Charter amendment amendment

More changes to the county charter are being considered. In another proposed amendment to the county charter, the Kauaʻi County Charter Review Commission held a hearing about upping the number of required signatures for amending the charter by the public from 5% to 20% of voters (based on number of votes in the last general election).

The stated motivation for changing the charter amendment signature requirement is that it should be higher than the requirement for placing a proposition (creating legislation) which is currently also 5%. Charter amendments certainly are changing a more fundamental layer of the legal system yet it seems that if anything the number of votes required for passage should be higher. Quite obviously, making it harder to put amendments on the ballot is hardly the same.

A summary of the percentage of vote signatures required by the major islands is instructive:

• Kauaʻi county charter [link] 5% (72 pages)
• Oahu  (City of Honolulu) charter [link] 10%
• Maui county charter [PDF] 10% (62 pages)
• Hawaii county charter [PDF] 20% (61 pages)

True, Kauaʻi does have the lowest bar for signatures to place proposed amendments on the ballot, yet do we want to jump to match the highest requirement? Since we are talking about effort to place amendments on the ballot a key consideration is if there are frivolous amendment proposals that the lower requirement is allowing that did not belong on the ballot in the first place or not. 

To support this I would like to see more of a justification, specifically where is the evidence that the 5% requirement is too easy? Have we had a problem with frivolous amendments get on the ballot? (Obviously some amendments will fail to pass, that doesn't mean they should never have been on the ballot.) On the other hand if we have had lots of amendments that only garnered 5% of the vote or something like that, I can see that as justification to raise the bar. In the 2012 election [results], nothing like that seemed to happen, so what's the motive? 

The real problem the county has been having with charter amendments is that they don't stand up in court: "For the second time in six years, a Hawaii court has invalidated a voter-initiated amendment to the charter". Due to a 2012 amendment the county attorney reviews amendments including "alteration or change in the form or language or any restatement of the text of the proposed amendments" (though the exact process is unclear).

My take on all this is that people are very rightfully frustrated with government. Many people here feel that this place is special, yet there is so much state and federal control on top of everything it often makes it difficult. 

This possible amendment seems unrelated, at least directly, to the effort to place an amendment to the county charter about GMO regulation. Even if both garner support they would appear together on the ballot later this year. 

The Fifth County

There is one more county in the state of Hawaii located in a remote part of Molokaʻi. Kalawao county (map), with a population under 100, is a special case with no elected officials. Maui county government supports Kalawao county as well as administer the rest of the island. Kalawao may be the least populous county in the United States (source). For obvious reasons their charter provisions isn't going to be comparable to the other counties, and actually I was unable to even find the document or even a web site for the county online.