: And wonderful.
SANTANGELO: You know what. There’s many social functions -
MARTIN: Don’t cut your nose in spite your face, now people.
HERKES: Next you’ll want to put the zoo in here.
MARTIN: That’s State property.
SANTANGELO: No I don’t. Hey, we’re given a cultural center, you know, 40 years ago. When it
comes to the band, there’s certain functions and ceremonial things that we go through, be it at Christmas
time, Fourth of July, and also augmenting community associations in what they do, and our County
Band, I mean, I am an advocate of it, does a hell of a fine job with very little money. Now the bands
causes a lot of political stuff, but it is a function that - We’re giving Senior nutrition lunches at
tremendous expense.
HERKES: Are they in the Charter?
SANTANGELO: What?
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HERKES: Senior nutrition lunches?
SANTANGELO: Through ordinance.
HERKES: I didn’t see it in the Charter.
SANTANGELO: By ordinance.
HERKES: I didn’t see it in the Charter.
RAY: Okay, well, I don’t think we’re going to reach agreement on this today, so let’s keep moving for
now.
MARTIN: Now we know who we’ve got to lobby.
RAY: Chapter IV, Fire Department. We’ve received a fair amount of information. We’ve gotten some
input on folks in regard to a Fire Commission, all being pretty positive. I think the negative has been
more from logistics and a possible cost standpoint. Do we want to create another Commission or
whatever, but I have a hard time, in my mind, not supporting a Fire Commission for the same reason we
have a Police Commission. I think for all the same reasons we have a Police Commission, that a Fire
Commission makes sense. There are unique things about Police but, go ahead, Sue.
IRVINE: What about the Public Safety Commission, possibly? Then we wouldn’t be creating another
Commission, but we would combine some, and I feel kind of strongly they ought to go over to the
Prosecutor’s Office or something, rather than being under one of these departments.
HERKES: Who go over to the Prosecutor’s Office?
IRVINE: This Commission.
HERKES: Public Safety Commission?
IRVINE: Yes.
HERKES: Interesting. Okay. Not a bad idea.
BESS: Yes.
IRVINE: Because then they won’t be any one department. They’ll be over three and they’d be
somewhat in a sense removed.
RAY: But, what’s the sense of just the idea of the Fire Department being supported by a Commission,
whether it be Fire Commission or Public Safety Commission? Is it generally -
SANTANGELO: Wait.
MARTIN: Straw vote, John. Don’t get excited. It’s only straw.
SANTANGELO: We brought up something about the Police Commission, and its function in terms of
public, right? What’s the function of a Fire Commission? I mean, we don’t normally have public
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complaint about that, per se, like the Police do. Well, the Fire Department is not arresting people, they’re
not shooting people.
HERKES: They’re promoting people, though.
IRVINE: That’s true.
SANTANGELO: But, the Commission -
RAY: I think John brings out a good point.
MARTIN: What would they do?
IRVINE: Yes, we’d better look into it a little bit. I haven’t even read my stuff on the Fire Commission
yet, I don’t think.
BESS: But, as I understand it, the mood of the Charter Commission is that the reason that there’s any
sentiment for the Commission is because of appointment of the Chief, right? That’s basically it.
RAY: Right.
BESS: There are no other functions.
YUEN: That’s basically what they do in Honolulu. It’s meant to create a partial insulation from the
political cycle.
BESS: Yes.
RAY: Okay. ARTICLE VII, Executive Branch, Departments or Agencies under Commissions.
Department of Civil Service. Gary, you got any comment on - Have we received any - I’m kind of
losing track here.
BESS: I’m looking at 7-1.2 and I would like to hear from our attorney about Commission membership
shall be representative of the community and the members shall all be in sympathy with and believe in
the principals of the merit system in public employment. How do you do that?
MARTIN: He ask him a question.
HERKES: That’s your (indiscernible) the last Commission.
BESS: Does that strike you one way or the other? You figure the merit does away with the problems
with ‘sympathy with and believe in’?
YUEN: Yes, there’s no mechanism for taking the loyalty oath on that because -
BESS: Okay.
YOSHIYAMA: It might be in the Statute.
IRVINE: That’s what I was wondering, if it was in there for some reason.
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YUEN: It might be. I’m not sure either.
HERKES: You don’t remember the discussion from 10 years ago?
YUEN: I really don’t.
MARTIN: I mean, it was amended in 1990, so.
HERKES: Yes.
YUEN: I don’t remember. I don’t know. I don’t know what Amendment was made.
RAY: Okay. It’s 3:15. How is the group feeling about continuing or not?
MARTIN: It’s getting real close to beer thirty.
IRVINE: I think we’re getting a little dingy.
MARTIN: Yes. Let’s take a break and come back and decide.
HERKES: Whatever you do is fine, but there’s a procedural - Well, let me say, this is written in the
wrong order. Let’s go back to Article 5.6. It says ARTICLE VI. Executive Branch. Executive Branch
should be on the top and Article 5.6 should be the second line because it’s under the heading of
Executive Branch, and I keep getting confused on this thing, so when we write it, I’m going to suggest
that you change the order of those. You understand? The Executive Branch is through the whole chapter.
YUEN: There’s three different articles that deal with the Executive Branch and the Executive Branch is
divided into The Mayor and Agencies directly under the Mayor, the Managing Director and Agencies
directly under the Managing Director, and Agencies under Commission, which are also considered part
of the Executive Branch, that will say general supervision of the Mayor because they are actually run by
these Commissions.
HERKES: But they’re all Executive Branch.
YUEN: They’re all Executive Branch.
RAY: I’m going to ask you to flip through the Charter with me just to see if there are some major things
on the radar screen that we want to be more proactive about in terms of research and information. So, I
think, on the next page, which would be 14, we’ve pretty much identified the things in the Police
Department that we’re interested in. I don’t think there’s anything in Liquor Control. The Department of
Water Supply we’re going to have at the next meeting. Prosecuting Attorney, on page 16.
MARTIN: There was some -
YOSHIYAMA: I’d like to look at the Manager of Water Supply.
RAY: Yes, that’s what I mean. We are going to be looking at -
YOSHIYAMA: Oh, I’m sorry.
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RAY: They’re on the agenda for next week, or the next meeting, so we’re going to be talking about the
Manager, the transfer of the Wastewater Division.
YOSHIYAMA: Okay.
RAY: The make-up of the Water Commission. The whole thing. Prosecuting Attorney, I don’t think
there’s anything there. Financial Procedures, we definitely need to have another session with Harry, and
understand that better, and I think, think of it in terms of the context of the Mayor vs. the County
Council on some of this stuff. So that takes us up to page 22. Initiative and Referendum. This always
seems confusing to people, percentages and just how all this works.
John, we decided to discontinue but we’re just doing a fast run-through. We’re on page 22 already.
Initiative and Referendum. Under Submission Requirements, I think we just need to understand how all
that works.
IRVINE: John, this is where I had - sometimes we use ‘electors’, 20% of the electors can do this, 15%
of the qualified voters, and then it’s registered voters under Recall.
RAY: Is this a section you’d be willing to kind of do a little work-up on and examination of?
IRVINE: Me?
RAY: Yes. Thank you.
HERKES: None of us are going to say anything else the rest of the meeting. You’ve effectively silenced
us.
IRVINE: Everything else we’ve asked our attorney to do, or our -
MARTIN: There you go. As a delegated responsibility, you call him Monday morning and have him do
it. Don’t worry about it.
RAY: Well, Chris, in regard to Referendum and Initiative, is there anything you would point out to us,
as far as things we might want to take a look at? We’ve just gone through some real controversial
situations and so we do have, and they don’t come to mind, from Al Konishi, our Deputy Clerk. He did
submit, in writing, a number of suggestions in regard to this process and other things, so we do all need
to re-examine that from his past experience.
YUEN: Actually, I think a number of the things that he proposed, as far as the signatures being good for
only one cycle, were proposed to the voters by the 1990 Charter Commission and not adopted.
RAY: Yes, this is one of those areas that once you, kind of, give the power, it’s awful tough to take it
back, just like the Mandatory Program Reviews, and whatever. It’s just a tough sell.
IRVINE: Although I think you could make it consistent, and percentages of what we’re talking about.
RAY: Well, since you keep mentioning that, why don’t you work on that a little bit.
MARTIN: I thought it was a done deal, on that. You need a second to the motion?
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RAY: No, we’ll just leave it.
BESS: You know, in support of Sue, I think that, as she points out, that the attorney can work on that,
because we’re been consistent -
SANTANGELO: We’ll just choose a Commissioner attorney.
RAY: Just so you’d know, you guys have been getting off pretty lightly. In the last Commission, they
really did delegate and divide duties formally in terms of taking on different sections of the Charter.
That was something -
IRVINE: Good idea. I’ll do this happily.
BESS: I still support Sue.
MARTIN: As well it should be.
IRVINE: As my Co-Chair.
RAY: Okay, under ARTICLE XII, Removal of Elected Officers. There are some inconsistencies there.
And Submission Requirements under Initiative Representative, it’s says at least 15% of the total number
of persons who voted in the county for the office of mayor in the last election, and under the Recall, the
language is may be signed by qualified voters equal to or no greater than 25% of the total number of
persons who registered in the last election. It doesn’t say voted for the mayor.
YUEN: It’s a much more stringent standard in the Recall. This is old but it sounds deliberate because
you have a lot more registered voters than people who vote for mayor.
IRVINE: That’s a funny -
YUEN: It means you need a hell of a lot of signatures down to a recall.
RAY: Okay. Impeachment on page 26. We’ve talked about that. I think we agreed that we need to look
at some of the language, but that’s probably a bigger issue than the number of qualified voters, is my
sense. It’s not a final decision.
Under ARTICLE XIII, General Provisions.
IRVINE: You know, guys, this is another thing that was given to us as an Amendment.
HERKES: General provisions?
IRVINE: Yes. ARTICLE XIII.
RAY: Okay, so everybody make sure they’re familiar with that.
MARTIN: 13.1 actually.
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IRVINE: Yes, from there.
RAY: And then the Appointments. We talked about that already, and possibly shifting the job
descriptions, the criteria, to the individual sections. And then Boards and Commissions, we have talked
about, and, I don’t think, come to any final conclusion, but at least we’ve started the discussion on that.
Mr. Takahashi pointed out, on Section 13-18, page 30, under Claims, addressing some language there.
IRVINE: I think he just thought if we left out ‘injury to persons or property’, if you just omitted that, I
thought it would kind of -
RAY: Well, anyway, we’ve got that.
HERKES: I have a question. Section 13-20, Records and Meetings Open to the Public. Are we in
compliance with State Law on open meetings? If that hasn’t been redone for ten years, we’re probably
not.
IRVINE: I think that’s what the Corporation Counsel told us. We needed to change that, and just say ‘be
in compliance with’.
HENRY: We also have to change the notice of publication.
IRVINE: Where is that?
HERKES: Notice of publication. To comply with State Law 160. Because we’re not publishing in
newspapers. We’re doing a whole bunch of stuff.
RAY: Under Code of Ethics. I’m trying to remember. Did Del Pranke testify in regard to -
IRVINE: I think, actually, it was at the bottom of page 30. All meetings shall be held in public places
and no bodies shall take any official action except at a meeting open to the public. Where personal
matters affecting the privacy of an individual. He said that should be where ‘personnel’ matters.
HERKES: Is that okay?
YUEN: There’s something wrong with that. I know there’s something off on that but I don’t want to say
what it is. I could look it up.
IRVINE: But it’s something that needed to be -
HERKES: Yes.
RAY: Well, nothing jumps out with me there under ARTICLE XV, Charter Amendment or Revision.
IRVINE: Well, 15 point - that’s another Commission that they were talking about putting into
compliance with the nine members of the Council rather than the traditional geographical areas, under
Charter Reviews, near the bottom of page 34.
HERKES: 15-3?
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IRVINE: 15-3.
RAY: Are you talking about the -
IRVINE: The make-up of the Charter Review Commission. It says it shall be representative of the
various geographical areas. I think this would all depend on what we’re doing with the County Council,
if we’re going to have -
HERKES: North and South Kona, and North and South Kohala, specifically.
IRVINE: Maybe, just, since we’ve got 11 members, maybe we can leave it at those six areas and then
the other five.
RAY: Yes, and we can also look at some of that other language as we’re wrapping things up, and see if
there’s anything else that comes to mind in terms of the process we might want to include, or not.
I don’t see anything else, so that wraps it up for today. In regard to our next meeting, I think on the 27th,
at 3:00, specifically, we have agendized the review of the Department of Water Supply and the County
Water Commission and related issues, and then getting the representatives from the Police Department,
Commission and Corp Counsel in to discuss the recommendations from Corp Counsel, in terms of
things the Commissions handle. So those are the two -
HERKES: I have three.
RAY: You have a third thing?
HERKES: Corp Counsel, Police and Water. Isn’t that three?
RAY: The Water related issue’s one. And by the way, make sure Public Works is there to represent -
HENRY: I’ll write them a letter.
RAY: You know, they’re the one who triggered all this, right? And then, we need to continue our
discussion with Mr. Takahashi, but are we ready to do that because he’s not offering any really strong
direction, one way or the other. It seems like we need input from representatives from the Council’s
perspective and maybe the Mayor’s Office when we go into this whole process.
IRVINE: And I think if we’re going to do something about performance measurements, that might meet
some of the criteria that he was talking about in internal audits, or this or that. And then, every time
we’d say, do you think we should do this, he’d say, well, we’re already instigating that, so maybe it
doesn’t need a Charter change, for some of the things he was talking about.
RAY: We’ll agenizes that for discussion and just to cover a catch-all, we can put General Review of
Charter on there, as well. Anything else? So that covers that next meeting at the Liquor Control Room.
And beyond that, obviously we got a lot more done today than we’ve been getting done at those
Wednesday meetings, so I don’t know if we want to decide today about another Saturday, or whatever,
in November, but I think it would be really worthwhile.
YOSHIYAMA: I don’t care to make any Saturday in November. I’ve got other work.
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RAY: Okay, let’s think about it and we’ll talk about it next meeting. Okay? Can I have a motion to
adjourn?
SANTANGELO: So moved.
HERKES: Second.
RAY: Okay, meeting adjourned.
The discussion ended at 3:34 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Sharron Henry
Secretary-Administrative Assistant
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