• A public accounting from the board • Getting to know Barack Obama A public accounting from the board Open letter to Mayor Bryan Baptiste and council chair Kaipo Asing and councilmembers: The stated purpose of the Kauai County’s Code
• A public accounting from the board
• Getting to know Barack Obama
A public accounting from the board
Open letter to Mayor Bryan Baptiste and council chair Kaipo Asing and councilmembers:
The stated purpose of the Kauai County’s Code of Ethics is to “establish a high standard of integrity and morality in government service (Section 20.01). Mayor, council and the Board of Ethics are charged with enforcing the code (20.04E).
The purpose of this letter is to ask that mayor and council call upon the Board of Ethics to give a public accounting of their rationale for invoking, or not invoking, Section 20.02D in their responses to requests for advisory opinions and/or requests that the board initiate impeachment proceedings based on the section, and to explain their refusal to release a county attorney opinion as to law in connection with a request from Jonathan Chun, chairman of the Charter Commission, for an after-the-fact advisory opinion. When I asked the board chairman to justify the board’s decision to keep the opinion secret, he said, “I do not intend to answer that, Horace. It could be that I don’t know; it could be that I just don’t wish to answer that question.”
In my opinion, the board has made 20.02D a dead letter in the charter, thereby usurping the voters’ exclusive authority to add to or subtract from the charter. I have previously provided copies to you of several communications supporting my opinion and will not repeat here the evidence contained therein. However, I will add that this is not the first time the board has failed to invoke 20.02D and failed to offer an explanation for its decision to ignore the section — the most recent example occurred in December 2007, details of which are available in the board’s minutes.
After refusing to offer a rationale for the board’s decision in the Chun case and refusing to offer an explanation for keeping secret a legal opinion it has the sole authority to release, the board chairman volunteered an argument to the effect that if Chun was guilty of violating 20.02D, so was Councilmember Mel Rapozo, who appeared before the board in connection with his bid to deliver subpoenas for the prosecutor’s office. He implied that anyone who disagreed with his assertion was inconsistent at best and hypocritical at worst.
Besides being diversionary and irrelevant, the argument totally lacks merit. Rapozo acted under the terms of section 20.03A, which stipulates a competitive bidding process for the contract he sought, and to use his appearance before the board to claim he was violating 20.02D is specious, if not worse. The responsibility for enforcing 20.03A lies entirely with the Purchasing Department. If the department had honest doubts about awarding the contract to Rapozo, the department should have asked for an advisory opinion. Instead, the department placed him in a catch-22 position by requiring that he appear before the board and the board apparently summoned him to appear rather than instructing the Purchasing Department on the proper procedures. (On the same day the board made its decision about Chun in secret it questioned a representative from the water department at length about an advisory opinion involving a prospective employee and saw no need to question the prospective employee.)
It is worth noting that Chun’s fellow attorney on the Charter Commission seems to agree that the board should have based its decision in the Chun case on a plain reading of 20.02D. He has proposed a charter amendment that would exempt volunteers on boards and commissions from the requirements of the section.
At a minimum, I believe that the board should be required to answer publicly the following questions: Can the board give an example of a situation in which it would base its decision on 20.02D? Why did the board feel no need to question Chun about his request for an advisory opinion — did the fact that an experienced attorney requested intervention status account for Chun’s absence from the proceedings? What explanation can the board offer for keeping secret an opinion as to law and its cavalier disregard for members of the public who sought to participate responsibly in the proceedings?
I told the board that I would do what I could to see that they were held accountable for their actions. In my opinion, the logical place for a public accounting from the board is a council meeting aired on Ho‘ike and for that reason I call upon council chair Kaipo Asing to place the matter on the council agenda at the earliest convenience. We in the public can petition for redress but only those in authority can take effective action.
I urge you to do so.
Horace Stoessel
Kapa‘a
Getting to know Barack Obama
Gordon Oswald’s understanding of Barack Obama is a good example of how we, as voters, define our candidates. We let the TV newsradio and perhaps a few Internet sites blast us with sensational, titillating, emotionally charged and sexy headlines and then we base our opinion on such nonsense. One thing I love about the younger gen-Xers is that they question such propaganda to the point of cynicism. In today’s world that is a healthy approach to the media’s propaganda. It’s no wonder why so many people get their news from Jon Stewart and other satirists. To those who follow the headlines, please go to the library, or Borders, or just ‘google’ for information. It is out there and in today’s world it is accessible by the click of a button. And to those who want to know more about Obama? Search his Web site or read his books. You will get to know this man and what makes him tick. And then decide. But, please, don’t limit yourself to CNN or Fox “news headlines” to decide who should be the most powerful person in the world.
Michael Smith
Kapa‘a
