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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN CHC 2000-02-05MEETING OF THE HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2000 ALPHABETICAL INDEX Subject Page numbers Adjournment 98 Administrative Branch 4, 19, 51, 55, 85 Agenda 2, 94 Animal Control 21 Attendance 1 Band Director 27, 28 Board of Appeals 86 Board of Water Supply 13, 45 Director 45 Boards and Commissions 6, 7, 11, 12, 14, 18, 22, 29, 30, 33, 36, 44, 45, 46, 47, 69, 71, 72, 74, 79, 97, 98 Executive 36 Terms 18 Budget 31 Building Inspection 21 Cali to Order 1 Chief Engineer 80 Civil Defense 21, 29, 81 Civil Service 2, 4, 5, 14, 18, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 51, 55, 56, 59, 81 Commission 33, 36 Department 2, 14, 28, 33, 81 Coastal Zone Management Program 84 Communications 2 Compensation 26 Corporation Counsel 14, 44, 45, 93 Special Counsel 93 Cost of Government Commission 30, 36, 94, 97 County Charter Articles/Chapters Article 13-3 County Clerk 80 80 57, 59 County Council 3, 4, 11, 12, 20, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 45, 49, 50, 51, 55, 56, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 83, 85, 86, 88, 94 At -large 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79 Make -Up 39, 61, 69, 74 Six -Three 61, 62, 64, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74 Single member districts 63, 64, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 88 Terms 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69 County/Council Manager form of Government 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 61 County Departments 46 County Physicians 27, 28 Department Heads 8, 9, 11, 18, 27, 28, 31, 37, 38, 57, 59, 61, 80, 81, 82, 83 Qualifications 8, 9, 80, 82, 83 Department of Management 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37 Deputy Department Heads 27, 28 Detention 21 Elections 74, 75, 76, 77, 78 General 74, 75, 76, 77, 78 Primary 74, 75, 76, 77, 78 Emergency Services 21 Environmental Management Commission/Department 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12 Deputy Director 5 Director 5, 6 Qualifications 8 Environmental Engineer 4 Executive Branch 14, 29, 43 Finance Department 13, 31, 44, 48, 80 Financial Status Report 2 Fire Commission 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 33, 36, 73, 82, 98 Fire Department 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 33, 44, 60, 82 Chief 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 60, 82 Statement of Reasons 19 Deputy Chief 19 General Review Geographical Districts Hawaii Revised Statutes Housing Administrator Housing and Community Development Impeachment Legislative Auditor's Office 94 69 85 28 29 88 28, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61 Director 52, 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 61 Qualifications 52, 54, 59 Legislative Branch 3 Legislative Reference Bureau 49 Legislative Research and Council Services Office 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 60 Liquor Commission 33, 36 Liquor Control Department 14, 33 Managed Competition 4, 5, 6, 13 Managing Director 14, 21, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 55, 87 Qualifications 30 Mayor 4, 13, 18, 19, 20, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 61, 63, 83, 87 Term 63 Meetings 2, 95, 98 Minutes 1 New Business 94 Non -point source pollution 9, 10 Nonpartisan elections 76 Office of Aging Director 29 29 Parks and Recreation Department 12, 14, 31, 44 Permitting 85 Planning Commission 69, 70, 72, 74, 84, 85, 86, 88, 97 Planning Department 13, 29, 31, 44, 45, 46, 48, 80, 84, 85, 86, 87 Deputy Director Director Police Commission 29, 85 31, 45, 46, 48, 85, 86 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 33, 36, 69, 70, 73, 74, 97 Police Department 12, 14, 16, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 33 Chief 16, 20, 23, 25 Statement of Reasons 16 General Orders 23, 24, 26 Privatization 4, 5, 9, 13 Prosecuting Attorney 27 Public Hearings 2, 94, 95 Public Safety Commission 21 Public Safety Department 21 Public Works Department 5, 6, 11, 12, 14, 31, 44, 45, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85 Director 45, 80, 81 Engineer 82 Reapportionment Commission 69, 70, 78, 79 Recycling 9, 11 Research and Development Department 13, 44, 80, 82, 83 Director 80, 82, 83 Safety Coordinator 27, 28 Salary Commission 26, 28, 97 Sewer Commission 11, 12 Sewer Department 13 Sewer Rates 11, 12 Solid Waste 9, 10, 11 Staff Agencies 44 State Department of Health 10 • • • Statements from the Public 1 Storm Water 10 Subdivision and Zoning Codes 85 Sunshine Law 18 Term Limits 61, 62, 63, 66, 68, 69 Unfinished Business 2, 84, 88, 93 Wastewater 9, 10, 11 Water Commission 7, 11, 33, 46, 88 Water Supply Department 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 33,46,47,80,81,82,84 Manager 8, 46, 80, 81, 82 Water Systems 9, 10 HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION Transcript of Meeting of February 5, 2000 Waimea Civic Center Waimea, Hawaii Attendance: J. Ray, S. Bess, M. Herkes, R. Higashi, S. Irvine, D. Kurozawa, G. Martin, J. Santangelo, G. Yoshiyama, Counsel C. Yuen Absent: E. Alonzo, K. Balog And 2 members of the public in attendance. The meeting was called to order at 9:17 a.m. RAY: I'd like to call the meeting of the 1999-2000 Hawaii County Charter Commission to order. It's Saturday, February 5th, and we're in Waimea at the Civic Center. Attendance. Attending, myself John Ray, Chair; Roland Higashi, Vice Chair; Steve Bess; Marni Herkes; Sue Irvine; Dr. Daryl Kurozawa; John Santangelo; and Gary Yoshiyama are present at this time. Statements from the Public. We do have a couple of members from the public here. If you folks have anything to say to the Commission now, or it's pretty informal, so if you'd like to talk with us about anything later, that's fine. Let the minutes reflect no statements from the public at this time. Minutes Approval. These are the minutes as circulated from January 19. Do I have a motion to approve? MARTIN: So moved. RAY: Second? SANTANGELO: Second. RAY: Discussion. IRVINE: There's a correction on page 65, Fred Koehnen. Should we put Meg Kon in there just because people know who you're talking about? HENRY: Do you have the correct spelling? IRVINE: K -o -e -h -n -e -n, I think. 1 HERKES: That's right. HENRY: And Meg's last name? IRVINE: K -o -n. HENRY: Thank you. RAY: Any other questions? All in favor? COMMISSIONERS: Aye. RAY: Okay, the minutes are approved. Financial Status Report. We don't have an updated report from the last meeting so it's basically the same as shown in the last report. Communications. In your packets: Agenda for the meeting next Wednesday, the 9th, that we have in Hilo. Remember, it's at 5:00 p.m. That's our regular scheduled meeting. A letter from Mr. Scott and a communication from Mr. Ben of the Department of Civil Service. Unfinished Business. I guess we can just go right down the line and deal with these one by one, in this order, and then I'll just need help from everybody in terms of bringing up other things that we need to cover. But, as I communicated in the memo that I sent out, if we're going to follow the tentative schedule we talked about, I don't think we have a whole lot of latitude in terms of more time. We need to pretty much wrap things up as far as our preliminary recommendations, so that we can come up with the dates and set a series of public hearings, so we can go through that phase of input and have time to refine and incorporate that input into final Amendments, or recommended Amendments, and develop the language around those, and have our attorney have time to do that so we've got ample time to, there again, take that out to the general public. So, I think there is some sense of urgency, especially if it's anything at all major. Let's try to get everything dealt with today, at least as far as deciding if we're going forward or going to table it. We'll start with Unfinished Business, A. Environmental Department/Commission. Does anybody want to speak to that? Sue. IRVINE: I guess I could add that I did do a little more homework on this. I went to website for Longview, Washington, which has, like, 34,000 people. It's more rural and smaller than the other places I looked at. They do separate their Public Works Department into Utilities and Public Works, sort of, along the lines that I mentioned previously. I then talked with Mr. Boucher at our Wastewater Division about the possibility of an Environmental Services Department, or Commission, and he 2 • certainly thought it was worth a try. 1 haven't talked to Bob Yanabu, who heads Public Works, but Public Works is a gigantic department and it has a lot of things to cover, and Boucher thought that wastewater, solid waste, non -point source pollution which is storm water, and individual County water systems could be included in an Environmental Services Department. Right now, before the Legislature, there are a couple of bills to consolidate Parks under County and Highways under State. Right now, we have both State and County of each of those, and he didn't know where that legislation might be going, but at this point, the State also handles those individual County water systems, and they could be put under the County, if we set up a second department. As to just making separate Division, or something, inside of Public Works, I think there seems to be, at least from the people I've talked to, less support for that. Of course, I have mostly talked to people who are involved in County and City govemments rather than people in the private sector. 1 wasn't able to figure out who to talk to or reach anybody at the various waste companies on the Island. I did find that we were all given the City and County of Honolulu Proposed Organization from 1998, when they, apparently, came up with a Department of Environmental Services, and it was going to involve refuse collection and disposal, and wastewater management, and they also had included their Board of Water Supply and Water Department, but that meant that they had to have a Charter change, and 1 don't think this happened. But there is a chart that shows that. And that's where I am right now. RAY: Comments? John. SANTANGELO: As I said before, I would like to ask this Commission to really push for a separate department. It wouldn't require more people, of this Environmental Services, and it is a pretty common model, in which the waste stream is consolidated in that. And it's really simple to do. It would require the Council and the legislative body to fill out, through ordinance, how that department would operate. The question that it raises with me is, then do we model something like the Water Commission in which there is a body that helps to manage that, and set the fees, because this should be something that stands alone. The thing that I like about it is that it creates some sort of environmental stewardship because then it would have to be self-sustaining, and that would create fees in which people had to support it through their own waste habits, and would really help a budget in terms of separating out the burden on just the property tax, and placing the burden on the end user. So, there's that possibility in what comes out of that. HIGASHI: John, I would support that concept. However, if we have something that is general and broad in the Charter and then, like you say, can be enacted by ordinance to supply the details; I think that would be the way we should be going. But also, in the Charter, we should make it - RAY: Let me ask you this, Roland. How would the language read in the Charter in regard to triggering, or mandating, the creation of that department? That's what I don't understand. HIGASHI: My thinking, all along, is that if we have it in the Charter, it would be permitted, whichever Administration chooses to create it. If it's not in the Charter, 1 don't think they'll be able to do it. But as long as it's listed in the Charter, the department, and if the next Mayor chooses to move ahead, and timing is right, fine. I'd like to interject that I looked at the Charter allowing privatization in this field. There may be department, maybe managerial type operation, but not necessarily mandating an operational entity of government. So, I don't know. That's why we have a legal counsel, to kind of figure this thing out. I mean, that's just where I come from. We can create the department. We can create it in the Charter so it can be formed, but we need the flexibility, whether it's managed competition, or whatever, that we have that in the Charter so it's allowed, and not mandated to be a Civil Service type department. RAY: Okay. SANTANGELO: Mr. Chairman, addressing the vagueness of it, and really it isn't vague. But, if you just take the Department of Public Works, and you just model it right after that. Mr. Yuen knows better, but under Organization: There shall be a Department of Environmental Services, consisting of an Environmental Engineer, or something like that, and the staff necessary. This Environmental E=ngineer shall be appointed by the Mayor, confirmed by the Council, and may be removed by the Mayor. Then Powers and Duties. And it seems like all these departments are set up • that way. And here's this gigantic department set up with the powers, duties and functions of the Department of Public Works shall be prescribed by ordinance, and shall be exercised and performed by the department. RAY: And so, in your mind, would the Administration and/or Council be mandated to create that department? SANTANGELO: If this is voted on by the public and placed into the Charter, then there's a normal,governmentai way of fleshing this thing out that's been done in the past, and unless someone could show me the flaw in that, I would expect that that's how this would be done also. RAY: So in your mind, it would be mandated. SANTANGELO: Absolutely. RAY: That's what I didn't understand from Roland. Roland was saying that we enable the creation of it, by putting this in the Charter, but it's not necessarily mandated. HERKES: Mr. Chair, can I ask a question? Chris, is everything in the Charter mandated? if it's in the Charter, do you have to do it? YUEN: You can have a `shall' and a 'may' agency in the Charter. HERKES: Okay, that's what I thought. YUEN: So it could be done either way. The Council can also create a department, on it's own, without it being in the Charter, which I don't think they've ever done. But I think the advantage to doing it in the Charter is that, in a way, it pre -clears it with the voters, which is, I think, the concern for the politicians of creating another - because you do have another set of appointments. It may not actually end up costing you more money to have another department, but you would be able to have an appointed Director, and possibly a Deputy, which multiplies the number of appointed positions that you have, which may be, in this case, something that you want to do if you're trying to upgrade the status of certain services in the County. RAY: And then, in regard to Roland's remark, as far as allowing managed competition, or privatization, do you have any thoughts on how that sentiment would be incorporated, or not, in Charter language? Is that something we'd have to address? YUEN: I think that the main thing is not to put any obstacles in the way of doing it, in the Charter, so there's nothing that anybody, in the future, can point to the Charter and say you can't do these functions by contractual services. What's happened is privatization, just to give an overview, is held up on the State level by the State Supreme Court's decision on the County Waste Management case here in Kona, • where the State Supreme Court said that Civil Service law, by implication, prevents you from farming out, and privatizing, additional Civil Service functions. And just to give you a little bit more background, the Hawaii Supreme Court said, in one of the really basic decisions about County -State relationships back in the late 1960's, that the State Civil Service law superceded anything in the County Charters. So that, for example, you can't put in the County Charter that certain positions are going to be not civil service when, according to State Civil Service law, they are civil service. So we can't put anything in the Charter that overrides the State Supreme Court's decision on privatization because that is based on the State Supreme Court's interpretation of Civil Service law. So what I would do, is just make it clear that, as far as the Charter is concerned, it was not the intent to restrict any farming out, by contract, of the services being provided by this particular department. But, for it actually to be implemented, there would have to be changes on the State level on the Civil Service law. RAY: Sue. IRVINE: Right now our County does not recycle or pick up garbage so, to me, it's hardly a matter of privatization. They don't do it at this point so it's not a County service. We do service the dumps, but it seems to me like it's not something we've done traditionally and, therefore, it would be quite easy to farm it out. The other thing. Making a shell department, we have several divisions within Public Works which would, pretty much, automatically belong in this department at this time, so 1 don't think it would be shell. It would a matter of moving those into a free standing place, and • obviously, we'd want to make absolutely sure that the Department of Public Works is cool with this, and that maybe we could even include Water later. That's what Honolulu wanted to do. HIGASHI: I think you're correct, but if we need to take it to a higher level, then we need people with higher expertise than what we have now, and in my mind, that's what I'm thinking that we ought to do. People who are in the lower tier level are managing the environmental services. By creating this department, then we may have people with more experience, more expertise, more training, and so it will be on the level of a Public Works Director. So that's my thought. And my thought on the managed competition is in the last session, or two sessions ago, through the Legislature, didn't we have the managed competition bill? HERKES: They're still working their way through the rules. HIGASHI: But the law did pass. But promulgating rules and regulations is still ongoing so that may be a vehicle we could use. RAY: the Charter. I'm mainly concerned to what degree we have to deal with that in HIGASHI: In the language you can have necessary staff or contractual • services, or something. Chris, rather than just having staff, is there language 'necessary staff or some other language that enables us to perform the job, but not necessarily by employees of the government? YUEN: I understand what you're saying. We certainly could say that in the Charter because the departments, as listed in the Charter, say 'consisting of a staff', blah, blah, blah, and we could make it clear that the functions can be performed by contracting out. RAY: John. SANTANGELO: Just to disagree a little bit, Sue. I believe, regardless of how Public Works feels in this, period. Because there's a different set of expertises, and allows for so much more, and in the proposal, it's `shall be', so the 'shall' is there, so once this is passed, if the people pass it, they have to do it. My question then goes back to how do you operate this in terms of, if you look at the Water, it says 'there shall be a semi -autonomous...'. Because this is the opportunity, do we want to go anywhere near that, and if we do, then the language is there to set up a Commission that does operate, and sets its policy, and sets its budget, and then levies fees in terms of its operation to sustain it. That does remove it from the budget a bit. That does make it a little more autonomous, and it's kind of like what they call enterprising, and that opens doors for other possibilities, too. So, do we want to venture into that? I don't think it's real complicated because we have language here that exists in the County. IRVINE: Were you suggesting that we make this department semi- autonomous, as Water? SANTANGELO: Yes. IRVINE: Okay. It's certainly a thought. I do think that we were talking, initially, a lot about a Commission, an Environmental Commission, and l definitely think we should attach a Commission to this department, who might be advisory to even the Water Commission as well. 1 think Water does need to get integrated with this at some point. SANTANGELO: Sue, the reason I went there was just a Commission has very little impact at all, 1 mean, on anything. It's advisory and people don't listen. If you make this semi -autonomous, understand that I think that Commission is definitely, as with the Water Commission, they're dealing with millions of dollars, they're setting policy, they're setting the budget, they're hiring and firing, and they're the ones that say which tanks get set up and what new lines get put in. They are definitely different from any other Commission, quote, in the County government, and I just warn you about that. It's different. HIGASHI: I feel uncomfortable by having a Commission in this case because they cannot support themselves. To begin with, Water has a source of income, where • a department like this may not have an adequate source of income to operate itself, so we may have to recognize that portion of having a semi -autonomous group. HERKES: The Commission could be in the ordinance. RAY: I think the question is, recognizing that there's not that source of income, does it make sense to set it up that way? SANTANGELO: But is that true, Mr. Chairman? RAY: George, you had something to say? MARTIN: I think it's a pretty simple solution to that problem. If, in fact, it goes semi -autonomous and they don't have a working budget to begin with, we put in the Charter that for the first four years, or whatever, they shall be budgeted by, and after that time, they either sink or swim. IRVINE: I think they might sink. I hate to say that. People are more likely to pay for water than sewers. RAY: Roland. 1110 HIGASHI: In the scope of this thinking, and we're talking about source of income, we're not considering putting the Water Department into this department, are you? HERKES: Not at this time. IRVINE: Not at this time, no. HIGASHI: Okay, just to make it clear. MARTIN: There's got to be a separation. RAY: John. SANTANGELO: In terms of income, there's nothing that this department would do, at least in the beginning, that they aren't already doing. Hopefully, they would do more, and do it better, so the money is already there. It's already been budgeted, number one. Number two, it might bring fees around to where they belong, and where Roland may have been headed. We already know it's somewhere between $35 and $85 a ton to bury this, and these fees are generated at that point of disposal. Once you start to get into that, you can start to create - See, here's the thing, and this is dangerous water, so 1 just warn you. If you have this department that's semi -autonomous, the budget is there, and it has a revenue source. It has a cost center. Then what happens is people can no longer, say, go to their local little place and dump their garbage, quote, free. That creates a revenue source that then funds other people that can go out and collect rubbish because they have to pay somewhere, and a lot of times, they'll pay you to pick it up rather than go down and do it themselves. And so when you say semi -autonomous, yes, it needs a budget, and that's generally where it leads. That's murky waters, and that's why 1 brought it up. HERKES: Mr. Chair? RAY: Marni. HERKES: Actually, we collect disposal fees now in our property taxes and our taxes for the Counties. Somebody pays for disposing. They pay for operating the landfills. So, that is just a diversion of funds that would be separated out to run this, once you figured out how much. I want to go back to, and I think it was John that brought it up, the qualifications of an Environmental Service Manager. In the Department of Water Supply, there's no qualifications for the Manager. It says they have to be an engineer, but there's no administrative qualifications. There's no educational qualifications. They're chosen by the Water Commission. Can we insert some language that the Administrator of this Environmental Services Department shall have environmental service experience and education, maybe even an Environmental Service degree, so we have somebody that has some expertise in environmental services? Thank you. RAY: The reason I sent all these suggested changes on Department Heads was just for that reason, so we'd at least thought it through. We talked about some of these, and others not, but I just pulled language out of different charters; Maui, City and County, and whatever, just to throw it out for discussion. 1 would assume we would look at that position and the Department Head the same way, on what was appropriate. So I would think the answer would certainly be yes, whatever we felt was appropriate, and I'm not sure what that is. Roland. HIGASHI: So, Mr. Chair, should we move to the center and say whether we're going to create this department? If we do, then we can work on the details. If we're not, then move on to the next subject. RAY: you the truth. HIGASHI: At least we can have the framework. We can ask Counsel to put language together, if we're going to pursue it. If we're not going to pursue it, then leave it for next meeting, but I'd like to, kind of, dispose of some of these issues. RAY; Prior to accepting a motion, if there's anymore preliminary discussion. Gary, do you have something to say? YOSHIYAMA: Yes, I want to go back to privatization and I'm going to keep calm about this. It seems that what I'm hearing is it's just like the State or the County don't have any private contracts, or they don't do privatization or contracting. There are thousands of contracts in the State. There are hundreds of contracts within this county. So, we have privatization and we have contracting out, so I don't see why we've got to put more language in there to say it's allowable. Anybody can make a motion. I'm a little bit caught off guard, to tell RAY: Okay. HIGASHI: As long as it's not prohibited. RAY: The Chair will entertain a motion in regard to creating a Department of Environment, or whatever we want to call it. IRVINE: 1 would like to move that we create a Department of Environmental Services which would take care of wastewater, solid waste and recycling, non -point source pollution and individual county water systems, among other things, and I would further like to move that we have an Environmental Commission, of some sort, attached to this department. SANTANGELO: Mr. Chairman, point of information, just for clarification. I was ready to second this motion but I stand back because it appeared to me that you were including the Department of Water. 9 IRVINE: is storm water. No. Wastewater, solid waste, non -point source pollution, which HERKES: Pollution? IRVINE: I think that they call it pollution. MARTIN: Storm drains, right. Correct. IRVINE: Anyway, storm water, and individual county water systems. MARTIN: What do you mean by that? If I may, clarification. IRVINE: That means, I think, a hotel or people who have their own catchments. YUEN: You mean individual wastewater systems? BESS: Water systems other than the county. Is that what you mean? SANTANGELO: No. • IRVINE: I don't know. I think, you're right. It would be wastewater. I'd be happy to pull that particular point out right now. RAY: Right now, the State has jurisdiction over those systems, Department of Health. IRVINE: I think you're right. RAY: So whether it's Parker Ranch's wastewater system or Hualalai, or whatever, that's administered by the State. In fact, the Department of Health still has jurisdiction over cesspools and septic tanks. They're in the process of trying to work that out to transfer it to the County now, but that's still a State function. So we need to do our homework on how this works right now, and what makes sense in terms of proposing. IRVINE: That we could take it over if the State does get rid of it. They're trying this year, I think, is what was my understanding. YUEN: Let me make a suggestion. I think you want to say some of the functions that would be transferred over but it's not critical to make an exhaustive listing of those because it can be fleshed out later. You would list the major ones and then • you would say whatever functions may be assigned by ordinance, because this gets to the level of detail that it's, I think, difficult for the people sitting at this table to make a 10 • judgment in the future, as to whether the personnel - Like if individual wastewater systems do come over to the county, in actual fact, are the personnel that do those going to fit better in this new department than in the Department of Public Works. It's hard to know sitting here right now, so I think just saying wastewater, solid waste, and recycling would cover it, and then you just say, and further functions that may be assigned to it by ordinance. There'll have to be a follow-up ordinance that actually transfers a set of positions over. IRVINE: Can 1 ask that Chris's wording, right here, would be my friendly amendment to my motion? RAY: Okay, and let's clarify the Commission part of it, as well. That was also part of your motion. Is it your thought that this is an advisory commission to this department? IRVINE: The County folks have asked us for a commission to set sewer rates, and I would assume that this commission would be doing that sort of thing, taking the politics out of sewer rates, as well as advising on the environment. HIGASHI: So, is it an advisory group? IRVINE: I don't know how you set that up, but that's what Public Works, Sand I don't know who all else, had testified to us from the County about the fact that the Council just has a hard time setting sewer rates. RAY: Let me ask our legal counsel. What are we actually talking about in terms of having the commission have that authority, such as the Water Department? YUEN: I've heard different types of commissions being discussed. One, you would say you could attach a purely advisory commission, which would help the department in, basically, community interface. They would meet with the Director of the department. They would be community people. They could be people who are in the area of recycling, or litter control, or whatever. RAY: In regard to rates, they would make recommendations. YUEN: They could make recommendations, yes. You can also set it up so that this is under a commission that has the power to set rates. You would say so in the Charter. I think then you might wind up creating a concern from the people that pay sewer charges about the responsiveness of that group to their concerns. You know, the flip side of the whole political question. It can be done, but that ties it more in with the third kind of commission, which is like the Water Commission where the • organization is self -funding. Let me put it this way, though. If you have a Sewer Commission that sets the sewer rates, that's an appointed commission, but the 11 • organization itself, the Environmental Services Department, is not self -funding, the Sewer Commission has no incentive to maximize the rates because the only thing that's going to happen is, if the Environmental Services Department is set up like the Department of Public Works, or the Department of Parks and Recreation, or the Police Department, that is basically funded by an appropriation that comes from the County Council, and the services are paid for in your tax bill, like virtually all county services except for the Department of Water Supply - If you set it up that way, but you have a Sewer Commission that sets the sewer rates, there isn't any incentive for that Sewer Commission to raise the sewer rates, and sit there and take all the heat, when what's going to happen is the County Council is not going to let you keep the money. They're going to cut your appropriation, as a result of your raising more of your own money. IRVINE: sewers. Chris, I thought there's some sort of federal mandate on these YUEN: They're supposed to be self -funding. The rates are supposed to be set that way, but that's true whether it's the County Council that sets it or if you have a Sewer Commission that sets it. SANTANGELO: Point of information on that. The requirement by the Federal government for the sewer system to be self sufficient is based on its grant. That's a loan requirement. Once that is no longer there, we do what we want. The problem I have with that, Sue, is only a few people are sewered, and yet we all benefit from that. But I'm wondering if we could take the commission up separately. Maybe we all agree that we want this department, but we could really disagree about the commission. So that one isn't held hostage by the other. IRVINE: Fine by me, too. SANTANGELO: Because we need to second something. IRVINE: Yes, or bring it up next time. RAY: My inclination is to incorporate an advisory commission that would advise the department. Seems to be the reasonable way to go. And then at least you have an independent body that's weighing in from a public policy standpoint that can have some influence over the County Council. Gives them something to hang their hat on to make a tough political choice in terms of rates. Sue. IRVINE: Sounds good. SANTANGELO: Then I'd like to second that. SYUEN: So, the motion is with a pure advisory commission. 12 IRVINE: Correct. RAY: Does everybody understand the motion? All in favor? COMMISSIONERS: Aye. RAY: Opposed? Chris will work out some proposed language, incorporating the sentiments expressed today in regard to the whole issue of privatization, managed competition, or whatever. Let's let him come up with some language that would reflect the lack of impediments, or obstacles, to that being considered, and see how we all like it. Well, congratulations. That was a big one. 1 didn't even know that was coming up. HIGASHI: It's on the agenda. RAY: I was thinking that was one we were going to take off. HIGASHI: Mr. Chair? RAY: Yes sir. HIGASHI: I'd like to just move back, several months back, remember the Board of Water Supply and the Department of Sewers were negotiating an agreement - RAY: To handle by billing? HIGASHI: To handle by billing, and we were holding this issue as, kind of, a vehicle to encourage them to move along faster, so I think we should, kind of, follow up to see how they are doing on that. RAY: To see what progress is being made, or not? HIGASHI: Yes. RAY: Anybody need a lua, coffee break? No? The next one. This may be a surprise too. Department of Public Safety. We'll ask Ms. Herkes to lead the conversation here. HIGASHI: Let's move to the Fire Commission. HERKES: Roland wants to move to the Fire Commission first, and that's probably not a bad idea because it does effect this. When I lay out the way the Charter is arranged now, we have, under the Mayor, R&D, Planning, Finance, and '13 Corporation Counsel. And under the Managing Director is Department of Public Works, and Parks and Rec, and Fire. And we would move Fire, if we adopted a commission, under Commissions. So Commissions would be Civil Service, Police, Liquor, Water, and Fire. RAY: That's why I sent out this memo with language from Maui County in terms of the possibility of rearranging the whole Executive section of the Charter, because unless there's a reason not to do that, that seems to be, in my mind anyway, a cleaner way to do it, and to put the Managing Director as the overall management executive for all the departments. It's the same powers that exist in our Charter, but it's arranged differently, and they don't seem to have felt the need to put it in three separate sections the way we have. Because their Commissions, the Fire, the Police, operate pretty much the same way ours do, and they don't have it in a separate section. So I don't know that we need to worry about that. We're going to discuss that further anyway. HIGASHI: The reason I asked Marni to take the Fire Commission first, if that's the will of this group to put it in, then we know exactly what we're dealing with. Because if there is no Commission, we're going to have to deal with this differently. RAY: Okay. I thought we'd already voted on that. • MARTIN: I thought we did too. RAY: I believe we voted at the last meeting to move forward with the Fire Commission per the language submitted by Gary. MARTIN: And you were going to find out some information on it. HERKES: I think we deferred the vote because we just got the document that day. IRVINE: I know we were going to talk with Honolulu about whether their system worked well because we were using their language, and there was some question about - RAY: We have already gotten that input, Sue, that they seem to be very happy, the City and County, with the way it's working. We got that early on in the process. IRVINE: Okay. YUEN: It was passed. I thought it was, and on page 50, it was passed as a preliminary vote to have a Fire Commission per Gary's draft, and then I think 1 jumped • in with a little bit on suggesting modification of the procedure for removal of the Chief. 14 • And I did draft something up that noneof you have seen yet. I was going to pass out when we got to that today. RAY: Are we all clear on that? We did take a preliminary vote, but understand, all these are just preliminary votes. We can take another vote. We can change our minds if we want. Gary. YOSHIYAMA: Are we going to come back to Fire Commission because I have something to report? RAY: Let's deal with Fire Commission right now. So, we've established we did take the preliminary vote at the last meeting, and so we are moving forward on the same basis we have on everything else. We've taken a preliminary vote to develop language and flesh out any other concerns, so in regard to that, Gary. YOSHIYAMA: Sometimes I've got to thank Roland of reminding me of some stuff, and he reminded me of an assignment I was given. I was supposed to do some follow- up with the City and County of Honolulu. Sorry I don't have a written report because I did it kind of late, but I did talk to the Fire Chief, Leonardi. 1 talked a little with the Fire Fighters Union, and I had two lengthy conversations with Fire Commissioners Patsy Young and Norman Ahakuelo, and don't ask me to spell his last name. But, they all agreed that the Fire Commission is a very good commission for the City and County of Honolulu. They are very happy with it. The Fire Chief and the two Commissioners I talked to - the first thing they told me was it took politics out of the Fire Department, and they all mentioned the same thing, from the selection of the Fire Chief to political campaigns. And then they went on to say about the professionalism, the selection, the criteria for picking the Fire Chief, and then some operational matters. It's running very smoothly. They've only, really, about two years of experience, but they don't have any glitches. The Fire Chief seems to keep them very well informed. 1 have some other information if you want to ask me some questions, but I'II end with this. The budget is very small. Initially they started out with a $12,000 budget, and that was mainly to buy equipment, computers, etc. But they're now operating on $3,500 a year. They meet once a month. RAY: Any other questions for Gary in regard to that? HIGASHI: I have one. RAY: Roland. HIGASHI: So, in essence, they're using the staff that they have now. They don't have a Commission staff? YOSHIYAMA: They have their own staff. It's a part-time clerical, steno -type, employee, and they tell me she works part-time, and they need her for the services of this position when they meet once a month. That's it. 15 RAY: George. MARTIN: The primary function of the commission, as it's implemented in Honolulu, is to hire and fire the Chief. YOSHIYAMA: That is a primary responsibility. Also to hear public complaints, similar to the Police Commission. Review the budget. They review the budget for the Fire Department with the Fire Chief. And recently they met with the Mayor and his people, along with the Fire Chief, the Fire Commission, and they hashed out the Fire Department budget. So those are, I think, the major areas. HIGASHI: And as I recall, they also review personnel action? YOSHIYAMA: We didn't talk about that. RAY: So, that didn't come up? YOSHIYAMA: No, that didn't come up. RAY: I hope I didn't confuse everybody by putting this on because we included things that we have voted on but we need to flesh out other concerns or details. Chris, so you've got some - YUEN: Yes, as I mentioned, this was passed last time and there was a little bit of discussion, maybe I instigated, on the procedure for removal of the Chief, and I prepared something. I just finished yesterday so I'm going to pass out. I changed the language from what was in Gary's draft. I followed the Honolulu Charter and I changed it very slightly as a suggestion. There are two changes from the Honolulu draft. One change is that instead of 'charges', I used the word 'reasons', and I think the word 'charges' implies some kind of misfeasance in office, like taking the fire truck joy riding, or - I don't know what the Fire Chief would do. It seems to me that the Fire Commission should be able to remove the Chief for things like inefficient functioning of the department, which I don't know really fits into a statement of charges. So, that's one change. The second change, and this is really up to this Commission, of how easy they want the procedure to be to remove the Chief. The Honolulu Charter, and actually our Charter for the Police Commission, says that you cannot remove the Chief until you've given the statement of reasons and the Chief has had an opportunity to respond to them at a hearing. And what that implies to me is that you can't do it all in one meeting because you have a motion, you present the statement of reasons, and to me, when you say you have an opportunity at a hearing to respond, it doesn't mean you just, okay, what do you say about that, and that's it, and you're out of there. I wrote this so that it didn't say at a hearing, and so this could actually all be done in a single meeting. And it's up to this Commission if you don't want to have them be able to do it that way, then say at a hearing. Otherwise, just leave it stated like this. Then it would have to be on the agenda; evaluation and retention of the Chief; and then they would 16 have a meeting, and somebody would make a motion, 'I think we should get rid of the Chief because the Chief hasn't upgraded the equipment or they bought the terrible radio system, it doesn't work', or something like that. And then the Chief would have the opportunity to respond to that, and then the Commission could vote, and if they voted to remove the Chief, that would be the end of that. So that's what this language is meant to do. RAY: Comments to that? Gary. YOSHIYAMA: I move for incorporation of legal counsel's amendments. HIGASHI: Second. RAY: So, you're voting to support the facilitation of the removal without that whole process? YOSHIYAMA: Right. RAY: George. MARTIN: I think that Gary's original draft had the same language but now Chris is just making a change to that language so it's actually an amendment to your • original. YOSHIYAMA: Yes, incorporating the change. IRVINE: No commission is going to go through a meeting and say these are the reasons we're going to fire you and vote to fire them, are they? MARTIN: Why not? RAY: I think we did get testimony that that's actually the way the Police Commission had operated in the past. On Monday you're in and Tuesday you're out. But, hopefully, we've progressed in terms of our political behavior. We have a member from the public that would like to make a comment, since you folks are here. AKANA: Eddie Akana from Waimea. I just want to know, during the hearing now, if the Fire Chiefs job is on the line, at that time can he have an attorney at the hearing and all that? YUEN: attorney. Yes. If you have a hearing, yes, the Fire Chief could have an 17 • RAY: But we're suggesting not having a hearing. IRVINE: Right. YUEN: Not saying that there is a formal hearing. There is an opportunity to the Fire Chief to respond. Let me just say that 1 think, typically, just to give a typical situation where a Director is hired and fired by a Board or Commission, you could take the Superintendent of Education, for example. The firing is done quite quickly. It is a typical thing. When it happens, it typically happens very quickly. It may be building up for a long time. The other scenario does make it considerably more difficult because, and let me just flesh this out, if you have a motion to remove somebody at one meeting, and then you schedule the meeting for two or three weeks later to actually vote on it, then, of course, the person then has the opportunity to invite public testimony at this time and it does make it considerably more difficult if it does not all get wrapped up in one meeting. Now, that's for you folks to make a decision on how difficult you want to make it, but that is the scenario that I see possible when you say that there's a hearing. HIGASHI: It's not covered by Civil Service? Does he have a choice to keep it closed meeting or open meeting? YUEN: I think it could be closed at the request of the individual involved • because of the personnel matter. It would be Sunshine Law exemption for a personnel matter. HIGASHI: Okay. I'm not worried about the firing too much. Implementation of something like this, supposing it's approved by the voters, the next go -round normally the Mayor appoints the Fire Chief. In this case, what would be the scenario? YUEN: I think the implementation under the proposal as passed last time is quite clear that you have a new Mayor coming in, and the Mayor would appoint the whole Fire Commission, and then the Fire Commission would appoint the Chief. So, in essence, you have immediate implementation. There's another thing in the Charter of how you stagger the terms, so that some people would be appointed for a full five years, so you would have people dropping out, over time, from the Commission. HIGASHI: Would rule making apply here? You know, appointing a new commission, is there time for rule making and procedures and formation? What I'm just trying to find out is if the implementation will take a while we may have to put in some interim language as to who is the Fire Chief, whether he holds over, or appointed by the new Mayor interimly, or something, so that's the only thought I had. YUEN: Let me look at the Fire Chief. Actually, I think the Fire Chief holds over anyway, under present - 18 • IRVINE: In our thing, there are transition provisions concerning the Fire Commission. The Fire Chief serving on December 31, 2000, shall serve as Interim Fire Chief. Should the Fire Chief vacate or be removed from the office before appointment of a Fire Commission , (a) the. Deputy Fire Chief shall serve or, (b) the Mayor may commission an Interim Fire Chief. YUEN; Let me suggest something here. The language that you just read, and I'm sorry, I should have looked at this a little more carefully - Probably what you want to do is, you're right, it may take the Commission a little while to either decide on whether they want to keep the old Fire Chief or hire a new one. In the meantime, it seems to me that the most logical thing would be to have the old Chief hold over, rather than have the Mayor, who comes in on the 5th of December, on the first Monday in December, appoint a Chief who, then you are in the position of having to get rid of. Or, in a sense, it may be too much of a signal from the Mayor as to who the Chief is supposed to be. But that December 31st language is not good because it's not December 31m. The new Administration comes in on the first Monday of December. I think, as the Charter is set up now, the Fire Chief does actually hold over until removed by the Mayor, but we can work on that little bit of language. That's a technical point, but you're right, if I'm gathering people correctly, that the transition should just be that the old Chief holds over until the Fire Commission appoints the new Chief, and if the old Chief decides, for whatever reason, for example to resign, I think that Gary's • language says here the Mayor appoints a - IRVINE: Yes, the Deputy steps in or then the Mayor may appoint if neither one of them. YUEN: Oh, 1 see. The former Deputy becomes the Chief for that time period. Okay. RAY: Steve, do you have a question? i BESS: Yes, I have one question. Chris, you have given us your opinion with regard to changing the language here, particularly the use of the word 'respond' to the statement of reasons, and not entitling the Fire Chief to a hearing. And I'm wondering whether or not the language, as worded here, he or she is given an opportunity to respond, and whether or not some resourceful attorney may say that rises to the point of 'I have a right to a hearing', and my question is, one, whether our record is abundantly clear that a hearing is not intended, or whether we should, in fact, add to this language to make it clear that response is not a hearing? YUEN: You're right that a resourceful attorney could still say that the opportunity simply to sit there and respond to the motion that's been made is not equivalent to a hearing. If you wanted to go further, it could be made more clear. Yes, that could be done. 19 BESS: So 1 move that the attorney put in that kind of language to make it clear that a hearing's not what we're looking for here. RAY: Is that regarded as a friendly amendment? YUEN: Yes. HIGASHI: Second. SANTANGELO: So I'm to understand that this commission is appointed by the Mayor and approved by the Council, so we have that balance of power, and that what we're looking at is the hiring and firing. It's a temporary person anyway. They're brought in to administrate. When they're hired, they know that this is to run that Fire Department and it may not be for life, so the hearing thing is a good thing not to have because that's not like somebody who's looking for lifetime employment. And so I totally support this, and I like the checks and balances in it. IRVINE: right? We did talk last time - right now, our Police Chief gets a hearing, SANTANGELO: No. BESS: It's the same language, respond. IRVINE: To me, I thought we were talking about being consistent and I really like this Fire Commission stuff from Honolulu, the way the powers and duties, and whatnot, are set up, and I thought we were talking about maybe making our Police RAY: going into that. IRVINE: taking it out - That's why we agendized the Police Commission so we'll be So, if we're taking this out here, would we then be thinking of RAY: That's a separate discussion, but we'll be getting to it in just a minute. Okay, we've got a motion on the floor and amended to Chris's language, amended by the addition of Steve's recommendation. So, is that clear to everybody? IRVINE: Yes. RAY: All in favor of those changes and reaffirming our earlier vote on the Fire Commission, say aye. • COMMISSIONERS: Aye. 20 RAY: Opposed? Okay. We get two gold stars. Let's take a five minute break, a little coffee break. RECESSED The Chairman called a recess at 10:17 a.m. RECONVENED The meeting reconvened at 10:27 a.m. RAY: Let's reconvene our meeting. Now let's jump back, since we've covered the Fire Commission, the Department of Public Safety. Marni. HERKES: I think the reorganization under the Maui Charter accomplishes a lot of what the Department of Public Safety would have done. I still like that idea. I notice Maui has a Public Safety Commission, but only the Fire Department's under it. I admit that up front. But the Public Safety Commission and the Public Safety Department, I still think is a good idea, but 1, kind of, agree that it's a little late to move that. We don't have time for testimony from all those departments, and things, right now. To put Police, Fire, Civil Defense, Detention, Animal Control, and Emergency Services, as well as Building Inspection, under one department would be a major change. But in the reorganization, under the Maui Charter, all of those departments would be under the Managing Director, and in the long scheme of things, it might be possible for him to group later on. And future commissions might like to look at a Public Safety Commission. Okay? HIGASHI: So for now, we just - HERKES: For now, I think we're - YOSHIYAMA: Sounds real good. RAY: Okay, Police Commission. Just so you know, I've still received some comments, and I think, certainly, profited by all the public scandals, and whatever, is there something we need to do to address the situation with the Police Commission. I got a call last night from a Police Commissioner that really needed to talk to me but I didn't get hold of her, but Roland did. Jo -Anna Herkes. But I really put this on here because there was that conversation, that came up today earlier, that folks like the language from the Fire Commission, and maybe we should look at incorporating some of that, and I thought that was more for clarification, a cleaner language, kind of spell some things out better, rather than substantive changes. The floor is open for discussion in regard to the Police Commission. Marni. HERKES: I make a motion that we adopt the language that's been submitted for the Fire Commission in it's entirety, and adopt that as the Police Commission • language in the new Charter. 21 • i RAY: Second for discussion? SANTANGELO: Second. RAY: Okay, let's discuss. John. Well, first off, let's everybody take a minute and see if we can pull that out to see what we're talking about specifically. Let's hold all discussion and let everybody get a chance to get it. So, everybody needs to open up our Charter and look at the Police Department. MARTIN: Chapter 2, page 14. RAY: And then the Maui County. Okay, who had the floor? John? SANTANGELO: I guess I asked Marni. She had a difference of opinion. But I'm wondering, with this, we were talking about making all these commissions conform under the same rules, set up the same way. Is there any way this can be a part of that general housekeeping stuff, or does it have to be handled totally separately, because I can see where it could get a bit confusing. But, I support this a hundred percent. I'm now wondering how best to handle it. HIGASHI: Conformity is one thing but the responsibilities of different departments is another thing, so I feel uncomfortable with having some of those things - SANTANGELO: Okay, it was just a question. RAY: Do you want to address that specifically, as far as what - HIGASHI: I don't have a copy. I only remember about the personnel procedures goes before the commission in terms of the Police Department. I feel somewhat uncomfortable of micro managing personnel actions through the commission. And 1 don't have a copy but I remember that one point. RAY: Can you give him a copy there, Sue? IRVINE: I can. YUEN: Just a couple of things. For a point of clarification, looking at your motion, this would be to change the powers of the Police Commission to include the powers in 6-4.6 of the Fire Commission? HERKES: Correct. YUEN: more general. Because there's a bunch of powers that don't apply. These are 22 HERKES: Okay. YUEN: And on John's question of housekeeping, I think that to make changes like this, in this section, to the Police Commission, would be a significant change in the powers, and so it would have to be done as a separate ballot item. RAY: You're talking about (e) under Section 6-4.6? HIGASHI: Right. RAY: (e) says 'review personnel actions within the department for conformity.' HIGASHI: Mr. Ray. RAY: Yes sir. HIGASHI: Under the Police General Orders, are these things covered? They operate under General Orders, as part of the operation, and if they change their General Orders - I mean that's the way they operate. They don't operate similar to this, and it seems to me that we need to read their General Orders, what is covered and how they operate. HERKES: Police Department or the Police Commission? HIGASHI: Police Department. HERKES: He's talking about the Commission. HIGASHI: Well, the Commission, in this language, kind of operates the Police Department. The other way, they hire and fire the Chief, and that's their job, to hire and fire the Chief, and make him accountable. The Fire Commission goes into a lot more detail into the operations and approving of this, approving of the policy, approving of the budget, review personnel policies or personnel action. I'm not inclined to support that detailed of an operation for the Police Department. I think they're, somewhat, more complicated in their operations than the Fire Department. RAY: I was trying to pull out, in City and County - they did revise their Charter in regard to be Police Commission recently, and the one change that stands out in my mind was the five-year hiring of the Chief. 1 know they implemented that, but I was trying to look in the City and County, since we're looking at their model for the Fire Commission, and what they have in regard to the Police Commission. But I don't have the recent changes that they made. But it seems like that would be a logical place to look since we're looking at their language for the Fire Commission; how they address the Police Commission. Okay, other folks' comments on this? 23 IRVINE: John, I really, really like the way the Fire Commission, Honolulu, reads at the beginning, statement of policy under 6-4-2. It's declaring that they have the purpose as to establish in the county a system of fire, and we could put police, protection and prevention, and they set up, right there, standards for recruitment shall be designed to attract into the department, persons with a high degree of education, intelligence, and personal stability. It gives some real overall guidelines, and I think people, at this point in our island, would be really appreciative of having, like, a policy or a goal like that set up so that they had more confidence in how things were being done. RAY: I thought that was the sentiment, more along those lines, is why we brought this, actually, up rather than the specific duties so much. More this organizational language that seems to be more appealing. HIGASHI: Are we adopting this in total, perform police work and investigation? You're going to have all of that in here, under performing, you know? HERKES: Yes. HIGASHI: It says perform firefighting and emergency service. Are we going to detail all that the policemen have to do? Is that what the intent is? IRVINE: Protection and public safety, or whatever you say, yes. HERKES: Perform public safety - IRVINE: Obviously, there'd have to be a few changes but - HIGASHI: So, why don't you come up with a draft rather than adopting this thing, as a whole? HERKES: Okay. RAY: Somebody needs to look into City and County, because I'm looking at that and I can't figure out - I mean, they have a page and a half on the Fire Department and one paragraph on the Police Department, so I don't know where the rest of this stuff is. IRVINE: Is that page 14, 15? In the '96 supplement, I think there's more. But, you're probably right, that maybe we need to have Chris write this up as it might apply to our Police Commission, find out about General Orders, or whatever those are. HIGASHI: If it's covered under the General Orders like training. IRVINE: Who knows about General Orders? Who would we ask? 24 RAY: I don't think we have enough information to make any decision on this. We do have a meeting next Wednesday so if, just in the meantime, maybe Marni, you could do a little more research. HERKES: I'll rewrite it. There are five members on this commission rather than nine. Did we have any discussion on that? RAY: No, we didn't. HERKES: Okay. RAY: But, that's a good point you brought up so that's something we need to deal with on the Fire Commission, right? YUEN: Well, it got adopted as written up with five, right? So if you want to change it, you've got to decide what you want to do. HERKES: I like the five, but I'm open. YUEN: There are two different kinds of things that are being talked about with the Police Commission. One is a, kind of, general statement about what the Police Department is supposed to do, which is not really in our Charter. You could say duties of the Chief of Police; arrest lawbreakers, prevent crime, that sort of thing. That's a general statement. Then, there was a motion by Marni which was, I thought, to adopt as the powers of the Police Commission, something similar to 6-4.2, similar to what we had put in on the Fire Commission. Let me just describe what is significantly different between the powers of the Fire Commission and the powers of the Police Commission under the present Hawaii County Charter. First, I think, and I'm looking at the Fire Commission, not the Police Commission: (a) is already in there; (b) is already in there; BESS: And the Council. YUEN: Okay, to the Mayor and the Council. It's basically similar. (c) is review the department's operations. That is not in there for the Police Commission, so that's different; (d) annual evaluation, is not in there for the Police Commission presently; (e) review personnel actions for conformance with policies, is not in there for the Police Commission presently; (f) complaints of citizens, is in there for the Police Commission with different wording and, actually, a little broader because they actually have the power to adjudicate, you know, make findings on complaints; and then (g) the annual report is in there for the Police Commission. There is an annual report. Then this non-interference except for purposes of inquiry is in there for the Police Commission. RAY: So, we're really only talking about those three items; (c), (d), and 25 (e), expansion of, so let's just keep that in mind and we'll get some more information to continue this discussion on Wednesday. Marni. HERKES: Do you want me to withdraw my motion? RAY: Yes. HERKES: I withdraw my motion. IRVINE: I guess I was wondering, Roland mentioned General Orders in the Police Department. Is that something that we need to know something about to do this? YUEN: Well, the Police Department has a bound volume of what are called the General Orders, and they're administrative in nature. They're things like - AKANA: Haircuts, uniforms, basic. YUEN: They're administrative rather than being really broad policies. They are specific rules for the conduct of the Police Department. They overlap, sometimes, with things that are in the contract, like car allowances and meal breaks. • You can get a copy but I think that what we're doing is at a higher level of generality than the General Orders. IRVINE: Okay. RAY: Moving on. Salary Commission. We have correspondence from Mike Ben. We have correspondence from Gary Yoshiyama, which I guess is Mike Ben's response, a follow-up on that. And then in the memo that I sent out I included a draft on Compensation; Salary Commission, and this is just pulling language off the shelf from other Charters. Everything is pulled out of other Charters. The last sentence, I did editorialize a little bit, so I came up with some language there, and it says, Commission shall review and compensate all county elected officials and appointed directors so that their, and this is what I added, total salaries and benefits have a reasonable relationship to both the compensation of civil service employees and the private sector. And, to me, if I were a Commissioner, that's the kind of direction they would look at, a total salary and benefits package that would use civil service pay and private sector to come up with recommendations for these executive pay raises, because we're competing with both. This is on the table. We did not take any vote on this at the last meeting, so I'II open this for discussion. Roland. HIGASHI: Are we looking to empower the Salary Commission to set the salaries without confirmation from the Council? RAY: That's my understanding, right. And just a little background. 1 26 spoke with Maui County, actually ex -Mayor Lingle about this a couple of weeks ago, and she said they instituted it on Maui and it seems to work well and people seem to be very happy with it. Gary. YOSHIYAMA: John, you were talking about your last sentence there, and you make reference to the reasonable relationship to the private sector. What I would suggest is rather than state civil service employees, we would broaden that to, maybe, just say public sector, because it's much bigger than civil service employees. They're all different classes. RAY: Yes, that's good because, like, if you're looking at a new, a more empowered Managing Director position, you'd probably be looking to a public sector employee in that field. That would be your competition. HIGASHI: Is a motion in order to adopt the amendment? RAY: Wait. Mr. Ben's submittal to us, if we could all refer to that. We asked him what executive positions would he recommend be effected by this. So, other than the Department Heads and Deputies, included on this list are the County Physicians who I've never known what they did. And also, it's got the Safety Coordinator. It's got the Band Director. HERKES: I thought we took out the band. MARTIN: No, and we're not going to. BESS: Why is the Prosecuting Attorney not in here? RAY: I don't know. YOSHIYAMA: That's by Council. The Mayor and the Prosecuting Attorney. I read that somewhere. YUEN: He's elected. IRVINE: Elected is already covered. RAY: What would we need to do if we wanted to incorporate all of these executive pay into this amendment, Chris? How do we do that? In an attached addendum or something? YUEN: No, you would more generally refer to all appointed Department Heads and their first Deputy. I think that's what he's got here. RAY: What about the Band Director and the County Physicians? 27 YUEN: Then you would list those separately because he has a few in here who are - The Housing Administrator is a Department Head. It's not a chartered department but it's a department. And the Safety Coordinator is it's own department. IRVINE: It's their own department. We moved them to Civil Service, but they're still an appointed position, as far as I know, right? YUEN: Yes. RAY: But logically, wouldn't it make sense for a Salary Commission to look at these for the same reason? SANTANGELO: Because they have no one representing them. RAY: These types of positions. IRVINE: John, I just hate to put those County Physicians and, say, the Band Director in there. Let's just remain silent on them because they're probably positions which should not exist. KUROZAWA: What does a County Physician do, Sue? IRVINE: They do pre-employment physicals and they are being paid, that half-time, is somewhere between thirty and forty thousand dollars a year. YOSHIYAMA: They do other things too. IRVINE: They do other things? What? YOSHIYAMA: Other kinds of examinations also. It's not only pre-employment. IRVINE: They have some little eye program, I know, but these doctors can't do eyes. They had something where county employees were supposed to get their eyes checked every couple of years. But, that is certainly one of those places where, it seems to me, if you pay for service rendered, you would not be paying these kinds of salaries. RAY: Chris, can you flesh out who would and would not be covered on this list in this language, maybe, and we'll look at it? YUEN: Yes, if we just said Department Heads and a Deputy, the ones who would not be included would be the County Physicians, and the Safety Coordinator, the Band Director, and the Legislative Auditor I have to put a question mark because the Charter, as I wrote a letter to you, does not say that there is such a thing as a Legislative Auditor's Office. It just says there's a Legislative Auditor, but why 28 don't we leave that like that's a question mark because there's a discussion about formalizing what the office is and does, and in that case, it would be a Director and would be covered by the salary ordinance. RAY: Gary. YOSHIYAMA: I don't recall where the Director of Office of Aging and Harry Kim, Civil Defense - I don't know if they were converted from Civil Service to non -Civil Service type positions. To me, it's something similar to the Housing and Community Development being in the Mayor's Office, this kine. But in any case, I take it that Mike Ben and Barry Mizuno are going to attend our next meeting. RAY: Yes, I'm glad you brought that up. We have requested they attend next Wednesday's meeting. It would probably be good to get their input on this. Maybe we should table this until then. IRVINE: Okay, John, one other question. What about all the Mayor's Executive Assistants? Are they not - Kokubun, this kind of thing - Is this just the Mayor's discretion? RAY: He's the Deputy Planning Director. But anyway, no they wouldn't be covered under this. YUEN: No, they're not covered under Mike Ben's proposal. Positions in the Office of the Mayor, Marcia Reynolds, people like that, are Civil Service exempt but they're in a pay plan that's approved by the Council. RAY: Let's everybody just think this thing through and then we'll get some input from Mike on Wednesday and, hopefully, we can move it forward. My sense is that we're going to approve something, it's just a question of what. Managing Director, and this was the thing I addressed more in the memo that I sent out, and what I did, of the recommendation, was two things: (1) looking at a total reorganization of the Executive Branch of government, along the lines of Maui County. And, basically, what Maui does is they have a section that generally describes the Executive Branch, generally describes the Mayor, but then all the departments are listed under one section, and they just have the Managing Director at the top of that section, the Department of Management, at the top of the list. So that's the reorganizational part of it. So 1 called Chris and said, as far as the way they lump everything, including sections that have Boards and Commissions, is there any problem there. I don't believe there is if that's the way Maui County's been doing it for years. And then, the thought there is that it just doesn't change the powers of the Mayor and the Managing Director. It just puts it in a more logical sequence where it • seemed like he's the key management person. And then in the last page of the memo I sent out, that has specific language on the Department of Management, this is 29 language, sort of a hybrid of Maui County, City and County, and the Lexington Charter. So, under Organization, it says there'll be a Department of Management, consisting of a Managing Director and the necessary staff. And then under the actual Managing Director, the significant language, or expansion, there is that 'shall be appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by the Council' and then as far as the job qualifications, this is language taken out of a couple of Charters, including Lexington, that we had talked about; five years of experience in an administrative capacity, and shall possess demonstrable educational and/or professional experience in the art and science of government management as required by such office. I was just throwing it out for discussion. Powers, duties and functions. I'd say the significant ones that are included there that are a little bit different are (c), that the managing director would recommend to the Mayor the annual operating and capital improvement budgets. It just puts him more in that process. And then the section (d), I think, is mostly lifted out of City and County in terms of oversight on reviewing all the departments and it also has an inclusion that says 'make reports to the Mayor and the Council'. I included that to tie that in a little more. And then this language about Commissions, I lifted out, and that seemed to be applicable if we have Commissions and lumping everything together, that you tie in the Managing Director to these Boards and Commissions as far as those oversight functions. And (e), (f), (g) and (h) are identical. There was nothing in there. So, I think • the big choices are do we want to organize it this way, and then, as far as powers of the Managing Director, or appointments, do we want it confirmed by the Council® How do we want to describe the position, and then do we want to spell out the fiscal responsibilities the way they are more in (d) where it says more of an oversight for management and performance. While we're on this, and I hope this is not out of order to take it up, is after I sent this out, I was going through the Maui County Charter and became intrigued by a Commission that they have, and it's on page 22 of the Maui County Charter, and this is a Cost of Government Commission they have in Maui County. I'm just bringing that up because it's all, sort of, the same subject of oversight and how all this works. So that's something we might want to consider, and I chatted with a couple of people about it. I'll just throw that open for discussion, all this stuff. First, Chris, in regard to the way this whole thing is set up, are there any red flags in your mind, as far as if we were to want to organize it this way in our Charter, along the lines of Maui? YUEN: It can be done that way. 1 think that what you have in mind actually goes a little bit farther than what Maui does because I think Maui leaves it more up to the Mayor to decide what agencies, if I'm understanding correctly. It's, kind of, up to the Mayor to put them in there. RAY: Well, wait a minute. Look at 6-1.3, (a) Act as the principal management aide to the Mayor, (b) Supervise the administrative functioning of all agencies, department, boards and commissions assigned by the mayor. It's the same language we have now. It doesn't - 30 • YUEN: I just want to make sure I understand. Right now, our Charter is organized where there are some departments that report to the Managing Director, like Public Works, and Parks and Recreation, and some that do not, like Planning, although the Mayor could tell the Planning Director that henceforth I want you to report to the Managing Director. Do you want to organize it so that all, what are called in our Charter, the staff agencies that report to the Mayor now, that are not listed under the Managing Director, would necessarily be under the Administrative control of the Managing Director, or do you want to leave that up to the Mayor? RAY: I think that's open for discussion. MARTIN: I think it leads to the question I was going to ask, as far as I see no place in here that this Managing Director, I'm sure he would though, make recommendations for the other Department Heads, or if he would have any say in who the other Department Heads would be. RAY: That is language that's included in the Lexington Charter, just so you know, and I didn't include it in this, but we certainly could. Like it says in here, that the Managing Director, Administrative whatever they call it, does make recommendations. I'll pull that out. He does make recommendations so that certainly could be included. Other discussion? IRVINE: I have a question, John, and it's under (d). Maybe it's for our attorney. If we set up this oversight of the budget process, and appoint the necessary staff to assist in such evaluation and analyses, and to assist the executive agencies in improving their performance, etc., the way I read it, it sort of sets up a budget function under the Mayor, and it's my understanding then, that those positions would be appointed rather than Civil Service? RAY: Yes, I think so. IRVINE: Which really changes - YUEN: No. IRVINE: Right now we have a budget division under Finance which is staffed with Accountants. YUEN: No, this creates a Department of Management and then, if the positions were created - Does the Managing Director have staff currently? HERKES: Yes. YUEN: How many people does he have? 31 HERKES: Two. YUEN: If you have a Department of the Managing Director, the staff that gets appointed to that would be Civil Service, definitely, except for the personal secretary of the Managing Director, who is exempt. IRVINE: Okay, 1 see. YUEN: You're not creating positions in the Office of the Mayor. You're creating positions under a Charter Department. HERKES: John, that word 'appoint', it creates an impression that this is a permanent position to evaluate a department, or a program, and I think that there's quite a bit of latitude there for contract people to be able to evaluate performance and things, so I have a problem with the word `appoint'. May 'secure' the necessary staff, so that they can go outside if the expertise is not available, and they don't want to hire a permanent staff. IRVINE: 1 guess I have a question on that. To what kind of agency do you go to get expertise in that sort of thing? I know the Government Organization of Financial Advisors, or whatever, do that sort of thing, according to the National Association of Counties stuff I've read. But is there any company, or organization, on • this island, or in Honolulu, that you could hire to do a, sort of, audit that goes beyond just the numbers and on into efficiency and such? RAY: Yes there is, and right now, the Board of Water Supply in Honolulu is going through a total reorganization, and they have contracted with a national consulting firm that specializes in this kind of thing, so there certainly are, whether that would fit what we'd want here, or not, I don't know, but there certainly are companies that do specialize in that kind of thing. IRVINE: It seems to me, then, that instead of appointing the necessary staff, we want the job done, we don't care how they do it, and so maybe that is something we could look at. HIGASHI: Mr. Chair, I think the Maui Charter, pretty much, covers the things that's covered under your proposal, except in a broader manner. IRVINE: Yes, it does. HIGASHI: I could support Maui's language, which is broader than ours, and not as detailed as the one that's proposed. HERKES: Is that a motion? 32 IRVINE: Yes, this just makes me a little nervous because, I guess, I don't understand exactly, but Maui is, definitely, I think, along the same lines and easier to go with, but that's just my impression right now. RAY: All of this is just thrown out there to move the discussion along. I've tried to incorporate the different things we've talked about, and looked at, as far as just putting it on paper and how it might look, but - HIGASHI: For purposes of further moving it along, I move that we adopt, for consideration, the language in the Maui Charter under Chapter I, Department of Management. HERKES: Second. RAY: Does that include the general organization of the - HIGASHI: Just Chapter 1 for now. HERKES: And having seconded, though, just Chapter I? RAY: You're not talking about all of Article VIII, the County Departments structured in this way? HIGASHI: Well, start with Chapter 1 and see where we go under Chapter 1, how it's described and then we can move on further and complete the whole thing. HERKES: The big difference I see between Maui and Hawaii County is that the Commissions are separated out from the departments. The Commissions are under Article VIII; Civil Service, Police, Liquor, Water, and Fire. The departments are under the Mayor/Managing Director, and the Maui Charter integrates the Commissions with the departments, and that, to me, makes a lot more sense, and it's a lot simpler organization chart. I'm ready to talk about Article VIII, all of the County departments; integrating the whole County department, Article VIII, into Hawaii County. IRVINE: I guess I'd just like to ask John, why did you go to City and County of Honolulu and put that (d) in more detail than Maui had it? Is there a rationale for that? RAY: Just from the discussions we've had about more fiscal management performance review, trying to incorporate those kinds of sentiments, and oversight, just to spell it out in more detail. And I think it also lays it out for the Mayor a little more clearly, the role and the involvement of the Managing Director. MARTIN: Mr. Chair, if I may interject. Excuse me but I believe there's a motion on the floor, and it was seconded. 33 SANTANGELO: We're in the discussion. MARTIN: Okay. RAY: So the motion on the floor would be to adopt the Department of Management language in the Maui Charter vs. the language in the memo that I furnished. HIGASHI: No, I'm not even considering your memo right now. I'm considering only having this thing described as Managing Director and it's functions. BESS: But that conflicts with what John's prepared on this one. HIGASHI: Yes. BESS: So you're saying that you'd rather have the Maui one than his. HIGASHI: I want to start with this. RAY: Right. I thought that's what I said. HIGASHI: One of my reasons is under the Managing Director, under the • description, five years experience in an administrative capacity, and shall possess demonstrable educational and/or professional experience in the art and science of government management. I think maybe business people have a lot to offer in terms of business experience, running government, so I'd prefer broader language giving the Mayor an opportunity to select somebody with experience as prescribed in the Maui Charter, in public or in private. RAY: Okay. Steve. BESS: One of the things that I see that John is trying to do, and certainly I would agree with that, and Marni is there as well, is that, personally, I really would like to see a County Manager. We recognize that this was not the right time to do it. I think we were going to have to rewrite the whole Charter. It was too much. And so that this is an interim step towards, hopefully, the next Charter around, they will see fit to adopting that form of government. So, that's why there is the degree of detail in here about, hey, this guy is a real manager, and recognize that he's a manager, and put language in there that removes some of the stuff where the Mayor looks like he is the. CEO. He's still the CEO, but we're putting more and more power in that Managing Director position. And so, with regard to (d), I think that's important, and I like some of the detail. I am concerned with a couple of the things in there where, and I'm straying from the point here, but on Section 6-1:3(d) that John recommends, where he's saying that there will be reports to the Mayor and Council on the findings and recommendations, the reports are being made to the Council. Again, we're working 34 • towards that County Manager. The one thing that I would say, and I mentioned this to John earlier, and that is is that I'm wondering whether or not in the reports to the Mayor, there ought to be routine reports setting up bi-annual reports so that there will, in fact, be reports, so that the Managing Director can't wait out the demands of others saying, hey, make reports. RAY: John. SANTANGELO: I just want to speak to John's proposal in broad spectrum. What I appreciate about it is where it's coming from, and it's coming from an individual who I worked with, who understands government and worked as an elected official, is no longer, in any way, a professional politician, and has looked at the flaws and how the system does and doesn't work, because it's not mutually exclusive. You can have a business minded person, but I think you need some of this other in there, and I'm appreciating that part of it. So, I just say let's look at it from that viewpoint, and maybe we can reach an agreement. RAY: Roland. HIGASHI: If we can amend Section 6-1.2 with the Managing Director's description under Maui 8-1.2, I would have no objections to the other parts. RAY: In response to that, I really wasn't not only not wed to this arts and science of government management. That doesn't really appeal to me that much. It's just that I couldn't think of anything else. That was just one of the examples. MARTIN: See what you get for being cute? IRVINE: 1, kind of, like that. HIGASHI: We still have the Mayor form of government, and he's going to appoint somebody who's going to implement these things, but I think that, if you adopt, in my opinion, somebody with experience in administrative capability both in public or private, I'II buy that. And as far as item (d), I have noobjections to that. I think we're heading in the right direction. RAY: Sue. IRVINE: I guess, on (d), what Marni mentioned about appoint the necessary staff, is there some way we can state that so you could go - HERKES: Secure? YUEN: I have a suggestion for that. And that is that you already have it at • the top here, and it was interesting to me that under our Charter, there's nothing that 35 • says the Managing Director has to have necessary staff, and I think the Managing Director does not actually head up a Department of Management. That's why I asked, and I was trying to think, they have two people. So, you don't need to say in (d) that you have necessary staff to do (d) because you have necessary staff up at the very top, and so they can appoint necessary staff to do any of the functions that they have. RAY: More input? Steve. BESS: I just thought that it might be helpful to assist the executive agencies in improving their performance, and make one suggestion, bi-annual reports to the Mayor and the Council on the findings. And likewise, it may be necessary to put in some time provisions on the Police Commission and the Fire Commission, as well. Or the other alternative is to make it so that the Fire Commission and Police Commission could request the Managing Director to go ahead and do that, and that he should report in response to that. IRVINE: We can put the Police and Fire in one sentence, saying Police Commission and Fire Commission will be reported to when their respective departments are - pardon? SANTANGELO: Don't we have to wait until we have a Fire Commission? IRVINE: Well, that's the kind of language that we're going to let the Corporation Counsel straighten out after we get done, right? If there is no Fire Commission, we're going to let him or her take that out, hopefully. YUEN: You have to put a little footnote in this, and this is one of the tricky things about the ballot. Actually, I think what I would say is, probably, all Commissions would prepare an annual report and just leave out Police and Fire, but then you have Liquor and Civil Service, but yes, you could make them have an annual report too. MARTIN: Yes, we had twelve meetings. Thank you very much. YUEN: Yes. Well, the Executive Commissions would produce an annual report. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. That solves your problem of whether or not you have a Fire Commission, which you're not going to know until the voters vote. IRVINE: Okay. RAY: In regard to Steve's concern about spelling out the review periods. There again, if you use Maui as a model on this, their Cost of Government • Commission is bi-annual, so whether you had a Commission or not, that's another discussion. Maybe that would make sense. 36 • BESS: Okay. SANTANGELO: John. RAY: Yes. SANTANGELO: To move this along now, we have what might be a friendly amendment to that one section that would allow us, then, to come back. Chris could come back with a general discussion and give us something that we could vote on. I just ask where are we at on that? RAY: My understanding is that I think we could say we have a motion on the floor to adopt the Department of Management language included in the memo that I sent out, but in Section 6-1.2, instead of using the language in my memo, we'd use the language from the Maui County Charter. Is that right, Roland? HIGASHI: That's right. HERKES: Well, no. HIGASHI: Let's take that as a beginning point. IRVINE: And we, sort of, mess around with (d). RAY: And (d), Chris can reflect the comments we made about the staffing, how that works, having to include that. So, we'll just move that forward to the next meeting. SANTANGELO: So, call for the question. BESS: Point of clarification. Number one, we discussed the language relating to art and science of government. Also, in your provision, you have confirmed by the Council. The Maui Charter does not have that language. RAY: My thought on that is, Steve, you talked about the thought is we're moving toward more of a Council Manager form of government. This just seemed to be a part of that. In the Council Manager form of government, the Council hires the Managing Director, so it just seemed like, if you want to move in that direction, that you might want to consider including the confirmation of the Council, and if they had this language that spelled out the duties more, it gives them something to influence the type of person that gets hired for a position like that. IRVINE: Does Roland have a problem with confirmed by the Council? • HIGASHI: How about confirming him and not confirming the Department 37 Heads? I mean, he's going to be the manager. HERKES: Does the Council confirm the Department Heads? IRVINE: Yes. HERKES: They do, don't they. HIGASHI: Yes. I mean, it's a double whammy. You're going through all the Department Heads and how they operate. I'd go one or the other. RAY: I'II tell you, having been there, it's very unusual, and it's not that big a deal, for the Council to confirm these positions. HERKES: I don't hear that from the Department Heads, John. RAY: Oh, come on, it's a couple of hours of guff they have to take. But, the bottom line is you have to have a pretty strong reason not to confirm. HIGASHI: The last Public Works Director was 5-4. YUEN: It's happened. HIGASHI: Yes. It's happened. RAY: It has happened, but I think, in terms of a balance of power - HERKES: Are we putting the Managing Director in charge of this County? And are we getting somebody that's experienced in management that the Council gets to confirm? And if they are experienced in management, do they get to pick a team that will work well, or do they have to conform to the wishes of the Council? It's a real big question. RAY: I think what they have to conform to is the wishes of the Mayor. We're not changing the nature of the strong Mayor form of government. The Mayor's still the CEO, and that's who the Managing Director answers to. We're not suggesting that the Managing Director appoint Department Heads, as would a Council Manager form of government, so that's a whole different animal. You can put in there that the Managing Director can have input, or make recommendations, but the Mayor's the guy picking his team so the Mayor's the guy in charge. That's not where we're going. We're, sort of, headed in that direction. HERKES: RAY: That's where I'm going. A hybrid, but the bottom line is that the Mayor is in charge. Let me 38 • share, I was talking at the break about this, two conversations I had in the last couple of months. I was at the Hawaii Association of Counties Conference on Kauai and a guy, Vernon Gray, was there. And Vernon is the head of the National Association of Counties, the big enchilada. I had a long conversation with him about Charter stuff, and I told him we were really considering the Council Manager form of government, and he, kind of, chuckled and shared some stuff with me. He said, yeah, you know, that was really a popular move at one time, couched in government reform, and this and that, but he said more and more people are finding it is not as an efficient way to run government as with a strong Mayor/CEO. And I got an article from Jay Sasan just yesterday, as well, about a Managing Director position in Northern Virginia, where a guy who's one of the top Managing Directors in the country - he was in Hampton, Virginia and he then went to Fairfax County, which is a Targe Northern Virginia County with a two billion dollar budget, da, da, da, da, but it's kind of similar to us in that it's a large county that has very divergent districts, or poor and rich, it has single member supervisors so they're representing their specific constituencies that are very different in the county, and this guy, arguably one of the hottest managers in the country, just suddenly left after a year and a half, and said, you know, I just can't work with this situation; it's just too many bosses, and whatever. So, I just want to share with that. I don't think the Council Manager's the silver bullet. IRVINE: John, do we get a copy of this article? RAY: Yes. But anyway, I did just want to pass this on to you. But, to answer Marni's question, what we're recommending does not change the current levels of authority and the basic powers of the Mayor. I think what it, hopefully, does is encourages the Mayor to use the Managing Director more as a City Manager type, or a Chief Operating Officer. But it doesn't make him do that. SANTANGELO: John, just to speak to that just real quick. We've got a thing coming up on this Council make-up, and again, the public can decide, or not decide, and it's controversial for their kind of government. But as a Commissioner looking at this proposal that's on the table right now with this Managing Director, I have a stake in it because I think we're going to be better off with this. And so, it's how do we couch this that makes it also passable. Is there a point of no return, where we go so far where it becomes controversial, and where you've stopped is a place where I'd be very proud to have brought this county to. So I speak strongly to what's been proposed. Roland has asked for a compromise in there. We've gone along with that. Chris is going to flesh out the other part with Steve and Mami's suggestions in that area, and I'd ask if we could move on on this particular thing. 1 think it's a good thing, and it will be good on the ballot. RAY: Discussion? HIGASHI: I think we're almost there. It's a matter of whether it's confirmed or not confirmed by the Council. 39 RAY: I speak in favor of having it confirmed by the Council. I think you'll get more buy -in, and I don't see it as problematic in terms of - IRVINE: I second that amendment, if it's an amendment. Is that an amendment to the motion? HERKES: What's the amendment? IRVINE: That we put in 'confirmed - RAY: It is an amendment because it's taking the language out of the memo form and inserting it into the Maui County, but it's not necessarily a friendly amendment, so - IRVINE: No, it's an amendment. I second the amendment. RAY: We need to deal with it - MARTIN: There's no need for an amendment because that's the way it's written. RAY: No. Roland's suggesting using the language from Maui County for that particular section of Managing Director. HIGASHI: No, no, no. I think Steve Bess put it best, that the motion, as it now newly reads, is to adopt what was circulated by you except with the exception of Section 6-1.2, deleting that, and inserting the language from Section 8-1.2 of the Maui Charter. RAY: Okay, that's what's on the table, so does somebody want to make a motion - I probably shouldn't make it - About amending that to include the 'confirmed by the Council' in 6-1.2. SANTANGELO: Yes, I'd like to move that this is confirmed by the Council. YUEN: Just as a matter of procedure, I think Roland has to control whether the motion that gets voted on has confirmation by the Council or not. It's his motion so, I mean, he can state it either way, but that's the clearest way. So, let's just go on and have him state it. HIGASHI: My compromise language is to insert 8-1.2 as is. SANTANGELO: Call for the question. • RAY: All in favor, say aye. 40 COMMISSIONERS HIGASHI, HERKES, KUROZAWA, SANTANGELO: Aye. RAY: Opposed. COMMISSIONERS BESS, RAY: Aye. MARTIN: I think you gave the wrong number. IRVINE: I didn't know how to vote because can we then amend this next. Chris just said we had to vote on this, but I thought you could always amend the motion, and then you would vote on the amendment first, and then you'd - you know what I mean? HERKES: We voted on the motion already. It's over. IRVINE: Okay? Okay, then I now move that we insert 'confirmed by the Council'. YUEN: You can do that. IRVINE: Can I? Okay. YUEN: You can change it. IRVINE: I just did so. YUEN: I think -that the members of the Commission want to adopt this new language, and there is a disagreement among members of the Commission as to whether there should be confirmation by the Council. So, if it wasn't clear - I thought it was that you were voting that there would be no confirmation. IRVINE: Okay, then I should have voted no. YUEN: Were there six votes with you voting? I didn't count them. IRVINE: Three of us voted - MARTIN: I know myself and Gary didn't vote. YOSHIYAMA: I didn't vote, IRVINE: Then it didn't really pass yet. RAY: What's the best way to get us out of this mess? 41 • HERKES: These are preliminary votes, right? HIGASHI: Why don't we reaffirm the vote, show of hands. YUEN: The motion is to not require Council confirmation on the Managing Director. HIGASHI: The motion in the compromise was to adopt certain language from the Maui to insert in John's section. MARTIN: Question. Clarification on the language that's going to be implemented, because I heard two things here. First I heard Roland's indication that he wanted - HERKES: Public or private business. MARTIN: Right, correct. MARTIN: And then I heard - RAY: That he wanted what? IRVINE: Maui. Roland's doing Maui. MARTIN: The experience part of it, I believe is what I heard Roland indicating. RAY: He's inserting the 8-1.2 Managing Director section from Maui County, as is, in 6-1.2 - MARTIN: Okay. RAY: Which does not include confirmed by the Council. MARTIN: Point well taken. RAY: So, all in favor of Roland's motion, raise your right hand. COMMISSIONERS IN FAVOR: Higashi, Kurozawa, Santangelo, Yoshiyama. COMMISSIONERS OPPOSED: Bess, Herkes, Irvine, Ray, COMMISSIONERS: ABSTAINING: Martin. 42 • HIGASHI: As it reads now, what are we considering now? Nothing at all? RAY: The logical thing to consider would be using 8-1.2, but just inserting the `confirmed by the Council'. SANTANGELO: Mr. Chairman, I so move. IRVINE: Second. RAY: All in favor, raise your right hand. COMMISSIONERS IN FAVOR: Ray, Bess, Herkes, Higashi, Irvine, Kurozawa, Santangelo, Yoshiyama. MARTIN: Abstain. BESS: I just have a comment. One of the things that's happened here is just that by taking the action that we have, and adopting Maui's, I take it that the Charter Commission doesn't think that the Managing Director ought to be recommending to the Mayor the annual - • SANTANGELO: No, just this. RAY: section. No, Steve, we adopted this with just the insertion of the one Maui BESS: All right, sorry. Got it. RAY: So, all that's in there. You want to try to tackle a couple of more? HIGASHI: Sure. Let's go. Maybe I won't be attending Wednesday. YUEN: Confirmed by the Council was passed, and added to 1.2. RAY: Chris is going to explain to us some of the issues in regard to the overall structure of the Executive Branch, and things I asked him to think about, in terms of the powers and how this would work. So, do you want to do that now? YUEN: The way I read the Maui Charter is that the Managing Director does not have a set authority and jurisdiction over certain departments the way that our Charter does. It says that the Managing Director supervises the administrative functioning of all agencies, departments, boards and commissions assigned by the • Mayor, which means that the Mayor, on the first day, can bring the Managing Director in and say, I want you to work with Public Works and the Police Department, and the 43 rest are my babies and you keep your hands off of them. Our Charter is set up with a three-part division. Part one is what they call the Staff Agencies in our Charter, being Corp Counsel, Finance, Planning, and Research and Development, and miscellaneous. Then you have the Managing Director, and agencies under the Managing Director, and the Charter says something like 'the Managing Director supervises all executive agencies except those directly under the Mayor', and so the Managing Director has Public Works, Parks and Recreation, and Fire, This is a formal organizational chart. Then you have departments under Commissions, and those are run by the Commissions, and in the last paragraph, it says they come under the general control and supervision of the Mayor. And my question is do you want to keep this the same? Do you want to make it purely optional what the Managing Director's authority is, or do you want to put all of these under the Managing Director, which would be the three choices that I see? RAY: George. MARTIN: Question, Chris. On that, as it's implemented and run now, has it been run successfully to this point? RAY: No. MARTIN: Then a change is in order. RAY: When I say run successfully, I mean that it hadn't been run under that format. IRVINE: You mean under the format that it explains here in the Charter, like the Mayor's in charge of some and the Managing Director in charge of others? RAY: Yes. I don't think there's been any sort of a clear delineation of authority, the way things are run now, and I think the Managing Director is more a general assistant to the Mayor. HIGASHI: Like a management aide? RAY: Yes, a management aide, and the Mayor's really operated as much more of a hands on administrator. So I think that the sentiment is that we'd like the Managing Director to be the hands on administrator rather than the Mayor in terms of the day-to-day administration. MARTIN: So I guess a recommendation from you, Chris, would be in order as to what do you think this Managing Director should be in charge of, or does anybody else have any ideas? RAY: I think that's really our choice, not Chris's. We make the choice 44 and he tells us how to do it. MARTIN: I agree, but the legal section - RAY: He's given us the options and it's up to us to discuss them and come up with it. Steve. BESS: I was just going to say I'm strongly in favor of putting them all under the Managing Director because having worked with the Charter before and the Corp Counsel's office, you've got to flip back and forth, who is it now. Let's just focus all of the managing supervision in the Managing Director's Office and, obviously, the Mayor's going to have a lot to say about what that Managing Director's going to do. IRVINE: I think that's a good idea. HIGASHI: Steve, I agree except, maybe, the Board of Water Supply. BESS: That's under a semi -autonomous commission so that would not be. HIGASHI: Right, but it's still listed under the control of the Mayor. BESS: Oh, I see. IRVINE: Those under Commissions are a little different. RAY: I wanted Chris to answer this because I didn't understand that. They do lump them all in Maui but Maui's Board of Water Supply's semi -autonomous too, isn't it? HIGASHI: No. I just read it here. HERKES: Does the Board of Water Supply have a Director (indiscernible) and necessary staff? RAY: I think it is, and that was my question. How do they do it? HIGASHI: Board of Water Supply consists of nine members appointed by the Mayor with approval of the Council. The Planning Director, Director of the Department of Public Works - It's on page 19. IRVINE: It says the Council can issue general obligation bonds for benefit of the department and may provide capital appropriations. RAY: Let's don't go all over the place. 45 • YUEN: I don't, for the functioning of the Department of Water Supply, think it would make that significant a difference because it would just put the Managing Director in the chain. The Mayor is still at the top, and all you're doing is you're putting the Managing Director in between the Water Manager and the Mayor, for the purposes of administrative supervision, and they're doing the same thing with the Planning Director and the others. So, it does not really change the status of the authority of the Commission. The key thing that makes the Department of Water Supply is this special fund thing. HERKES: The revenues are kept in a special fund. YUEN: That's what really makes them much more semi -autonomous than anything else in the County. HERKES: So, basically it's like the same thing. MARTIN: Yes, we'd like to keep it that way. IRVINE: So we're talking taking all the delineations that agencies that are under commissions, agencies under the Managing Director, and agencies under the Mayor, and just listing them County Departments? RAY: Right. HERKES: Here. IRVINE: Okay, just to clarify. RAY: Can I have a motion to that effect? YUEN: There was a motion. Wasn't there a motion? Okay, I'm sorry. HIGASHI: Steve Bess's motion? YUEN: I skipped one. RAY: I think he spoke to it, in favor of it, but didn't make a motion. BESS: I move that all departments fall under the Managing Director's administrative supervision. RAY: And that is similar to the way it's organized in the Maui Charter under County Departments? BESS: That's correct, so that what we're doing here is we're taking away 46 • these distinctions between commissions under the Mayor, and what have you. RAY: HERKES: Do I have a second? I second it. RAY: Discussion. Is that clear? I don't think this is that radical a departure because I think it all works pretty much the same on Maui County. They organized it this way. It hadn't been a problem for them, so I don't think it effects the autonomy of the Water Department, or whatever. IRVINE: John, also, in what we just adopted, it does say that the Managing Director, or whatever, supervises the administrative functions of all agencies, department boards and commissions assigned by the Mayor. So if the Mayor really wanted to take the direct responsibilities for any of these departments, he or she could, right? So, that's why I hope our amendment isn't going to screw up the ability of the Mayor to make that sort of decision. MARTIN: Good point. YUEN: Well, my understanding of what Steve Bess is proposing is no. This is like a practical vs. organizational chart. As a practical matter, the Mayor and the Managing Director can do whatever they want. As a matter of organizational chart, I think what Steve has in mind is that no, this is the way it works, and this is the way it's set up, and all these things are under the Managing Director. IRVINE: Are we being sort of schizophrenic then, when we say - YUEN: I would say if Steve Bess's motion passed, then I was going to suggest that that language be changed, that was adopted before, just to make it clear that it's not up to the Mayor to pull things out of the jurisdiction of the Managing Director. That's where I thought this was going. MARTIN: We put the cart before the mule then. YUEN: No, and I think that the gist of the first motion that passed was to change the powers, change the qualifications, and I think that's fine. It's hard to keep all the balls juggling at the same time, so it could have been done either way. You haven't voted on Steve Bess's motion and you're still discussing it, but I think that the way he had it in mind was no, that this is the way the organizational chart works and the Mayor is supposed to let the Managing Director have the administrative responsibility over all departments. RAY: Sue. 47 IRVINE: I guess I'm just wondering whether these things like Planning, Finance, and whatnot - I guess we're beefing up the Managing Director, and that would be what we're doing here, right? RAY: Look at it this way. Theoretically we could elect a Mayor with no experience, qualifications whatsoever. SANTANGELO: We really could. IRVINE: Okay. MARTIN: I think we should strike that from the record. RAY: In light of that, doesn't it make sense to create a Chief Operating Officer position? HIGASHI: Do we need to vote? MARTIN: There's a motion on the floor. Further discussion before the question is called for. I just want to make sure that everybody understands that the Mayor will appoint these individuals. Once they're appointed, the Managing Director takes over. That's the way I'm hearing it. HIGASHI: Day-to-day stuff, yes. Operations. MARTIN: As Roland is saying on a day-to-day, but the only person who can remove these people is the Mayor, so you give up control to the Managing Director. The Managing Director will not technically have control, and I'm just being devil's advocate, because he can't hire or fire these people. RAY: That's right. YUEN: I think that, and I was listening for this, the motion said 'administrative supervision'. Now, what is administrative and what is policy? Those kinds of things, there's no hard and fast line, and they always have to be worked out, but the basic idea is still, for example, that the Planning Director is establishing Planning policy, but there is an administrative control. This motion puts it under the administrative control of the Managing Director. RAY: All in favor? COMMISSIONERS: Aye. RAY: Opposed? Great. 48 YUEN: And just so we're clear here, if you would give me a little leeway to work with 6-1.3, particularly (b), to be consistent with what we've just done. That's what I just discussed a minute ago. RAY: Moving on. Legislative Auditor. We received information some time ago from our Legislative Auditor, Connie Kiriu, and I've had some discussions with her in the last couple of weeks, and Chris has as well. So, based on those more recent discussions, Chris sent out a memo just in the last day or two. Okay, everybody, I want you to get that in front of you. Does everybody have it? YUEN: I have hard copies for everybody. I faxed people. RAY: Additionally, this addresses some of the concerns we had about the title of the Office, and the confusion around it being a Legislative Auditor vs. what's their real function. So Chris, you want to go over this? YUEN: Just to tell you my thinking on it, I started off preparing two different drafts because I thought there were two different types of offices, and the difficulty, I think, is that the County, probably, does not have the resources to support two different offices. One is more a direct services to the Council members and the other is more the kinds of services provided by a Legislative Reference Bureau, or a Legislative Auditor's Office. In the end, I prepared one draft with the understanding that you can only go so far in this situation because you're creating an agency that ultimately serves the Council under the control of the Council, and if the Council members turn out to want more an agency that provides more direct services to the individuals rather than drafting services, or research services, or other kinds of services rendered to the committees or the Council as a whole, there's only so much you can do about that, or say about that, in language like there is in the Charter. However, like the draft presented by Connie Kiriu, this is intended to make the office more an office that does function as research, staff assistance to committees, drafting of bills, review of the budget on a technical level, and the like. And there are a number of choices. This is just the discussion draft because I certainly recognize the Commission has not voted on anything so I'm not writing up what the Commission's voted on, nor has there been any kind of a consensus, I think, on this. And there are a number of choices that can be made at each step and each go -round. RAY: Has everybody had a chance to read? You want a few minute to read through this? Let's take a five minute break. RECESSED The Chairman called a recess at 11:55 a.m. RECONVENED The meeting reconvened at 12:07 p.m. RAY: Let's reconvene the meeting. We're on the Legislative Auditor proposal. So, let's just open that up for discussion. 49 • HIGASHI: For discussion, I move that we adopt the draft circulated. MARTIN: I was just going to do that. It's a good point. 1 think that Chris has done a fine job on this one and it still leaves the opportunity for the Council to massage it, if you will. It doesn't tie their hands where they can't bring in their buddies anymore, not that they've ever done anything like that in the past, of course, and I want the record to show that. RAY: Did we get a second on that? YUEN: Yes, George seconded it. HIGASHI: Great speech. Was that a second? MARTIN: 1 second it. RAY: So, we're discussing the draft language that our attorney came up with. Any specific thoughts on that? I know that, Sue, you continually brought up the question of the auditing function, or lack of, and the confusion in the title. This reflects a Legislative Research and Audit Office. Does that seem reasonable? John. • SANTANGELO: I have a question. In (a) it says that the Council may, so we're not mandating this, right? • YUEN: Right. I suspect that they would do it, but if they don't want to, it seems like they shouldn't have to. HERKES: They might give it to the Managing Director. RAY: Understand this is under the County Council so we're not going to change that. RAY: It's kind of like the thought behind the Managing Director, we trying to push it in the right direction. IRVINE: I think, like you say, maybe you are trying to push it in the right direction but I really do wonder if we're saying 'audit' here. I don't think this office is capable of that sort of thing, as presently, or under this proposal, I just don't think they're going to be doing that. I think we put language for the Managing Director that would be more of an auditing function. RAY: But my sense is that people want that type of activity so let's create the opportunity for it, and if the Council wants to respond to that, they could take on more of that function. Steve. 50 BESS: I'm concerned about the financial audit function, and particularly where the staff of this agency is appointed by Council members, who, if they don't have enough political appointments to make in their own office, may use this office as a place to plant people who are supportive of their election efforts. From the standpoint of this being a Council services agency, fine. When we look at the other function, (c), (1), I'm not so sure that this system may work in providing the Director with the kind of people that he or she needs to conduct this kind of post audit. SANTANGELO: John, I'd like to respond to that. RAY: Okay. SANTANGELO: Again, I think the key word here is 'practicality', and we can elect just about the highest or the lowest common denominator, and frequently we are doing both. And unless you're creating another department of Civil Service layer, you've got, I think, to just cut through the fat here and face reality, and it's going to be appointed. We're taking a step in the right direction. If a Council member, or the Council as a whole, wants to just fill it with a bunch of inept people, and flounder, they're going to do that unless you completely remove this from it. I have to admit that I have a lot of questions about this, and there's a lot of this that I don't like, but it is probably the best effort that we could put forward under the circumstances, and I don't mean to whitewash it at all. I know what goes on in the Leg Auditor's Office. I saw it, and as a minority, I saw how it can hurt or help a person. This is a good effort, and it does support the process, as such. And as terms of an audit, if we don't want to do them, if the Council doesn't want to do it, fine, but if the public wants to put pressure, and they have the ability, then they can move on it. It's a darn good effort in the right direction. RAY: Roland. HIGASHI: I just have one question. Annually, the County has an audit by a auditing firm. Is that under the control of the Council or the Administration? SANTANGELO: Administration. And just to add to that - RAY: And that's called for in the Charter, right? Internal audit? YUEN: Somewhere. IRVINE: Financial procedures, probably. SANTANGELO: And Council members don't necessarily know how to read that audit. I came from business, and I understood a Chart of Accounts. I understood Cost Centers. I understood a lot of that, and it's complicated. Most of those people don't have a clue, and if they choose not to, but you've got to have the resources to be able to help the Council, and that's your checks and balances with Administration. 51 BESS: I really agree that it's a great effort, and Chris, I'm really relieved with the language in (d) because I know that's going to take care of it, because it's going to be on an independent objective basis and impartial with respect to individual Council members. Thank you very much. IRVINE: I'd like to say that I think this may be the best we can do, but I think we should change the name to Legislative Research and Council Services, and not pretend that we're doing an audit. Even though we have the audit language in there, I would be willing to vote for that language because I think this is an improvement over what we have now, but I think let's just call it Legislative Research and Council Services. I so move. HERKES: Mr. Chair, we don't have any qualifications for this Director. We don't have what kind of person should be looked for, for this Director. SANTANGELO: Point of order. We have a motion on the floor. IRVINE: Well, not unless somebody seconds it. RAY: We had a second, I believe. IRVINE: Oh, we did? HERKES: We have a second for the motion on the floor. We don't have a second for Sue's. RAY: So we're discussing the motion. IRVINE: What's the motion on the floor? HIGASHI: Point of clarification. We're talking about the motion did not have a second. Is that the motion that - MARTIN: She wanted to change the name so it's a friendly amendment to the motion that Roland made and I seconded, I believe. IRVINE: That's right, we did. That's true. Okay, I would like to add that then as a friendly amendment. Is that - SANTANGELO: I don't know that that's friendly. IRVINE: I guess I'd have to ask Roland. HIGASHI: Why don't we restate it and if there's no second, we're going to move along. 52 IRVINE: Actually I have to ask you, I think, if I want to make a friendly amendment, don't I? I'd have to ask him if he - YUEN: Well, he has to consent to it. IRVINE: Yes, would you consent to that? And then it changes the - HIGASHI: It doesn't require my consent. The motion belongs to the body. If you have a second, it's fine. YUEN: Yes, okay. IRVINE: Try wait. Just a minute. Somebody makes a motion and then I say, would you mind if we made a friendly amendment to change the name of the department? And if you say that's okay, I think that becomes part of the motion, right? HERKES: And if you do that, I'll vote against it. IRVINE: No? HIGASHI: The motion belongs to the body. It doesn't belong to me anymore. It's made and seconded. SANTANGELO: So it should stand on its own. IRVINE: All right. MARTIN: I think so. HERKES: So, have you withdrawn your motion? IRVINE: I'II withdraw my motion. SANTANGELO: Good, now we're in discussion. YUEN: Probably, the easiest way is to have a vote on the amendment - HIGASHI: Yes, if it's seconded. IRVINE: And mine got a second, did it? Rd SANTANGELO: It wasn't seconded. YUEN: Legislative Research and Council Services Office. IRVINE: Yes, Office of. 53 HERKES: So that motion is dead. So now let's go back to the qualifications. If we're going to use the word 'audit', which is what Chris is recommending, I think it does almost mandate some kind of qualifications for the Director of the office. YUEN: You know, this is something that I struggled with. Most of the functions were taken from Connie Kiriu's draft. The difficulty I have in - If you remember when - And the materials she's attached had qualifications, but they were for, what you would call, a pure auditor type position. What she pointed out when she came to us was that Marian Higa, the present State Legislative Auditor, is not an accountant, or a CPA, does not have any of these qualifications. We could put in very general qualifications that say something like suitable experience and background, etc. HERKES: Administrative experience, yes. YUEN: Beyond that, I couldn't come up with anything that would really fit the job without possibly eliminating very qualified people. My thought about the way auditing would work in this is it would be similar to the way it is being done now, which is that the Legislative Auditor has never been, I hate to say never, but at least for quite a long time, has not been a CPA or what you would call an audit person. SANTANGELO: Chris, if 1 can interrupt. What was Harry's job. Harry was the Legislative Auditor for a long time. YUEN: Yes, but is he a CPA? I don't think he is, no. HERKES: Audit can be used in other terms besides money, and it really is accountability of programs. YUEN: Right. HERKES: And that's how I was thinking you were using it. YUEN: But (c), (1) here is a financial audit, and my thinking of a financial audit would be that if they wanted to create a position in this office that was a financial auditor, then they would create it and fund it. Because the nature of the office is not primarily financial auditing, I didn't want to put in a qualification that the head person had to have that ability. But, as I say, it was difficult to come up with qualifications beyond something quite general, which would be fine to put in. HERKES: My reasons for the quite general, is to bring to people's attention that there might be some qualifications necessary for the office. I think that in evolutions of every organization, as well as the County, different qualifications are needed at different times, and if you get too specific, you're right, you might drive • people out, but at least it brings people's awareness to the qualifications for the office, and if you leave them out entirely, then that awareness is absent in a lot of places. 54 SANTANGELO: And to add to that, one thing, Chris, you might not be aware of, just as practical speaking, Councilman Chung knew and treated the Leg Auditor's Office as it should be, so it was a general type of thing. He allowed, or caused to be allowed, his appointment to be that auditor. They actually brought someone in who had expertise in that area. So they do look at these things, and they do try to do what's right occasionally. RAY: Roland. HIGASHI: In (c) in item (1), we must conduct an independent post audit of County's financial transaction. Is that something that's being done now, or is it duplicating a financial audit done by the Administration? YUEN: No, now looking through this, I would like to make a change in that because in the financial procedures, Section 10-13, Post Audit, talks about an independent audit being done of the accounts of the County, and I think what the Director, and it says `the County Council shall provide for this', and I think what we should say in (c)(1) is that the Director administers the independent post audits, rather than conducts or causes to be conducted. The 10-13 calls really for an outside, independent audit to be done, so we shouldn't say that the Director of the Legislative Auditors Office - it sounds like we're making them do another one, which there shouldn't be. IRVINE: Chris, should this be an internal post audit then, rather than an independent because the independent County Auditors tell us every year that we should set up internal audits within the County? Like you say, is it internal rather than independent? BESS: To a certain extent, haven't we taken care of that in the Managing Director's position, an evaluation and analyses? RAY: Gary, you have a question? YOSHIYAMA: I want to talk about Civil Service, and I'm going to talk from the standpoint of independence of this office, conducting various independent audits or whatever, patriotism, and different temporary and permanent type of jobs. So the question I throw out is if we consider this office to be like a department, and independent, why aren't we allowing the Auditor to hire his or her own staff? And to say that because we don't want it to be Civil Service, we'll have the Council to hire, I don't understand because then the patronage question then arises. I know that in audits, or contracting out or whatever, you can hire temporary staff, if you want to do an audit, financial or otherwise, and these positions need not be Civil Service because they're of a temporary nature. And even if you have Civil Service positions, if there is no longer a need, these positions are abolished. We have seen, on the State system, several thousand positions were abolished in the last few years, so I don't understand. 55 This question comes up, we should determine Civil Service or non Civil Service, and therefore, who should hire. The question I think that I'd like to address is is this office independent or not, and then we proceed from there. IRVINE: Very well spoken. RAY: Yes. I think the way Chris explained it, and where we are right now, that it's not independent. IRVINE: Right. RAY: Services. It's not an independent audit office. It's really part of Council YUEN: If I could just say, this is why I highlighted this in my letter, that the Commission can make a policy decision about how it wants to do this. I wrote one draft, and I'm not trying to push for one or the other, one way of doing it or the other way of doing it. I don't think that's my role in drafting these things up. The Connie Kiriu's draft was non Civil Service. What Gary's saying, and what I say in my letter is that if you want continuity, and obviously independence from the Council, then yes, you would have the Director appoint and then they be Civil Service, but that 's a decision for the Commission here to make, as to how they want the office to function. SANTANGELO: And if I can interject. One of the things that we might take for granted, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Connie's report was pretty courageous considering that her job, and how she holds her job, and what she needs to do, so, there's a lot of things she can't just come right out and say. We've got to read between the lines, and so that is our job, there. And so it's open for discussion in that area. IRVINE: When I read between the lines, I felt that she wanted to be in charge of her staff, but that's just not the way it is, so that's why I'm suggesting that we change it to Council Services rather than Audit, because she cannot, under these circumstances, perform independent audits. She is a Council appointee with the Council appointees underneath her who are beholden to Council committees or committee chairs, and they're doing the work of the Council. RAY: If we were talking about an auditing office, I think there'd be no question that it would have to be independent, and we'd be talking about Civil Service employees, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a Legislative Services Office, but that does critical research at a higher level than the Council aides, so we'd like that to be more professional in nature, and we'd like that to be, ideally, less subject to political patronage, especially in terms of the duties of those people. You've got higher paid positions servicing the committees, so as much as you could insulate them from political activities, and whatever, that would be nice. But we're not talking 56 about an auditing department. IRVINE: Why are we calling it an audit office? BESS: Mr. Chair, I move that we delete (c), (1) from the draft. IRVINE: Second. BESS: And let me also include what Sue spoke earlier about, about calling this Legislative Research and Council Services. SANTANGELO: So, it's one motion? BESS: One motion. SANTANGELO: Does the second stand? RAY: There are two sides to the Council, so you've got the County Clerk really in charge of the Council Services on one side and a separate office, and then you've got the Leg Auditor in charge of the other staff, so I'm just wondering how that - • HIGASHI: But in terms of classification, they're both rated as A18. Does that indicate that they have the same level of responsibility? RAY: I thought one was 17. One is a Department Head and the Leg Auditor is rated a Deputy. HIGASHI: I don't know. I thought I saw A18 to both of them. SANTANGELO: And understand the Council Services, they're hiring those secretaries. They're at about $19,000 and the Leg Audit assistants are around $30,000, so they're at least $10,000 more. And if you put this Research and Council Services, you may well be accomplishing what you didn't want to do, so just be careful with that. RAY: I don't think Council Services is the - IRVINE: Yes, A18. HIGASHI: A18, both of them, County Clerk and Council Services. IRVINE: She's already there. • HIGASHI: So they're both Department Head types, the people we're talking 57 about? RAY: Yes, or close. HERKES: John, we started out, at the Legislative Auditor's request, to look at a different kind of office. If we go back to the Council Services Office wording, we're leading the office back into the mire that they're in now. So, I think that it's better if we change the wording, and maybe just Legislative Research will do it. But, I don't want to put the Council Services back there because then we're back to where we started. RAY: I agree. SANTANGELO: Yet, it is more Legislative Research. IRVINE: You're right. If you want to head somewhere, I'd be happy with that. I was just saying what it is. SANTANGELO: If I can just speak to what Marni just said. I think that's pretty accurate. It was my experience - There was one time when we were taking County land, mainly down in the lava inundation area, and we kept taking it, and we'd take on tremendous, environmental responsibility. So I wanted us to stop that, so I was trying to figure out how we could write a bill that could address the need of the finance - and I won't go into all of it, but that was research thing. I needed somebody with expertise, and had the time, to research that and develop the bill. So, a lot of the real work that's supposed to be done over there is research, and then that ends up in writing some sort of legislation that's supposed to correct or further something. RAY: So Steve, you want to make a friendly amendment to your amendment, and we'll just call it delete (c), (1), and we'll call it the Legislative Research? BESS: So moved. HIGASHI: So second. SANTANGELO: And I'm ready to so vote. RAY: All in favor? COMMISSIONERS: Aye. HIGASHI: So we have the thing called Legislative Research Office and (c), (1) is deleted, along with that vote. Do we all understand that? 58 IRVINE: Yes. HERKES: And I'm still hung up on some job description, some kind of wording that says they'll have administrative experience, and that's all. RAY: You've got the same dilemma, and I left it out as well, and I should have thought of it, as the County Clerk. And there again, you've got another Department Head salary there with no job description. HERKES: Yes. IRVINE: You said they manage staff and papers the last time I asked what they do. SANTANGELO: But we have Department Heads coming up. RAY: Anyway, Marni, see if you can come up with - HERKES: Okay. RAY: Term Limits. Is this in relation to the 6-3 Council Make-up, Chris? YUEN: Yes. MARTIN: I think there was some point of clarification with what Roland was talking about, I believe. YUEN: Before we leave the Legislative Research Office, newly renamed, I'm not sure if the Commission wanted to discuss further the issue brought up about whether this should be Civil Service or done as it's drafted. HIGASHI: Before we leave the Legislative Auditor, as amended, that's it? No further amendments? We need to vote on the final bill, is that - YUEN: Let me ask this. Because we're trying to put things together, is there a consensus that some kind of general qualifications should be stated? SANTANGELO: Yes. HERKES: Yes. YUEN: Okay. Then it is probably easiest if I put up something. It will be very general, but there will be qualifications stated. How is that? RAY: For the County Clerk as well. 59 YUEN: I think you need a motion, actually, vote on that or something. Is that, on the agenda, the Clerk? Informally, you folks can ask me to do that and then put on the agenda later. RAY: Okay, informally I'd like to ask you to do that. HIGASHI: So, the removal part, just leave it at the will of the Council, is that the way we're going to leave it? MARTIN: If you're not going Civil Service, yes. HIGASHI: And not show cause and whatever. MARTIN: That's an interesting question. What about the Director? What if the Director likes somebody? HIGASHI: You want to leave it somewhat independent. BESS: Reasons. Same kind of language as the Fire Chief. YUEN: Two things here. • HIGASHI: Give us something, some kind of language. The will of the Council is just went in and remove. Five new guys move in, they move them out. YUEN: Are you questioning about the Director or the staff members? HIGASHI: I'm talking about the Director. IRVINE: Both. YUEN: Both. • HERKES: The Director assigns the staff to the Council committees, and I thought that was a very interesting part. YUEN: No, actually on your point, the key point here was supposed to be that the Director supervises and directs all activities of the staff. But on Roland's point, this is again something I mentioned in the letter, and you notice that it says DRAFT 1: No Set Job Tenure for Director. Connie Kiriu's draft required a two-thirds vote to remove, so it would be easier to put the Director in than to remove the Director. There are different ways of giving somebody job tenure. One is that sort of thing. Another is a set tenure except for cause. All these things are possibilities. The down side is if you require removal for cause, it becomes a legal matter as to whether cause exists, and it does become quite a bit more difficult. Both removal for cause and the two-thirds 60 create the possibility that a majority of the Council wants to get rid of the Director, who works for the Council. It's the same thing that really comes up with the Council Manager in that they're working for the Council, the majority of the Council wants to get rid of them, why does that person stay in and - HIGASHI: (indiscernible) It's happened before. They got rid of the Clerk, the Deputy - YUEN: It's a trade off between creating a degree of job security and independence for the Director, which you can do by giving a set tenure and removal for cause or some kind of super majority removal, and responsiveness to the members of the Council. All I can do, really, is lay that out as choices for you. I can tell you that if you want to emphasize the continuity of the job in having a set tenure, either have a set term with for cause provision for removal. I think that would be better, though, than the two-thirds vote. You can discuss it. RAY: This is a Legislative Research Office that's part of the County Council budget. I mean, the Mayor can remove any Department Head. Why shouldn't the Council be able to remove? Why are you going to open this up to some process that - HIGASHI: It's only because I was hearing about being more independent. RAY: If it was an Auditor's Office, I could see that. HIGASHI: Doesn't matter to me, I mean, just to have consistency. We discussed that with other Commissions. RAY: Steve. BESS: Just as a minor point, I'm noticing here that (a) needs to be amended as well, Chris, since it does provide for legislative research and audit. RAY: If things bother everybody or you're thinking about it, we can bring this back up again. We're going to be getting another draft. That'll give us a little more time to mull it over. HERKES: We're getting there. RAY: And just remember, we've got our whole public input and department review of all this stuff. HERKES: The department review's what's going to be interesting. RAY: The Term Limits is tied to the 6-3 Council Make-up. I thought we 61 agreed that the seats at -large would be four-year terms. Right? SANTANGELO: That's right. IRVINE: Yes. RAY: So, we need to firm up the issue of when this would be implemented and how it would effect the existing four two-year Council terms. Specifically, the situation of should this be voted in 2002, you have the six Council people that were elected in '96 are still in office. They would have served six years in 2002, so if you stuck with just the straight four-year terms, that would preclude, arguably, your most experienced folks on the Council from running for a four-year term. So, the question was would you want to allow a one time exception in that case, that should this be voted in in 2002, would you allow everybody to run for a Council seat at - large, which for those six, if they'd been in, it would increase their term limit. So, there are probably other considerations, and I know when we proposed the four-year term limits, there was one, kind of, out of sync scenario. I can't remember what it was, but it's tough to make it a perfect world, .or whatever. Anyway that's the discussion that we need to decide on that. Right, Chris, on how that's going to work? YUEN: RAY: Yes. Is there anything else, or is there another scenario? YUEN: You mean as far as term limits? I wrote a letter on 6-3. There were a few loose ends that needed to be tied up with the 6-3, term limits being one of them. They can be taken one by one. And the basic issue of term limits, John has just stated them. Are you going to count at -larges separately from district seats for term limits, or are you going to follow the individual and have an eight-year cap on consecutive terms for the individual? Secondly, are you going to implement this transition that John mentioned, that would be the possibility that somebody who had already served six, could go to four more as an at -large? HIGASHI: First things first. We need to establish, if it passes, when the at - large will take effect. So is a motion required, as part of the at -large seat, that - YUEN: I think there should be a motion on which date to start with, yes. HIGASHI: I move that it starts at the year 2002. RAY: Do I have a second? SANTANGELO: Second. RAY: Discussion. Just from a practical standpoint, I think if you push it 62 out four years, it just, kind of, doesn't make sense. People have already lost track. It's bad enough two years later. If you've got four years for something to take effect, who knows what's going to happen in the meantime. YOSHIYAMA: Clarification. Chris, you wrote something about that regarding the Mayor's race and the four-year term. If we start 2002, it wouldn't coincide, right? HIGASHI: It would be an off -mayor year. YUEN: Just wanted to lay it out that that's - SANTANGELO: I kind of like that.. RAY: All in favor? COMMISSIONERS: Aye. SANTANGELO: Mr. Chair? RAY: Yes. SANTANGELO: I wanted to speak to the four-year term with the at -large seats. What's on the floor? HIGASHI: Nothing. RAY: We're discussing the term limits right now, so we need to decide, like Chris said, if they would be regarded differently from the single member seats altogether. That was another possibility. Could you serve four two-year terms and then serve two four-year terms? SANTANGELO: For discussion on that, the only thing that occurred to me in looking that over is pretty obvious, but I'll state the obvious. A four-year term and this at -large just is a whole other ball game, and so as far as making an exception for a sitting Council member, I really don't have a problem because it's really not like any of those, or all of them, or some of them, would run for that in the first place. It's a whole other race. And so that's the point. RAY: So, what makes sense to you? SANTANGELO: That we have the four-year. That we stick to the term limit because I think, if you change the term limit, we're really creating a lot of public opinion. RAY: So you're saying stick with the eight-year term limit? 63 SANTANGELO: RAY: were voted in '96, SANTANGELO: ten years by then year for that - Yes. So in 2002, if this were voted, then if the six Council people who none of them could run? No, make an exemption for them. That had they not served their - say they only had eight years in, why couldn't they run for a four - IRVINE: Their eight years you mean? SANTANGELO: If they were in for eight, not ten. Any Council member that already fulfilled the term limit, could not run. But anybody short of that, why not allow them that one chance? Not that they would. There's a very good chance most of them wouldn't. I mean an at -large race island -wide is a whole different type of thing. And I'm not married to any of it. RAY: Roland. HIGASHI: I just have one question for Chris. From a legal standpoint, what would be your observation of an at -large person vs. a single person? John was Councilman -North and South Kohala. Is there a difference, you think, between a Councilman -North and South Kohala, and an at -large Councilman? YUEN: The proposal that was passed to have a 6-3 does not give one Council member different power or responsibility than the other, except that you represent a larger area, but as far as formal power, there isn't a difference. It did pass with a four-year term rather than a two-year term. If I could just interject, the proposal passed to have an eight-year limit for at -Targe, and what I'm trying to get clarification on is whether that counts separately from somebody who has served eight years as a single -member district. I would suggest that that question be answered first, before this question of the people in the year 2002 because if you allow them to be piggybacked on, then it's not a problem. HIGASHI: That's the question I was posing to you from a constitutional standpoint. A person's rights, that's the question I'm trying to search from you. Is it up to us? A person has that right? YUEN: Say it was limited to eight years, period. Then a person who had served six years would not be eligible to run for that at -large seat. And 1 think that's legal. You can do that. They still live in a district. They could still run for their district seat again. I understand that the argument being made in favor of doing this is that they didn't know in the year 2000 that there was going to be an at -large available that was going to run for four years in the year 2002, and maybe they could have refrained from running in the year 2000, and held out, and run in 2002 and gotten a four-year 64 term instead of a two-year term. But if it's set up, and this is what the Charter Commission wants to do, I don't think there's any legal problem. You're not taking away any constitutional right from them, or any other kind of legal right that they should have, to run for this. HIGASHI: So if I hired you and I wanted to make a case, you would give me a - I mean, somebody's going to come back with - YUEN: That's an absolutely great question. Let me tell you the real life of being an attorney. Myrole with you folks is different than if you come into my office and hire me to be your attorney. If you came into my office and you hired me, and you were the six years, I would probably say something like this, 'jeez, my best assessment is that you will lose, that the Charter Commission had the right to cut you off like this. Now, I can make an argument on your behalf. We can go to court. It's not going to be something that's absolutely silly, like I don't have to persuade the judge that the moon is made of green cheese, but I'm going to have to go against, probably, the weight of the real legal authority.' So, yes, somebody could make a case. My best assessment, sitting here, is that they would lose. HERKES: John, I suppose this goes to why we're discussing this, or why we're changing the Charter. Our goal is broaden the involvement of the voter, and to make it work better. It's not to be convenient for the sitting Council people, or be convenient for other people. We need to look at what our goal is and, let's face it, elected officials get turns in their road all the time, and I think that they would probably adjust. RAY: But I think a worthwhile consideration, especially with these eight two-year terms, is legislative experience. HERKES: Four two-year terms. RAY: If you've got six people with all that legislative. experience, if you're in favor of four-year terms, wouldn't you want to consider making it possible for that legislative experience, and also, from a voter's standpoint, they're the people that you're going to know more about, and arguably, be more qualified to run for seats at - large. So 1 don't think you're doing it for the politicians' convenience. I think there's some real value for the public for those people to be able to offer their legislative experience, and the familiarity the public has with them, to for those four-year seats. From a constituent standpoint, that would make sense to me, that if we were going to do this in 2002, I would like to make an exception to allow those six people. As a voter, that would appeal to me personally. MARTIN: You want a motion? IRVINE: Are you advocating then for ultimately having eight plus eight? 65 RAY: No. IRVINE: You're just advocating for the one time exemption. RAY: A one time exception. To draft some language that anybody in office, even if they were effected by the term limits, would be able to run at least for - I'm not in favor of this anyway. IRVINE: Sure. I understand. You and me both, but are we looking at just eight years, the two four-year for at -large and - HIGASHI: Eight consecutive years. SANTANGELO: We said we were going to limit an individual to eight years. IRVINE: Eight for any one individual. Okay, eight for any one individual. SANTANGELO: We'll make one exception this one time. IRVINE: Okay. SANTANGELO: John, I'd like the floor. RAY: Okay. SANTANGELO: I favor this strongly, and I favor it for good government, and I have this little speech. If you look at the Constitution of the United States of America. Listen you guys. We created a bicameral system because the House was a two-year term that is given to the winds and the gusts of public opinion. A Senate was established. Well, if you think it's so funny - You've got to be able to take this to the public and sell it, and there's a damn good reason for it. We've got people who are not doing government. If we can get this four-year out there and get it passed, we'll have better government. And the four -year's important because that establishes some stability to this thing. We've got a situation in which this Council does whatever is prudent and expedient for re-election, and not for government. So I think we need to stick to the eight-year term to the individual because that's palatable to the public. I think John made a good case for why you make an exception one time. But the reason for this is not for Council. The reason for this is for us. And I sat there and I watched this parochial territorialism and we need something that goes beyond that and we need something that's more stable. Okay. MARTIN: Mr. Chair, if I may, I'd like to make a motion that, as being mentioned, we stick with the eight-year term limit for all Council members except those that are sitting now, and if this proposal passes, they would be able to run one itime for the four-year at -large. If they're successful, that's all they're entitled to. They 66 can no longer run, unless they have a hiatus of two years, which is called for right now, and they can re -run. It's their prerogative. Right now they can do that. They can run eight years consecutive, step out for two years, and then go back again. So that stays the same. Got that, Chris? HIGASHI: Second. YUEN: Yes. One slight question. What if they've served eight years, as single member, they cannot run for the four-year? MARTIN: No, they cannot. YUEN: It's only for people that have served six years, correct? MARTIN: Right. Anybody, in 2002, hassix years, they'd be entitled to this provision. HERKES: To a four-year term? MARTIN: To one four-year term, or they can still run for single membership and run out their gamut in eight years. IRVINE: retirement? We do remember that they would then be entitled to some kind of RAY: That'll be an issue that will be brought up. IRVINE: Okay. But, we'll remember that. RAY: But I don't think that's why we're doing this, or not doing it. IRVINE: No. SANTANGELO: And it's not that everybody can run for this, or would want to run for it, or could run for it and win it. MARTIN: As John mentioned earlier, if all the six decided they wanted to run, only three would win, and we're only talking about three retirements if, in fact, that's what it comes down to. RAY: Yes. Ron, if you want to come here. DELA CRUZ: My name is Ron Dela Cruz from Waimea. Some of the voter friends that I have, and 1 wanted to come to this meeting because of that particular topic - We, as voters, believe that leave it up to the voters. Let the voter vote. If the person has six years, or even eight years, if this person is a true servant to his community, or 67 to the community at Targe, of this County, let the voter decide, because if this person is • going to be good, they'll elect him. They are the one that's going to decide that term limit. If that person should leave after eight years, or get another term at four, or even two terms, or six years if they're going for the at -large seats, and I can see why the at - large seats was added to this, but this has come from a group of voters that I hang around with, and we were concerned about this. So all I'm saying is that I can understand the discussion, and I give you guys a lot of credit, but as a voter, as a constituent, I would like that opportunity, whether we keep this person in office or not, or have him continue. SANTANGELO: But Ron, you understand we have term limits. Are you speaking against term limits? RON: No, no, no, no, no. I'm just speaking against this particular - If you're going to enact this particular bill, or proposal, as of the year 2002, if someone is serving in the Council for six years and wants to run at -large, he not only be allowed to run for the first four years, if that person can be elected for the first four years, he should be allowed to run for that second, also. Leave it up to the voter. Thank you. RAY: Unfortunately, we did, and they voted for term limits. SANTANGELO: If I could follow-up on Ron. Then, if I'm understanding you right, • you're saying that regardless of how many years - We'll take the Chairman right now, we'll take Chairman Arakaki. He runs for two more years. Now he will have been on the Council for ten years, no, fourteen years or something. RAY: terms. Term limits didn't start until '96. He can run out the four two-year SANTANGELO: And what you're saying is regardless of how many years they have under their belt, anybody on the Council now should be given the opportunity to run for the four-year, and let the voter decide whether they want to terminate them or not. DELA CRUZ: Exactly. RAY: No, that's how we voted. YUEN: Well, they haven't voted yet, but that's not the motion. HIGASHI: I think it's a different issue. I think exactly what he's talking about is eliminate the term limits and let the voter decide. RAY: Let's take a vote on the term limits, everything we agreed on. Everybody in favor? 68 MARTIN: Before we vote, Chris, could you read it back to us so everybody • knows exactly what it is we're voting for, or Sharron, whoever has the correct records. YUEN: Let me state it. I'm pretty sure that I know. The motion is that there's an eight-year limit for consecutive terms of Council service regardless of whether they've served in a two-year term or a four-year term, or as a single -member district or as an at -large district, but there is a one time exemption in the transition for people who, in the year 2002, have served six years consecutively in the Council, will be eligible to run for one four-year at -large term. RAY: All in favor? COMMISSIONERS: Aye. RAY: If somebody wants to bring up the term limit, I think that would be handled as a separate amendment anyway. 6-3 Council Make-up. In regard to this, the effect on Boards and Commissions is one thing we need to talk about, and I expressed my opinion to you in a memo. HIGASHI: May I say something on that? RAY: Yes. HIGASHI: The voters decided last time to have nine single -member district representation on the Planning Commission and Police Commission. YUEN: There are only two that this causes an issue, and the Planning and Police are the only two. HIGASHI: If we describe those geographical districts and leave it as nine, and no representation of Council district, or can we do that? YUEN: Right. You can have a more vague description of the geographical areas. The, problem is that the Council districts is the only way the County is divided into nine, by any kind of legal definition now, is the existing Council districts. So, if you kept it that way, it would be roughly fair for a period of time. If you said that they would just continue to be appointed according to the nine Council districts - HIGASHI: Nine geographical districts. YUEN: But you see, there are no nine named districts that have lines in the County boundary lines except for the Council districts that were established by the Reapportionment Commission. Now what I'm saying is, and I didn't put this in as a possibility in my letter, it is a possibility to say that you just keep those nine districts 69 for the sake of the Police Commission and the Planning Commission, and for quite some time that will probably give you roughly the correct representation, as far as a population standpoint. But eventually it may come out of whack because if you keep the district boundaries the same, perhaps some districts will lose population and other districts will gain population. HIGASHI: It's not a perfect balance. YUEN: It would not be a perfect balance, and I think, in my letter, I set out a number of other ways of changing it, which would include going to seven, and having six from the Council districts and one at -large so you don't have that much of a possibility for geographic concentration in one area. That seems to be, I think, probably the biggest concern of people. I mean that was the intent of going to the Council districts for the representation on these commissions. HIGASHI: My concern was not to have the Council districts effect what people had already voted on so that they felt there was equal representation. Whether we have an addendum, describe the boundaries as of right now, I mean you can always go back to that. But the idea is not to have it linked to each other because you're going to have 6-3, people may feel that they have less representation, which is part of the rationale some people are using. So if you have nine distinct districts for Planning Commission and Police Commission, that issue of the 6-3 would not be of concern to most people. So if it can be done, not part of a Charter Amendment, some other description. YUEN: The only way to do it, and keep it at nine, and follow more or less what the present Council districts are, would be to add to the function of the Reapportionment Commission to have them periodically reapportion the nine districts for the Police Commission and the Planning Commission only. Otherwise, you're going to have these nine Council districts that are set and never change, and the Police Commission or Planning Commission members are going to have to come, one each, from those nine districts forever, unless you have some way of changing it. Now, it's not like one man -one vote. The Planning Commissioners and the Police Commissioners don't have to be appointed from districts of equal population. So, if you didn't want to ever change it, you could do that. You could just say you're going to continue to have nine Planning Commissioners and nine Police . Commissioners, one each from the Council district as they existed in the year 2000, and if they did become out of whack, I suppose the Charter Commission, in ten years' time, could look at it and change it at that time. RAY: Sue. IRVINE: Chris, your alternative down here that says `specify that one Commissioner shall be appointed from each Council district and three at -large, but no more than one of the three at -large members may be a resident of the same Council district', sounds like it solves the problem if we go 6-3. Otherwise, we'd stay with the nine Council districts. 70 YUEN: The intent was to lessen the potential for geographic concentration, but I do have to say that you have three Council districts right around • Hilo, for example. This would not prevent you from having those three at -large being in Hilo. The method that actually reduces the potential is to reduce the number of at - large by going to a seven member Commission. HERKES: I like that. YUEN: Then you're going to favor one area a little bit more but there's no potential of doing it that much more. I tried to think of a way that you could say one of the three from - HERKES: From Ka'u or Kona. YUEN: But it's really hard because the island does not divide up into threes very easily. HERKES: John, I like the number 3, to reduce the number to seven, six district members. Part of that is the geographic concentration but part of it also is what's the magic number of nine. We have nine -member commissions because we have the Council districts. If we don't have the Council districts, the magic number of nine disappears, and with less people on the commission - I know the commissioners will say, well, we won't have a majority, we won't have enough people, but maybe, with Tess people, more people will show up because we'll have more people to spread around with all these Boards and Commissions that we're appointing. So, it's a less and more. RAY: Chris, you're more, probably, familiar with the Planning Commission activities than anybody else. Does anything come to mind as far as if you made that a seven person commission as far as the reaction. YUEN: It used to be seven. These were changed from seven to nine because of this idea of conforming to the single member districts. They used to be seven. So no, there's no reason why they should be nine instead of seven because you still have to pass something by majority. RAY: So if you did seven, so you're following the six House districts, you still could very easily end up with two commissioners from West Hawaii and five from East Hawaii would be appointed. The only two in West Hawaii you'd have would be 6th seat and whatever the next one is in Kona, and then, theoretically, all the five others could be from East Hawaii. So that's the reality of it. YUEN: If you went with seven, your breakdown would be minimum of two from West Hawaii out of seven vs, having presently nine, where you have three. It would be two out of seven vs. three out of nine, would be the breakdown. HERKES: So you get the same. 71 • RAY: John. SANTANGELO: It worked for minor commissions where if you had six and the Chair could only vote in case of a tie, but with the Planning Commission, that's really, really important. But I was also thinking something like you brought up. What's to keep us from staying with seven and, say, three from West and three from East and one at -large? RAY: What's East and West? YUEN: Then you have to draw a line or specify the districts. You can do that. As I mentioned, commissions are a little bit different. One man -one vote does not apply to these commissions. MARTIN: John, with that statement you just made, then I ask you, how do you consider two from West and the rest of East? Where have you drawn the line? RAY: North to South, that's where I'm looking at as the line. HERKES: And the Department of Health puts Ka'u in West Hawaii, so. MARTIN: I always thought it was there. HIGASHI: So you see the problem. I'm trying to preserve the nine by some method. Describing the nine, and that not being an issue in the 6-3 elections. Keep the nine. They have nine now. You're not taking away from anybody. There lies the challenge, Chris. If you can describe it somehow and maintain those nine, and not become an issue, we can - YUEN: districts. No, the only way to have nine is to stick with the existing Council HIGASHI: So my follow-up question is can that be defined to conform to the Charter, and just deleting the word `Council district', there'll be nine districts? YUEN: If that's what you want to do, I would do that. It's a drafting thing. That would take care of that. You would just say something like you have nine Planning Commissioners from the nine Council districts established as of such and such a date. RAY: representation. I think what's important to the voters is havingthat geographical HIGASHI: Right. 410 RAY: So I don't think it would be an issue how the votes came out or the reapportionment issue. They want somebody from North and South Kohala. So, let's 72 just leave it at that. HIGASHI: RAY: Leave it at what, the nine? The nine, yes. HIGASHI: Okay. With the idea that it should be described, and so in the language of the Planning Commission and Police Commission, the words 'Council districts' should be deleted. There will be nine districts. Is that? YUEN: No, it would say one member from each of the nine Council districts as they were constituted in the year 2000, and then that would be what it would be until the Charter Commission, many years later, might find that those are unsatisfactory, and they'd probably change it. HIGASHI: They can change it some other time. RAY: John. SANTANGELO: I struggle with that, with the 6-3 being up. If it's so good to change it to 6-3, but it's so good to have it as nine, why wouldn't you keep it all at nine? I feel there's an underlying eroding of what we may cause this to be effected. It's easy to keep it nine and use the metes and bounds that are already established, but when you talk about Police and Planning, the impact on the people is equal. It's not necessarily concentration. There's a theory that effects the whole island. And having a seven with three from East and three from West and an at -large, and establishing that, gets away from this. I see.a political conflict, that all. And the other does address an area of constituency that says, hey, I'm being taken into account here. RAY: But I think the seven, with the three from East and three from West, is even more convoluted and harder for people to understand. We don't have a line as far as what's East and what's West Hawaii, so how do you establish that? HIGASHI: It's not an issue. We're not even going to consider that. RAY: It's seems simpler and cleaner to just leave it at the nine. H I GAS H I : At nine. Okay. HERKES: Can I quote from our new Fire Commission wording that says, 'there shall be a Fire Commission which shall consist of five members broadly representing of the community'. So if we're going to change the wording of the Police Commission to fit the Fire Commission, the Police Commission will no longer be nine members, and it will no longer be geographically representative, so I just thought I'd throw that into the discussion for the fun of it. MARTIN: Just a minor oversight. 73 HIGASHI: Let's have the dog wag the tail and not the tail wag the dog. • MARTIN: Put the cart before the mule. RAY: Where are we on that, Chris? YUEN: You need a motion on what to do with the Boards and Commissions. If the motion is stick with nine, and they'll stick with the nine single member districts as the members, then that's the motion. If that passes - What I'm saying is for my guidance, I need a motion, and if it's the will of the Commission that if 6-3 passes, we will still retain nine Planning and Police Commissioners, one to be selected from each of the existing Council districts, and that's what I'm looking for. One decision or another on that. BESS: Mr. Chair, I apologize but what I would like is I would like some time to think about this. Can we just table this motion until Wednesday and then just vote on it next Wednesday? RAY: Sure. Anything on the 6-3 Council Make-up we need to deal with? YUEN: I made a booboo last time. You're going to have three people running together, and you're going to elect three people together on the 6-3 Council, and I said something like oh well, if you get more than 50%, then naturally you should be elected on the first election. And that's not really true because you can have a whole bunch of people get more than 50% because people are casting more than three votes. So what we need to do is just state how many are going to get carried over to the next ballot, and we made this decision last time, that it would be twice the number of seats, but it was made on the assumption that you might have two people going on, or you might have four people going on, but in actual fact, unless you only have three people running, there's no way to come up with a cut-off number that you elect somebody after the first election, or the Primary Election. SANTANGELO: For the at -large seats. YUEN: For the at -large. IRVINE: So Chris, all we need to do is say how many people move into the General, is that right? YUEN: Into the General. IRVINE: And at this point, if we had three, six people would be in the General, depending on parties. YUEN: Right, that's a vote that we took but I wanted to bring it up again • because I had, kind of, set the stage wrong. And if you still want to say six are going to go, that's fine, but I think we should re -vote that. 74 MARTIN: So the total number would be six under your scenario that three and twice the number of openings. Comes back to the total votes cast, though. Couldn't it be an exact number and if somebody gets 50% of total votes cast, that they would be bound over as a winner, no? YUEN: No. Let's imagine that eight people are competing for the three seats, and let's imagine, just to keep the numbers straight, that there are a hundred voters. So you have three hundred votes total, right. Let's say that four of those people are very popular and they get 70 votes each, because 300 votes can be cast. Each of a hundred voters can cast 3 votes, so there's 300 votes, so four people can get 70 votes each out of that. That only adds up to 280 votes. MARTIN: It's still not half of the total number of votes cast. YUEN: But you can't get 150 votes. You can only get 100 votes because everybody can only vote once, and so the maximum anybody can get is 100 votes. You cannot get 50% of 300 votes cast, that 150 votes. There's no way to get to 50%. MARTIN: Como esta. HIGASHI: Did you calculate that carefully? YUEN: Yes. Now I am quite sure of this. I was, kind of, embarrassed when I realized my mistake, but I am quite sure because every person can cast three votes, but unless you're going to really change the way elections usually work, and let somebody vote three times for their favorite, which is something that is actually suggested, and done in certain places, cumulative voting, but it's quite rare in the United States. I wanted to say, if you're thinking out of the box, we could consider cumulative voting, but if we're sticking to the way normally you do it, you - There are arguments to be made in favor of cumulative voting. If you really like the person that much, then cast all three votes for your person. But okay, again with the scenario; -a hundred people voting, 300 votes cast in total, the most any candidate can get is a hundred votes. SANTANGELO: It's just in the wording. If we stuck to no more than twice the number running, which would be six would move up, the top six, what if you have five people running? YUEN: If you only have five people running, they all move on. SANTANGELO: So no need for printing in the Primary, just vote on them in the General. YUEN: You could say that, and in fact, let me touch on this because this is something I think we did not discuss with respect to even the single member districts, and I just lay it out there. You could say that if there are six or fewer, for the at -large first of all, why make them beat each other up in the Primary, just let them go into the 75 General. You can also say the same thing for two people running for the single member, if there are only two running. And, just to mention, Maui does that. The way we had voted on it, with a single member nonpartisan, was that the first go -round would do it if you had only two people running. Whoever carried more would win outright on the Primary. That's the way it is in City and County. Maui, if you only had two people running, you don't even put them on the ballot in the Primary, you run them off in the General. So my job is just to lay, kind of, lay out what the possible scenarios are and let you folks decide how you want to go with it. SANTANGELO: And a case can be made to both. One is if there's two, you decide it in a General. It's decided because of those two and you make it a hell of a long race, and an expensive one, or you let them get it over in the beginning. But with the at - large, it's no more than double the amount. I mean, do you put them on the Primary? Do you put them on the Primary and General, or do you generally only vote one time? YUEN: This gets to the question of how much of a consensus do you want to have. How strongly do you want your candidates to show in order to elect them? Say you've got people running, then you can elect somebody with 15%, 20%. And the same thing is true, you have three people that get elected but you have 30 people running. If you have a winner take all, one time, one shot, so that's why - SANTANGELO: It's 50% of the total votes cast. YUEN: Pardon me, what? SANTANGELO: In a single member, we said 50% of the total votes cast, you were an outright winner. YUEN: Right. MARTIN: 50 plus one. YUEN: No, what I'm' saying is that you were raising this question, for the at -larges, should you have a Primary at all. And I think the rationale for having a Primary in the at -large is still the same as the rationale for having it with the single member, which is that you whittle down the field so that in the General, the people choose among the more - SANTANGELO: But Chris, it only came up as if you only had as many people running as seats available. In other words, six or less. Because if we're going to move six up, that's all. YUEN: And I understand that. This is what you have to vote on. If you are going to carry six people over to the General, and you have only six people running in the Primary, there isn't, to my way of thinking, a lot of point in having the Primary. It's • just like a beauty contest, it's like doing a poll or something. Then the candidate will go, oh gee, I've got to work harder. But it's an expense. You gear up to a particular 76 election and you spend the money. IRVINE: I would think, if there are six or fewer people running, we'd have them go to the General Election and leave the single office, of course, in the Primary so the winner could take all. MARTIN: Just the opposite. Why wouldn't we run them all in the Primary and be done with it, in the sense that we only have six, and save the taxpayers money to print it twice? IRVINE: We wouldn't print it twice. MARTIN: So you're not going to print nothing in the Primary? IRVINE: No, not in the Primary for those six or fewer people that are running at -large. SANTANGELO: But that begs a good question. Why wouldn't you get it in done because you get things done in the Primary? IRVINE: Because you might have fewer voters, and I like to see more people vote on any given issue, any given person, SANTANGELO: And you'd finish that in the General? IRVINE: Yes. SANTANGELO: Okay. MARTIN: Chris, back to the numbers. If there's a hundred, and there's three, and you get a hundred, you get 100% don't you. YUEN: Yes, you get 100% of that 100, right. But if your cut-off is the 50%, you could have more than three candidates getting more than 50%, and it really doesn't mean that much, to get more than 50%. It's not like where you can only cast one vote, and if more than 50% vote for that person, well, that's the majority. This way you could have - You get the point, you have several who have more than 50%, and there's no magic cut-off point. You can't say sixty-six and two-thirds, or something like that, as being the magic number. HERKES: Have you read what was passed in 1998 by Maui County? YUEN: Yes. HERKES: They don't use six. They use 'the names of all candidates for each Council seat shall be placed on the ballot for the first Special Election provided that for any Council seat with two or fewer candidates, the names of the candidates shall appear only on the ballot for the second Special Election'. 77 YUEN: Yes, this is what I just went through, that in Maui they do it differently than the City and County of Honolulu, and they do it differently than what we had voted on in the first go -round. It tends to put the decision more into the General Election which, just from a philosophical point of view, I think is the proper thing to do because the Primaries really were originally for nominating purposes in the Primary. It does create an element of gamesmanship, or it really changes the election between having two and three because if you only had two running, then you only run in the General whereas if the third person jumps in, all of a sudden you have a two-step election. That happens. KUROZAWA: Chris, I just wanted to make a quick comment about the at -large seating. There actually is a way to do it if you wanted to, but it gets too complicated. It's a mathematical number and it falls, probably, between 75 or 80% of the vote. But if you put it to the voters, it would be too complicated. It's not as straight forward as if you had winner takes all kind of thing. It falls about 75 or 78%, a number they could get and actually win outright, but you have to factor the percentages. I wouldn't recommend it. IRVINE: YUEN: No, neither would I. No more than three can get more than 75%. IRVINE: I move that we, for the at -large offices, provide that if there are six or fewer people running, that we go directly to the General Election, rather than having them in the Primary. YUEN: General? And otherwise, if there are more than six, then the top six go to the IRVINE: Yes. YUEN: Okay. RAY: Do I have a second on that? SANTANGELO: Second. RAY: Discussion. Do we understand that? All in favor. COMMISSIONERS: Aye. RAY: Anything else in this area, Chris? YUEN: No. Currently you have a Reapportionment Commission of nine members. If you have six Council member districts, then you should not have a nine member Reapportionment Commission. Again, you get to this nine thing. First of all, I don't think you're going to need a Reapportionment Commission in the year 2001 78 because I think we're going to fit six districts still. I don't think the census is going to • change that much, but I think that the Reapportionment Commission should be then redefined so if you need one in the future, I would go to seven. Just have the six districts and one at -large, rather than have nine. RAY: Okay. Can I have a motion? MARTIN: So moved. RAY: Second? YOSHIYAMA: Second. RAY: Any discussion? IRVINE: I guess I was wondering is this Chris's recommendation for the other Commissions that we tabled until next time? RAY: That was George's recommendation. He made the motion. MARTIN: But again, it comes down to what Mr. Bess did say earlier. He wanted to have something to think about. BESS: One of the problems I've got is I'm really hungry. No, really, I'm just not thinking clearly, and that's one of the reasons why. Either we come back this afternoon and vote on them, but I am ready for a break. That's where I'm at. HIGASHI: Adjourn break. RAY: Can we get this behind us, just this one vote we're in the middle of, reapportionment? BESS: Sure. RAY: We have a motion on the floor. All in favor. COMMISSIONERS: Aye. RAY: break? What does everybody feel about coming back, if we take a lunch MARTIN: It's not a bad idea but I don't think anybody will. HERKES: It's fine with me. RAY: Okay, how much time we need, a half hour? MARTIN: So a half-hour lunch break starting now. 79 • RAY: RECESSED RECONVENED Yes. The Chairman called a recess at 1:30 p.m. The meeting reconvened at 2:18 p.m. RAY: I'll call the meeting back to order. Returning to the agenda, we're at item (j) Department Head Qualifications. I did put some stuff out in this memo and if we could pull that up. Just to go through that, starting with Finance, it seemed like the language was okay in that, to me, that's in the Charter in 13-3, and the question is do we relocate it to department. Planning - And by the way, I pulled this language out of other Charters. I didn't make any of this up. HERKES: RAY: Do you want to do one at a time? So, what's your pleasure? Take this individually? IRVINE: I think you were doing fine, but you said, under Research and Development, the Director shall have had a minimum of five years experience in a related field in the private or public sector. And then, down below, you said either in public service or private business, or both. Why don't we just use "in the private or public sector'? RAY: I didn't spend a whole lot of time doing this. I just wanted to get something out there. IRVINE: sounds good. If we just use the brief 'in the private or public sector', I think that RAY: The ones that are more of substance are the Public Works, because this addresses taking out the Chief Engineer position, so it's more of a change. It doesn't specify a registered engineer, so that's why it changes to the `Department consisting of a Director and necessary staff, and then the language of the Director is ' or his deputy should be an registered engineer'. That's the way they dealt with it in either Maui or City and County. So that's just a suggestion. And then Department of Water Supply is the other one that, in our Charter, it specifies as a registered engineer, and I put in there the `Manager or his deputy should be a registered engineer', and in Maui County, they don't specify a registered engineer for either one. I talked to several people about this and the general opinion was that these jobs are more administrative in nature, really, and I thought one of the best sources was I talked to Donna Kiyosaki. She was our Chief Engineer and she's also with the Water Department, and Board of Water Supply. She's the Deputy Director there, so she's served in both, and she said that it seemed to make sense to her that these positions were more administrative in nature. Some of the other points. I think Milton Pavao made the point, he wasn't pressing really hard that it had to be a registered engineer, but the point he made was that it keeps more of a less qualified, or a political appointee, from being put into the position. He just made that comment. 80 HIGASHI: It just has to be a registered political appointee. RAY: And then somebody else made the comment in Public Works that a lot of your division chiefs are registered engineers. Sometimes, if a person doesn't have the presence or leadership, that they tend to, sort of, try to take advantage of them, like I'm more professional than you, or whatever, but I don't think that's a problem with someone who's a strong administrator. I think they can deal with that pretty easily, if you've got the right person. These are all things that either we talked about, or in general talked about putting some more language, so I'll just throw them out there. John. SANTANGELO: John, it may seem trivial but under Civil Service - I'm sorry, never mind. I saw Harry Kim written all over that and it was just - never mind. RAY: Yes, I just pulled that out of another one. It just seemed like good language that came out of another Charter. SANTANGELO: We don't have anything to do with Harry Kim's position? IRVINE: No, it's not in the Charter. RAY: I don't know why it's not in the Charter. There again, it's in the Maui Charter. HERKES: With who's position? IRVINE: Civil Defense. SANTANGELO: Because there's degrees in Public Safety. YUEN: It's created by State Statute, and the State Statute puts it in the County. I don't know. I've never thought about it. Whether putting it in the Charter makes a difference or not, to tell you the truth. I can think about, if you want. HERKES: Well, it will be in the Charter if we adopt Maui's language. RAY: So, if people are generally in favor of these, you want to recommend changes to any of them, specifically, and vote on them? Gary. YOSHIYAMA: My feeling is on Public Works and Water Supply, that we strike the requirement for registered engineer completely. HERKES: Completely. IRVINE: And say 'or equivalent' maybe, or just strike it? YOSHIYAMA: No, just strike it. 81 RAY: And don't even use the deputy? YOSHIYAMA: Yes. HIGASHI: Second. RAY: So we take the last sentence out, right? HIGASHI: Under the Fire Chief, we have it under the Fire Commission covered some place?. YUEN: Yes, that was passed. That was put in. IRVINE: I, kind of, wondered, Research and Development; `Director shall have five years experience in a related field'? Does anybody know what a related field to Research and Development is? RAY: That was just a need to put something in. HIGASHI: Chris, when we do the Charter Amendment, are these all single items, or is it lumped together, or what? YUEN: Honestly, I think that taking the engineer out of Public Works • should be put as a single item. I think that's fairly significant. I think, the rest, we could lump them. HIGASHI: Establishing at least a minimum qualification. YUEN: Right. But in one ballot. One ballot item is what you mean. The Fire is already going to be in a separate ballot. RAY: position too. YUEN: The suggestion was just not to make them an engineer. It's not an engineer now. It doesn't have to be one now. RAY: Yes it is. Department of Water Manager. HERKES: 'Manager shall be a registered engineer.' YUEN: Yes, I think that should be separate too. IRVINE: Another place where we have nine Commission members, were we aware of that when we were talking about - no? What about the Department of Water? That's an engineering RAY: Let's get through thisfirst because I've actually got that. 82 BESS: Coming back to Research and Development, and Sue's comment, does that mean that we just leave the language as is in the Charter without making any changes? YUEN: What is the language? BESS: That right now, 'there shall be a Department of Research and Development consisting of a Director and the necessary staff', and that 'the Director of Research shall be appointed by the Mayor, confirmed by Council', with no qualifications at all. That was a tough one to come up with qualifications, I think. YUEN: Can I just interject something to think about, since Roland brought up this question of ballot questions. I think, when we start tallying up the changes that are going to be suggested in the Charter, we're starting to get a substantial list. I think we talked earlier about last time, and why it ended up being eighteen, and none of the Commissioners wanted to have eighteen. Most of the changes we have talked about, I think virtually all of them, are going to require their own separate items, so I think we need to put that into perspective, that at some point we may wind up with, and it's a matter of numbers, more than you want to have. RAY: But I think we're close to the end of this review of what's up, so let's take a look at it, how it all shapes up. So, what's your pleasure with the Director of Research and Development? To delete it, or come up with better language? • HERKES: I would like to see us come up with better language, but I would not like to see us delete it. If we can't come up with better language, let's use this language and then leave it to future Charter Commissions to come up with better qualifications. IRVINE: Do we have any statement of what the Department of Research and Development is; aiming at, for example, so that maybe we'd then know. BESS: Powers, duties and functions, page 11. My comment is is that I'm with Sue. I don't know what this language means. I think it's meaningless in terms of a related field in private or public sector, and it's just verbiage that's being thrown in. Unless we can come up with a better piece of language, that sets forth the qualifications clearly, I would suggest, in light of Chris's statement about so many Amendments being proposed, just leave itas is. SANTANGELO: Marni, does it come close to like an Economic Development? HERKES: Mr. Chair, I'm reading out of the Annual Report for Hawaii County. 'The Department of Research and Development is charged with the responsibility of promoting economic development in Hawaii County, and collecting and developing data for decision making, program development and policy making.' So, that gives you, kind of, what they do. 'Focus encompasses numerous programs, tourism, agriculture, • new industry, industry development, research, and statistics.' So, when you're looking for a director, you want somebody that has some experience in economic development, 83 and in collecting data for decision making. IRVINE: To me, something like your first couple of sentences there, as a statement of what the department does, and then you could say you wanted somebody in a related field. But since there's nothing in here, I mean they just start talking about organization instead of what are their functions, what are they doing for us. If you put something like that in there then you could say we want somebody who's worked in related fields. RAY: lumped in. Sounds good to me. Good idea, especially if it's going to be BESS: Okay, lump in. RAY: If it can be part of a package and not a stand alone, and then at least people can look at the functions of a department and make some judgment on if they have experience in something related to the job description. So can I have a motion to approve this language as written with the two deletions we spoke about in regard to the Public Works and Department of Water Supply qualifications of registered engineer? YOSHIYAMA: So moved. SANTANGELO: Second. RAY: All in favor? COMMISSIONERS: Aye. IRVINE: Can we say all in the private and public sector rather than those longer sentences? HIGASHI: It's got to be reworded anyway, so we'll work it out. IRVINE: Okay. RAY: Under Unfinished Business, there are a couple of things I noted that had been brought up earlier. One, which I'm personally interested in, and this is a recommendation from the Planning. Commission that was given us in writing to put in some language regarding the Coastal Zone Management Program, and there is language in the Maui Charter. Look at - IRVINE: Chris has something for us. RAY: On this particular thing? YUEN: Yes. There were a couple of things about the Planning 84 Department. The Planning Commission requested the change that John Ray just mentioned, `to act as the authority on all matters', I put `relating to special management area, Chapter 205(a), Hawaii Revised Statutes'. It's basically the same thing. This is something that they do anyway, and I don't think it's absolutely necessary, but they wanted it put in for clarity. Then the second change that I added was restore the Planning Commission's power to adopt rules and regulations having the force and effect of law pursuant to subdivision and zoning ordinances, which was taken out in the '98 amendment. I've asked a number of people why and I haven't gotten a very good answer. It concerns me because they do have rules and regulations in the Planning Commission, and I don't think it was meant to invalidate those. The final thing that this draft does that is probably the biggest thing that we talked about for the Planning Department, has to do with this question on transferring subdivisions and some other permitting functions to the Department of Public Works. I had a further meeting with the Planning Director and Deputy Planning Director, and what came out of that meeting was that there would have to be some further Council action, to actually implement this change because the Subdivision and Zoning Codes would have to be amended. For example, the Subdivision Code now says that the Planning Director issues final plan approval, and they weren't really ready to map it out in complete detail, what lines of responsibility, what staff members, would be transferred over if this happened. That it was probably best to remove the barriers in the Charter to doing this reorganization and let Council do - actually what would happen is the Administration would come up with a reorganization plan and submit it to the Council in the form of an ordinance, and then it could be thrashed out at the Council in a lot more detail than we • have time, or the ability, to do here at the Charter level. So I put in a new paragraph that says 'the powers of the Planning Director, with respect to subdivisions, Zoning Code enforcement, variances, or permits under the Zoning Code may be transferred to, or shared with, the Department of Public Works if so prescribed by ordinance', and that basically says that they can pass an ordinance to do all this stuff at some later date. RAY: Chris, in terms of adopting rules and regulations, did you ask Virginia? I can't believe as recently as 1998, nobody knows why we did that. I feel kind of embarrassed. I think I was on the Council then. SANTANGELO: And you can't remember that either? IRVINE: I talked to her at the time she was making these Amendments, and she couldn't even tell me quite why these Amendments were a good idea. I was working for Elections as a volunteer and people had asked me to come out and talk about what was going to be on the ballot. This was one of the things that was going to be on the ballot so I went and talked to her and she, sort of, didn't have a rationale, and I said I don't think they'll pass unless somebody's arguing for these Amendments, but it just seemed vague at the time. SANTANGELO: For these Amendments here? IRVINE: The ones that went in in '98. We voted on Planning Department 85 changes. YUEN: Actually, one attorney in the Corp Counsel's Office thought it had been a mistake, but that turned out not to be true. RAY: As interested as you are in Planning matters, you don't remember it on the ballot, right? Red flagging it as an issue? Do you recall? YUEN: A lot of the authority that the Planning Commission has to establish rules and regulations comes from other State Statutes, so this did not have the effect of actually taking away their power to pass rules and regulations. To give you an example, the SMA permit, typically the major permit that is passed out of the Planning Commission, is set up in the State Statutes, and clearly they have rules and regulations with the force and effect of law to implement and pass the SMA permits. There's another section of State Statutes which talks about the shoreline setback, and that's another rule and regulation of the Planning Commission which has the force and effect of law. So, if the Charter had never said they did have the power to pass rules and regulations having the full force and effect of law, it wouldn't worry me because they have it somewhere else. My concern is it looks like the voters said, no, we don't want the Planning Commission to have this power, and so it worries me that it got taken out. I mean that there was actually an act to take it out, and I'm not going to go through the names of all the people that I talked to about this, and I haven't gotten a good explanation of why. • RAY: What comes to mind is since it seems like everybody was asleep at the wheel the first time it was on the Charter, that's probably going to be the case the second time. Strategically how do you explain that or deal with it? Gee, we wanted you to pass it the first time and we want you to do it this time, and nobody knew about it either time. I think it's a real crap shoot. YUEN: All I can say is I don't know what the public reaction is going to be. I was a voter. I wasn't more involved than the general public in '98 and I didn't flag this myself. The major part of that Charter Amendment was that decisions of the Planning Commission would not be appealed to the Board of Appeals, only the decisions of the Planning Director. And I was in favor of that. I thought it was silly to have two public boards to which you appealed. You know, you have a Planning Commission, you don't like it, then you appeal to the Board of Appeals. If you lose at the Planning Commission, go to court already. Have one appeal, instead of two Planning Commission Board of Appeals and then go to court. But it was on there. I checked. It was on there. It was a Council initiated Amendment. The resolution was passed. The Council had it on there. As I say, I don't have a good explanation for it. HERKES: It was a Council initiated Amendment, so what Council person initiated it? You asked the wrong person. Ask Connie because they wrote it. • RAY: Well, for now, let's include it. So can we have a motion to include these changes as outlined by Chris Yuen? 86 HERKES: So moved. • YOSHIYAMA: Second. RAY: Discussion. BESS: On item 5-4.2(d), the reviewing the list of proposed capital improvements, I'm wondering whether or not they can recommend the order of their priority to the Managing Director? Not critical, but it's in line with our previous thinking about what the Managing Director is, and the Managing Director does have to prepare the capital - YUEN: I think that's handled simply by the reorganization. You could say that. The way it's written now, because the Planning Department is directly under the Mayor, it doesn't say who it recommends but it's implicitly the Mayor because that's the only person that they would recommend it to because they're under the Mayor. BESS: That's right. But the provisions that we earlier addressed with regard to the Managing Director provides that he is the guy that's developing a capital budget. YUEN: I have to also mention that this is the one that Norman Olesen said should be taken out completely because he didn't think this was their function, but it • could say Managing Director, but I think if it didn't say it, and the Managing Director thing passed, that that's who they'd be recommended to because it would now be under the Managing Director. BESS: I think you're right, but still trying to professionalize that Managing Director's job, that's all. RAY: Other discussion? IRVINE: I was wondering if we pass something like these changes to Planning, then would we take this Department Head Planning thing out of Chapter 13, or whatever, and throw it in as part of the Amendments to the Planning? HERKES: Didn't we pass that, to take that out? IRVINE: I think we're going to. But we were talking about putting all these on as one Amendment. If we end up with changing things in the Planning Department, would it be best to put the Planning - RAY: Let's just figure that out strategically a little later. IRVINE: I just wondered. Just a thought. • RAY: Let's just see how it shapes up. Okay. All in favor? 87 • COMMISSIONERS: Aye. RAY: Opposed? Good. Still in the Unfinished Business. I've thought about it a number of times, and I can't remember whether I brought it up, the make-up for the Water Commission. It's a nine member Board now, but I would strongly recommend that it be tied to the nine Council member districts, and I talked to Mr. Pavao about that, and he agrees. I mean, to show you how skewed these things can get, the present Water Commission has two members from West Hawaii and seven members from East Hawaii, and that's just absurd in terms of where water development is taking place, where our real critical water issues are. And that's under that broad language in six districts; the six districts of Kohala, Kona, Ka'u, whatever. So, I'm just throwing that out if anybody wants to make a motion. IRVINE: Absolutely, if we're changing to six and one. SANTANGELO: So moved. RAY: Do I have a second? IRVINE: Is this we're going six -one? RAY: This is nine. HIGASHI: Second. IRVINE: This is for nine individual Council districts? RAY: Yes, I think it's geographic in nature, like the Planning Commission, to have somebody from Kohala that's familiar with the water issues there. So discussion? All in favor? COMMISSIONERS: Aye. RAY: Another one that's, kind of, still floating out there, impeachment language. That was one where Chris wrote up some legal opinions. That was the one area where he did - I don't know if you recommended a change in terms of the grounds for impeachment might be something we'd look at. I know other members had other concerns so I wanted to bring that up for discussion. HIGASHI: I wanted us to consider having the impeachment language changed. Right now the impeachment language is illegal anyway, according to the last court decision. I think the language states now a hundred people within this County, and I think the decision was that you can impeach only if you vote for the guy. Constituents can vote the person out. So either it's got to be per district, or something to that language. YUEN: I spoke with one of the attorneys involved directly in that case, and 88 that was not the grounds for the judge's decision. The grounds for the judge's decision were that there were no verification whatsoever of any of the signatures. I think, at present, it is unclear whether the hundred need to come from your district or not, and that's something that the Commission could do, if you want to make it be clear then make it that it's from the district. I think that out-of-district may have been an argument that was made, but it was not what the judge actually decided on. RAY: Chris, and you also suggested a possible language change in the legal term, just cause. YUEN: I would have eliminated maladministration from the grounds for impeachment, as being excessively vague. RAY: I think that, as we discussed and Chris pointed out, these are awful tough areas to wade into politically and get any support for. Once you give people any ammunition in this area, it's awful hard to get it back. So we need to think that through, also, in terms of the number of Charter Amendments. SANTANGELO: It's obvious in this one, that the hundred qualified voters, at that time, everybody was voted on by the whole island. But I agree with John, you start wading into that one, I come exactly where you're coming from, Roland, a lot of this frivolous stuff is nuts, what these guys are pulling, but we've got really important things on the ballot we need to get passed. • IRVINE: Right. On the other counties I had done, kind of, a chart of what it was throughout the islands. Here we have a hundred qualified electors of the County. Kauai has a hundred voters registered in the last General Election. Honolulu has 5,000 registered voters, and Maui has 5% of voters in last General Election, or the majority of the Board of Ethics can impeach someone. So, it doesn't take too many people to start an impeachment procedure, no matter where you are. It's quite different from Initiative and Referendum, where you have to have quite a few, because it is, as Chris told us, something that just gets referred immediately to the Courts, and it's not a matter for voters then to vote. But it seems to me that it ought to be some kind of a percentage rather than a number because we do change numbers of registered-voters, but maybe it's not important either, to change, particularly. HERKES: What would 5% of our registered voters be? IRVINE: I don't know. RAY: How many registered voters do we have? SANTANGELO: 70,000? HIGASHI: 65,000, something like that. • HERKES: So that would be 3,500, if we have 70,000, right? A much better number. 89 • • RAY: That's a pretty substantial change. HIGASHI: Hilo district - Or maybe a hundred per their district, but a hundred guys from the HERKES: That's just confusing. Maui says just 5% of voters registered in the last General Election. It doesn't even say 5% of those that vote, just registered. SANTANGELO: We might be surprised how people feel, but I'm getting really tired of people using up my tax dollars for a lot of this stuff. IRVINE: We could throw it out. At least at our hearings, we could mention the possibility and figure out how 5% would be, of people. HIGASHI: Yes. MARTIN: Either that way, or we could even say 1% which still they'd look at it and say, it's not that big of a deal, but if the number is 70,000, you'd still need a few more votes than you need right now. HIGASHI: What about an idea of frivolous lawsuits. If they file for impeachment, they put a bond up equal to some legal fees, and if they lose, they forfeit the bond. Right now, it's easy to file a lawsuit. IRVINE: It's hard to get signatures, though. If you really just make them get signatures, l think that will be enough. HIGASHI: The last impeachment thing was about program review, and I'm sure it cost everybody a couple of thousand dollars, just to prepare for a defense. There needs to be some kind of a balance to having an easy impeachment proceeding filing in somewhere. BESS: I thought of that too, Roland, but if we don't knock out maladministration, and then we stick a frivolity clause in there that it's a frivolous lawsuit, then you're going to pay the guy's costs, and that kind of thing, that maladministration needs to be stricken, I think, because it just provides for too much ambiguity that the guy can hide behind. I understood what Chris was saying was, gee, or maybe it was you, John, about maladministration in office. If we knock something like that out, it's not going to be too popular with the voters. They're not going to want - what are we giving up here? RAY: I think that's the case with any of it. HIGASHI: I think it's like John said, we're spending public money defending some of these people for frivolous lawsuits. It's going to cost somebody. BESS: What I'm saying is that I agree with the frivolous clause. I think that's the way we should go, but if we go that route, we knock out maladministration. 90 IRVINE: There's no harm in trying to put a percentage rather than a number because percentages make more sense than absolute numbers, and knock out maladministration, and just take it to public hearing and if people really dump on it, then we knock that off as not possible to get passed. I think we need to find out how many registered voters we have and see what 1% would be. SANTANGELO: Well, it's greater than 65 and probably a little less than 70. RAY: So you'd be talking about 650, 700 votes. IRVINE: Sounds good. HERKES: So, if you need 3,500 votes to impeach, that's a much more serious effort than a hundred. That, to me, solves the problem of the frivolous lawsuits. I mean, it may not solve the problem, but it lessens the risk. MARTIN: The thing is, as we were talking earlier, if you give them an absolute number, then the voters are going to look at it and say, what are these guys trying to do, but if you give them a percentage like 1%, it's no big deal. We take 1%, no problem. HERKES: 5%. IRVINE: 1% seems like small, yet it would be a substantial increase over what we're looking at now, because it's not that easy, I wouldn't think, to get 700 signatures. I don't know. RAY: from Maui? IRVINE: hundred. Sue, what were the numbers from the other counties? It was 5% 5% Maui. Honolulu had 5,000. Kauai had a hundred, and we had a HERKES: So, how many registered voters does Honolulu have? What percentage is 5,000 of their - MARTIN: thousand? The Gubernatorial race. Their numbers come out 120, 130 SANTANGELO: Generally your registered voter rule of thumb is slightly less than 50% of population. HIGASHI: True. Chris, from a legal standpoint, can you vote for impeaching somebody that you never even voted for? I mean, since it's single member district now. It's constituent and you have no relationship with the guy but you want him out of office. Isthat- YUEN: It's not clear in the present Charter, but I think you probably can, 91 and the reason is that because the Council members do actually represent the whole island so impeachment is supposed to be really a legal matter. HIGASHI: It's another gray area. YUEN: I'd say, under present Charter, it's a gray area, and leave it at that. My feeling is that probably you don't have to be from the district. If I were doing an impeachment petition, I would try to get them from the district just so you would lock it up and nobody was going to fight with you over it. But I'm inclined to think that it doesn't have to be. RAY: Anybody got another suggestion? BESS: I don't have a great suggestion but in terms of resolving this thing, one, we knock out maladministration. We don't rely on the frivolous clause. We go to what Marni is saying, a percentage, and just as a practical matter in terms of the voters voting for something like this, a change, that maybe a 3% might seem much less significant to them. RAY: Five to one to three. Any other suggestions? MARTIN: 1%. • HERKES: I would suggest 5% because I knew he was going to do 1. IRVINE: We're into compromising. Let's go with 3. HERKES: Three. IRVINE: I must say too, in looking for the reasons, there is no other county that has that maladministration. Everybody else is just malfeasance, misfeasance, nonfeasance, and then Maui throws in 'or an Ethics Code violation'. HIGASHI: Mr. Chair, do we ask Corp Counsel to draft something along those lines, 3%, and see what we get? YUEN: And let me just ask this one thing. Are we talking all 3 must be within the district? Is that the suggestion? Must be district residents? HIGASHI: IRVINE: YUEN: 3% of the entire island's registered voters and you can draw the signatories from the entire island, right? 3% - No. IRVINE: Right. 92 HIGASHI: 3% of qualified electorate from the previous election, something like that. You cannot register and then sign up. IRVINE: Oh yes, you can. YUEN: Oh yes, you can, sure. If that's what you want to do, then might as well vote on it, and then it becomes just a mechanical thing for me to write it up. RAY: explained it? Can I have a motion to support the last measure as Chris HERKES: So moved. IRVINE: Second. RAY: Discussion. All in favor? COMMISSIONERS: Aye. RAY: Is there anything else under Unfinished Business that anybody can think of, any items that we haven't talked about? YUEN: There's one small thing. I don't think we voted on this. Corp • Counsel had asked for a change in language about when outside counsel could be hired, to include such situations where there was a conflict of interest in the Corp Counsel Office. I wrote it up, sent it to Corp Counsel. They felt it worked for them, and I sent it out to the members, but I don't think we ever actually voted on it. Sharron is shaking her head, so we didn't. I don't think we did. It's not on Sharron's list of things we voted on. IRVINE: interest. This is to allow them to hire special counsel when conflict of YUEN: When they're in a conflict of interest. RAY: Somebody like to make a motion? YOSHIYAMA: I move. RAY: Second? BESS: Second. Could 1 just ask Chris. I don't remember you writing that. Is this their own discretion, as they find that they're in conflict, they don't have to rely on disciplinary counsel? YUEN: It doesn't require them specifically to get a clearance from disciplinary counsel. They would be able to hire the special counsel without going to 93 • the County Council, but there would have to be a blanket appropriation to cover it, naturally. They just wouldn't have to go on the individual case, as long as they had money earmarked for the purpose. RAY: Any other discussion? All in favor? COMMISSIONERS: Aye. RAY: Anything else in Old Business? New Business. I brought up the Cost of Government Commission from Maui County. I'd like to throw that out on the table for discussion. That's in the Maui County Charter on page 22. Does anybody have any thoughts on that? SANTANGELO: For me, it sounds like a great idea. Yes, let's do that but let's get done with this other stuff. You want us to discuss it, vote it, and everything today? IRVINE: Could we do that on Wednesday, maybe? Have time to read it, or is it real simple? RAY: It's real simple but we certainly don't need to vote on it today. So we'll table the Cost of Government Commission. • SANTANGELO: But I speak in favor of it. • HIGASHI: Something like this, we need to agendize it before. Wednesday's kind of late for us to publish an agenda. YUEN: Don't we have a General Review of Charter? We've been doing this catch-all thing. HIGASHI: But it's not the review. It's something new. It's additional. YUEN: I understand. HERKES: But our agenda is published, is it not, for the 9t? YUEN: Yes. RAY: In any case, we will, or won't, discuss it on Wednesday, but we'll look at that. The other thing I want to bring up is we need to develop our schedule, as quickly as possible, in relation to setting these public hearings, and I mentioned the possibility of doing four Saturdays in March. So that means, at least a couple of weeks prior to that, we're going to need to send out the first set of notices to community groups, with a pretty close facsimile to what it is we're considering right now. So, that's two weeks from now. 94 HIGASHI: Instead of the first of March, I'd appreciate - RAY: Pardon? Well, now, at the public hearings we don't all have to be there. Do you want to move it to the middle of March, and start mid-March? Do two in March and two in April, something like that, give ourselves another couple of weeks? YUEN: It's up to you folks. Within two weeks, I could give a description of, certainly, what the Commission has decided preliminarily to put on the ballot, that would be a fair description of it. I don't think I can have the exact language for each thing, but for the bulk of them I could. And I don't know that that's critical from the standpoint of the public hearings, to have every line in there. IRVINE: John, are you thinking that we'll have a meeting Wednesday and we don't need to have any further discussion until we have the public hearings? RAY: Sue, I kind of jumped beyond that into the public hearing thing. Because that's the thing, we've got to schedule notice and get reservations for, and whatever. So, that's why I jumped over the in-betweens. I'm not sure what we need to do in between then. IRVINE: That's what I was wondering. HIGASHI: Mr. Chair, you discussed four public hearings. Where do you intend to hold them? RAY: Hilo, Kona, Waimea, and somewhere south. HIGASHI: Hilo, Kona, Hilo, I-lilo? IRVINE: No. HIGASHI: We went to Pahoa, nobody showed up. We went to Puna - IRVINE: Let's go to Volcano, which is halfway between Ka'u and Pahoa, where we went last time. RAY: We might get better participation. SANTANGELO: Volcano would be great. Cooper Center, lot's of people would come. IRVINE: Good. HIGASHI: 9 o'clock? • RAY: Are Saturday mornings okay? IRVINE: Sounds good. 95 HERKES: Early Saturday mornings. MARTIN: Saturday morning for these public hearings? HERKES: Yes. MARTIN: I think that Saturday, for the public hearings, is not a good idea. IRVINE: Why? MARTIN: I don't think we'll get the turn out, but it makes no difference to me,. one way or the other, but most people, family, working, want to spend time with their family and Saturday is their days. HERKES: Saturday morning, Cooper Center is busy. IRVINE: Maybe we'll have to do it Friday night at Cooper Center. MARTIN: I just was thinking, maybe, during the week, early evenings. RAY: I really can't commit days during that time frame of the year. I'm just too busy with the Legislature and stuff, to block off weekdays, week nights, and all. • HIGASHI: We could try two Fridays and two Saturdays, or something like that. IRVINE: We could do that. RAY: I'd rather do Saturdays, personally. BESS: But in terms of the reason why we would not do it on a Saturday is because of families, and I would think, people wanting to stay home with their families is that Friday nights is the same argument, so why not just do them all on Saturday? Friday nights people are going to be going out to parties and stuff. KUROZAWA: I think if the public wanted to come, they're going to come whether you have it on a week night or weekend. RAY: How about if we shoot to start these the second Saturday in March which is March 11th, so we go the 11th, 18th, 25th, and April 1st. And how about scheduling another Charter meeting in February? Do we want to do that? SANTANGELO: A Saturday work session? RAY: Yes. BESS: We can always cancel it. 96 IRVINE: Yes, if we got done. • RAY: We're going to meet next week, and I think, to me, as soon as possible, we just have another work session to wrap things up, and to get ready. HERKES: 3:00 on the 23`d? BESS: I think Saturdays. RAY: I would go with Saturday. IRVINE: We did go into what Saturdays were good or bad last time and I think, John, the 26th was bad for you, right? And the 19th, Marni and I are - MARTIN: I'm gone on the 19th. RAY: I think the 26th is kind of late. My sense is we ought to do it within a couple of weeks. MARTIN: So, go the 12th then, right after. IRVINE: Is that next week? That's next week. • KUROZAWA: For next Saturday, you don't have time for your newspaper notice. no need? HENRY: Yes. We have to have seven days. It's too late to publish in the State publication. KUROZAWA: For next Saturday. MARTIN: What about during the week, then, John? The week after next. RAY: I just have such a hard time predicting - MARTIN: So what time do we meet March 8th in Hilo, 5? YUEN: To give you my honest opinion, the things that have been discussed so far are pretty close to being done. The only thing on the 9th' we have these two Commissions. I made a mistake, by the way, the Planning Commission was always nine and not seven, but in any case, we need to do that. We have Salary Commission. We have - RAY: • YUEN: This Cost of Government Commission. Right. Police Commission. 97 HERKES: Fire Commission. YUEN: I don't know. Maybe we should decide on the 9' whether you need to have another meeting, because I think that everything has been fleshed out enough that you can present it to the public, and they can make an intelligent decision on them. And there are certain tiny little fine points that may not be prepared. RAY: All those four meetings, we can conduct business as well. Does anybody care, or have any input in regard to those Saturdays, where we are, or do you want to leave it up to us? The 11th, 18th, 25th and 1St IRVINE: If you can't get Cooper Center on Saturday morning - RAY: They're all going to be Saturday morning. IRVINE: Okay. HERKES: I would request that you not go to Kona on the 18th. That's one time that I cannot be there. MARTIN: So, what are you asking, John? Do you want commitments for days, or are you going to leave it up to - RAY: We're committing to those days, all Saturdays. MARTIN: Do you want commitments from the other members? RAY: If you have any preference on where - MARTIN: I'll commit to all of them. Just tell me. I'II be there. RAY: Okay. Congratulations. Can I have a motion to adjourn? HERKES: Move. RAY: Second? YOSHIYAMA: Second. RAY: All in favor? COMMISSIONERS: Aye. The discussion ended at 3:17 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Sharron Henry Secretary -Administrative Assistant 99 CHRISTOPHER J. YUEN ATTORNEY AT LAW February 4, 2000 Hawaii County Charter Commission John Ray, Chairman Re: Fire Commission ')//5 ICA5.1 • HILO LAGOON CENTRE, SUITE 108 101 AUPUNI STREET HILO, HAWAII 96720 TEL. (808)935-4429 FAX (808)935-1844 e-mail: chrisyuenz@hotmail.com Dear Chairman Ray and Members of the Commission: During the discussion on the Fire Commission at the January 15, 2000, the consensus was to have a Fire Commission as proposed in Gary Yoshiyama's draft, but to make slight changes to clarify the grounds and procedures for removing the Fire Chief. I have prepared the following language, which generally copies that for the removal of the chief of police in the present charter, except that it just says that the chief must have an opportunity to respond before being removed, rather than an opportunity to respond "at a hearing before the commission." The proposed fire chief removal language would make it possible for the motion to remove the chief to be made and voted on at the same meeting. If the Charter Commission wishes to allow a hearing, the language can easily be changed. The proposed language follows. It would replace §6-4.3 of Gary Yoshiyama's proposal. FIRE COMMISSION 6-4.3. Fire Chief. The fire chief shall be appointed by the fire commission and may be removed by the fire commission at its sole discretion. Any motion for removal of the fire chief must contain a statement of reasons, and the fire commission shat n..o, vote to remove the chief unless the chief has been given an opportunity to respane, statement of reasons befo -e the commission. The fire chief shall have had a fl : - lium of five years' training and experience in fire control, including at least three years' experience in a responsible administrative capacity. CJY/np WORD \CD UN\LTRCOMM 11.125 Yours truly Christopher J. Yu