A MAN, A PLAN, A DEBACLE- RAPOZO

A MAN, A PLAN, A DEBACLE- RAPOZO: After decades of problems keeping the rain off the Kilauea Gym floor, the Director of the Kaua`i Parks and Recreation (P&R) Department, Lenny Rapozo, has finally come up with what many in the administration are calling a "brilliant" multi-pronged approach to fixing the structure which includes covering the current leaky roof with pili grass and moving the whole building 90 degrees to aviod the wet, easterly winds.

"A pili grass roof was good enough for the ancient Hawaiians so it should be good enough for us" said Rapozo, "especially if it's not raining."

The roof has never in human memory actually kept water out- which is thought by many in the Buildings Division of the Department of Public Works to be the main function of a roof- despite 137 attempts to replace it based on 373 different consultants' plans.

Rapozo also had a plan for the leaky door that faces into the rainy trade winds.

"We have hundreds of balloons and dozens of tanks of helium left over from the mayor's last campaign so we can just fill them up and float the building. And the beauty of it is that we can use all those political appointees and mayoral-approved civil servants who owe their jobs to him to turn the whole building, moving the door to a more desirable orientation... whichever way, after trial and error, that turns out to be."

According to Rapozo his own recent research has apparently shown that the current structure sits on the footprint and is a renovated version of the ancient "Kilauea Himanekium" where "pre-western-contact kanaka would go for drink beer." But, Rapozo said he discovered that during a 19th century renovation the building was inadvertently spun around sideways by witches, who were brought over for just such jobs by missionaries who were seeking to allow the structure to receive bigger shipments of bibles they could exchange for surrounding farms and home-sites.

"We're excited by the discovery" said Rapozo whose engineering expertise goes back to his days at Kapa`a High School where he lettered in "Pick-up Sticks" and "Tiddlywinks." He also studied basket-weaving, a skill he said may prove useful in the pili roofing project.

"I think I've got something here that nobody else could- or would- have come up with," Rapozo boasted with a straight face.

There are also plans to replace the wooden basketball floor with concrete and then put down lauhala mats in order to absorb any rainwater in case the pili grass leaks. "But the mats are only for when it rains because no one plays basketball in the rain anyway," said Rapozo. "Besides, the plan is all up here," Rapozo said pointing to his head "so we can save money on design consultants if the pili grass has to be replaced. Since everyone is used to paying over and over for consultants every year or so, we have an unending source of funding for the project, 'cause grass stay cheap, eh?"

Rapozo did not at first indicate where the cheap pili grass would come from since it is an all but extinct species but when asked of his plans for future recreational projects Rapozo said he's thinking of a Youth Program where students grow can pili grass on county land, then sell the product to the county for other roofing projects.

His boss, Mayor Bernard Carvalho applauded Rapozo's ingenuity. "That's why I hired him- since he has no expertise in any one particular area, he tends to think, not just outside the box but outside the entire realm of human endeavor and experience."

Rapozo also talked about- but didn't explain- either using the remaining balloons and helium to actually move Moran Pond at Lydgate or filling the balloons with the mud that now befouls the once popular swimming pools after a previous Rapozian plan to dredge the pools want awry... for some unfathomable reason.

"Then maybe the mud balloons will just float away," he said wistfully

Council Chair Jay Furfaro was cautiously enthusiastic over the plan saying "it wouldn't be the absolute stupidest thing we've ever approved- but it'd be close."

Councilperson JoAnn Yukimura was apparently skeptical but said she would have to see the plans in writing before she could really comment and recommend a thorough study of the project.

But Councilmember Mel Rapozo was both for it and against it, making sure that he didn't state a position until he figured out what the political implications were.

Blogger Andy Parx but did manage to wake up long enough to backhandedly mumble an ambiguous complement saying "it sound just like something Lenny would come up with since no one in the county is smarter or more suited to his job than he is."

PLENTY OF NOTHIN'

PLENTY OF NOTHIN': It's gonna be the best of elections. It's gonna be the worst of elections.

Yes it's a dickens o' pickin's and a tale all too sh*tty when it comes to the most dismal number of candidates for the seven seats on the the Kaua`i County Council in memory. Yet on the plus side the enumeration of only nine names includes Gary Hooser, a politician who makes us reluctant to use the term to describe Gary since it's usually reserved for corrupt cronies and despicable despots.

Hooser, who started his public service career on the council from 1998-2002 before becoming the Kauai's State Senator from 2002-2010, is returning to his roots. His presence will no doubt bring the level of council discourse and accomplishment, if not to the highest rung of the ladder of good governance, a least out of the existing swirling sewer of percolating pestilence.

The problem is that the rest of the list is made up of the same old seven incumbent-hacks we've grown to, in some cases loath, in others tolerate, plus local and UH baseball hero, Ross Kagawa, who has two chances- the proverbial slim and none, with slim nursing a terminal illness.

So we're down to a proverbial game of musical chairs and the only reason to vote in the election- the one in November that is because all will get past the August 11 "primary"- is to see who gets dumped when Hooser is inevitably added.

While we are tempted to just "plunk" for Gary (a term for not using all seven votes and simply "plunking" down only the names of those who one truly likes) and may do so in November, for now we will list the rest of those running based on exactly how much of a worthless piece of crap each one is and why.

So for all you dumpers out there (and if you're not one, please register now) here's our list of dumpees in order of dump-worthiness.

1) Dickie Chang. This is probably the hardest choice- whether to make our good friend Dickie our least favorite or save that honor for Mel Rapozo. It's like trying to decide whether you like the guy who is repeatedly plunging a knife in your back or prefer the guy who is standing there watching, trying to decide when and whether to either encourage the stabber or condemn him... although it would certainly never occur to him too stop him.

Dickie is the proverbial man who, like former State Rep Ezra Kanoho for whom the phrase was created, "never met a hotel he didn't like." Dickie's penchant for lap-dog behavior- usually in the service of Chair Jay Furfaro- is infamous and when he does take a stand it is clearly taken with clay feet planted firmly on both sides of the fence. The one thing we can say about Dickie is that this is exactly what we expected from him. That of course makes-

2) Mel Rapozo the next one to not vote for. Mel manages to play politics with the simplest of no-brainers, using his unique blend of bamboozical logic and contortionistic, convoluted unreasoning as his moral compass- a compass that continually points in one direction... toward Mel. Perhaps the most emblematic representation of this bit of Kabuki is his recent attempt to change the charter because he didn't like an opinion from County Attorney Al Castillo’s office regarding the legal use of the word "shall." Rapozo didn't like what Castillo told him the law said and what the courts have consistently ruled on the matter, so he first tried to get his cohorts to hire Mel's own personal choice of outside lawyer to tell him what he wanted the law to say. When that failed he unsuccessfully tried to garner enough votes to put the matter before the electorate even though if it did pass it would be moot from the day it was enacted because it doesn't matter what our charter says when the state courts have already ruled on the matter.

Rapozo's "are-you-going-to-believe-me-or-your-lyin'-eyes" defense of Prosecuting Attorney Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho as she "took the fifth" and demanded a private attorney to represent her rather than openly discuss her budget with the council- has known no bounds, making for some fascinatingly fractured farces... quintessential Rapozo.

That brings us to the aforementioned "larger than life" (both girth-wise and in his own mind-wise) current Chair-

3) Jay Furfaro. Furfaro managed to eek out a 4-3 vote for chair last election, something that he may not be able to do with Hooser on the council. More on that later.

Furfaro is a throwback to the old style Hawai`i "orator" whose chest-thumping, credit-taking, egotistical style of expression is endlessly enigmatic to watch especially as lunch and sometimes dinner breaks are approaching. As the clock ticks toward noon it invariably throws him into incoherent ramblings and rushed decision making, commensurate with the decibel level of his stomach growling. To be fair, he is diabetic but his munching-vs-governing meter is out of whack even for someone who has "the sugar." Speaking of sweetness, the next on our bottoms-up itemizing is someone who turned out to be NutraSweet. That would be-

4) Kipukai Kuali`i. Kipukai was appointed after current State Representative and then Councilmember Derek Kawakami was appointed to fill Mina Morita's spot when she was appointed to be the head the Public Utilities Commission. People expected a lot from his "win" of 2010's post-election version of musical chairs and got virtually nothing. He has turned out to be simply a little less of a political animal than Rapozo and seems quite content to learn more at Mel's feet. Although he has gone after some of the more absurd council appropriations- when they suit his political bent- the last straw was his unshakable support for Iseri after she fired the Victim/Witness Counselors in her office. That eliminated the long-time county positions and instead she contracted out the duties to (drum roll please) Kualii's employer, the YWCA, ensuring his support before the council. He not only sold his political soul but he then refused to recuse himself from participating in the council's deliberations regarding Iseri. And speaking of disappointments there's-

5) Nadine Nakamura, although in her case disappointment may be a bit strong because we never expected any more than we got. The would be a politically malleable councilmember who doesn't seem to have a position on anything other than compromise, even when one of the options is at best unpalatable, at worst patently absurd. Her prime directive for the past two years has apparently been to take good legislation and introduce difficult-to-reject amendments that make the original unacceptable, even in cases when the votes are there for passage. Even if she did govern from a progressive viewpoint no one would know it because her experience as a facilitator and mediator have made her into a gutless wonder who makes one question whether there is any substance there at all. And speaking of substance there's-

6) Tim Bynum. Some would have him positioned at the bottom of this list for his effort to allow transient vacation rentals (TVRs) on Ag land, not to mention his previous work to allow them to be grandfathered on all otherwise zoned land. We can hardly ignore that and other positions he's taken. On the other hand he was, with then Councilmember Lani Kawahara, primarily responsible for the plastic bag ban and also successfully took on then Council Chair Kaipo Asing over open governance issues. What we can say is that at least they have apparently been taken because he believes in whatever he has supported. But if for no other reason than his persecution-prosecution by political enemy Iseri in the Ricecooker-gate scandal- an abuse of power on her part that we hope will end in November with the election of Justin Kollar (more on that race in a future post)- we have positioned him among the keepers this time. He could have folded but his persistence has unveiled alleged criminal activity on Iseri's part. All that pretty much also goes for-

7) JoAnn Yukimura. It's not that our disappointment with JoAnn has diminished to a level where we enthusiastically rate her the numero uno councilmember- although she has done some really good stuff recently.* But she also went along with Bynum on the Ag TVR issue and was the prime mover behind the grandfathering efforts, preferring to knuckle under to big money developers rather than go to court to enforce the laws apparently forbidding them.

We've questioned the consistency of those we have spoken to who were dead set against supporting Bynum due to the TVR debacle but were equally as supportive of Yukimura. We've simply asked them how they can condemn Bynum on that issue without doing the same for JoAnn.

All we can say is that is, on balance- and especially given the reality of the fact that six of the seven are going to be on the council whether we like it or not- we are forced to rate Bynum and Yukimura as "plunkworthy," to coin a term.

That leaves only one issue to be decided in November when it comes to the council race- the question of council leadership, which hangs in the balance.

After the 2010 election Yukimura challenged Furfaro for chair. Furfaro had Chang's, Rapozo's and, at the time, Kawakami's votes leaving Yukimura with Bynum's and Nakamura's.

In order to wrest control of the chair- assuming either Yukimura or possibly Hooser will challenge Furfaro and that Nakamura will maintain her vote for Yukimura- the addition of Hooser makes a change in the chair a distinct possibility. That also assumes that the odd-man-out is either Chang, Rapozo or Kuali`i. We can't be sure of Kualii's vote but suspect he is politically indebted to Furfaro after Furfaro gave procedural support to Kuali`i and Rapozo during some of the budget hearings regarding Iseri.

If the election were held tomorrow in addition to being shocked, surprised and totally taken aback, we would be forced to plunk for Hooser, Yukimura, Bynum and Nakamura since leadership is the only issue to be decided. But equally as important is NOT to vote for Chang, Rapozo, Furfaro or Kuali`i.

The August primary will tell us something about the strength of each candidate- it has always been like a super-accurate poll since 14 candidates usually get though to the November vote. In this case although all - and only- nine will make it through, we'll certainly know more about the strength of each by August 12.

One thing is all but certain- this mess of a council will make it through this year's election with six or seven intact. And while it gives us plenty to froth and foam about, any plans we've had to be a kinder and gentler rabid reporter may well end up, shall we say, going to the dogs.

*Correction: It was Tim Bynum who, along with Lani Kawahara, was primarily responsible for the single use plastic bag "ban," not, as we originally said JoAnn Yukimura who was not on the council at the time the bill passed. The original on line version has been corrected. We regret the error

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We are heartsick over the loss of Rose Schlegel, the daughter of our good friends Sherry and Jim (Pole) Pollock, who lost her life in an apparent freak accident in Kalalau Valley Wednesday. It is horrendous to lose any loved one but to lose a child, even one aged 30, is unimaginably tragic and their pain and sorrow must be unbearable. Please keep them in your thoughts and, if appropriate, prayers. It makes one wonder how such bad things can happen to such good people while selfish and mean people go unscathed. Don't forget to hug your loved ones, especially your keiki, today and every day. Life is fragile, seemingly especially for the righteous. We love you Sherry and Pole and will hold Rose in our thoughts forever.

OFF THE DEEP END

OFF THE DEEP END: Nobody questions whether rats will desert a sinking ship. But how long they will wait before doing so probably depends on the circumstances. But when one starts, the rest usually follow

Obviously they can't take too long, which is why at least two councilmembers decided they'd waited long enough to abandon the SS P.O.H.A.K.U and they'd be damned if they were going down with Captain Spittle of Malaprop.

Councilmember Nadine Nakamura was backpedaling like Michael Jackson on steroids. She apparently didn’t like her political prospects should she let stand as her final word on the subject her recent vote to allow Kaua`i Prosecuting Attorney Shaylene Iseri Carvalho to run out the clock. And Chair Jay Furfaro also smelled trouble should he do the same.

Even Kipukai Kuali`i and Dickie Chang silently went along with the program, leaving only Iseri's first Mate Mel Rapozo standing on the deck.

For those who thought last week's vote to pass the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney's (OPA) budget without any resolution to Iseri's scandalous refusal to answer until she got a county-paid special counsel to represent her was going to be the last word on the subject, guess again.

Because Wednesday (go to 9:24:20), after Yukimura introduced a measure to ask the Board of Ethics (BOE) to look into the matter and read a statement written by Bynum (see below) detailing Iseri's misdeeds (Bynum was absent due to the imminent birth of his first grandchild), it became apparent that continuing to allow Iseri to get away with alleged crimes and misdemeanors was a bad idea if they expected to get reelected.

Before Bynum's statement was read, Iseri's First Mate, Councilmember Mel Rapozo, had attempted to defuse potential defections by launching into a "my-my, it's enough to give a lady the vapors" spiel, tying to claim that he'd never seen anything like this level of scrutiny in his political career- seemingly forgetting about his own politically motivated crusade to oust former Chief of Police KC Lum.

He then announced that, anyway, the administration had "launched an inquiry" into the whole matter.

But when Yukimura read Bynum's statement and "corrected" Rapozo by saying the administration was looking into the procurement improprieties but not the general ethics charges, it became apparent that no one was going to stay aboard with Mel and Shay.

Bynum's statement read:

On April 11, 2012 the Council met in executive session on matters that included the POHAKU program. An Executive Session was posted for a briefing related to POHAKU on April 18, 2012. On April 18th Deputy County Attorney Mona Clark responded to members questions in open session. Ms. Clark indicated that the information was time sensitive stating “I think it is important that the Council has as much information as possible, as soon as possible.” Council member Yukimura asked if there were possible liabilities for the Council that could increase if additional time went by. The answer was yes. In spite of this, a majority of the Council voted to delay the discussion for two weeks. On May 2, 2012 the briefing was finally held. However no action was taken.

I have concerns (Bynum continued) among them are:

- The use of county address as the address for the registered agent of a private business.
- The fact that the Pohakuprogram.com website directs payment to a private business and the Council has not been provided with a copy of any contract with that business.
- The Prosecutor has refused to answer questions from the Council related to the Pohaku program until the County provides her special Counsel for legal representation.

Subsequently we heard that the POHAKU program had stopped operating, however Ms. Iseri-Carvalho said last Tuesday May 15, on the Council floor “our office can internally run the P.O.H.A.K.U program, which we will continue to do almost immediately.” As of yet no one is looking into the possible Charter violations. After what, in my opinion, is too much delay the posting for this body to take appropriate action is finally here before us today.

County officials take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, The Constitution of the State of Hawai‘i and the Kaua‘i County Charter. I have been told by all the County Attorneys that have held the office since I became a Council member that when a question regarding a potential violation of the Charter is raised the Council has a duty to see that an appropriate inquiry is held. The Board of Ethics is an appropriate body for such an inquiry. So I will obviously support this motion.

But rather than outright supporting the call for an ethics referral, Furfaro announced that, at the request of County Attorney Al Castillo, he would support a deferral to either June 6 or 13 until the administration’s "inquiry" was finished.

But it was Nakamura who really started the stampede to the exits when she said she would essentially support the ethics referral saying she would "support the bullet points" contained in Bynum's statement. That caused the other two rats present to get caught up in the stampede and Kuali`i and Chang went along with the deferral since there were not only apparently not enough votes to defeat it but enough to approve, if not the referral to the BOE, then at least the deferral until June.

We'll see what the "inquiry" comes up with but for now there appears to be a growing awareness among councilmembers that, whether the local newspaper is covering the scandal or not, people have been following the story on TV and on-line. And if councilmembers want to maintain a spot on their own SS Council it may be time to abandon Iseri's leaky little POHAKU putt-putt.

BLOWING CHUNKS

BLOWING CHUNKS: It seems appropriate that sewage is once again spilling into the ocean at Nawiliwili. After all, all that crap being generated up the hill in Lihu`e this week had to go somewhere.

People all over town were asking "do you smell that?" on Tuesday and it didn't take an olfactorally-advanced detective to discover the source as being the Kaua`i County Council Chambers.

That was when our seven stilted servants once again turned to the budget for what, from all indications, appears to be the biggest criminal enterprise on Kaua`i these days- the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney (OPA). Those who have been under a pohaku might want to read up on OPA Godmother Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho and her P.O.H.A.K.U. program.


And another great must-read, blow-by-blow account of Tuesday's session is available via Joan Conrow for anyone who doesn't have the time to watch the debacle... although the latter is well worth the investment of an hour (start about an hour in) if just for the comedic value.

No one expected much in the way of discussion regarding evil mastermind Iseri's all-purpose now-you-see-it-now-you-don't combination misdemeanor diversion program/reelection campaign tool. She's been busy lawyering up and taking the fifth so to no one's surprise, with the aid of her Council(hench)man Mel Rapozo and his refuse-to-recuse sidekick Kipukai Kuali`i, her council nemesis Tim Bynum and his second JoAnn Yukimura once again failed to get any "answers" to the same kinds of questions all the other department heads had to answer in order to receive their yearly budget appropriation.

Lesser Iseri sycophants Council Chair Jay Furfaro, and Councilmembers Dickie Chang and Nadine Nakamura managed to help shut things down out and keep the relevant allegations of crimes and misdemeanors from the public's ears and eyes, running out the clock without any repercussion to the budget... and of course the local newspaper has been too busy promoting flower shows, defunct food banks and poisonous GMO corn to notice the P.O.H.A.K.U. mess.

But while the council busied itself exploring new corners and crevices on the other side of the looking glass, it might well have been County Attorney Al Castillo who stole the show.

This week's prize for "Most Convoluted Abuse of the Law" goes once again to the program "Legal Opinions From Al's Ass," the show that asks the statutory question "did he really just say that?"

This time Castillo actually told Yukimura that the council can't appropriate "line items" in the budget- specific amounts designated for specific uses like a salary for a certain position or a piece of equipment or furniture.

Despite the fact that that's what a line-item budget does by definition, Castillo told the assembled that to restrict department heads as to what the money can be used for would be violate "the separation of powers" and be "interfering with the administration."

After a few "let me get this straight" questions, Yukimura simply gave up, flabbergasted by the notion that a department head like Iseri can now take all money appropriated for her department and spend it on anything her black little heart desires.

Finally things got as curiouser as they could get when Nakamura revealed that, according to the finance director, the P.O.H.A.K.U. was either "pau" or "suspended". But attempted verification of that information apparently depended on how many times one asked the question, so the council spent the next half hour asking over and over until Iseri herself got up and told them it wasn't really pau or suspended but rather being run internally in her office.

By that point everyone was thoroughly confused and befuddled, but it didn't really matter because that was when Furfaro ruled the clock had officially run out, apparently because the only part of the day that matters to Furfaro was beckoning: lunch.

The next move in this monkey chess game will be played at this coming Wednesday's council meeting when, the council will consider the following agenda item:

C 2012-170 Communication (05/17/2012) from Councilmember Yukimura, requesting Council approval of her request that the Board of Ethics conduct an investigation of whether violations of the Code of Ethics have occurred in connection with the creation and operation of the POHAKU Program and related matters.

In addition, the matter is listed for an executive session.

And speaking of wasting time, get ready to once again to vote on a charter amendment that would give these clods four-year terms.

The claim by councilmembers is that "we can't get anything done in two years." But the message from the voters has been "we're not sure we want you to 'get anything done.' If there was a way to give you two month terms, we'd probably go for that."

It's not like Kaua`i voters haven’t said "no freakin' way" way too many times to keep track of over the past few decades. Yet the council is once again apparently going to ask the electorate to approve doubling the time between elections. The last time we said "no" was in 2006 when we also passed "term limits" of eight years.

If you get a chance watch the "debate," do so with an eye toward the unmitigated arrogance and sense of entitlement.

The assumption that these office are theirs once they are elected is palpable. Talk of "slots opening up" when the "eight-years are up" is bandied about with no sense of the fact that they have to run for re-election every two years.

The voters will no doubt reject four-year terms once again and the council will no doubt try again in a few years. If anything, we'd probably pass a charter amendment to prohibit the council from asking us more than once every 20 years.

But if you're looking for the obvious source of the sewage spill it might be the latest "big flush" of $120,000 into the Kaua`i Marathon. Every year it's been the same thing- for no apparent reason the taxpayers have been forced to shovel wads of cash into the event with promises that "this will be the last year." Only it hasn't been and apparently never will be since this year's appropriation seems to be circling the drain with little opposition from council members.

That money could go a long way if it were to be spread wisely among the charitable non-profits that serve the island's neediest. But instead it's shunted directly into the coffers of hotel owners, airlines and other off-island entities, soon to be converted into campaign contributions. Supposedly a few dollars will trickle-down to local businesses and service industry employees, but no one is really quite sure how that works, and council members didn't seem interested in asking any questions so they weren't told too many lies.

It is an election year after all. It can only get worse.

SPIT IT UP

SPIT IT UP: No, Shaylene didn't grab us off the street and throw us in her own personal dungeon. Nor did Beth Tokioka get out the pins and the voodoo doll.

And after an MRI "gut check" we've confirmed that our recent nausea is not, as we suspected, due to the prospect of four years of having to listen to the voice of former Governor Ben Cayetano should he become the mayor of Honolulu.

We regret the lack of a high fiber diet for the past 20 years (damn, dem Safeway baguettes is tasty), but the diverticular gods apparently have other people to sicken today so maybe between bathroom runs we can play a little catch-up today.

Of course the news that Judge Kathleen Watanabe threw out Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho's politically motivated charges against her blood-feud enemy Councilmember Tim Bynum in the "Rice-Cooker-Gate" case- and made sure she couldn't file them again- wasn't much of a surprise. The real laughter was that the "special prosecutor" assigned to the case was none other than former one-term Kaua`i Councilmember and current Deputy Prosecutor on Maui, Richard "Sweating Bullets" Minatoya.

Minatoya really had little choice but to go along with Watanabe's charade of taking Iseri's department off the case and then getting someone else to "investigate" Iseri's envisioned manifestations of the criminal mind of Tim Bynum.

Apparently Watanabe couldn't bring herself to just dismiss the charges all by herself, or better still jail Iseri for fraud and other "alleged" misconduct. The Judgy-Wudgy wouldn't want to deprive Iseri of due process just because Iseri has so little regard for due process herself.

(Parenthetically we just have to ask why it is that people who hate lawyers have such reverence for judges. Where do they think judges come from- the Judge Fairy?)

Once Minatoya talked to Iseri's hench-persons in the planning department and examined some of the evidence of Shay's and her "Igor," First Deputy Prosecutor Jake Delaplane's crimes and misdemeanors, he fulfilled his role of being "shocked, shocked" to find gambling at Rick's.

As an aside we can't let the fact that Minatoya's name is in the news go by without telling the tale of how he got that middle name.

It was we believe 1998 (we don't need no stinkin' fact checks) when then one-term Councilmember Mary Thronas decided to run for mayor (if we remember the correct chronology), trying to unseat then-Mayor Maryanne Kusaka.

Thronas failed in her mayoral bid after referring to Kusaka's office as "a Filipino taxi cab" and talking about "jewing-down" somebody-or-other... all within earshot of a reporter who apparently didn't know that those kinds of things aren't supposed to be reported on Kaua`i.

We were helping produce a "Video Voters' Guide" and had a couple of freebie rooms at the old Kaua`i Resort to do it. We had prepared questions for council and mayoral candidates and the questions were to be provided to each candidate exactly one hour before their individually scheduled taping times.

When Thronas came in we handed her the questions. She looked the piece of paper and then looked back at us and then looked back to the paper as if to ask "what the heck am I supposed to do with this?"

She never did glance at the content but rather spent the next hour gossiping with her hair and makeup people as they put her face in order. We actually had to read her the questions to her before she answered them... without of course really answering them, in quite the "accomplished politician" style .

Next up was the head-shaven Minatoya who had squeaked onto the council two years previously and had not exactly spent the biennium endearing himself to the electorate, serving as just another "bum" to be thrown out... just like the bum he had replaced.

Minatoya came in ten minutes before his appointed time to receive the questions and when we told him that, to be fair, we had to wait until exactly one hour before his taping time to give him the questions, he proceeded to stare at his watch for the next 10 minutes like he was waiting for the priest to arrive for last rites.

When we finally gave him the paper he began to look it over like it was his death warrant. What had previously been a trickle of perspiration now began flowing from his chrome-dome by the barrel-full. We didn't take a lot of notice and continued to yack about nothing in particular until Minatoya jumped up and, loud enough for them to hear him at the nearby Lydgate Park Pavilion, screamed "SHUT UP- I'VE ONLY GOT AN HOUR."

Needless to say by "showtime" Minatoya looked like he'd stepped out of a dunking booth. He stumbled his way through his answers, lost the election (some say because of the performance which played for months on public access TV) and was never heard from again on Kaua`i- until now.

Anyway, now we wait for the other shoe to drop as Bynum plots his revenge against Iseri, who has been busy lawyering-up over budget-related as well as other questions the council has over her P.O.H.A.K.U. program and other assorted sordid activities.

The council met in secret executive session on Wednesday regarding P.O.H.A.K.U. and next Wednesday will discuss it in public although the effect on Iseri's budget- which goes to public hearing next Wednesday at 5 p.m.- may be negligible in an election year since "dollar-funding" the entire Office of the Prosecutor (OPA) isn't really an option.

By the way, we just can't let this go without noting how hilarious it is that other island media have- due to a well established hatred of Bynum over the transient vacation rental issue- credited Councilmember JoAnn Yukimura with leading the investigative battle to reveal Iseri's "alleged" crimes.

The fact is that Yukimura has actually been serving as a mouthpiece for Bynum's research into Iseri's activities, but because Bynum wouldn't exactly be the best front-man for any public interrogation, Yukimura, to her credit, as taken up the reigns of the fight to publicize Iseri's shenanigans.

But the real news this week is the sudden departure of the local newspaper's "new" editor Renee Haines. We hear she was fired, not because she was censoring huge swaths of copy filed by her less-than-competent staff regarding Shaylene-related scandals and instead running fluff pieces Iseri gave her.

The publisher could care less about that and might have even been ordering it. They don't really care about much as long as the Happy Camper's column isn't printed blurry.

But apparently Haines had so little news savvy after coming over from the advertising side of the newspaper business that, as a fake newsperson, she personally wrote and published a fake story from fake marine biologist named Terry Lilley- who works for fake-everything Hanalei boatyard owner Mike Sheehan- and Lilley's fake "toxic levels of heavy metals in Hanalei Bay" report- all without checking with anyone as to what the truth is.

But if the local paper is a joke, the real joke is of course the Honolulu Star-Advertiser which has yet to say a word about the whole Iseri-Bynum brouhaha. That may be changing after Bynum's attorney Dan Hempey sent out a press release regarding Watanabe's ruling yesterday. But the joke may be about to become a shaggy dog story because the reporter assigned to the neighbor islands, Rosemary "No Dateline" Bernardo, has apparently yet to set foot on a neighbor island for a story, preferring to file her stories from the S-A's city desk.

We just love this place. Even bending over the toilet, it's endlessly entertaining.

We'll be posting whenever we can.

Eat your fiber kiddies.

P.O.H.A.K.U.: ROCKIN' IN THE SHAY WORLD; A PNN INVESTIGATIVE REPORT

P.O.H.A.K.U.: ROCKIN' IN THE SHAY WORLD;
WHAT ARE THE QUESTIONS THE COUNCIL WANTS ANSWERED ON PROSECUTOR'S SIGNATURE DIVERSION PROGRAM?
A PNN INVESTIGATIVE REPORT

(PNN) -- Prosecuting Attorney Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho's much ballyhooed P.O.H.A.K.U. program to "divert" minor offenders from jail has blown-up recently as two councilmembers have tried to ask questions about the program while the rest have blocked those queries, even refusing to hold closed door discussions of the program.

A PNN investigation has uncovered what some of those questions may be and found both process and monetary improprieties associated with the program as well as false claims on the part of Iseri and conflicts of interest within the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney (OPA).

For those who have not followed the council machinations lately, for weeks now Iseri, her First Deputy Jake Delaplane and her chief ally on the council Mel Rapozo have thwarted Councilmembers JoAnn Yukimura and Tim Bynum from even discussing the P.O.H.A.K.U. program, with the latest dust-up occurring at Friday's budget session for the OPA.

The council has twice defeated requests for an executive session with County Attorney Al Castillo, and when Council Chair Jay Furfaro was at a doctor's appointment Friday morning, Rapozo acted as chair and banned all discussion of P.O.H.A.K.U.

That enraged Bynum and Yukimura with Yukimura forced to withhold a power point presentation she had prepared to expose some of the alleged wrongdoing in the P.O.H.A.K.U. program.

But Rapozo banned discussion despite its direct relevance to the the agenda item: the OPA's budget, because, he claimed, County Attorney Al Castillo had banned the discussion- something Castillo later denied.

For those who want a blow-by-blow of the multi-level, multi-player chess game of the past month or so, including Friday's budget session, we recommend reading Joan Conrow's Kaua`i Eclectic coverage here, here and here

The overriding question no one has answered is why? What is Iseri so apparently trying to hide? No one can honestly watch the meetings without asking themselves that question. Why are she and Delaplane "running out the clock" with repetitive power point presentations and long winded answers to questions no one asked every time they are subjected to council questioning?

So what are Yukimura and Bynum trying to question her about?

The key to answering that is apparently a company that, despite Iseri's claim that the program is fully of her design and implementation, is apparently the entity that is responsible for the nuts and bolts of the P.O.H.A.K.U. program... a company called Strategic Justice Partners (SJP) LLC of Nevada.

Politically, P.O.H.A.K.U., which has been implemented for a few years now, has been a key to Iseri's campaign for re-election and she has promoted it recently in two articles in the local newspaper touting community meetings and the program's alleged successes. Iseri's official P.O.H.A.K.U. website calls it "a new innovative diversion program that was designed by the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney (OPA) as an alternative to the traditional court process."

But although SJP has never publicly been mentioned by Iseri or her department's personnel, a look at the bottom of the P.O.H.A.K.U. web site says "Content copyright 2011-2012. Strategic Justice Partners. All rights reserved."

And a visit to the SJP web site reveals where the program really came from. The very first thing you see there on the right side is the statement that:

Strategic Justice Partners is a leader in Alternative Sentencing, Diversion and Early Release Programs.

"Our Diversion programs have a 94% completion rate with over 96% of participants rating their experience as "good" or "outstanding".

And under the "What We Do" button it describes a service that sound exactly like the P.O.H.A.K.U. program, saying they provide:

Diversion Programs
Diversion Programs result in lower recidivism than “Stand in line-Pay a fine” justice while dramatically reducing the burden and costs on Prosecutors and Courts. http://www.strategicjusticepartners.com/What_We_Do.html

And the main program exemplary of their work? At the top of the left had side of the home page of the site is a color photo of a smiling, lei-bedecked Iseri alongside a photo of a Kaua`i-style poi pounder (the symbol of P.O.H.A.K.U.) under the title "Kaua'i County Hawai`i; P.O.H.A.K.U. Program." and a blurb that says "We are pleased to introduce P.O.H.A.K.U., an innovative alternative to the traditional court Process."

It doesn't really say who "we" is but the context demands one interpret it as being SJP especially because it's their web site.

Iseri has recently been holding a series of meetings- meetings dutifully reported upon by the local newspaper- apparently as a part of, or at least in conjunction with, her campaign for re-election in the fall. One example of how she has used P.O.H.A.K.U. for political haymaking at every turn is the wording of a communication to the county council for a special council meeting on April 11.

At the time Iseri was asking the "Council approval to apply for and receive Technical Assistance from the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Vera Institute of Justice's national Cost-Benefit Knowledge Bank for Criminal Justice," although it has since been withdrawn at Iseri's request, apparently because that would have opened the door to questioning about P.O.H.A.K.U.

What would make us say that might be the reason? Well, Iseri had already applied for the "technical assistance" before the item was to have been approved by the council. Not only that but she withdrew the request after all the other delay requests on her part had failed... and she did so in a late night email to the chair, sent the night before the meeting where P.O.H.A.K.U. was to have been discussed.

But it's the rest of the communication that had many laughing at the unique wording that was anything but the usual kind of straightforward "communications for approval." It went on to say that the assistance "will allow the OPA to find innovative programs and develop procedures to ensure that the community is served in the most cost efficient manner and in the best way possible."

Some may say "so what?- it's politics... nothing wrong with that... they all do it." But we bring this up not just to point to the use of the program as a political tool for Iseri but to point out what exactly amounts to wrongdoing here.

It's not clear what precisely SJP's full role is. But what is true is that the association between the OPA and SJP has never come before the council nor has there even been any type of official "procurement process" for SJP's services, as provided by law.

Any "grant" to any department or for that matter any donation of anything, including information or assistance must, by law, come before the county council for approval. It's usually in an official communication for approval to "apply for, accept and indemnify" as the agenda item would normally read. But the words "Strategic Justice Partners" have never been mentioned in even verbal form to the council much less written.

That would be for a grant or donation type of thing. What if the OPA is involved financially with SJP? The fact is that there has never been any official procurement of services from SJP. Nor of course has there ever been a type of contract or "memorandum of agreement" (MOA) which would also have to have been approved by the council.

Finally there have never been any HRS Chapter 91 Administrative Rules promulgated, which according to state law are required to establish procedures for how, say, the OPA would engage with SJP in the P.O.H.A.K.U. program.

But all that is just procedural. Here's what happens if you, as they say, "follow the money."

Because SJP is a Nevada corporation if it wants to do business in Hawai`i it must file with the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (DCCA) and have an "agent" in Hawai`i.

The DCCA filing shows SJP to be a for-profit corporation and the agent in Hawai`i is none other than Iseri's second-in-command, Delaplane.

The filing is simply the initial corporate document and apparently no 2012 report has been submitted. There is nothing to indicate whether Delaplane is being paid for being the sole representative of SJP in Hawai`i. But the fact that he is both their agent and part of the team that is contracting with SJP- the OPA- makes for a blatant conflict of interest.

So who gets what money and where does it come from?

The upcoming OPA's budget for 2013 shows a request for around $20,000 for four different diversion programs although there is no breakdown of how much of that would go to P.O.H.A.K.U. That is one reason why Yukimura and Bynum were asking questions- or want to ask them- in the first place; to find out how much is for each program and in fact what the county funding mechanism(s) for P.O.H.A.K.U. actually are/is. It also "opens the door" so to speak, to discuss the program.

But PNN did learn of one funding source that isn't listed anywhere and certainly has not been communicated to the council.

At Iseri's P.O.H.A.K.U. website those in the program can go to the "Register for Class" page. Under "P.O.H.A.K.U. Class Registration" it says:

You may schedule your P.O.H.A.K.U. class date below.
You must pay your program fees prior to registering.
You may REGISTER with a credit or debit card below or visit any Bank of Hawaii Branch with the deposit slip you were given (emphasis added).

And, PNN has learned, that the "deposit slip" is filled out to deposit $200 to an account bearing the name of, not the County of Kaua`i as one would expect for a program designed and run by Iseri but rather, Strategic Justice Partners.

According to testimony by Delaplane on Friday before the council 49 people have completed the program and so what is clear is that at least that many have paid SJP $200 each for a total of almost $10,000.

What is not clear however is whether the money is refunded if the person doesn't complete the diversion program. The question of how many people failed has, of course, not been discussed because nothing about POHAKU has been able to be discussed, even though both Delaplane and Iseri were permitted to tout it Friday during their "power point" presentation to the council on the budget.

Even- or maybe especially- if the OPA never sees or touches a nickel, improprieties abound with this setup. As we said, P.O.H.A.K.U. itself has never even been approved by the council. Plus, there has never been a procurement of services for SJP nor has there been any MOA, both of which would have to come before the council for approval.

Oh- and one more thing.

The only person listed as a "member" of SJP is one Kirk Barrus. That means he is the sole owner of SJP. Yet a search of SJP's web site does not readily yield Barrus' name- or any other associated with the company.

So who is Barrus? What is his background?

According to David Lazarus' "Consumer Confidential" in the February 20, 2008, Los Angeles Times, Kirk Barrus was the Senior Vice President and spokesperson for a company called American Corrective Counseling Services (ACCS).

In an article in which Lazarus discusses Bush-era court rulings providing full immunity to companies doing business with the government he cites the example of "AT&T and Verizon immunity for their roles in any past and future eavesdropping on the American people."

But ACCS was not granted immunity in the case at hand and Lazarus writes that:

when it comes to public-private canoodling, the most egregious case I've seen recently involved a San Clemente company, American Corrective Counseling Services, that worked with public prosecutors to go after people who bounced checks.

He describes the scam this way:

In contacting consumers, ACCS represented itself as actually being the district attorney's office, even though the cases involved may not have been vetted in advance by an actual prosecutor.

In return for its efforts, ACCS typically would be entitled to a $100 fee and as much as 60% of any fines paid...

Lois Artz, a 72-year-old resident of the Northern California city of Petaluma, received what looked like a very serious letter from the Sonoma County district attorney's office in November 2005.

"The Sonoma County District Attorney's Office has received a CRIME REPORT alleging you have violated Penal Code 476(a) of the California State Statute: Issuing a Worthless Check," the letter warned.

"A conviction under this statute is punishable by up to one (1) year in county jail, or in a state prison, and up to $1,000 in fines," it said.

The letter advised Artz, a former Bank of America branch manager, to enroll in a "bad check restitution program" and to pay $196.62 in fines.

"When I saw that letter, I almost fainted," she told me. "I was beside myself."
Her crime, Artz said, was writing a check for a $26.62 carton of smokes and not having sufficient funds in her bank account to cover it. Artz said she'd been distracted caring for her daughter, who has breast cancer, but she knows that's no excuse.

What troubled her was that her case seemingly was elevated with alarming speed to the level of criminal prosecution without anyone trying to work things out with her.

"I was humiliated and terrified," Artz said. "I felt like any time I turned around, there would be somebody there telling me to come with them."

According to court documents, ACCS went after more than 100,000 Californians in 2001, the latest year for which data are available. And most if not all those people believed they'd been contacted by a government agency, not a private company.

In speaking for ACCS, Barrus

denied that the company acts independently when it chases down suspected check scofflaws.

"We operate under the total control of the district attorney," he said. "We're basically a secretarial service, and therefore should carry the district attorney's immunity.

"They're not letters from a private company," Barrus insisted. "They're letters from a district attorney."

There is another article in The Press Democrat describing the situation in more detail

The fact that the council has questions for Iseri about P.O.H.A.K.U. shouldn't surprise anybody.

We'd certainly like to know a few things.

Did SJP receive other funds such as ACCS did in collecting "as much as 60% of any fines paid" in the California case? Did the OPA either receive or expend any funding directly or indirectly to or from SJP? What exactly is Delaplane's role? What does he do as "agent?" Is he a paid agent? If so, how much? If so, what if anything is Iseri's cut? Doesn't Delaplane or Iseri see an inherent conflict in a operation where someone- so far apparently SJP- is receiving at least $10,000? Why is Iseri so transparently covering up her and the OPA's association with SJP? Is it simply to take credit for a program she didn't really design and implement or is there more?.. perhaps a financial association?

We haven't been able to uncover all the facts or follow all the money. But we sure hope that Rapozo- along with Councilmembers Kipukai Kuali`i, Dickie Chang, and Chair Jay Furfaro- stop blocking at least an executive session but preferably have a full public airing of the issues involved.

Oh by the way- Kuali`i refused to recuse himself from discussions of the OPA's budget despite the fact that the Erin Wilson Victim Witness position cut by Iseri- which is the subject of a complaint by Wilson as we discussed in January - was contracted out to the YWCA where Kuali`i works.

The next thing scheduled for the matter is an executive session set to take place April 30.

IF TREES FALL ON KAUA`I WILL DEVELOPERS COMPREHENSIVELY ZONE IT?

IF TREES FALL ON KAUA`I WILL DEVELOPERS COMPREHENSIVELY ZONE IT?: The first step in what will arguably be the most important process taken up by the county council in recent memory was taken today after more than 20 years of discussion.

And most likely no one will notice. Or care.

The long delayed "CZO update" passed "first reading" today and will be going to a public hearing soon. But the measure, designed to clarify and simplify zoning on the island will probably do more to confuse and complicate matters than anything else.

According to the purpose statement of the bill (#2433) this "first phase" of the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance (CZO) update is "focusing on organizational and format changes," and said to be "non-substantive" by council staffer Peter Morimoto.

It's 166 pages long... and that's the short version. The full "Ramseyered" version- with underlines and brackets to denote additions and deletions, respectively- is a thick monster of a document which was waved in the air at today's meeting. But since it replaces the entire CZO it has been introduced in the "short" form.

But just wait. The second "substantive bill" will no doubt be even longer and more complicated because it contains all the changes that the council and planning department have been putting off ever since the original CZO was passed in 1972.

Prior to then Kaua`i was "anything goes" when it came to building anything at all, anywhere one desired. That's why you see structures over 40 years old that make you ask "how did they ever allow that to be built?"--not just for the construction itself but for the location.

The 1972 CZO established standards for the first time on Kaua`i and has been amended in dribs and drabs over the years to form what one council member called a "hodgepodge" of a document that has plagued everyone who's tried to use it for decades.

Many "general" amendments were delayed or just blown off because no one knew where to put them or what precisely needed to change. And the ones that did get passed were just stuck in anywhere.

Since the mid 80's, every time the council came up against a problem with the document they would inevitably throw up their hands and say, "well- that's another one for the 'CZO update'." But of course that update never happened- until now.

Former Mayor from 1988-94 and now Council member JoAnn Yukimura told the council at today's "extended" meeting (after yesterday's power outage caused the meeting to be re-convened this morning) that her administration had worked on getting it done. And Council Chair Jay Furfaro said that when he served as Chair of the Planning Commission in 1997 he was promised by the planning department that it would be ready for commission scrutiny "by the end of the year."

Over the past decade-plus the council has appropriated money at least twice (some say three times but who's counting?) to allow the planning department to hire a consultant as the process became longer and more complicated.

That was during the reign of Planning Director Ian Costa whose use of what we've called "the fog" managed to bamboozle the council with promises of "soon" followed by requests for more money, followed by more promises of "soon" and more requests for more money.

Anyway, according to the purpose section of this first "housekeeping" bill:

The County of Kaua`i adopted the first General Plan in 1971 (updated in 1984 and 2000).

Subsequently, the County of Kaua`i adopted the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance (CZO) in 1972. Since its adoption, the County of Kaua`i has approved several amendments to specific provisions of the CZO. However, the CZO has not been updated in a comprehensive manner since its adoption.

In order to present the CZO update in a more orderly fashion, the CZO Update has been divided into two phases, with the first phase focusing on organizational and format changes. This involves mainly moving or relocating existing provisions to more appropriate locations in the code. The first phase also includes the re-codification of ordinance amendments made to the CZO. The second phase will show the newly reformatted document with recommended substantive changes to the code in a Ramseyered format which will be forthcoming after the first phase has been completed.

Thus, the purpose of this ordinance is to complete the first phase of the CZO update by adopting all organizational, format changes, and to re-codify ordinance amendments made to the CZO to date.

The "second phase" will supposedly contain all the changes that people have sought over the years. But that, in and of itself, is going to be much longer and much, much more complicated.

And of course controversial.

You can count on the fact that developers will want certain measures to be amenable to development while the public interest will be to maintain control over that very development.

The devil will be in the details. With hundreds of pages of old and new provisions all up for grabs you can bet that the monied side will have banks of attorneys scrutinizing each "shall," "will" and "may" for an advantage- that all important "technicality" that will make a judge take notice.

Add to that the recent cap on development that was instituted after a petition-derived charter amendment limited growth to an amount determined in the general plan. And add to that the fact that another general plan update is due to commence any time now with the last one having been completed in 2002 and a charter mandate that they occur once every 10 years.

You can bet that the "development community" will be seeking to water down slow growth and "keep Kaua`i, Kaua`i" forces at bay at every step of the process.

The second phase will not be introduced until this first phase is done according to council staff and the content will come from the planning department where it will go though public hearings and planning commission approval before it eventually reaches the council.

If regular citizens want to participate in that process, the time to organize is not when the bill hits the council floor, but now while there is still time to formulate positions and get ready for those first planning commission hearings.

What the timeline is for all of this is anyone's guess. But those who are concerned about growth on Kaua`i can't start paying attention to this one too soon because there is no doubt the other side is already at work, having waited many years for this "opportunity."

As an aside, the actual text of the bill is available on-line, although apparently council members weren't aware of that today. That's probably because it's not at the council's page at the county web site but as part of the "Granicus" site, which is the company that does the video of the council meetings and where items are both streamed live and archived.

It's also where the "paperwork" accompanying each item on the council's agenda is now being posted.

A couple of weeks ago we wrote about the appearance of this "paperwork" for council agenda items on-line after years of delay- much of the delay, as we said, apparently intentional. At the time we complained that although Granicus was finally posting the material it was not in "text" form but rather as a scanned document.
http://parxnewsdaily.blogspot.com/2012/03/now-you-dont-see-it-now-you-still-dont.html

This week, however, many of the documents- including bills, resolutions and other communications- started to appear in text form, allowing the words to be copied and pasted from the document.

That's where the CZO update bill is posted and since the "new" CZO will replace the old one in its entirety, the new one is simply posted in its entirety.

We point this out because the council seemed blissfully unaware of the posting, even through apparently someone on their staff provided Granicus with the documents in the text format.

During the meeting council members kept asking their staff to "scan" and post a copy, seemingly unaware of the fact that it was available to the public in a text format through Granicus, although not in the Ramseyer format. But if Granicus could post the one they have there now, couldn't they also have put up a text-format copy of the Ramseyered document? (Unless the purpose is to cut down thousands of trees to provide paper to print everything out.)

Did anyone ever check to see if Kaipo Asing or Peter Nakamura had stock in either Georgia Pacific or Weyerhauser?

Well, we wouldn't be happy if we didn't have something to complain about.

POLITICAL THEATER ON RYE... WITH MUSTARD PLEASE

POLITICAL THEATER ON RYE... WITH MUSTARD PLEASE: What with all the fun and games of the Iseri-Bynum circus of the absurd, the status and functionality of the Victim-Witness Program (VWP), the meat of the recent political sandwich, hasn't really received much press.

As we reported two weeks ago (January 12) according to a scathing letter to the Kaua`i County Council by Erin Wilson, a terminated Victim-Witness Counselor at the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney (OPA, the program is now dysfunctional due to the requirement that all communications with outside agencies and the world in general be channeled through Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho, the lack of communications between those performing VWP services and many other issues such as the 17 new faces at the OPA since Iseri came into office.

According to the agenda for last Thursday's council meeting, Council Vice Chair JoAnn Yukimura asked Iseri to come before the council to discuss "the status of the Victim-Witness Program and OPA." And when Councilmember Tim Bynum recused himself due to Iseri's prosecution of him for alleged zoning violations at his home- as we detailed yesterday- Yukimura took over the questioning that, according to Bynum, had been suspended in 2009 when then Chair Kaipo Asing stopped it.

But not before Iseri, trying to direct the show, dragged up her whole department to blow smoke up everyone's butts after demanding that Wilson be questioned, spurring Chair Jay Furfaro to remind her that he was the one running the show.

Instead Yukimura asked for current VWP employee Dianne Gauspohl-White to come up to tesfy. She pretty much backed up most of Wilson's complaints although saying she could only speak from her perspective.

At first Yukimura's questioning elicited mostly red-faced rage, bluster and misdirection on Iseri's part, complaining how she and her staff had to take valuable time to present information they had supposedly already presented.

But after Iseri's right hand man First Deputy Prosecutor Jake DelaPlane- who continually throughout the session pulled her butt out of the sling she had created through her own belligerence- did a PowerPoint presentation with lots of numbers and statistics but almost nothing on the VWP, the questioning of Iseri by Yukimura began, mostly based on Wilson's allegations.

Things were going along swimmingly (not) with Iseri parrying Yukimura's questions with non-responsive "answers" and continual reminders that she had already presented the requested material, when Yukimura finally asked the right questions and hit a jackpot of an answer.

"The Victim Witness Program no longer exists" Iseri told a stunned council.

Seems that Iseri has instituted a program called "vertical prosecution." Formerly deputy prosecutors were assigned to individual courts, not to individual cases. That meant that many times an attorney got the case for the first time when he showed up to court after a case had, for example, been moved from district to circuit court or from the court of one judge to another.

"Vertical prosecution" (VP) is a system where each case is assigned to one attorney who takes it from beginning to end, usually sorted by subject matter- drugs, violent crime, domestic, white collar crime etc.- supposedly creating attorneys with expertise in a certain area.

It actually sounds like a good and long overdue practice.

Under VP each individual attorney has a "team" assigned to him or her- a law clerk, and now, a Victim-Witness (VW) counselor.

And in Iseri's office that apparently has come to mean that there's no cross communication anymore between the various VW employees.

According to White and Wilson, VW employees are now tasked by the attorney who almost exclusively assigns them tasks like calling specific victims and witnesses to let them know about court dates, changes in case status and those kinds of things.

Apparently the actual "counseling" part has fallen through the cracks and not only that but the only victims and witnesses contacted by the counselors are those the attorney on the team tells them to call- and then only to communicate matters regarding the case status.

It used to be that VW employees met every month, traveled to conferences and did a lot of evaluation of whether and how services were being delivered to VWs. But that is a thing of the past with VP where counselors are now "team members" whose actions are dictated by either the attorneys in charge of the team or Iseri herself.

Whereas vertical integration is growing in popularity in the offices of prosecutors and district attorneys across the country- and, according to Councilmember and Iseri ally Mel Rapozo, is by far the most popular management scheme- robust victim witness counseling can wind up being be sacrificed.

Especially if a megalomaniacal, puerile, petty, vindictive, ego-driven prosecutor is the one running the show.

The rest of Yukimura's questioning revealed that, despite requests from the council that statistics and information be presented in an intelligible manner and one that addresses questions the council has- like how all the monies from the various VW programs from the county state and federal governments are actually spent- they are embedded in spread sheets and long narratives where there's little or no possibility of extracting the pertinent information.

It all ended up with DelaPlane- who had taken over much of the question-answering after Iseri's patented self-righteous, rage-filled and spittle-spewing attacks on the questions and questioner became self-defeating- promising to put the statistics in meaningful formats for the new budget... and, importantly, to provide the evaluation forms that victims and witnesses have filled out for those entities providing the grants, which had never been provided to the council previous to the request.

We can expect a repeat performance during the budget hearings starting in March when the OPA presents its budget. But more importantly we just may get some of the issues aired during this year's election campaign where current Deputy County Attorney for the Kaua`i Police Department (KPD), Justin Kollar, is challenging Iseri for the Prosecutor's job.

Iseri won her first and only term as prosecutor in 2008 running unopposed, leaving her position on the county council after four years there.

Although the community has suffered in all this, personally we can't be too distressed with the Bynum matter, the victim witness program questions and other brewing debacles promise that this summer will be anything but a dull one in this space.

So thank you Shay- you're a columnist's dream. So much so that we're torn between supporting Justin for the sake of the community or you for being the gift that keeps on giving.

(PNN) PROSECUTOR ISERI UNDER FIRE FOR MISMANAGEMENT AND MALTREATMENT OF EMPLOYEES OF VICTIM WITNESS PROGRAM

(PNN) PROSECUTOR ISERI UNDER FIRE FOR MISMANAGEMENT AND MALTREATMENT OF EMPLOYEES OF VICTIM WITNESS PROGRAM; LETTER TO COUNCIL FROM LAID-OFF COUNSELOR CHARGES PROGRAM IS INEFFECTIVE, IN DISARRAY

(PNN) 17.

That's the answer usually given by former and current employees at the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney (OPA) to many of the questions as to why there are so many charges of mismanagement and ill-treatment of employees in Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho's office.

That's because 17 is the number of "Deputy Attorneys who had been hired and either terminated or left on their own accord from OPA" according to a scathing letter to the Kaua`i County Council by Erin Wilson, a former Victim Witness Counselor at the OPA.

Wilson's letter- which is published here in full (below at the end of this article)- was submitted as testimony on a communication at yesterday's (January 11, 2012) council meeting. The communication asked for Iseri to come before the council to discuss "the status of the Victim Witness Program and Office of the Prosecuting Attorney."

The matter was deferred for two weeks until January 25 however because Iseri submitted a letter saying she was "sick," according to Council Chair Jay Furfaro.

The issues Iseri will discuss in two weeks, according to the agenda, include:

1) Case backlog caused by furloughs.
2) Funding - how utilized and whether sufficient to address concerns.
3) Levels of staffing and level of service for the Victim Witness program.
4) Caseload open, closed and pending

The issue dates back to May 6, 2009 according to Councilmember Tim Bynum when Iseri was summoned to appear before the council to answer the same questions but never did because, Bynum said the minutes of that meeting show, he was cut off from his line of questioning by then Council Chair Kaipo Asing.

Asing claimed Bynum's questioning of Iseri was a Sunshine (open meetings) Law violation because it was off the subject of the agenda. However according to Bynum, more than a year later the Office of Information Practices (OIP), which oversees the Sunshine Law, ruled his line of questioning did not violate the law.

Bynum famously feuded with Asing over many matters of council process and rules during Asing's tenure and is currently involved in a well-known, long-standing feud with Iseri dating back to her days on the council with Bynum.

Until yesterday the latest chapter in the conflict has been what Bynum claims is his malicious, first-of-its-kind prosecution by Iseri for a permitting violation, apparently spurred by Bynum having had a rice cooker in a family room of his home which, Iseri claims, is a zoning violation because technically, with the presence of a sink, it created a unpermitted separate living unit.

Wilson spoke of the number "17" by saying:

After asking many employees at OPA why the delay on the above referenced case and others I had been assigned to, I was consistently referred to one number...17. This number was significant because there had been 17 Deputy Attorneys who had been hired and either terminated or left on their own accord from OPA. 17 was a significant number because the prosecutor’s office is a relatively small office to begin with. 17 was a significant number because all of these 17 former employees had left the office since the current OPA Leadership was elected into office. Most importantly, 17 was a significant number because it answered some of my questions about why a large backlog of cases had either sat for long periods of time without victims being contacted, defendants being indicted, or passed on from deputy to deputy through the revolving door at OPA.

Some of the allegations in Wilson's letter are that:

- NOTHING could be done without the direct approval and oversight of the elected prosecutor. In fact, office staff received an email from the Prosecutor’s Office leadership, stating that staff was not to send emails to any outside agencies unless discussed with the OPA leadership prior to sending. Furthermore, OPA Leadership asked to be cc’ed on all other emails to outside agencies.

- The process by which OPA would receive completed investigations and then assigned to the appropriate Deputy and Victim Witness Counselor was ambiguous. The time frame with which the assignment would take place was even more vague and varied week to week. Sometimes cases would be reviewed by the Prosecutor and assigned to a Deputy Attorney and Victim Witness Counselor right away. Other times, as I found out with my caseload, would take months upon months before even being assigned to a Deputy or Counselor for any action to be taken.

- In a letter to County Council dated January 19, 2011 regarding furloughs, the Elected Prosecutor, Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho, states that as a result of furloughs,

'OPA, the sole agency to file the criminal documents with the court and/or prepare for hearings, wasn’t able to accomplish its duties in a number of cases because there was insufficient staff to prepare them in an expedited and timely manner.'

I beg to differ. I would suggest instead, it is the constant revolving door of employees that has caused a tremendous backlog of cases at OPA. Even the office letterhead is constantly changing and currently reflects that about half of the Deputies that were listed on the above referenced letter, dated January 19th, 2011, have left OPA within the past year. All, I would suggest, to the detriment of Kauaiian families and community.

- The elected prosecutor demoted the former Victim Witness Director, Diana Gausepohl-White and effectively eliminated the Director position altogether. What did this mean for the Victim Witness program? It meant that our Victim Witness program no longer had a leader in Victim Witness services to provide oversight of day to day operations and management of the program. It also resulted in drastic changes in the scope of services that Victim Witness Counselors were allowed to offer... After the Victim Witness Director position was eliminated, these components of our comprehensive program diminished or ceased to exist.

- The current OPA Leadership also promotes the perception that Victim Witness Counselors have little importance within the office and are perceived as such by many of the attorneys, clerks, and other staff at OPA.

- I am no longer employed with the Prosecutor’s Office as I was informed on November 9th that I was being laid off and my position as Victim Witness Counselor was being eliminated from the office due to “lack of work”. This “lack of work” described in the letter that OPA gave me is in stark contrast to the much needed Victim Witness Counselor that the elected prosecutor requested monies for, in her letter (just a few months ago) to County Council dated June 13th, 2011. Despite this “lack of work” the office has hired several people including a Receptionist, a Process Server, two (2) Law Clerks, and a Law Office Assistant position which was created for the previous Secretary--all since my last day of employment, November 23rd, 2011. Furthermore, OPA has done nothing to preserve my employment despite that the County of Kauai Employee Handbook (page 17) Layoff Policy states that they will give 90 days’ notice prior to instilling a Reduction in Workforce or Layoff. I am certain that the victims who call OPA on a daily basis requesting an update on their case status or the victims of the most recent surge of crime on Kauai, could have used the services I provided as a Victim Witness Counselor.

At yesterday's meeting, while Bynum was trying to give the history of the issues being aired before the council and the Asing/Sunshine Law/OIP matter, Councilperson Mel Rapozo, famously an extremely close ally and employee of Iseri's, tried to stop Bynum from speaking by claiming the statement he was making violated the Sunshine Law, interrupting Bynum twice and appealing to Furfaro to stop Bynum.

After getting huffy at the notion that he was being accused of ducking the issue- even though Bynum said no such thing- Furfaro allowed Bynum to finish his statement.

Rapozo serves summonses for Iseri's office despite a ban on councilmembers doing more than $500 worth of work for the county. He and Iseri have thus far successfully circumvented the provision by breaking the contracts up into parcels of less than $500 each and also have claimed that Rapozo is the only one on the island who can do the work based on the fact that no one else bid on it.

Part of the intent of the law is to make sure that councilmembers cannot use their power to intimidate others from bidding on a contract upon which the councilmember is bidding.

Council Vice Chair JoAnn Yukimura- who sent the communication to the council requesting Iseri's presence- referred to Wilson's letter and asked that staff contact former Victim Witness Director, Diana Gausepohl-White and request that she be present to testify at the January 25 meeting.

Iseri is up for reelection this year and will face current Deputy County Attorney with the Kaua`i Police Department, Justin Kollar.

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Erin Wilson's letter to the Kaua`i County Council


Date: January 10, 2012

To: Jay Furfaro, Chair
Joann Yukimura, Vice Chair
Tim Bynum
Dicky Chang
KipuKai Kuali’i
Mel Rapozo
Nadine Nakamura

From: Erin Wilson, Former Victim Witness Counselor at OPA
Re: Council Meeting Agenda Item C 2012-08

First of all let me say thank you for your time and providing an opportunity for public comment on the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney (OPA) and Victim Witness Program (VWP) at your meeting today. I believe my circumstance is unique to any other and I appreciate the opportunity to share some of my experiences with you in hopes that you will consider what I have to say as an opportunity to improve services at OPA and the Victim Witness Program.

I am a single mom who moved to Kauai in August 2011 from Colorado with my 6 year old son because I was offered a position as a Victim Witness Counselor at the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney. This was in my mind, a dream job, where I could use my passion for helping others, advocating for victims of crime. Within a few days of working, I was assigned to work on the most serious of crimes including murder, negligent homicide, assault, robbery, theft, etc. In this position, my responsibilities included making contact with victims to find out how they were coping, finding out what their needs are, helping victims apply for Crime Victim Compensation, finding local resources, getting victims registered for SAVIN (a victim notification system), and let victims know about other civil remedies. Most importantly, my job was to listen to our victims.

I quickly learned at OPA that NOTHING could be done without the direct approval and oversight of the elected prosecutor. In fact, office staff received an email from the Prosecutor’s Office leadership, stating that staff was not to send emails to any outside agencies unless discussed with the OPA leadership prior to sending. Furthermore, OPA Leadership asked to be cc’ed on all other emails to outside agencies. I was very surprised by this as I had not worked in such an environment where communication with related agencies (agencies we interface with) was restricted in such a manner.

The process by which OPA would receive completed investigations and then assigned to the appropriate Deputy and Victim Witness Counselor was ambiguous. The time frame with which the assignment would take place was even more vague and varied week to week. Sometimes cases would be reviewed by the Prosecutor and assigned to a Deputy Attorney and Victim Witness Counselor right away. Other times, as I found out with my caseload, would take months upon months before even being assigned to a Deputy or Counselor for any action to be taken.

In one case that was assigned to me, there were several victims of a violent crime. Prior to making initial contact with the victims, I reviewed the police reports so as to be fully prepared when I contacted the victims and their families, being fully aware of what happened. What I was unable to prepare for was the anger and frustration these families felt when I met with them the first time in our office and learned that after 17 months, I was the first person to contact them from the Prosecutor's Office. In those 17 months, none of the victims or their families had been contacted by anyone at the Prosecutor’s office to offer condolences (there had been a death resulting from the crime) or inform the families about their rights to Victim Witness services, Crime Victim Compensation, or any other related community services that they were entitled to. It was not that the Deputies or Victim Witness Counselors were not working hard on their caseloads, but rather, the victims’ receipt of services could have occurred much earlier in this case and many others, had the case(s) been assigned by OPA Leadership in a timelier manner. Many of the cases I came across had sat waiting for screening and prosecution or declination for long periods of time. Cases had sat for so long that in some situations, the statute of limitations had run out on certain counts of crimes and the defendants could no longer be charged, leaving victims helpless.

After asking many employees at OPA why the delay on the above referenced case and others I had been assigned to, I was consistently referred to one number...17. This number was significant because there had been 17 Deputy Attorneys who had been hired and either terminated or left on their own accord from OPA. 17 was a significant number because the prosecutor’s office is a relatively small office to begin with. 17 was a significant number because all of these 17 former employees had left the office since the current OPA Leadership was elected into office. Most importantly, 17 was a significant number because it answered some of my questions about why a large backlog of cases had either sat for long periods of time without victims being contacted, defendants being indicted, or passed on from deputy to deputy through the revolving door at OPA.

In a letter to County Council dated January 19, 2011 regarding furloughs, the Elected Prosecutor, Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho, states that as a result of furloughs,

“OPA, the sole agency to file the criminal documents with the court and/or prepare for hearings, wasn’t able to accomplish its duties in a number of cases because there was insufficient staff to prepare them in an expedited and timely manner.”

I beg to differ. I would suggest instead, it is the constant revolving door of employees that has caused a tremendous backlog of cases at OPA. Even the office letterhead is constantly changing and currently reflects that about half of the Deputies that were listed on the above referenced letter, dated January 19th, 2011, have left OPA within the past year. All, I would suggest, to the detriment of Kauaiian families and community.

There was another significant factor that limited the scope of Victim Witness Services at OPA. The elected prosecutor demoted the former Victim Witness Director, Diana Gausepohl-White and effectively eliminated the Director position altogether. What did this mean for the Victim Witness program? It meant that our Victim Witness program no longer had a leader in Victim Witness services to provide oversight of day to day operations and management of the program. It also resulted in drastic changes in the scope of services that Victim Witness Counselors were allowed to offer. For example, before the Director position was eliminated, the VWP offered services such as Outreach programs, crime scene support upon request, alliances with multiple community agencies. After the Victim Witness Director position was eliminated, these components of our comprehensive program diminished or ceased to exist. Another downfall to eliminating the Director position was the inability to maintain relationships with agencies that the VWP interfaces with on Kauai, in the state of Hawaii (ex. Victim Witness Coordinator meetings) as well as nationwide organizations such as National Organization for Victim Advocacy (NOVA). These former relationships made our Victim Witness program at the Prosecutor’s Office stand out among others in the Pacific region.

Losing the Victim Witness Director at OPA, we also lost accountability for an equitable distribution of workloads among the Counselors. For example, each Counselor is assigned to certain types of cases such as Property, Crimes Against Persons, Firearms, etc. without regard to the intensity of the case or the needs of the victims and witnesses. The current OPA Leadership also promotes the perception that Victim Witness Counselors have little importance within the office and are perceived as such by many of the attorneys, clerks, and other staff at OPA. For example, in one conversation I had with a Deputy Attorney at OPA, two Victim Witness Counselors were referred to as “worthless.” In a separate conversation I had with a Prosecutor, it was stated that ‘Victim Witness Counselors were not needed because deputy attorney’s already make contact with their victims, without the help of a Counselor.’ Based on my experience working at OPA, I disagree. Furthermore, the notion that the Deputy Prosecuting Attorneys have the same job responsibilities as a Victim Witness Counselor, is misleading.

Other responsibilities of the Victim Witness Director that also took a backseat included the onboarding of new Counselors, ongoing training of new skills, knowledge of trends in the field, and ensuring that advocates took turns attending national conferences.
I am no longer employed with the Prosecutor’s Office as I was informed on November 9th that I was being laid off and my position as Victim Witness Counselor was being eliminated from the office due to “lack of work”. This “lack of work” described in the letter that OPA gave me is in stark contrast to the much needed Victim Witness Counselor that the elected prosecutor requested monies for, in her letter (just a few months ago) to County Council dated June 13th, 2011. Despite this “lack of work” the office has hired several people including a Receptionist, a Process Server, two (2) Law Clerks, and a Law Office Assistant position which was created for the previous Secretary--all since my last day of employment, November 23rd, 2011. Furthermore, OPA has done nothing to preserve my employment despite that the County of Kauai Employee Handbook (page 17) Layoff Policy states that they will give 90 days’ notice prior to instilling a Reduction in Workforce or Layoff. I am certain that the victims who call OPA on a daily basis requesting an update on their case status or the victims of the most recent surge of crime on Kauai, could have used the services I provided as a Victim Witness Counselor.

I request of you today, to re-evaluate the Victim Witness Program and consider that victims are not being served in this community in the full scope that they should be served, due to the changes and restraints that the elected prosecutor is putting on the Counselor’s abilities to communicate with local agencies and organizations, conduct outreach to victims, and serving victims in a timely manner through the prosecution of crimes. I believe that the County of Kauai has excellent resources to support the victims of our community. My hope is that my words will be a starting point for restoring the full scope of the Victim Witness Program back to its intended purpose for our victims, community, and ohana.

Sincerely,

Erin Wilson

SILENT BUT DEADLY

SILENT BUT DEADLY: We're old enough to remember when there were still "water closets"- those big boxes installed way up on the wall above toilet bowls that, when you pulled the chain, released a torrent of water so noisy that everyone in the restaurant had to pause conversation until the sound of the flash flood had subsided.

When the W/Cs were removed, their replacements were still loud but at least they weren't conversation halters. And now of course we have the ultra-silent modern toilets that barely make a sound.

But for the most silent flush of all, you had to attend last Wednesday's Economic Development Committee meeting of the Kaua`i County Council.

For those who are new to these pages, it was all part of the latest "Gush and Flush" as we've come to call them- sessions where councilmembers fall all over themselves to throw money at Kaua`i Visitor's Bureau and associated events, first gushing over what a great job Director Sue Kanoho is doing and then promising to flush another hundred grand or so down into the cesspool of tourism promotion.

No matter what the economy has done to our "biggest industry" in recent years- biggest only if you count all the money that never sees the shores of Kaua`i- it's always a wonder to behold what a great job Kanoho has done with the money the council appropriated, even though there has never been a verified connection between each flush and the council's subsequent gush.

Two years ago Kanoho told the council how "down is the new up" followed by "flat is the new up" last year. And of course with occupancy up and numbers of direct flights to Kaua`i increasing, Kanoho and her county overseer, Economic Development Chief George Costa, were all too ready to breath in the wondrous air of success even though they, as always, couldn't show any correlation between whatever the figures are and the taxpayer money spent on promotion.

And, as they are wont to do, the council couldn't contain themselves at the election-year-news that their foresight in appropriating the money was rewarded with such rousingly successful promotions.

The council of course knows someone is watching occasionally so this time they conveniently failed to post the agenda on-line until the Monday before the meeting so that not only wasn't the agenda item in the local newspaper but those who get the agenda via an emailed link didn't get it until Tuesday. That meant that nitpickers Glenn Mickens and Ken Taylor, who have been trying to publicly point out all of this for years, didn't even know there was a meeting much less the subject of it.

There was one attempt to counterbalance the obscene self-congratulatory proceedings by Gusher-In-Chief, Councilperson JoAnn Yukimura, who asked for proof that increases in occupancy were somehow correlated with the million dollars in "stimulus money" the council threw at KTA over the last couple-a few-years or so.

And, as if Yukimura didn't know the answer, Kanoho was all too happy to inform her that those numbers were "proprietary."

"So I shouldn't be happy to see high occupancies because they aren't real?" asked Yukimura.

Kanoho hemmed and hawed and was about to launch into one of her patented ebullient doubletalk explanations when Yukimura baled her out to let her know that she was only questioning the occupancy numbers because they had to be accurate or any semblance of validity for purposes of the newly-enforceable general plan- due for update this or next year- would be a joke.

Well, at least she seems to have a firm grasp of the obvious.

Usually one gush and flush is enough for one day but since they had gone to all the trouble of making sure no one knew what was on the agenda, they also revisited the cash they have been throwing at The Kaua`i Marathon for many years... money that, we were apparently assured at the last meeting, wouldn’t be forthcoming anymore.

Anyone expecting what was said six months ago by councilmembers to be repeated again without someone sitting there at the testimony table and reminding them of it was sorely disappointed. Apparently, the $120,000 that was off again, on again, off again is now on again, pending approval at budget time when the appropriation won't stand out like a sore thumb among all the rest of the cash thrown at the county's woes.

Actually- and we're somewhat guilty of burying the lede here- there was a bit of news from the meeting from Councilmember Mel Rapozo who somehow got to bring up the subject of the Wailua Golf Course. Unbelievably enough, in the year 2012, they don't take credit cards.

Yet increasing the number of rounds played by tourists has been the focus of the council and administration for a decade as the amount of taxpayer money the county has had to use to subsidize the supposedly self-sustaining golf course has grown almost every year in that time to around a half-million bucks in this year's budget.

Rapozo pointed out how many, himself included, use ONLY credit cards when they travel and don't ever use ATMs because they doesn't trust them.

Kanoho then announced that the county had finally, at great expense, gotten an ATM machine at the course. But that doesn't help people who want to book a round from the mainland and it really doesn't help those without a debit card because the amount charged for a "cash advance" on credit cards can be exorbitant.

Kanoho at first claimed that they now take credit cards only to be told by Rapozo that staff had called that very morning to verify that credit cards were still not welcome at the golf course.

The way the gush and flush works best is when no one bothers to challenge it. Only then does the modern silent toilet work to cover-up the stench of the way we throw money at tourism without any indication it does thing-one to bring more visitors here... assuming indiscriminate urging of Kaua`i visitation is what we want in the first place rather than cultivating a niche in a directed, precise- and of course verifiable- manner.

There's a well known hoax that claims that the flush commode was invented by a man named Crapper. But those who think that's the biggest lie in potty history have never been to an economic development session of the Kaua`i County Council.