• Lucky to be Americans • Keep it professional • Accountability all around Lucky to be Americans Since the dawn of civilization, communities have been overrun by their neighbors. History is steeped in unresolved injustice. The Romans were not invited
• Lucky to be Americans • Keep it
professional • Accountability all
around
Lucky to be Americans
Since the dawn of civilization, communities have been overrun by their neighbors.
History is steeped in unresolved injustice. The Romans were not invited to Europe, but rather took it by force. But they also replaced barbarism and anarchy with the rule of law, democracy, roads, schools, and hospitals.
Worldwide, cultures were more, or less, fortunate by whom they were controlled. Latin America still languishes in poverty and corruption as a legacy of their Spanish and Portuguese colonization.
It just happens that Hawai‘i landed in the hands of the United States. It was very nearly Britain, and even could have been Russia, neither very nice. So the Hawaiian populace enjoys the Bill of Rights.
Say what you want, worship as you please, contribute to this newspaper, defend your family, go to school, live where you choose, pick your career, enjoy your freedom, vote. Queen Emma, God Bless her, would have given you no such rights.
Look no further than the other Pacific Island nations to understand what poverty, indigent health care, and dysfunctional government look like.
Yes, we are lucky we live Kaua‘i. But we are also lucky to be Americans. No one here starves or is locked up for what they believe.
Don’t forget there are young men and women dying for your rights, many of them Hawaiian. Your senator and defender lost an arm fighting for this country.
And besides, without the Bill of Rights, there could be no Kimo Rosen. Then what would we all have to laugh at?
James Thompson, Kalaheo
Keep it professional
Regarding KIUC employees that were working on Makaha Ridge road in Koke‘e on Oct. 19:
One of the KIUC employees acted very disgruntled towards me as I was leaving the ridge on Makaha Ridge road. That person yelled out loud and angrily, “you are the one who writes in the TGI all kind s—t about us!”
Just a reminder to him, what I write is not about you. Who or what I write is just an opinion in general. And most of what I wrote and might write in the future is toward the staff of KIUC on an opinion of mine that I do not agree with such as a hike in cost for the use of kilowatt.
KIUC staff should remind their employees to be professionals when out in the eye of the public. From what I saw and heard I surely hope this doesn’t reflect the staff. Without us (customers) you (the staff) and your employees wouldn’t have a job.
Howard Tolbe, ‘Ele‘ele
Accountability all around
The commentary on current proposed charted amendments in a Sunday editorial last month entitled “Questionable” cites the failure of elected officials to implement a citizen-initiated charter amendment adopted in 2008 that “took the permitting power to approve requests for new tourist accommodations from the Planning Commission and gave it to the council.”
The editorial opines that the failure deserves a profound public explanation from the council and administration and adds: “Until we better understand why this law has been cast aside like it doesn’t exist, we will be left with the impression that regardless of the outcome to the questions put before voters this time around, the county will simply pick and choose which new laws it feels like implementing.”
The public, and The Garden Island in its role of holding government accountable, have a right to expect elected officials to follow the law. We also have powers and responsibilities of our own, the neglect of which enables this casual attitude toward the law by elected officials.
Charter Section 23.13, as amended in 1992, provides that county officials may be impeached for malfeasance, misfeasance or nonfeasance. Failure to implement the 2008 amendment is surely an example of nonfeasance, with the central question being who is accountable.
Impeachment proceedings may be initiated in Fifth Circuit Court by a petition signed by at least five percent of voters registered in the last general election. (Previously, only 100 signatures were required.) This burdensome requirement provides protection for officials against frivolous or merely mean-spirited charges.
The Board of Ethics may also file impeachment charges on its own initiative, which suggests that the sensible way to implement impeachment proceedings in a substantive matter like the 2008 amendment is to petition the Board to initiate the proceedings.
To follow such a course would, at a minimum, bring to light several issues that have yet to be tested in court. My purpose here is simply to raise the question of whether the following exemplifies a workable scenario.
Working together, concerned citizens and The Garden Island place elected officials on notice that unless the 2008 amendment is implemented by a specified date we will petition the Board of Ethics to file an impeachment charge of nonfeasance. This will, in turn, automatically place the Board on notice about its powers and responsibilities as a semi-autonomous agency of government to uphold “a high standard of integrity and morality in government service.” (Charter Section 20.01)
Horace Stoessel, Kapa’a
