• Rewriting the County Charter Rewriting the County Charter The County Charter is the foundational document that governs our County Council, and a document in need of clarification and updating. Councilman Mel Rapozo is championing the drafting of a new
• Rewriting the County Charter
Rewriting the County Charter
The County Charter is the foundational document that governs our County Council, and a document in need of clarification and updating.
Councilman Mel Rapozo is championing the drafting of a new County Charter, one that he says works better for the 21st century.
We’ve carefully read the charter, which was enacted in 1969, and found it lacking in several areas.
First and foremost is how the charter defines, or actually how it doesn’t define, the duties of councilmembers. We don’t know if this was deliberately done to give council leaders more leeway in carrying out their duties, or if the role of a lawmaker is just harder to define than that of the executive branch of our county government.
The role of mayor is carefully defined in the existing charter, and the duties of the mayor are listed clearly.
Those drafting the document may have been focusing on what the mayor of Kaua‘i County was to do as the charter was adopted during the first term of Kaua‘i’s first mayor, Antone Vidinha, the namesake of Vidinha Stadium.
The charter was apparently the firstever for the county government, which was formed about 1905.
The duty of overseeing the process of rewriting the county charter would go to the recently formed Kaua‘i County Charter Review Commission, if Councilman Rapozo’s plan moves forward.
Two past proposals to rewrite the County Charter went nowhere, the first in the mid-1970s and the second in the mid-1990s.
We see a rewrite of the charter as a task that’s needed, especially in defining the duties of the County Council.
We also see a danger of potential political-driven penmanship in the rewriting. Shaking up the balances of power, giving certain boards and commissions too much power and other changes could provide power bases that could be exploited.
To avoid such problems, or even the appearance of any political maneuvers, fair and balanced outside oversight will be needed as the process goes forward.
Our ongoing problems with the Ohana Kauai property tax charter amendment shows that any issues affecting the charter, or interpretations of what the charter states, can cause community divisions and mistrust of our political processes.
We back a rewriting of the County Charter, but only if it can be proven in advance to be politicsfree, fair and dependent on public input.
