Vision meetings, open or closed?To the Forum:

Your report on the recently held (March 7, 2000) visioning meeting is

interesting and, to some extent, illuminating on a matter that has been of some

concern by many on this island.

As an officially formed body by the mayor

this gathering fits the legal defintion of a “Board” under Hawaiian

Revised Statutes, HRS, Chapter 92 – Public Agency Meetings and Records –

(usually referred to as the Sunshine Law).

This particular

“board,” created by the mayor, carries the facade of a “publicly

noticed open meeting,” as required by HRS 92; but, by removing this

particular “public open meeting” from the usual venue-namely the

Historic County Building, where the County Council meets, and where dialogues

between the legislative part of our government (the County Council) and the

administrative, or excutive part normally take place – to a hotel room seven

miles and 15 minutes away, and scheduling it at 8 a.m. in the morning, the

mayor has created a strange creature that definitely does not encourage, or

promote, or maximize public participation.

This would seem to violate at

least the spirit of the Sunshine Law which admonishes government agencies to

make their meetings “… as open as possible….” (Chapter 92-1).

In reality, few if any members of the public attend these vision meetings,

so that they become de facto closed meetings.

As a matter of fact, and of

record, the mayor no doubt so regarded these meetings, or she would not have

disclosed the names of the nine members of her secret Solid Waste Advisory

Committee at the Feb. 15 visioning meeting, a fact tangentially reported by

The Garden Island on March 1, and missed by the reporter of another newspaper

who happened to show up just after the mayor made her disclosure.

This

Freudian Slip by the mayor then raised these interesting questions, aside from

serious legal issues under the Sunshine Law:

Since the visioning meeting

has minutes, as required by law, wouldn’t the names of the Secret Nine be in

the minutes of the Feb. 15 meeting?

Since Council members were present at

the meeting wouldn’t they be in possession of the “open secret”

(pardon the oxymoron), and would have to reveal it when asked by the

public?

Tricky questions indeed these are!

Obviously under pressure

to produce bona fide minutes of the Feb. 15 meeting, the Administration on

March 8 finally revealed the names of the secret nine.

One might hope

that in the spirit of the Sunshine Law the Administration would also reveal

the qualifications of these obviously very important advisors so as to preempt

the raising by the public of the third question, “What is this

Administration trying to hide?”

Raymond L. Chuan

Hanalei