Kauai county council begins the new term

Yesterday the new county council started the two year term of office under new chair Mel Rapozo, passing new council rules that give the chair additional authority and restrict public involvement and access.

After writing up a summary of the rule changes last that night it struck me: once they enact the new rules, once the Council Chair single-handedly sets the council agenda, there will be no way to go back, or make any rule changes the chair does not want. In effect, the chair now has veto power over any further rule changes. (I have included my written testimony below.)

In my opinion, giving that much power to one official is unconscionable, no matter who is chair. Regardless of the caliber and integrity of the individual, democracies should function with checks and balances. 

I couldn't disagree more with Councilmember KipuKai Kualiʻi who said, quoted in a TGI article:

”I’m disheartened by what’s happening today by a couple of my fellow council members and the statements that they have made,” Kualii said. “Councilman Mel Rapozo, as I have known him over the years as a constituent and colleague, has always been an honorable, positive friend to me, a leader and a servant.”

My counterpoint to this is that the rules are not about individuals and personalities - we donʻt tailor the rules for the executive branch of the federal government to fit our assessment of the new president - they are the mechanism of a functioning democratic body. No matter how wise and benevolent Council Chair Rapozo may be we still need checks and balances if only to avoid the appearances of abuse of power. The council rules should never be tailored to an individual but should be fair regardless of who is chair. By responding that it is about who is chair Councilmember Kualiʻi seems to believe that this chair deserves new added authority and can be trusted implicitly without the need of any check of that power. I would like to believe that the citizens who voted for Councilmember Kualiʻi wanted his voice on the council to shape the affairs of the county, but in supporting these new rules he has started off by giving up his voice on many decisions formerly in the purview of the council. 

Rather than assessing the benevolence of the Council Chair Rapozo, I suggest that the discussion should be about the rules as supporting democratic values and checks and balances, independent of personalities. Let me ask a couple of specific questions that I think better frame the discussion than being about individuals.

[1] While Councilmember Rapozo was the top vote-getter in the election, he hardly has an overwhelming mandate of the people: of 24,043 ballots cast, 10,896 (46%) did not vote for him. I would invite any proponent of the new rules to explain now the concentration of power in the chair respects the intentions of those voters? (If there is some "efficiency" benefit I would say it needs to be extremely strong to compensate for the potential downsides.) 

[2] Hypothetically, if six council members want to change a rule, or propose any resolution for that matter, to my mind they should be able to override the chair, but under these rules they cannot (if I'm mistaken in this interpretation, please comment and explain how they could). For two years only one person on this island can enable any further council rule changes. How is that a desirable way of doing business that is in the interests of the county?

UPDATE: (Dec. 3, 2014) now this is a working video up at http://kauai.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=1548 I was unable to attend and don't know the details yet - unfortunately the online video is very poor quality and one version [http://kauai.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=1547] (as of Dec. 2, 11am) useless color bars for 3 hours. Hope they notice and fix as I could not even find a contact to write for this.

Written testimony on Res. 2015-02 (new council rules)

I am concerned about the proposed rule changes in Resolution 2015-02 that the new Council Chair is taking excessive authority. Specifically, I urge the council to continue the following current rules:

• Rule 9: The public right to petition the county council. 
• Rule 10(c) & 15(b): Placement on Agenda within 120 days without Council Chair approval required.

Likewise, I urge rejection of the following proposed new rules:

• Rule 11 Testimony: Written testimony must be submitted as fifteen copies. This seems excessive and unnecessary burden that will only reduce public input to the Council. What happens to email testimony now permitted (that I am taking advantage of here)?
• Rule 19: Requiring advance permission for reporters to photograph council proceedings. Has there been a problem with press coverage abuses?
• There are a number of other rule changes that increase the powers of the Council Chair to solely decide things that currently the whole council decided. These are also of concern and deserve close scrutiny but for brevity I will focus on the above more egregious changes.

I have read(*) that the claim for these changes is "efficiency" yet being unaware of past problems would urge the council to only adopt these new changes in light of specific rationale and evidence that they address real concerns great enough to justify the reduction in democratic decision making and public involvement they entail.

The purported argument that removing the 120 day rule is only to prevent "illegal" proposals from coming to the council strikes me as highly disingenuous. If so, the language of the rule should state that as a condition and include a process for timely legal review. Even then, recent history (e.g. Bill No. 2491) shows that the legality of bills is controversial and as such I think properly determined by the full council. As written, the new rules allow the Council Chair to unilaterally block anything from the council agenda even without justification, short-circuiting proper council deliberation.

I would like to point out that once these rules are adopted, under the new rules the Council Chair is empowered to block any resolutions to further modify the rules so in effect once you approve this it will be the last chance for two years to change the rules in anyway the Council Chair does not want.

While there are many concerns with the new rules, allowing one person to arbitrarily control what comes before Council is by far the greatest threat that I see here, representing a highly anti-democratic change. Only after an extremely powerful justification of benefit should the council allow these rules investing so much authority in one individual, and to my mind that argument has not nearly been made.

(*) Source is below - if this is not authentic I would urge the new Council Chair to correct for the public record.

http://parxnewsdaily.blogspot.com/2014/11/rapozo-responds-hooser-answers-response.html

Respectfully,

New council, new rules

The new county council is sworn in and holds its inaugural meeting [agenda] where the new chairperson, vice chairperson, and standing committees will be constituted as well as the council operating rules adopted. After finishing with the most votes in the recent election, Mel Rapozo is widely assumed to become the new chairperson. Mel has introduced Resolution 2015-02 presenting new rules for council business, and there are a lot of changes.

Here is my unofficial quick summary of the changes that look significant to me. Someone has spent a lot of time making cosmetic changes and substituting their preferred way of saying things so it's quite difficult to separate the real changes from the inconsequential. For example, "H.R.S." now gets spelled out "Hawai’i Revised Statutes"; seriously, was that really necessary and a good use of time by the new chair?

The current rules can be found here … or rather I should say the "unofficial" rules. For unstated reasons, the county seems to only provide authoritative copies of the rules on paper.

Caveat: the language of the rules is somewhat arcane (I figured out that a "movant" is the person who made a motion, for example) and requires significant interpretation so take the following with a big grain of salt as just my best inexperienced effort.

The new Council Chair is clearly maneuvering for a lot more control of council proceedings. Taken as a whole the incoming Council Chair wants very much to run the show and with less public input, less interference from other council members, and more restricted press coverage.

• The public may no longer petition the county council. Testimony is more restricted and less convenient.
• The Council Chair can indefinitely block other council members resolutions from coming before the council.
• Now Council Chair, alone, approves workshops; controls the council agenda order of business; approves or disapproves absent council members.
• Reporters need advance permission to photograph council proceedings.

Detailed rule changes

Here is my summary of significant changes in the proposed rules:

• Rule 1(a)(2): For some reason now only a majority of council members must have their credentials in order. Interestingly, even with a minority without proper credentials it appears that everyone gets sworn in. This one I have no idea what the thinking is. - "If a majority of the credentials are in order, the credentials committee shall so report and the oath of office shall be administered to the Councilmembers-elect by some person duly qualified to administer oaths."
• Rule 1(f): The provision for adding items to the agenda in the case of emergencies has been removed. Now in an emergency they cannot address it at a regularly scheduled meeting but need to hold an extra meeting. Why removing this option be helpful? - "Council may hold an emergency meeting or add an emergency item to a posted agenda"
• Rule 1(g): Workshops now can only be held with the approval of the Council Chair.
• Rule 2(c): Committees now need a majority instead of a physical majority to take action. I believe this means if, say, two committee members are absent, it still takes three votes (majority of five voting members) to pass anything. Formerly a two of three majority of those present would suffice.
• Rule 2(d): The ability to compel absent council members to appear has been stricken.  - "A physical majority of less than a quorum may adjourn from day to day and shall have power to compel the attendance of absent members ." These two changes to Rule 2 seem to enable a lazy council member, or members, to stall committee work by not showing up, and now there is nothing to be done about it. Why would the new Council Chair want this?
• Rule 3(c): Committee Chairs no longer need approval of the committee to call meetings and hearings. It seems rather authoritarian to call meetings the committee as a group doesn't approve.
• Rule 4: The committees have been reworked including many changes.
• Rule 5(d): Now the Council Chair must approve council member excuses for being absent. This sounds like elementary school mentality: can't we trust our elected officials not to cheat when they say they cannot attend a meeting? - "No member may be absent from a meeting … unless the member has so advised the Council Chair ... and has been deemed excused by the respective Chair."
• Rule 6(c): This one I can't make sense of at all: the motion to receive for the record has been stricken completely. "6th, to receive for the record, to receive, or to file, which means to take final action to close the file on the item; "
• Rule 9: Petition removed completely. - "Any person may petition the Council. Petitions and other matters shall be in writing, with at least the name of the petitioner signed and printed. The petition shall be disposed of by the Chair, including its referral to the proper agenda if deemed appropriate. The Chair shall notify all Councilmembers of the receipt and disposition of the petition. "
• Rule 10(c) & 15(b): Placement on Agenda can now be blocked by the Council Chair indefinitely. - "All bills and resolutions must be initialed by the Council Chair or, in the Chair's absence, the Vice Chair (or other designated chair as stated in Rule 3) in order to be placed on the agenda; provided that any bills or resolutions shall be placed on the agenda within one hundred twenty (120) days of the date of the written request by a Councilmember to the Council Chair. "
• New Rule 11 Testimony: Written testimony must be submitted as fifteen copies! Oral testimony is limited to three minutes and cannot include direct questioning of council members among other restrictions. 
• Rule 13(e) allowing public testimony at the beginning of council meetings is removed. This courtesy saved citizens time because without this rule one needs to sit in the council room until the item one came to speak about comes up on the agenda - which is totally unscheduled and unpredictable. 
• Rule 15(f), (g): now the Council Chair, alone, has the right to promote a special agenda item and to resolve without debate all questions about priority of business. "The Council Chair may direct that any matter shall be made a special order of business."
• Rule 19: Reporters must request advance permission to photograph the proceedings. "Requests to film the Council proceedings with the use of video or still photography may be submitted to the Office of the County Clerk in writing within seven (7) business days prior to the meeting."

Committees

Committee seats are detailed in Resolution No. 2015-03. Committees are constituted as follows:

• Public Works / Parks & Rec: Ross Kagawa, chair (includes roads, utilities, waste management, and much more)
• Public Safety: Gary Hooser, chair (includes police, fire, prosecutor's office, civil defense, liquor control)
• Housing & Transportation: JoAnn Yukimura, chair (public housing and public transportation)
• Planning (planning, zoning, etc. with the water department which was formerly under Public Works)
• Economic Development & Intergovernmental Relations: KipuKai Kuali’i, chair
• Budget & Finance: Arryl Kaneshiro, chair (formerly this committee handled economic development as well)
• Committee of the Whole: Mel Rapozo, chair (includes Auditor, Human Resources, and Elderly Affairs which was formerly under the Public Safety committee)

The new rules combine economic development into the one committee where formerly it was split with sustainability issues going under Intergovernmental Relations and tourism/business development under the Finance committee. Moving the water department out of Public Works seems odd.

	Public Works	Public Safety	Housing/Trans	Planning	Economic/Intergov	Budget/Finance
Chair	Ross Kagawa	Gary L. Hooser	JoAnn A. Yukimura	Mason K. Chock	KipuKai Kuali’i	Arryl Kaneshiro
Vice chair	Arryl Kaneshiro	Mason K. Chock	Mason K. Chock	Gary L. Hooser	JoAnn A. Yukimura	KipuKai Kuali’i
Member	Mason K. Chock	Ross Kagawa	Gary L. Hooser	Ross Kagawa	Gary L. Hooser	Mason K. Chock
Member	KipuKai Kuali’i	KipuKai Kuali’i	Arryl Kaneshiro	Arryl Kaneshiro	Ross Kagawa	Gary L. Hooser
Member	JoAnn A. Yukimura	JoAnn A. Yukimura	KipuKai Kuali’i	KipuKai Kuali’i	Arryl Kaneshiro	Ross Kagawa
Ex-Officio	Gary L. Hooser	Arryl Kaneshiro	Ross Kagawa	JoAnn A. Yukimura	Mason K Chock	Mel Rapozo
Ex-Officio	Mel Rapozo	Mel Rapozo	Mel Rapozo	Mel Rapozo	Mel Rapozo	JoAnn A. Yukimura

I looked at the distribution of council members among the various Standing Committees, excluding the Committee of the Whole which is the full council everyone is on. It makes sense that the Council Chair is ex-officio (i.e. non-voting) member of all other committees. Ross Kagawa is Vice Chair of the Council so it is reasonable he is not also vice chair of another committee, which means someone gets to be two vice chairs (Mason Chock). JoAnn Yukimura gets the least favorable treatment with a voting seat on only four committees; KipuKai Kuali’i get a little special advantage with a voting seat on all six committees. Were they to swap one committee seat it would make for an even five voting seats for everyone so this is a completely intentional shift in assignments.

	Chair	Vice Chair	Voting member	Ex-Officio
Mel Rapozo	0	0	0	6
Ross Kagawa	1	0	5	1
Mason K. Chock	1	2	5	0
Gary L. Hooser	1	1	5	1
Arryl Kaneshiro	1	1	5	1
KipuKai Kuali’i	1	1	6	0
JoAnn A. Yukimura	1	1	4	2

The first meeting of the new Council is tomorrow: all signs so far indicate this will be a very different two years of county council. If you do not attend you can watch it here.

2014 Election results

I've been playing with the county election result numbers by precinct as it gives a good snapshot of the political state of the island.

The mayoral race was never really in question with Barca only winning (by two to one margins) on the north shore. Beyond the Wailua river it was a one-sided victory for the incumbent. In the graphic to the right, precincts are numbers from north shore on the left, roughly going along the highway to Lihue, the south shore, and the west side.

The council race was much more interesting. In the end only two seats changed: newcomer Kaneshiro and past council member Kualii replaced Furfaro (who lost by less than 100 votes) and Bynum.

Here are the numbers by precinct.

	RAPOZO (MR)	KAGAWA (RK)	KANESHIRO (AK)	KUALII (KK)	YUKIMURA (JY)	CHOCK (MC)	HOOSER (GH)	FURFARO (JF)	BRUN (AB)	PERRY (DP)	COWDEN (FC)	BYNUM (TB)	DeCOSTA (BD)	LARANIO (TL)	Grand Total
14-01	523	401	329	362	542	871	865	594	191	349	1,065	803	326	452	7,673
14-02	494	380	398	348	580	838	910	524	213	289	1,059	876	338	566	7,813
14-03	423	349	344	359	344	465	361	349	266	291	402	353	245	411	4,962
14-04	1,649	1,520	1,379	1,265	1,167	1,198	1,147	1,162	848	935	1,123	1,057	763	920	16,133
14-05	643	590	524	479	431	392	392	464	306	388	332	331	275	289	5,836
15-01	1,148	1,073	1,005	916	868	1,084	942	822	640	773	966	940	667	686	12,530
15-02	735	610	635	567	501	307	326	431	375	431	225	296	279	232	5,950
15-03	1,193	1,115	1,063	840	720	468	392	626	615	693	304	356	470	263	9,118
15-04	1,384	1,336	1,333	1,088	878	664	591	804	784	852	462	534	596	357	11,663
15-05	259	219	252	195	186	165	171	133	157	144	143	141	155	86	2,406
16-01	821	767	890	634	631	543	554	514	507	519	515	494	504	308	8,201
16-02	1,387	1,345	1,385	1,032	889	821	760	725	1,070	937	685	676	994	473	13,179
16-03	1,207	1,299	1,214	897	611	415	401	517	984	683	257	348	757	276	9,866
16-04	507	579	459	372	245	209	191	201	424	277	141	159	362	162	4,288
16-05	736	773	710	606	330	280	240	277	691	482	229	224	500	176	6,254
16-06	38	31	51	25	18	10	14	22	49	33	9	14	12	8	334
Grand Total	13,147	12,387	11,971	9,985	8,941	8,730	8,257	8,165	8,120	8,076	7,917	7,602	7,243	5,665	126,206

The numbers are overwhelming to look at for patterns so I did some further analysis. First, look at ranking by precinct which shows how localized support is for many candidates. (Winners in bold.)

	MR	RK	AK	KK	JY	MC	GH	JF	AB	DP	FC	TB	BD	TL
14-01	7	9	12	10	6	2	3	5	14	11	1	4	13	8	Hanalei
14-02	8	10	9	11	5	4	2	7	14	13	1	3	12	6	Kilauea
14-03	2	8	10	6	10	1	5	8	13	12	4	7	14	3	Anahola
14-04	1	2	3	4	6	5	8	7	13	11	9	10	14	12	Kealia
14-05	1	2	3	4	6	7	7	5	12	9	10	11	14	13	Kapaa town
15-01	1	3	4	8	9	2	6	10	14	11	5	7	13	12	Kapaa mauka
15-02	1	3	2	4	5	10	9	6	8	6	14	11	12	13	Hanamaulu
15-03	1	2	3	4	5	10	11	7	8	6	13	12	9	14	Lihue
15-04	1	2	3	4	5	9	11	7	8	6	13	12	10	14	Puhi
15-05	1	3	2	4	5	7	6	13	8	10	11	12	9	14	Poipu
16-01	2	3	1	4	5	7	6	10	11	8	9	13	12	14	Koloa
16-02	1	3	2	5	8	9	10	11	4	7	12	13	6	14	Kalaheo
16-03	3	1	2	5	8	10	11	9	4	7	14	12	6	13	Hanapepe
16-04	2	1	3	5	8	9	11	10	4	7	14	13	6	12	Waimea
16-05	2	1	3	5	8	9	11	10	4	7	12	13	6	14	Kekaha
16-06	3	5	1	6	8	12	9	7	2	4	13	9	11	14	Niihau

Blue for first place in precinct.
Light blue denotes top 7 finish in precinct 
Light red denotes 10th or lower finish in precinct

Most surprising thing I see is that Felicia Cowden owned the north shore winning Hanalei and Kilauea precincts but failed to win a seat, finishing eleventh, since (like Barca) her support was so concentrated north of the Wailua river. Brun and to some extent Perry had strong west side support, dropping off quickly in Lihue and near dead last beyond in the east and north.

The top three winners all had broad island-wide support sharing the top spots in most precincts except north of the Wailua river where support falls off abruptly. Kualii and Yukimura had moderate support quite consistently island-wide, weakest in the north, that combined to win them seats.