Letters for Monday, January 17, 2011

I’m selling my TV

I shed tears during Wednesday’s televised memorial for victims of Tucson’s tragic shooting, but I could not simultaneously ignore a shameless, high-gloss federalized political rally run full-tilt with cheering audience cat-calls, slick color playbills and 14,000 professionally printed thematic T-shirts prepped only since Saturday — all this performance art carefully wrapped in typical Judeo-Christian-bible-thumping-American-flag-waving rhetoric.

I don’t buy it.  

Ringleader-in-Chief Barry Soetoro and his side-show administrator enforcement clowns are right on script seizing the moment to “never let a good crisis go to waste” — a grim kick-off to the Democratic 2012 presidential campaign reminiscent of William Clinton’s rally post Oklahoma City bombing.

Why, P.T. Barnum would be proud of all this staging.

Next, count on blathering mainstream lap-dog media to obediently perpetuate the official agenda-message or the Republican counter-offer couched in phony talking-head sympathy until the juice runs out or the next horror can be exploited better by the fake left-right party line paradigm mouthpieces. 

Regardless, get ready for more rights sacrificed for “security.” 

That’s it, after this next over-hyped, under-performing Super Bowl, I’m selling my TV.

Rolf Bieber, Kapa‘a

Draft Bill No. 2395 a solid first step

I believe Draft Bill No. 2395 achieves its stated purpose of conforming the County’s salary ordinance (County Code Section 3-2.1) to Charter Section 29.03.

The executive salary process authorized by Charter Article 29 as amended in 2006 is quite simple. Its main features include the following:

1. It authorizes the Salary Commission to establish salaries for elected officials and salary ceilings for positions occupied by appointed officials.

2. It authorizes appointing authorities to set the salaries of their appointees at or below the established ceiling. It is misleading and confusing to assert that the commission sets the salaries of or gives raises to appointed officials. The ceilings it sets do not constitute automatic or mandated salary raises for individuals occupying the positions.

3. It authorizes the Council to reject any or all salaries established by the commission’s salary resolutions, but not to amend the salary figures.

4. It requires the Salary Commission to present its salary finding by March 15.  The purpose of the requirement is to align the executive salary process with the County’s annual budget process.

The requirement presupposes that the commission will make salary decisions on a year-to-year basis (though it does not require changes to be made every year) and it provides no basis for what happened in 2007, when the commission established four salary increases spread over two and a half years — a decision that led to confusion and unnecessary expenditure of time and energy related to deferred salaries.

5. It alters the traditional roles played by the Salary Commission and the Council. Prior to 2006 the commission recommended salary figures and any non-salary provisions it deemed necessary and the Council made the final decisions about both.

Now the commission is authorized to establish salary figures which the Council can allow to take effect automatically or can reject in whole or in part but cannot modify, while the Council retains full authority over non-salary provisions in the salary ordinance.

It follows that the commission is not authorized to establish non-salary provisions. For example, the commission has no authority to dictate conditions that appointing authorities must satisfy before setting the salaries of their appointees, as the commission purported to do most recently in Section (d) of Resolution 2010-1, which requires appointers to meet three conditions before they can raise salaries of appointees.

These altered roles lead to the conclusion that the commission should restrict the content of its resolutions to salary figures and should submit separately to the Council any recommendations it has for non-salary provisions in County Code Section 3-2.1.

6. The role of the Mayor is to set the salaries of mayoral appointees and to see to it that the salaries set by the commission for elected officials and the salaries set for appointed officials by their appointing authorities are incorporated in the County’s budget ordinance.

Draft Bill No. 2395 is a solid first step in conforming the executive salary process to Charter Section 29.03. If the entire process is brought into conformity with the section the Mayor will not find it necessary to ask for two-year salary deferrals as happened in 2009, nor will the commission again encourage the Mayor and Council to violate Section 29.03 by purporting to authorize them to reduce executive salaries by means of the budget process, as it did in Section 2 of Resolution 2010-1.

Horace Stoessel, Kapa‘a

Still driving on the beach!

I was just wondering why are people still driving on the beach when I thought it was illegal.

I see the “no vehicles beyond this point” sign is gone, so I guess they can drive again on the sand hoping no one is in there way.

I remember the last time when someone got run over! Don’t get me wrong, it sounds like fun, but safety come first in my book.

Daniel Renaud, Kapa‘a