NOW YOU SEE IT...

NOW YOU SEE IT...: It’s always worth a chuckle whenever malihini- even ones who’s been around for a few years- try to navigate the Minotaur’s labyrinth.

So it was this morning as attorney-blogger Charley Foster wrote

Copies of ordinances are available at the County Clerk's Office for purchase by the public. For further information, please call"

That's what one finds under the "County Ordinances" tab on the County web site. 'If you want to know what the law says, you can purchase it from us.' Does that strike anyone else as potentially unconstitutional? I think I feel another non-billable research project coming on.

Charley doesn’t say what he thinks is worse, the fact that the “county code”- the place where ordinances are compiled- isn’t available on-line like it is in just about every other local jurisdiction in the country and all in the states - or the fact that you have to pay for it and then get it piecemeal, ordinance by ordinance... and travel downtown to get it to boot.

But while that’s an old story you’d expect that once we’re assured that information and documents will be posted on-line- especially after a brouhaha- it would be there.

But a trip to the “Council Documents” page at the county’s web site shows the last time the minutes and the recap memos were posted was early January.

As many will remember, after Councilmembers Tim Bynum and Lani Kawahara tried to bring some sanity to the way county government operates and especially the way they make (or more accurately don’t make) documents available, they were assured by the chair and administration that from then on the council’s minutes and "recap memos"- a document which lists the actions taken at each council meeting that’s very existence was thentofore a secret- would be posted on the council’s web site.