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.