I ask readers of The Garden Island to compare the stories of two commissions and decide if the mayor engages in unprincipled manipulations. The mayor and council jointly failed to appoint a Salary Commission for 1997-98, 2001-02, and 2005-06. Politics
I ask readers of The Garden Island to compare the stories of two commissions and decide if the mayor engages in unprincipled manipulations.
The mayor and council jointly failed to appoint a Salary Commission for 1997-98, 2001-02, and 2005-06. Politics explains the pattern. The council had no incentive to push for a commission because council raises piggybacked on administrative raises, and mayors avoided having administrative raises on the table when a mayoral election was imminent.
When the issue of non-appointments for 2005-06 was raised, the council offered the lame excuse that volunteers were not forthcoming and the mayor said nothing.
This year the mayor, who could not find three appointees during the previous term, nominated all seven in record time. During the first week of February a new Salary Commission was activated as if by magic and started working with only four members.
Under extreme time constraints but with maximum administrative support from personnel collecting information and paving the way even before they met, commissioners were able to produce the schedule of administrative raises desired by the mayor, though they had to ignore or bypass certain time-related aspects of their mandate in order to do so.
The Charter Review Commission traditionally convened every 10th year to study and review government operations and to propose charter amendments it deemed necessary or desirable.
After being flooded with ideas and proposals, many of which originated with the public and some of which involved significant changes, and realizing they could not adequately process the flood of proposals, commissioners took the unusual step last year of proposing that the commission sit continuously for the next 10 years, using standard three-year rotating terms for commissioners. Chairman Louis Abrams arranged to archive on the county’s Web site the commission’s voluminous record of commission proceedings, public testimony, and related historical and documentary materials.
When the voters approved the ongoing commission schedule last fall everything was in place for new appointees to carry forward the work of the commission and the commission’s secretary was still a member of the mayor’s staff.
The Garden Island reported May 28 that, although all members had been nominated and approved, the Charter Commission would not convene until some unclearly defined support person or persons were hired. The message was attributed to an appointee, although the decision to delay was undoubtedly made by the mayor.
The commission’s ongoing task is a time-consuming one, and commissioners would have been hard-pressed to present timely proposals on major topics in 2008 even with maximum available time and full administrative support. Yet the commission languishes until support personnel are hired — a moveable timeline that the mayor can string out indefinitely.
The pattern of procrastination replicates the history of the last commission. The mayor delayed activating the commission for a year, thereby guaranteeing that nothing would reach the ballot in 2004 to interfere with his reelection plans and, along with other manipulations, reducing the likelihood that major proposals would reach the ballot in 2006.
The main target of these manipulations is a county manager proposal. The logical time to present such a proposal is a non-mayoral election year. Thus, a proposal approved in 2008 would become effective in 2010, and a proposal bypassed in 2008 would not reappear until 2012.
• Horace Stoessel is a regular contributor to the Forum page and a resident of Kapa‘a.
