In Our View for Sunday — March 06, 2005

• Civics 101

Civics 101

This issue of The Garden Island marks the beginning of our in-depth coverage of Kaua‘i’s County government.

We feel that while both the County Council and Mayor Bryan Baptiste’s administration are making forward progress, there are issues facing our county government that are sitting on the back burner, while other issues not of top priority are being focused on. An example of this is on our front page today – the Hawaii Superferry issue.

At other times, issues are being acted on, or rather reacted to, way too late. The prime example of this is the Ohana Kauai property tax reform charter amendment. The Hawai‘i Supreme Court will be deciding whether the people have the right to change tax rates and tax systems, or whether that right is vested in county government. The County of Kaua‘i won their “County vs. County” suit in having a circuit court judge decide in favor of jettisoning the Ohana Kauai amendment. However, the bottom line on this issue is the the County Council and the County Administration should have acted the day the petition to put this amendment on the November ballot was handed in. If it was such an important issue why wasn’t it a priority then? And why isn’t a move overriding change to property tax assessments in place already? There’s been more action in fighting an amendment that an overwhelming majority of voters approved for Kaua‘i then there has been on substantive change in reforming property taxes. That’s why the Ohana Kauai had to go the petition route.

In our new section we will keep an eye on the weekly actions of the Council and our Mayor to see what’s been accomplished each week, and to see if items off the radar are being focused on, rather than the mandate of County government.

We are also looking closely at the County Charter, and the newly-formed Charter Commission.

We’ve found some areas of the charter ambiguous and will continue to comment on what changes we see as needed.