SWEEPING NEW KAUA`I COUNCIL RULE CHANGES IMBUE RAPOZO WITH KINGLY POWERS

The Great Dictator

(PNN) In a move by new Chair Mel Rapozo that removes the rights of councilmember to introduce legislation, move bills out of committee to a final vote by the full council, initiate workshops and even cuts the amount of time allotted for them to speak on measures on the agenda by half, the new Kaua`i County Council majority rammed through wholesale changes to longstanding rules at Monday's usually inaugural meeting of the Kaua`i County Council.


The rights of the public were also severely curtailed by cutting the mandatory length for public testimony in half, removing the right to petition the council, severely restricting exchanges between councilmembers and testifiers and forcing the public to one again wait for hours to testify.


The County Charter requires adoption of the rules at the usually pro-forma first meeting which turned into a protracted, almost four hour long losing battle to protect the rights of councilmembers and the public after Rapozo attempted to sneak new rules past due consideration by the council by circulating them unformatted, without using the standard "Ramseyer" format that shows changes to legislation. That way a quick glance made those reading them think there were no changes at all.


A PNN article on Saturday which detailed a small handful of the proposed changes apparently alarmed Councilmember Gary Hooser who then "shared" the article on Facebook. That spurred an email from Rapozo sent only to those who had contacted him after seeing the article, attempting unsuccessfully to play down and in fact misrepresent the changes. That email itself was followed by a detailed point-by-point Facebook post refuting Rapozo's email from Hooser who was outraged over the not just the rules themselves but the attempt to dupe the council into adopting changes.


Among the changes is one previously unreported provision that would allow committees and their chairs to prevent the full council from taking a final vote on a bill or resolution by holding the bill in committee permanently, thus killing it.


While giving chairs this kind of power is common at the federal and state level it is rarely part of the rules for local jurisdictions. Kaua`i is the first county in Hawai`i to pass a rule like this, although Hawai`i Island briefly considered and quickly rejected a similar measure this week after their chair attempted a similar secret maneuver.


According to Roberts Rules of Order which governs parliamentary procedure, only the full body can determine the ultimate fate of any measure with a majority or more (depending on the type of measure) of the full body carrying the outcome. But under the Rule-a-la-Rapozo a "receipt for the record" or in fact any vote other than approval by a five-voting-member committee of the seven member council would cause the measure to remain in committee until the chair allows it to come up again- conceivably not at all. That would allow three votes- or even less depending on how many are in attendance for the vote- to essentially kill a bill or resolution.


The new rules also:


-Cut the time the public is given by law to testify on an agenda item from a total of six to three minutes. It would leave granting a second three minutes to the discretion of the chair, replacing the old four additional minutes under the chair's purview. It's interesting to note that when the matter came up for discussion Councilmember Kipukai Kuali`i showed how even he- a member of the new majority who was the most vocal about how it was "disrespectful" to challenge the new rules- insisted this was not true, personally attacking Hooser over his contention that it was. It took an insistence from Hooser that the record reflect the truth for Kuali`i- obviously worried enough about how his performance would look to the electorate to later apologize and claim he was not attacking Hooser personally- to acknowledge his error demonstrating definitively that he hadn't understood or possibly even read one of the most glaring changes. The "total of six minutes" rule had been in effect on Kaua`i for decades;


-Removed the right of councilmember to have proposed legislation- or any matter- placed on the council agenda within 120 days of submittal. This provision was added a couple of years back after Rapozo's stated "mentor," former Chair Kaipo Asing, abused the requirement requiring the council chair to "initial" matters in order for them to appear on the agenda. to block legislation he disfavored from ever appearing on the agenda;


-Eliminate the right of members to hold "workshops" unless the matter is on the council agenda. Workshops are used to gather facts, input from experts. members of the administration and the community to contribute to the preparation of legislation without violating the state Sunshine Law which requires six-day notice and public testimony whenever a majority of the council gathers to deal with actual or projected council business;


-Cut from 10 to five minutes the time councilmembers may speak on an agenda item without permission from the chair;


-Eliminated the right of citizens to petition the council to consider legislation;


-Eliminated a recent rule change that had allowed members of the public to testify on any single agenda item for three minutes at the very beginning of a meeting rather than having to sit around all day- sometimes into the night- in order to testify, thus forcing them to, once again, take a full day off to speak their mind rather than just an hour or so at 9 a.m.


Rapozo claimed many of the substantive changes were merely "housekeeping" measures and that all were done with intent of "expediency (and) efficiency" and as "cost saving" measures, even suggesting much of the council's proceeding- apparently including public and council input- were "a waste of time (and) money" presenting an unsubstantiated a figure of $250 an hour to record, caption and web-cast meetings.


For the record, at one point during the meeting Rapozo personally chided PNN Publisher, Editor and Chief Correspondent Andy Parx by name over what he thought he had read in PNN's first (Saturday 11/29) article on the rules. Rapozo mockingly claimed that Parx wrote that a rule regarding "intemperate" or "abusive" language was new. However a critical-reading of the paragraph shows that the reference to "new" was made regarding the section on "Public Testimony" in which the passage is contained, not the passage itself. PNN welcomes a retraction and apology from Rapozo considering how adverse he is to litigation.


The meeting began with a... ah screw this "news" format- the rest calls for a lot less "just the facts ma’am" and a lot more Rabid Reporter bombast.


The power grab by "King Louis-Mel "I am the County" XIV, The "Blotting out the Sun(shine) King" started with a "hurry up and just pass the damn rules" push during the usually pre-fake-swearing-in snooze-fest where the gaggle of governance takes the actual oath of office while the audience swears a different kind of under-their-breath-oath. That is usually punctuated by selection of the new chair, vice chair, clerk and deputy and finally pretty much the same old rules as the last term are adopted. At least that's been the case for the at least the last 25-plus years with any substantive rule changes taking place at regular meetings throughout the term.


As the clocked ticked down to the official unofficial hour assigned to re-perform the swearing-in ceremonially in the auditorium next door approached, the new council majority became panicked when it became apparent that the minority were not happy about the elimination of their and the public's rights as Councilmember JoAnn Yukimura announced she had prepared nine amendments for the most egregious of the measures to consolidate MachiaMelli's powers.


" Hurry... only a few minutes to go" shouted dumber-than-the-usual-bear Ross "Boo-Boo" Kagawa to Yogi the Chair as the clock ticked down. "Let's just pass them and be done with it" said perennial also ran, first-time-actually-elected Rapozo-sycophant Kipukai Kuali`i who seemed outraged-to-tears (if that's possible) that someone would challenge the rights of Il Douche-A, to run roughshod over the minority.


It was only when, with mere minutes to go, Yukimura shouted "Move to amend" and a split-second later Hooser said "second" that the lap-dancer-fondling chair thought better of not recognizing the motion at the almost-didn't-happen delayed-on-line-streaming of the event and they all proceeded next door for the banal fake-coronation and insipid oratories from Hizzonah and Ghengis Mel, saving the fireworks for after the show.


Despite the opposition from the majority- which includes a long-sought seat for big Kaua`i landowner Grove Farm in the form of Silver-Spoon-Fed legacy "Missing-D," Arryl Kaneshiro (whose election, many say, was due to confusion with his father, long-serving ex-Councilmember, Darryl)- Yukimura charged on with her amendments with "seconds" from Hooser and loose support from the other member of the progressive minority Mason Chock who, with Yukimura, voted for the final rules with only Hooser voting in opposition.


The worst of the worst of the really offensive "how dare you challenge The Prince" rhetoric came from Kuali`i who had gotten the votes of many progressives in the last election despite his demonstrated support for the Rapozo, Asing and former councilmember and disgraced former County Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho.


Iseri and Kuali`i were accused of colluding to throw Victim-Witness Program monies to Kualii's employer, the YWCA, with Iseri firing the V-V program employees she had just hired (causing a wrongful termination EEOC filing which the county settled) in the prosecutors office... where the program had always been housed since its inception.


This, say council-watchers guaranteed Kualii's allegiance to the Iseri/Rapozo alliance during the often bitter battles over Asing's secretive and paternalistic reign as Chair after having served nobly for years as the champion of the people in the '80's '90's and early '00's.


Of the nine amendments only one passed and that with an amendment to the amendment. But that was was perhaps the most perplexing of all because the "new" rule was the same as the old rule housed in that previously mentioned section on Public Hearings.


The council rules certainly did need some actual housekeeping measures including use of archaic language, anachronistic provisions and misogynist phrasings. But one of the most glaring had always been that there was no section regarding the rules for Public Testimony. Those rules had always been housed under "Public Hearings" which are required by charter but separate from common public testimony which is required on every agenda item at every meeting by the Hawai`i State Sunshine (open meetings) Law. The Public Hearing rules have always been treated as applying to both.


Apparently when staff pointed this out to Benito Rapozo he decided to use the opportunity to make the council train run on time.


The one and only provision that differed was that during actual Public Hearings, the council has been restricted from asking questions and having exchanges with those testifying. It had always been pretty strictly adhered to until recently when, although former Chair Jay Furfaro would often remind councilmembers of the rule, he in fact was a little lackadaisical about enforcing it.


Yet here was an amendment from Yukimura apparently seeking to allow it that during Public Hearings. Now it should be pointed out that at this juncture that although the council appeared to be working from, if not a formal Ramseyer copy of the new rules at least one that indicated changes, still neither has not been made available to the public.


And as a matter of fact one of those "housekeeping" rules made it even harder to know what the heck is going on at meetings by allowing the chair to dispense with the actual verbal reading of measures. We've tried for years to get them to read actual amendments when they're introduced- or at least before they are passed- to no avail.


Parenthetically, as a matter of fact- and we should have anticipated this- council service is traditionally about as fast as a molasses-surfing turtle when it comes to getting things posted on the county web site. Yet the new rules were posted so fast it made our head do an Exorcist and now the old rules are apparently lost to the ages.


Not so parenthetically, in some ways we were sympathetic to the impetus (if not the lack of thought) behind a few of what can only be called the new"Yukimura Rules."


There isn't one person we know who hasn't rolled their eyes and even walked out of the room asking those remaining to "let me know when she's done" after sitting through one of her interminable "thinking out loud" sessions, usually during Q&A with someone testifying. The smirks when councilmembers made veiled references to it during the debate were not as veiled as the references themselves.


So back to the actual amendment that apparently amended nothing, Yukimura's amendment seemed to seek to allow exchanges during Pubic Hearings. That would have been a change from what we remember the old rules said:


"Public hearings are held to receive testimony from the public. Councilmembers shall reserve their opinions, questions, and arguments for the appropriate Council or Committee meeting."


So after much wrangling and Yukimura's pleas that members be able to "clarify" what those speaking at Public Hearings were saying, the following was added:


";except that Councilmembers may ask clarifying questions that enable the Council to better understand the point or position of the speaker."


And THAT passed unanimously. Big whoop. It's probably the one change we would have opposed.


The afternoon session session began with His Melness attempting to run down the list of changes, often mumbling "housekeeping changes made by staff"- until it turned out they weren't- or otherwise glossing over or misrepresenting them. Then Yukimura's amendments rejected at breakneck speed, with the the Greek Chorus responding to Sophoclapozo's "I wont abuse my power" with a refrain of "No he won't abuse his power" followed by some HMS Pinafore-like


What Never?

No Never

What Never?

Well... hardly every

Hardly ever abuses Ruuuules.


Hardly ever sick at Council meetings? We suspect that for the next two year the response will be "yes always."

ONCE UPON A TIME IN AN AUDITOR'S OFFICE NOT SO FAR, FAR AWAY

You don't have to wear a tin-foil hat to swallow the hook, line and sinker of conspiracy theories. Some otherwise normal, rational people seem to think that "they can't say it on the internet if it ain't true... can they?" Or the newspaper for that matter, especially on Kaua`i. Sometimes it feels like there's some national Confederacy of Dunces that's a strong enough alliance to make those of us who require more than speculation and innuendo to determine veracity, think that there actually is a conspiracy- one to designed to obliterate Americans' critical thinking and reading skills.

Kaua`i has it's own brand of conspiracy theorist who is more than happy to connect the disparate dots to form a picture of his or her own design.


The latest of these concerns "Fuel-gate"- the "scandal" surrounding the alleged misappropriation of county gasoline that came on the heels of County Auditor Ernie Pasion's report (still labeled "interim") which found irregularities and pointed fingers in the direction of Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr.


Despite the efforts of former Prosecuting Attorney (PA) Shaylene Iseri- Carvalho (no relation) to indict the mayor- an effort that won her admonishment from the judge for not having enough votes on the grand jury but moving ahead as if she did- no one has been prosecuted in the case... yet.


The scuttlebutt-narrative around town and on social media has it that, for nefarious reasons, the County Council- which by county charter is responsible for hiring and firing the Auditor- has, instead of pinning a medal on his chest, met at least 20 times by some counts in closed-door executive session to discipline and possibly fire Pasion for some type of as yet unstated misconduct.


The claim is that the council is protecting the mayor and they're all just a bunch of corrupt bums- proof positive that they must be thrown out next November en masse when all are up for re-election.


Many seemingly intelligent self-appointed county government watchdogs and other supporters of Pasion have filed up to the council testimony desk to bemoan the corruption and praise Pasion as a pillar of honesty in the cesspool of misdeeds that is Kaua`i County government.


That is, if you'll pardon my French, Bullsh*t.


The more politically astute in the community- those that actually know the players and follow the action- know the whole affair to be yet another result of the infamous reign of terror of nefarious former PA Iseri-Carvalho (now just plain Iseri... you do the math) and her proxy war on everyone else, being waged by a handful of her still-loyal compatriots.


They include Councilmembers Mel Rapozo and his trusty manservant Ross Kagawa, former Councilmember Kipukai Kuali`i, regular council gadflies Glenn Mickens and Ken Taylor, newspaper columnist Walter Lewis and- no surprise to anyone who has paid attention over the years- Pasion. *


The whys and wherefores of this cabal of Iseri-ites is a subject for a particularly complicated series of flow charts, pie charts and Venn Diagrams to be complied by another reporter on another later day. But the genesis of the council's executive sessions and the fact that Pasion's job is hanging by a still unraveling thread may be more simply explained by examining a little noted actual "claim" submitted by a former Staff Internal Auditor in the Office of the County Auditor, Ron Rawls.


In it Rawls describes how first Pasion attempted to delete possibly exculpatory material from the report which had been compiled by an outside law firm regarding Carvalho's guilt or innocence. Then Rawls says Pasion sought to change key words to strengthen the charges against the Mayor.


But when Rawls insisted that ALL county employees who were found to be using county gasoline without paying for it- including then Prosecuting Attorney Iseri- be cited in the report, Passion refused and retaliated against Rawls, first by excluding him from meetings and anything else to do with the fuel audit and eventually banishing him to a windowless office in another building with no work to do.


The sections in italics below constitutes Rawls' entire statement. It is essential reading for anyone who thought they knew anything about "Fuel-gate."


According to Rawls' notarized declaration in support of his claim:


I was employed as a staff internal auditor in the Office of the County Auditor, County of Kauai.


On June 25,2012,1 filed a complaint alleging a hostile workplace and violations of State and County law involving corruption within the Office of the County Auditor. Since that time, I suffered illegal retaliation based on what and who I reported. I was forced to resign my employment, due to the actions taken against me, and the severe and pervasive hostile work environment that followed because I spoke out about illegal activity as well as ethics violations and misconduct in the Office.


1 was assigned to conduct an audit of county fuel costs, including controls designed to ensure that fuel usage is authorized and limited to valid county business purposes. During this audit, I discovered that the county's Mayor, Bernard Carvalho, may have inappropriately used county fuel in his private car for personal use purposes and I immediately reported this to Auditor Pasion. Auditor Pasion then contracted with the law firm of McCorriston Miller Mukai and MacKinnon LLP (hereinafter "McCorriston") who performed extended audit procedures in the form of investigations into the mayor's use of county fuel for personal use purposes and other . suspected instances of fuel misuse by county employees.


Generally speaking, the purpose of the investigations was supposed to be an independent assessment of the various facts and circumstances surrounding the appearance of fuel use/misuse, with the goal of determining whether illegal acts or fraud had likely occurred. The results of the McCorriston-led investigations were memorialized in two reports; one regarding the mayor's use of fuel and the other regarding a parks employee's alleged misappropriation of fuel. At the outset, I note that McCorriston's May 1, 2012 report regarding the mayor's use of fuel concludes that the mayor may or may not have possessed the mens rea required to support a criminal case against him. The McCorriston report also recommended referral to law enforcement (in this case, the state's Attorney General) if the County Council decided to seek further investigation into the lack of mens rea problem.


According to Wikipedia:


Mens rea is Latin for "guilty mind". In criminal law, it is viewed as one of the necessary elements of some crimes. The standard common law test of criminal liability is usually expressed in the Latin phrase, actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, which means "the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty". Thus, in jurisdictions with due process, there must be an actus reus, or "guilty act," accompanied by some level of mens rea to constitute the crime with which the defendant is charged (see the technical requirement of concurrence). As a general rule, criminal liability does not attach to a person who merely acted with the absence of mental fault. The exception is strict liability crimes.


Anyway, that's when things really began to unravel. Rawls' claim continues saying:


Auditor Pasion submitted a summary report to the County Council based on McCorriston's May 1,2012 report. Prior to providing McCorriston report to the Council, however, Auditor Pasion and I met with the (then) Prosecuting Attorney, Shaylene Iseri- Carvalho. At the meeting, Auditor Pasion and Prosecuting Attorney Iseri-Carvalho decided to withhold from the County Council the portion of the investigators' report which indicated that the mayor may have lacked mens rea as to a potential criminal offense. Thus the report that was provided to the Council had important evidence of innocence removed, before the Council was briefed. I voiced my opposition to this decision to both Auditor Passion and (then) Prosecuting Attorney, Iseri-Carvalho.


Because I disagreed with the decision to withhold this information from the report I formally communicated my concerns to Auditor Pasion in an email message (which I sent to Auditor Pasion at 1:24 p.m. on June 5,2012). In particular, I communicated to Auditor Pasion that I felt that the councilmembers should be provided with all significant information pertaining to the investigation, including the investigators' findings regarding the mayor's possible (lawful) rationale for using county fuel in his private vehicle and the difficulty with lack of evidence regarding criminal intent. Nonetheless, Auditor Pasion removed references to the potential lack of criminal intent from the summary report that he submitted to the County Council. I also note that Auditor Pasion also declined to provide the councilmembers with full version copies of the McCorriston report, which delineates the lack of mens rea problem.

If true, that alone looks pretty bad for both Pasion and Iseri. But there was more manipulation of the report to be submitted to the council. Rawls continued:

I believe the intentional omission of potentially significant information from Auditor Pasion's report was an effort to manipulate the Council's decision regarding whether to refer this matter to law enforcement.. I further believe that this was only one of a number of instances in which Auditor Passion, along with Audit Manager Lani Nakazawa, violated government auditing standards (and hence violated legal requirements set forth in the county charter) relating to auditor independence, objectivity, impartiality, integrity and professional behavior in connection with the fuel costs audit investigations. During the course of the fuel costs audit investigations, I often spoke out about these types of instances. For example, when Ms. Nakazawa provided me with her proposed draft of a memorandum addressed to Council Chair Jay Furfaro, dated December 15, 2010, claiming that "fraud had likely occurred," I spoke out against the use of word "likely" because I felt that we did not have enough evidence to support that contention. Rather, I recommended softening the wording to "fraud may have occurred." However, Auditor Pasion and Ms. Nakazawa declined to change the wording (i.e., from "likely" to

"may"). It is important to note that the wording "fraud has likely occurred" was intentionally used by Auditor Pasion in the December 15,2010 memorandum in order to provide him with an avenue to directly report the mayor's possible misappropriation of county fuel to the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney.

From the early stages of the audit and investigations, it was clear to me that Auditor Pasion, Audit Manager Lani Nakazawa and Prosecuting Attorney Iseri-Carvalho wanted the mayor's fuel use matter referred for criminal prosecution. By contrast, I simply tried to ensure conformity with county charter-required government auditing standards and to be a "voice of reason" and impartiality throughout the fuel audit and investigation process. This often put me at odds with Auditor Pasion.

Lani Nakazawa is the former County Attorney who was appointed when Bryan Baptiste became mayor in 2002 and began the era when the county charter was reinterpreted to say that the office's functions and responsibilities had no public component but rather only represented the council, the mayor and administration personnel.

As we characterized her our introduction to Chapter 11 of our serialization of Anthony Sommer's book "KPD Blue"


With “A New Mayor” in 2002 came a new era of mind boggling and often illegal secrecy and legal deception initiated by Bryan Baptiste’s new County Attorney, Lani Nakazawa.

In Chapter 11 of KPD Blue by Anthony Sommer we meet Nakazawa, the Red Queen of the Smokescreen and initiator of a new era of secret meetings and padlocked records, who now represents Kaua`i as a state “legislative liaison”- a cushy, low-work, high-pay, unbudgeted, lobbying position created by Baptiste without council approval- or knowledge.

Despite months of requests from the county council to have Nakazawa appear before them to go over the agenda for the last and the coming legislative sessions, she’s refused to appear with a new excuse every two weeks.

Meet her and get to know the real Bryan Baptiste in this week’s serialization of KPD Blue.

Getting back to Rawls' claim, so far so bad. But that's when things really went through the looking glass and Pasion was "forced" to step in to protect his ally Iseri.

In November 2010, during the course of the same fuel costs audit, information came to my attention that a number of county employees were using county-owned vehicles on a take home basis. Since county-purchased fuel was likely used by these employees for commuting and other personal use purposes, investigating this possible misuse of fuel clearly fell within the scope of my fuel costs audit. State law required that I look into all people who may have been misappropriating fuel, as a part of such a fuel-use audit - not just they Mayor.


HRS, Division 1, Title 9, Chapter 105, Sections 105-1 through 105-5, provides that it is unlawful for any county employee to use a county-owned vehicle for personal use, including commuting. Penalties for violating section 105-1 include a fine (up to $50) and/or imprisonment (up to 10 days). In addition to the statutory restrictions, I found that the county has a policy prohibiting unauthorized use of county-owned vehicles dating back to November 2002. The policy was prepared in order to ensure compliance with the aforementioned state law.


On August 4,2011, before the McCorriston-led investigations commenced, the Office of the County Auditor received a written allegation from an anonymous person asserting that the (then) elected Prosecuting Attorney and her First Deputy Prosecuting Attorney were routinely using county-owned vehicles for personal use purposes, including commuting, daily errands and the like. The use of county-owned vehicles and fuel by the prosecuting attorney and her first deputy was substantiated and was quite analogous to the situation involving the mayor's alleged unauthorized use of county fuel. I reported my findings and the possibility that the Prosecuting Attorney had engaged in illegal fuel use to Auditor Pasion. I strongly advocated that the information that we had already gathered regarding the possible unauthorized use of county-owned vehicles and fuel by county employees (including the prosecuting attorney and her first deputy) should be provided to the McCorriston investigators for their review and consideration. Auditor Pasion objected.


However, shortly before entering a meeting with the investigators at the McCorriston offices in Honolulu in mid-August 2011,1 was able to persuade Auditor Pasion to allow me to provide the anonymous allegation letter and other information regarding "take home vehicle" use to the investigators. At the meeting, the investigators immediately recognized that the possible unauthorized use of county vehicles and fuel by the Prosecuting Attorney, her first deputy, and multiple other county employees needed to be fully investigated in conjunction with the investigation of possible unauthorized use of fuel by the mayor. The investigators were unequivocal in their position and cited the likelihood of serious prosecutorial problems arising from the appearance of "selective prosecution" if different audit/investigation standards were applied to different individuals.


Nonetheless, in early-September 2011, Auditor Pasion contacted the McCorriston investigators and directed them to focus their efforts first on investigating the possible misuse of fuel by the mayor and, secondly, on a parks department employee who appeared to have misappropriated gasoline by way of county 5-gallon gas cans.


The same month, Auditor Pasion specifically directed the investigators to not investigate the use of fuel by any other employees, including the prosecuting attorney and her first deputy. It was clear to me that Auditor Pasion was trying to quash or postpone indefinitely any investigation into possible unauthorized use of county-purchased fuel (and a county owned vehicle) by the Prosecuting Attorney - in violation of the scope of the audit and in violation of State and County law.


I have also come to learn that Mr. Pasion is a close political ally of the former • Prosecuting Attorney. On the contrary, I have observed that Auditor Pasion openly disdains and disparages Mayor Carvalho.


Finally, when Rawls refused to shut up like a good little county employee he was retaliated against by Pasion by being shut out of all office activity and finally shut out of the office itself.


In late-April 2012, after receiving documents from the McCorriston investigations into the mayor's unauthorized use of fuel and the parks employee's possible misappropriation of fuel, I discussed the take home vehicles and fuel use/misuse matter with Auditor Pasion.


I believed that Auditor Pasion was knowingly failing to perform his duties, which are inherent in the nature of the Office of the Auditor, as defined in the county charter. In April 2012,1 spoke up about this misconduct and I openly recommended that Auditor Pasion recuse himself from further involvement in the take home vehicles investigation. I also confronted him at that time with a report that he had engaged in illegal quid pro quo dealings with the Prosecuting Attorney.


On May 10,2012,1 formally recommended that Auditor Pasion "self-assess" his ability to maintain auditor independence with respect to the take home vehicles audit/investigation .matter and that he consider recusing himself from further involvement. In response, Auditor Pasion lashed out at me.


Auditor Pasion then retaliated against me by excluding me from any further involvement in the take home vehicles matter. In particular, he re-assigned the take home vehicles audit/investigation to Ms. Iwasaki and he ordered me to turn over all of my papers relating to the take home vehicles matter to Ms. Iwasaki.


Auditor Pasion further subjected me to various forms of unlawful retaliation for my role in uncovering/revealing possible illegal activity by the prosecuting attorney and her first deputy, even though investigating and discovering this information was part of my job responsibilities.


Among other things, Auditor Passion encouraged the auditing staff to stop speaking to me about anything but the most essential work matters. He and/or the auditing staff began having daily, multiple and secretive closed door meetings at work, and all of these meetings specifically excluded me. He also hid my other fuel costs audit workpaper files in a locked file cabinet drawer (without telling me) and he directed Ms. Iwasaki to take control of the file cabinet key - so that I could not access the key or the contents of the office file cabinet.


On June 5,2012, Auditor Pasion called for an impromptu staff meeting in which Auditor Pasion and Ms. Nakazawa ridiculed me with false accusations about the quality and timeliness of my work. This was done in the presence of my co-worker, Ms. Iwasaki, At least three times during the meeting I told Auditor Pasion that I felt that his and Ms. Nakazawa's comments and attacking tone, as well as the subject matter (i.e., my work performance) were inappropriate for an open staff meeting and I asked him to stop it. He declined each of my requests to stop the verbal attacks.


The June 5,2012 impromptu staff meeting was held at approximately 2:30 p.m., which was approximately one hour after I submitted the aforementioned email to Auditor Pasion citing my disagreement with his decision to omit significant information from the proposed audit report to the council regarding the investigation into the mayor's use of fuel.


It should also be noted that, in the moments immediately prior to the June 5th staff meeting, Auditor Pasion held a closed door meeting with Ms. Nakazawa and Ms. Iwasaki.


Between June 5th and June 25th, Auditor Pasion subjected my cash management audit different standards than were applied to audits conducted by my coworkers. On June 25, 2012,1 filed a complaint alleging a hostile workplace and corruption within the Office of the County Auditor. Shortly thereafter, I was offered a workspace in a separate building.


Even though I was physically located in a separate workspace, I was ready, willing and able to conduct audits as required by my job description.. In July 2012, Auditor Pasion assigned me to work on an audit of parks maintenance and improvement activities, for which I promptly began performing background research (a normal audit planning phase activity).


However, beginning in early-August 2012, Ms. Pasion began taking my assignments away from me without any explanation or logical reason. More specifically: • On August 8, Auditor Pasion re-assigned the remaining portion of my responsibility for the fuel costs audit to Ms. Iwasaki. Auditor Pasion offered no explanation for this change.


• On August 10,2012, 1 submitted a detailed, seven page audit "scoping statement" to Auditor Pasion, which provided an overall framework for a proposed audit of the county parks department maintenance and improvement activities. However, instead of reviewing and approving the scoping statement as he normally does, Auditor Pasion inexplicably declined to allow me to proceed with any meaningful work on this audit. By late-September 2012, this audit completely "stalled out" when Auditor Pasion discontinued all contact with me regarding this assignment. As a result of these actions, I was no longer allowed to work on meaningful audit assignments. In short, I was denied virtually all opportunity to do my job.


Also in August 2012, Auditor Pasion sent Ms. Nakazawa and Ms. Iwasaki to a three day national governmental accounting and auditing training conference in San Diego, California. I was not told about this conference nor was I allowed to attend an alternative training conference, as normally would have been the case. I was denied this in retaliation for my insisting that the Council be provided with evidence of the Mayor's potential innocence as well as guilt, and for my suggestion that the audit also cover allegedly similar fuel misuse by the Prosecuting Attorney, the auditor's political ally.


On August 30,2012,1 formally reported the ongoing retaliation by my supervisor against ' me to the County Council, as well as the county's Human Resources department and the Office of the County Attorney. I reported that the retaliation was having an adverse impact on my ability to do my job and I requested that immediate action be taken to stop the retaliation. (Note: The council hired an investigator in September 2012, but this action did not stop the retaliation.)


Between September 2012 and November 2012, the retaliation continued and I reported it to the council's investigator. For example, I reported that my responsibility as the Office's liaison with the external. CP A firm that performed the annual financial statement audit of the county's comprehensive annual financial report (CAFR) was taken away from me without any notice. A representative from the audit engagement partner for the CPA firm told me that Auditor Pasion had informed the firm something to the effect that "Ron Rawls no longer works for the Office of the Auditor" and that all communications between the CPA firm and the Office of the Auditor should be directed to Auditor Pasion. To my knowledge, the council's investigator provided substantial documentation regarding the retaliation to the County Council in mid-November 2012. Again, however, no discernible action was taken to stop the retaliation.


Consequently, I was left sitting in a small windowless office with no audit work assignments from mid-August 2012 through my last day of work, on January 7,2013. These working conditions and the continuing retaliation and hostile work environment became so intolerable that I felt I had been constructively discharged from my employment.

Quite the tale of fear and loathing but hardly unique in the annuls of Kaua`i County.

The slew of EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) complaints and resulting "right to sue" letters- a few of which sprang forth from the actions of Iseri herself- stand as testimony to the fact that the county "just doesn't get it."

In fact the line of former employees that are trying to submit their cases to the EEOC to obtain the required determination to file suit is so long that finding local attorneys to take the cases is at best difficult and sometimes impossible because so many have conflicts-of-interest, having sued many of the same supervisors and department heads before on behalf of various other clients.

For completeness we've included the rest of the claim which discusses the damages Rawls was/is seeking.

Thus, I have lost, at a minimum, the following money and income due directly to Mr. Pasion's unlawful retaliation:


Increase in monthly expenses:
Expense Category Kaua'i Oahu
Net Increase in Monthly Expenses
Rent $ 850 $ 1,850 $ 1,000
Utilities: Electricity, and Cable TV 0 150 150
Parking at state parking garage 0 50 50
Groceries, household items 160 260 100
Meals out 200 280 80
Inter-island flights 0 220 220
Cab fares to/from HNL or parking at HNL 0 80 80
Golf 60 180 120
Total $ 1,800


On average, my general living costs in Honolulu are approximately $1,800 per month more than my cost of living on Kauai. This equates to $21,600 per year. I have nine working years remaining before my planned retirement age of 65, and therefore the projected additional cost for me to live and work in Honolulu until I reach retirement age is $194,400.


In addition, I believe my future earnings potential has been significantly damaged. As an auditor for the Office of the Auditor on Kaua'i, I was the likely candidate to advance into the audit manager position after Lani Nakazawa retired. And I was a likely candidate to be selected for the county auditor position upon Mr. Pasion's retirement. The annual salary for the county's audit manager position is currently $103,000 per year and the annual salary for the county auditor position is nearly $115,000 per year, whereas my current annual salary as an audit manager for the Office of the State Auditor in Honolulu is $91,000. Therefore, I have lost additional future earnings potential in the amount of $12,000 to $24,000 per year. Using $18,000 per year as an average, this equates to an additional $162,000.


Together, my lost earnings potential and the additional cost of living and working in Honolulu until retirement age can be reasonably projected to be $356,400.


I am hereby making a claim against the County in this amount ($356,400). As I incur attorney's fees to protect my right to work in a place that is free from illegal activity and retaliation for reporting the same, my demand my substantially increase. I am requesting that the County engage in dialogue with my attorney, Daniel Hempey, within 30 days of receiving this claim.


April 8,2013


The story about Rawls' claim was originally reported and his statement posted by Joan Conrow last May 31 but seemingly none of Iseri's minions- nor the conspiracy theorists- have bothered to read the claim... unless of course they simply chose to ignore it. We haven't heard of any even attempting to refute it.


We don't know what the council has found in the many executive sessions over the past year. We don't even know if Rawls' statement is true or made up out of whole cloth. Certainly some of it is verifiable and if sworn depositions are taken one would have to wonder how far Iseri, Pasion and their backers would go to protect them. Perjury is after all a serious crime.


But the notion that the council is protecting the mayor is patently ludicrous. The council is made up of seven individuals who, to varying degrees, support and oppose the mayor many times depending on the issue although permanent grudges and feuds are commonplace.


And there's certainly no love lost between Iseri and Mayor Carvalho or certain other councilmembers. Rapozo has been a proxy for Iseri in almost all matters before the council which may go a long way to explaining what the hold-up in dismissing Pasion is all about.


But to think that councilmembers would all agree to coverup crimes during official (and tape recorded) meetings is nonsensical, especially when one considers how well the narrative of Iseri's political alliances and her past alleged crimes- which include multiple alleged abuses of her prosecutorial powers and retaliation against those who tried to expose them- mesh with Rawls' allegations.


But the "don't confuse me with the facts" crowd will no doubt ignore and try to defame Rawls even though his account is the one thing that makes sense through it all.


(Note: the text of Rawls' sworn statement was derived by using optical character recognition software on the PDF linked above. Although we reviewed it for accuracy OCR can contain "typos.")

 
*(Correction: Shaylene Iseri was no longer on the council when Ernie Passion was appointed to the position of County Auditor. We apologize for the error which has been corrected.)

STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE MONTHS

STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE MONTHS: It not something we'd often admit to but occasionally watching a good political fight can be almost as stimulating as illicit sex.

The emotions behind the charges and counter charges of two combatants and the laughingly-obvious concerted half-truths and outright lies all leading up to an orgasmic first Tuesday in November, then, when it's over we clean it up and go back to our normal boring life.

Most of the time.

When the arguably all-time most entertaining of local campaigns- this year's often indecipherable machination of former Kaua`i Prosecuting Attorney Shaylene Iseri Carvalho's reelection campaign- came to an end we thought all we'd have were the sweet memories.

Even when an executive session item on last week's council agenda referred to a settlement of one of those on the long list of harassment complaints against Iseri- this time the one by now-rehired deputy prosecutor Rebecca Vogt- we didn't expect a "for old time's sake" post-coital, spittle-filled rant from the Queen of Xanadu (ask around).

Yet there she was on our screen (7 hours 25 minutes in), doing her best Captain Queeg impression... all that was missing were the steel balls and the claim of "that's where I had them.. with the strawberries."

Yes it's all a conspiracy folks- County Attorney Al Castillo, her opponent and now Prosecuting Attorney Justin Kollar, Hizzonnah Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr, the council, Vogt herself and a cast of dozens- they wanted her out and would do anything to achieve their goal of stopping Iseri from protecting Kaua`i... presumably from the likes of them.

For those who missed some of the details of the federal suit revealed when veteran Kaua`i reporter Joan Conrow described them in her KauaiEclectic blog, last September 20, she wrote:

The complaint, filed Tuesday in Kauai Circuit Court on behalf of deputy Rebecca Vogt, raises concerns about equal pay, gender discrimination, free speech rights and county ethics violations. It names both the county and Iseri-Carvalho, who was sued by Councilman Tim Bynum yesterday.

Vogt alleges she was pressured to support Iseri-Carvalho, who rewarded employees she considered loyal. When Vogt did not actively campaign, she claims she was passed over for a raise, while five less-experienced male deputies who supported the prosecutor got hefty pay hikes ...

She says Iseri-Carvalho handed out the pay raises even though in March — following “sparse attendance at her major fundraiser” — she had told staff that she would be cutting salaries due to “budget cuts.”

When Vogt complained about the arbitrary nature of the raises, and their apparent unethical link to campaign support, she says Iseri-Carvalho retaliated against her, giving her more work, denying her comp time and stripping her of the authority to independently approve plea offers.

Vogt maintains Iseri-Carvalho violated the county Code of Ethics, which prohibits county employees from using their positions to secure unwarranted privileges, advantages and treatment for themselves or others. She also says her right to free speech was violated when the prosecutor punished her for speaking up.

The complaint alleges Iseri-Carvalho's actions were “willful, wanton, outrageous and oppressive,” and that Vogt suffered job insecurity, income loss, humiliation, and emotional and physical anguish as a result. The extent of the retaliation forced her to take a medical leave of absence, she alleges.

Vogt, who began working for the Office of Prosecuting Attorney in August 2010, says she had always received favorable work reviews.

Iseri claims that, as part of this vast conspiracy, the mastermind, mousey little CA Castillo- with whom Iseri had been feuding ever since she stopped answering the council's budget-time questions regarding her home-made sentencing diversion program- went off and arbitrarily decided all on his own to settle Vogt's suit without any other input, especially from Iseri herself.

So is it true? Could it possibly be true? Well, not exactly.

Because in cases of employment discrimination and wrongful terminations, you are not allowed to just go to circuit court and sue.

You are first required to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC then does its own investigation of the complaint, including requesting that the alleged offender's employer respond to the complaint... something, by the way, the county has a long history of not doing. Then, if, and only if, the EEOC finds that there is reason to believe an offense occurred, it gives permission to the complainant to sue in circuit court.

That means that it would have been impossible for Castillo to act totally on his own to settle the suit just to make Iseri look bad and insure Kollar's election because the fact that a suit was filed in 5th Circuit Court meant that the EEOC- which refuses to discuss cases, which are all "confidential" by law- had already found that there was reason to believe the complaint was valid.

This of course is just one factor. In this week's tirade before the council (which she submitted in writing to the council so it is public record now) Iseri kept repeating that no one asked her about "the settlement." But it was hard not to notice that she kept referring to "the settlement" rather than the facts in the case which presumably she has had the opportunity to refute- something she hasn't done publicly.

But admittedly we don't know, which of course is the point here.

What we do know is that Iseri was- and still is as far as we know- not talking to anyone about anything because early in 2012 she "lawyered up" and got the county to hire her an attorney rather than answer questions from the council when it asked her for the same kind of "due diligence" budgetary information it seeks every year from all department heads.

So is it over? Was Wednesday's testimony simply one last hopped-up harangue from our dear "long time comin', long time gone," Miss Loodacris Lilly?.. a final "say it don't spray it" moment from one of the most entertainingly delusional public figures Kaua`i has ever seen- and most likely will ever see again?

Guess we should just light up a cigarette knowing we'll always have POHAKU.

THE TITANIC DECK CHAIRS NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD

THE TITANIC DECK CHAIRS NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD: The swirling cesspool of sexual harassment that is the government of County of Kaua`i has made filing lawsuits into a cottage industry. The state Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) probably has it's own little Kaua`i County corner office that's been kept busy for years.

But one little turd has resurfaced once again after many though it had permanently sunk to the bottom years ago.

There it is on this week's council agenda- a request for $15,000 to fight the case of Kathleen M. Ah Quin vs. County of Kaua’i, Department of Transportation, et al., (Civil No. CVO8-00507 JMS BMK, U.S. District Court).

What seemed at the time to be just another sexual harassment suit has turned into a case of protecting one of the most infamous of the "protected" cronies in Kaua`i government- former Transportation Agency head and current human resources honcho, Janine Rapozo.

For those who missed our still-for-some-reason exclusive December 2008 report on the details of Ah Quin's suit, Rapozo was accused of maintaining a pervasive hostile atmosphere in the agency toward female bus drivers.

In the interim, of course Rapozo was- and still is as far as the county auditor's report is concerned- at the center of the alleged gas theft scandal, having been arrested late last October by now disgraced and departed Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho, who herself has cost the county a pretty penny in settlements of EEOC charges of racial and sexual harassment along with other hostile workplace violations.

Although the real culprit in the gas theft case seems to have been Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. according to the auditors report, Rapozo was selected for indictment but was released from the pokey after it became apparent the number of grand jury votes to indict her were somehow miscounted.

How could that have happened?

In going back over our 2008 piece on Ah Quin's suit against Rapozo, what caught out eye before the details were presented was what happened when the council was asked for $50,000 that November to fight the suit. At the time, Iseri had just completed a couple of terms on the council and was Prosecutor-elect, having won the election after running unopposed.

On December 8 2008 we wrote:

Bus driver Kathleen M. Ah Quin is suing the Kaua`i Department of Transpiration- specifically Executive on Transportation Janine Rapozo- for what appears to be a pervasive hostile atmosphere in the agency toward women.

Just as appalling as the actual discrimination is the fact the lawsuit was filed only because a year went by after Ah Quin’s filing of Hawai`i Civil Rights Commission (HCRC) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaints without any attempt by the county to respond or even attempt to investigate the charges.

At a special council meeting called at the end of November the County Attorney at the time Matthew Pyun asked the council for $50,000 to hire an outside attorney to respond to the suit.

And outgoing councilpersons Shaylene Iseri Carvalho and Mel Rapozo (no relation) were livid.

“You’ve got to read this” shrieked Iseri waving a copy of the suit over her head. “The County Attorney’s office has not engaged in any investigation (for a year) and now wants to hire an investigator” when there’s only 20 days to respond.

She told the council that she would not use taxpayer money without a commitment to investigate complaints when they are filed, saying she was “disgusted” and how the situation was “typical of the wasteful spending” of the administration and specifically the county attorney’s office.

She also questioned why it would cost $50,000 to respond since the first 20 day response is really a pro-forma type of thing that should rightfully be done “in-house” before hiring an outside attorney if it becomes necessary to defend the suit.

Councilmember Rapozo- who with Iseri voted against the approval of the funds even after the request was amended to $20,000- described how no one with the county ever spoke to any of the employees names in the suit or investigated any of the incidents.

Apparently Iseri- predictably?- wasn’t particularly concerned about the content of the suit itself. But silly us, we thought the public ought to know what was being alleged against Janine Rapozo- who by the way is the wife of Mayor Carvalho's current Parks and Recreation Department Director Lenny Rapozo. L. Rapozo stepped into his job with no experience at all after his stint as Carvalho's campaign manager.

The actual content of the suit, which the county is apparently still contesting despite rumors it had been dismissed, was pretty disgusting when we presented them in 2008. But the fact that Janine Rapozo was not only not fired or even reprimanded but rather promoted to her current Personnel Department post- or actually "Human Resources" Department after the name was changed recently without any apparent change in the way the department is run- in unfathomably repugnant... except of course in the Minotaur’s labyrinth of Kaua`i County government where it's just standard operating procedure.

Add to that what the auditor alleges was her part in the gas "theft" and it's a case study of corruption in Kaua`i County government.

Back to our 2008 piece for the full story. As Ah Quin tells it:

The complaint itself depicts a transportation agency where females were routinely passed over for full time jobs because, as Ah Quin was told by another named female employee, Janine Rapozo “doesn’t like females” after Rapozo had ordered the employee to “keep her door closed” when she was working as a dispatcher because male drivers would stop by to talk to her.

That employee wasn’t the only one to warn Ah Quin. According to the suit another named female bus driver also told her to watch out for Rapozo because “likes her males, she does not like females”.

There are only three female employees in the agency and 17 males according to the suit.

Despite 11 years of experience and her more than adequate licensing it seems Ah Quin couldn’t get promoted to a full time position while men were given the jobs when they opened up.

The suit describes many incidents where despite the fact that her qualification surpassed theirs, Rapozo hired or promoted men to full time positions passing up Ah Quin and other women.

It also tells how on occasion drivers were brought in from outside the department and even county government itself to fill the full time positions in violation of standard county personnel department policy.

Ah Quin goes on to list eight males who were promoted over her as well as other incidents and examples of Rapozo’s gender bias.

When Ah Quin began to question why, despite a gleaming job performance evaluation she was passed up for promotion Rapozo started to engage in a program of retaliation, according to the suit by cutting Ah Quin’s hours.

Incidents described include one where passenger complaints was treated differently when filed against male drivers and another of a reprimand of Ah Quin for wearing her uniform shirt from another part time driving job while male employees similarly attired went unchallenged.

Ah Quin says she finally asked Rapozo “why don’t you like me. You never did like me. You keep ignoring me. You ignore me in the office. I keep asking myself what did I do to you? I know you don’t like me”.

Rapozo allegedly replied “because I have had problems with every female driver that has been hired.”

The suit also lists incidents where other named female drivers were harassed in a similar manner as well as misrepresentations by Rapozo as the fact that there was "no money in the budget” for expanding hours – a statement followed immediately by ads in the newspaper soliciting new drivers.

In another, Rapozo scolded Ah Quin for not picking up a person who was sitting in a wheelchair in front of the gift shop at Wilcox hospital which was not a designated bus stop, telling her she should have stopped the bus, gotten out and asked the person if they wanted to board the bus.

Ah Quin responded that there are persons in wheel chairs all over the place all the time around the hospital and that she was never told to stop, get out and ask each one if they needed the bus.

Rapozo has been a long-time, loyal, appointed crony in the past two administrations and has been shifted around various jobs before landing in the transportation agency overseeing the Kaua`i Bus.

To no one’s surprise she was retained in her position by Mayor Bernard Carvalho when he took office this month without any investigation of the complaints or lawsuit.

The council has scheduled an executive session Thursday to discuss the matter and they are required by law to reveal whether they okayed the expenditure in open session.

BIG TIME

BIG TIME: It's not often that these year's "best of " and "worst of" lists reach down deep to select local dignitaries but you might have seen this one coming.

Coming in at #39 on eBossWatch.com's 2012 list of America’s Worst Bosses is none other than defeated and disgraced Kaua`i Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho. In bestowing the "honor," they cited deputy prosecutor Shannon Weigel's $120,000 EEOC award for racial discrimination although they failed to mention the many other infamous abuses Iseri heaped upon her employees.

eBossWatch described it this way:

Hawaii’s Kauai County has agreed to pay $120,000 to settle an EEOC racial harassment lawsuit.

Shannon Weigel, who is white, claims that she was subjected to a racially hostile work environment by the prosecuting attorney, Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho.

According to the EEOC, Iseri-Carvalho made numerous derogatory comments to Weigel on an ongoing basis. Iseri-Carvalho allegedly told Weigel that she needed to assimilate more into the local Hawaiian culture and break up with her boyfriend at the time, who is also white, in favor of a local man.

Timothy Riera, director of the EEOC’s Honolulu Office, said, “The workplace is no place for derogatory remarks pertaining to race or any other protected basis, and it is important for an employer to take immediate corrective action when faced with illegal harassment. We commend the County of Kauai for expeditiously resolving this matter and agreeing to measures which will prevent and deal with both harassment and discrimination on the job.”

According to the site, eBossWatch was founded in 2007 and "is a popular career resource that helps

people evaluate potential employers and avoid hostile workplaces."

The 2012 top 50 list:

include(s) a college dean, four restaurant owners, a fire department chief, five doctors, a judge, three county prosecuting attorneys, and a state attorney general.

To date, the 2012 America’s Worst Bosses have cost their employers over $41 million in monetary damages and lawsuit settlement payments. Of this amount, the 2012 worst bosses in the public sector have cost their respective taxpayers over $21 million.

WHEEL OF MISFORTUNE

WHEEL OF MISFORTUNE: It's not as if it's unique to Kaua`i. The expression, "It's not what you know but who you know," wasn't coined in Lihu`e. It just seems like it sometimes.

While it's been that way since the island's haole sugar planters who comprised the Board of Supervisors appointed the mayor, under the current administration cronyism is not just the mothers' milk of our local politics but the very air it breathes.

That's why it so scrumptious to watch them eat their young as two leviathans (as it were) of local politics, Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. and Police Chief Darryl Perry, engage in one of those 1890's bare-knuckled, you-take-a-punch-I-take-a-punch boxing matches being staged over once-solid alliances that have turned inward on the body politic like antibodies rejecting a transplanted organ.

The battle over who has the right to discipline the chief of police, the mayor or the police commission, is not new. As a matter of fact the events that followed the last time a skirmish was fought (although it never went to court)- when in the late 90's Mayor Marianne Kusaka got Chief George Freitas' secretary to take away his gun and badge ostensibly because he gave his fiancee a ride in his official police vehicle- has led directly, in a strange karmic way, to today's standoff.

For those who have been doing a Rip Van Winkle recently, the commission vs mayor question came up earlier this year again when Perry allegedly ignored sexual harassment charges against one of his two assistant chiefs and coverup charges against the other. Carvalho felt he had to step in and suspend the chief because the county charter doesn't directly address who has the right to discipline the chief but does give him the right to discipline all department heads.

The court, in the person of former councilmember and now Circuit Court Judge Randall Valenciano, ruled in favor of the mayor, saying there was no ambiguity in the charter despite the fact that it says that the commission hires and fires the chief.

The commission is now reportedly appealing the ruling despite their promise, according to earlier reports, to let Valenciano decide without any appeal. And for some crazy reason (coming from

the person whose initials are MR) the county council has just voted to fund the appeal as they did with the original case.

But back to the chain of craters from Chiefs Freitas to Perry with a speed bump named Lum thrown in in between.

Readers of this space, and of course the book KPD Blue (see left rail) by former Honolulu Star-Bulletin Kaua`i Bureau Chief Anthony Sommer, know the story of how Perry coveted the Kaua`i chief job. He and his allies engineered their way to ousting Chief KC Lum-  an "outsider" (as was Freitas) from Kansas City (despite his Asian ancestry) who wasn't about to give deference to the tradition of drug dealers and other assorted bad apples on the force.

This was known as "destroying morale"... no, really.

Those allies included Mayors Kusaka and, because he had no appetite for going up against the old boys network upon which the crony network relies, Mayor Bryan Baptiste when he took the county reins in 2002.

Although Baptiste had only one real crony- Bryan Baptiste- he saw the value others gave it and always used it to his advantage.

And included on the list of allies was, of course, County Council Chair Kaipo Asing, the paternalistic godfather of local government who saw to it that the Board of Ethics removed Lum on trumped up charges in order to grease the skid for putting Perry in the top spot.

That was the position that the GOBs (now GOBAGs since gender has little to do with who is and who is not a good old boy or girl these days) who felt the locally-born-and-raised Perry was cheated out of his rightful position when, after Freitas "retired" (with a reported $250,000 settlement/buy-out), two upstart police commissioners- Chair Michael Ching and Vice Chair Carol Furtado- decided that the only way to end the blatant corruption and moral ineptitude described in KPD Blue was to appoint an "outsider", Lum, who had served for many years on the force.

Bad move guys. Who knew? (Answer: everybody but them).

So when Baptiste ate himself into a deadly heart-attack (and actually tried to cover-up his own death for two or three days), Carvalho stepped into a county where Perry was the new god of "raised morale" in the department. And, in a "my crony is your crony and your crony is my crony" move, he appointed all Perry supporters to the already pro-Perry commission that had helped engineer the ouster of Lum, Ching and Furtado... although she actually resigned after demanding a public "trial" in front of the ethics board where the case against all three was then seen by all to be the politically-based purge it really was all along.

Carvalho has always played the crony system for all it was worth. And it has worked for him. Those who support and even fall on their sword for him, and past purveyors of the system, get rewarded with life-long, high-paying, county department head or deputy jobs, like the recently-in-the-news Janine Rapozo... but that's another story for another time.

The very last thing Carvalho thought he would have to worry about was a renegade police commission because he never saw the conflict with Perry coming. But when he was put in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position when he was told of Perry's alleged coverup of the harassment charges that had gone to the EEOC already, he chose to protect himself from the potential public outcry over a coverup of the sexual harassment charges against the chief, who apparently tried to intimidate the complainant.

So here we are- the police commissioners, when pushed to show their true allegiance, chose Perry, leaving Carvalho with his pants down and his you-know-whats exposed and swingin' in the breeze (of public opinion anyway)... exactly what he had hoped to avoid.

To say "what goes around comes around" is an understatement and it all leaves those of us looking for a good chuckle being rewarded for our patience.

We imagine Lum, Ching and Furtado- and of course Sommer- are similarly amused.

SEPARATING THE WHITE FROM THE RICE

SEPARATING THE WHITE FROM THE RICE: It can't be a surprise to anyone who has followed our coverage of"Rice-Cooker-Gate"- going back to November of 2010 - that Councilmember Tim Bynum has finally filed a malicious prosecution suit against Kaua`i Prosecuting Attorney Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho.

The content of the suit- the "Facts" section of which are presented below, interspersed with background material and comments- won't shock our readers very much either. But for anyone who hasn't been able or attempted to put our real-time exposure of Iseri's blatant abuses of power into an even more horrific narrative, Bynum's attorneys- including local lawyer Dan Hempey and former State Attorney General Marjorie Bronster- have served up for Iseri what many hope will be some measure of the proverbial "dish best served cold"

The barely-scratching-the-surface coverage in the local and Honolulu papers failed to go into any depth, as could be expected. And that left former Kaua`i Council Chair Kaipo Asing- the mastermind behind the political hatchet job against Bynum- pretty much unidentified.

While his role is central to the plot and he is identified in the narrative of the suit as a driving force behind the farce, he isn't named as a defendant, so his role has yet to be widely exposed.

For the underpinnings of the whole story you can use the search box at the top of this page to go back and read how much of the basis for the suit began with Bynum's challenges of the paternalistic power exercised by the once beloved and eventually corrupt and reviled "Uncle Chair," as Bynum and others had taken to calling Asing.

In brief, toward the end of his career, Asing, the one time "voice of the people," began to abuse his evolving power until the wheels of Kaua`i government meshed solely at his whim.

Bynum, along with now-retired Councilperson Lani Kawahara, dared to challenge Asing's power grab simply by asking for things like adherence to the state's sunshine and open records laws, general transparency and public access to documents. They even had to do battle to place items on the agenda, something that Asing had come to deny councilmembers on matters which Asing didn't want publicly addressed.

When she was a councilmember, Iseri, along with fellow Councilperson Mel Rapozo, had become the chief minions of the Minotaur, owing much of their political careers to Asing's benevolence.

Nothing was too much for Asing to ask.

Going deeper though, much of this whole debacle has roots- as does everything seemingly on Kaua`i- in the infamous "Lap Dancer" episode, as described in the book KPD Blue by Tony Sommer which is serialized at this site (see left rail). That led to the infamous Executive Session (ES) 177 where Rapozo, a former Kaua`i Police Department (KPD) officer who was present in the room at police headquarters that night she was fondled by officers, went into a rant about the incident and other potentially explosive internal KPD matters.

Despite orders from the Office of Information Practices (OIP) that the potentially explosive minutes be released publicly, Asing successfully went all the way to the Hawai`i Supreme Court (HSC) to protect Rapozo from exposure, leaving Rapozo- and his ally Iseri of course- forever politically indebted to Asing.

In addition to everything else, Iseri had her own personal feud going with Bynum, much of it seemingly a part of Iseri's well known "anti-haole (Caucasian)" attitude- a mindset finally manifesting itself in the recent settlement of an EEOC racial harassment case.

Another factor in Iseri's enmity for Bynum was her opposition to Bynum's measure which ended Transient Vacation Rentals (TVRs) on Agriculturally zoned land but allowed existing ones to be grandfathered in. It was a major issue on Kaua`i and passage of the resulting ordinance left Iseri, Rapozo and Asing seething and licking their wounds.

So Iseri needed very little prodding to join Rapozo in doing the dirty work for "team Asing" during the well-documented good governance "Battle Royale" between Bynum and Asing.

That set up the "set up," so to speak, and Iseri set on a path to "get" Bynum after she successfully ran for Prosecuting Attorney in 2008.

The "Facts" section of the lawsuit lays out a chilling tale of how Planning Department Supervising Inspector Sheila Miyake trumped up charges against Bynum at the behest of Iseri and ultimately Asing, both of whom are identified by Miyake as apparent co-initiators of the scheme to issue the notice of a building violation.

Missing is the back story of Asing's years-long quest to silence Bynum who had been a thorn in Asing's side on the council as we briefly touched on above. Those seeking to read the whole sordid tale can make good use of the search box at the top of this page, inserting names and terms we've used here in order to follow the blow-by-blow accounts we've presented over the past almost three years.

The detailed "facts," as presented in suit itself (in italics), are a worth a look too. So, interspersed with a little background, here they are.

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Beginning in 2008, BYNUM, following legal guidance offered by the Kaua'i County Attorney's Office, voted for certain amendments to Kaua'i zoning laws with which Defendants MIYAKE and ISERI-CARVALHO disagreed.

BYNUM's right to vote as he did was protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and his votes related to matters of public concern.

Defendant ISERI-CARVALHO left employment with the Kaua'i County Council after she began her term as Kaua'i County Prosecuting Attorney in 2008.

Defendant ISERI-CARVALHO has a history of animosity toward Plaintiff. She harbors personal animosity toward the Plaintiff. She vehemently disagreed with Plaintiffs vote for certain amendments to Kaua'i zoning laws beginning in 2008.

Defendant MIYAKE has a history of animosity toward Plaintiff. She harbors personal animosity toward the Plaintiff.

The "amendment" was a successful effort by Bynum to "grandfather" existing Transient Vacation Rentals (TVRs) on agriculturally zoned land but ban new ones.

From there Bynum's suit sets up some of the events that led Iseri to go after Bynum

2010 was an election year for the Kaua'i County Council. After the election, it was known that Deputy County Attorney Michael Dahilig would replace the sitting Director of the Kaua'i Planning Department, Ian Costa as of December 1,2010.

Prior to the 2010 election, Attorneys Michael Dahilig and Ian Jung were employed as deputy county attorneys for the Defendant COUNTY OF KAUAI. These two attorneys were tasked with, among other things, advising the various employees of the PLANNING DEPARTMENT, including but not limited to Defendant MIYAKE, as to the proper interpretation and enforcement of the COUNTY OF KAUAI'S Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance ("CZO") as well as regarding the ability and/or constraints on Planning Officials to enter private property for the purpose of conducting inspections related to zoning compliance.

At all times pertinent to this matter, and to this day, Plaintiff was the owner of a single family home in Kapaa, Hawai'i.

Pursuant to the Kaua'i CZO, it is illegal to convert a single-family dwelling unit into a multi-family dwelling unit without an appropriate permit.

In 2005, BYNUM built an addition onto his home to accommodate the four (4) generations of family members living there at the time. The drawings for the addition went through informal and formal review by the Planning Department. Prior to permitting, a representative of the Planning Department informed BYNUM that the addition, as designed, was legal as long as no stove was installed. The plans for the addition were approved by the Planning Department, after being circulated to and approved by various departments including the Planning Department and a valid building permit was issued. The County sent inspectors during construction, and conducted a final inspection, after construction, after which the Plaintiff was issued a certificate of occupancy.

A laundry room separated the original home from the permitted addition. The door between the original home and the addition had a lock at the time the addition was approved and permitted. The permitted addition also contained a counter top/bar and a sink, as well as several electrical receptacles.

In March and April 2010, plaintiff BYNUM allowed his daughter's friend, Victory Yokotake, to occupy a room in and reside in the BYNUM family home.

While residing at the BYNUM home, Ms. Yokotake had access to the family kitchen.

In early 2010 a female came to the BYNUM residence and allegedly assaulted Victory Yokotake. A police officer came to the house to investigate. The police officer generated a report that incorrectly characterized the addition to the BYNUM home as a separate apartment.

At the time it was generated, this police report regarding the assault of Ms. Yokotake was a protected and confidential document, only to be lawfully viewed by members of the police department and the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney.

But even though there was nothing illegal in what Bynum was doing, Iseri was determined to bend the facts and the law- to the point of breaking- in order to put an end to Bynum's political career and, she hoped, to convict him of a supposed crime... one that didn't exist.

In early 2010 an unknown person who had lawful access to the police report informed Defendants MIYAKE and ISERI-CARVALHO that s/he believed that BYNUM was "renting out a portion of his residence" illegally.

Defendants MIYAKE and ISERI-CARVALHO each knew or should have known at the time of the report that there was nothing illegal about plaintiff renting out a portion of his home to his daughter's friend.

Upon receiving the allegation that BYNUM was renting out a portion of his residence, Defendant MIYAKE wrote down the reporting person's name as "Kalani Martin" although, upon information and belief, she knew that not to be true. MIYAKE also claimed on the report form that she generated that the reporting person "wants to remain anonymous." Upon information and belief, "Kalani Martin" never made the subject report to MIYAKE, but his name was used falsely by MIYAKE as cover for the true reporting person. MIYAKE knew the true identity of the reporting person. Nonetheless, she treated the report as an anonymous complaint.

Defendant MIYAKE has stated that she acted on the subject report because, inter alia, the Kaua'i County Council Chair, "Kaipo Asing, was asking."

Government Inspectors at the Defendant PLANNING DEPARTMENT are not legally authorized, absent a warrant or an exception to the warrant requirement, to enter onto private property to investigate an anonymous complaint that someone is renting out a portion of his or her home, especially where renting out a portion of one's home is not illegal.

Next is the smoking gun which we reported on years ago- an email from Iseri showing her to be the one who contemplated and initiated action in the matter before it was ever on Miyake's radar screen- or for that matter anyone in the planning department.

(http://parxnewsdaily.blogspot.com/2010/11/pnn-bynum-denies-report-of-illegal-unit.html)

Iseri has repeatedly denied she was in anyway involved in the matter until the planning department came to her with the supposed "violation" which the email disproves.

On or about April 7, 2010, before the Planning Department had instigated any investigation of the "anonymous" complaint, defendant Prosecuting Attorney ISERI-CARVALHO emailed then-Director Ian Costa of the PLANNING DEPARTMENT, stating: "Aloha Ian, We received information to corroborate an anonymous complaint dated March 26,2010 that was sent to the Planning Department and our office, that Councilmember Tim BYNUM was renting out his house, or a portion thereof. Can you let me know if renting out a portion of his residence is illegal given his land status, and what ordinance/statute would he be violating by doing so? Please advise. Much Mahalo, Shay."

Mr. Costa responded to Ms. ISERI-CARVALHO's email, advising her in relevant part: "The CZO really doesn't prohibit renting portions of structures. Even the issue of "lock-outs" is not addressed. The CZO does not dictate where locks are permitted and not permitted (thank goodness!). The issue would be whether the area, in question creates a "multi-family" dwelling. What was permitted is a "single-family" dwelling based on "one kitchen". If a second kitchen (area used for the preparation of food) is present, then a violation would exist for an illegal "multi-family" dwelling unit. I understand Sheila has been assisting and monitoring. Let me know if we can be of farther assistance."

Next is a description of Miyake's tangled web of illegal activity- activity which, she had been repeatedly informed, was anything but lawful.

Despite the Planning Director's correct interpretation of the CZO, i.e. that the allegedly anonymous compliant did not allege any illegal activity, Defendant MIYAKE nonetheless instructed her subordinate, Planning Inspector Patrick Henriques, to enter the BYNUM property and search for potential zoning violations. MIYAKE made no attempt to obtain a search warrant, or even consult with anyone about the necessity of a warrant before entering private property for the purpose of conducting a search for zoning violations.

Prior to searching Plaintiffs property without a warrant, MIYAKE made no attempt to contact BYNUM or anyone else in his household to schedule an inspection or offer him a chance to consent to or refuse the search.

In early April 2010 Defendant MIYAKE and Inspector Henriques entered BYNUM's private property without a warrant, without notice and without permission, went through a gate, walked up a wheelchair ramp in the rear of BYNUM's home, looked in his windows and took photographs of the inside of his

home.

While conducting the warrantless search of BYNUM's home, Defendant MIYAKE allegedly observed a portable rice cooker and a refrigerator in the addition/family room in the family home.

Defendant MIYAKE specifically timed her entry on to Plaintiffs private property to a time and date when she knew Plaintiff would not be home - MIYAKE knew BYNUM would be attending a Kaua'i County Council Meeting at the time.

But later when it was apparent Miyake was in a deep hole she did what most criminals tend to do... keep digging... and digging... and digging...

During a subsequent investigation into the allegations of zoning violations of BYNUM's property by the State Attorney General, Defendant MIYAKE claimed to a Special Deputy Attorney General, Richard Minatoya, that the previous Kaua'i County Attorney, Matthew Pyun had trained her that she could lawfully search a private home without the need for a search warrant and without notice or consent of the property owner, as long as the private home was associated with a use permit.

Upon information and belief, County Attorney Pyun never actually taught MIYAKE that she could conduct a warrantless search of a private residence, without notice to the property owner based solely on the existence of a use permit on the property.

After MIYAKE searched Plaintiffs house and allegedly observed the rice cooker, she consulted with deputy County Attorneys Jung and Dahilig about what she had seen. Each of those deputy County Attorneys advised MIYAKE that she had trespassed onto the BYNUM property, thereby engaging in an illegal warrantless search. One or both of the two deputy County Attorneys also advised MIYAKE that the presence of a rice cooker and a refrigerator in the lawfully permitted family room did not constitute a second "kitchen" within the meaning of the CZO.

Despite having been clearly informed by COUNTY lawyers that BYNUM had not committed a crime by allowing a tenant who allegedly put a rice cooker and a refrigerator in BYNUM's lawfully permitted addition, and despite having been informed by County lawyers that she had illegally trespassed onto the BYNUM property and engaged in an illegal warrantless search, Defendant MIYAKE nonetheless caused an Zoning Notice Violation to be issued to Plaintiff by the COUNTY OF KAUAI.

Now as anyone who has even deal with the planning department on this knows, what constitutes a kitchen often depends on what the planner had for breakfast as much as anything else and Miyake took full advantage of that. But one thing was always clear- to be a separate apartment there has to be a stove installed. The suit goes on to tell the sordid tale.

At all times relevant to this Complaint, the KAUAI PLANNING DEPARTMENT maintained an official policy or custom of inadequate training and supervision of its planning inspectors, with respect to what constitutes a "kitchen," the legal standards and requirements for searching private property, and Kaua'i planning inspectors have no uniform or written standards other than the CZO to as to what is or is not a kitchen.

Defendant MIYAKE has stated that "each inspector has his own kingdom" with respect to such determinations. There are no written guidelines for inspectors to follow when interpreting the Kaua'i CZO with respect to the definition of "kitchen" and such determinations are made ad hoc, arbitrarily and, in this case, capriciously and maliciously.

52. On or about April 15, 2010, MIYAKE directed Inspector Henriques to prepare a Zoning Violation Notice ("ZVN") to be issued against BYNUM, using a standard PLANNING DEPARTMENT template.

So, determined to pound the square peg into the round hole, Miyake kept digging, bringing Chair Asing's henchman, County clerk Peter Nakamura, up-to-date.

On or about April 15,2010, MIYAKE emailed the County Clerk, Peter Nakamura, with the subject line that read "4 your eyes only" and attached a copy of the April 15, 2010 ZVN. BYNUM was not informed of the ZVN for nearly one month later on May 12, 2010.

Defendant MIYAKE sent the email copy of the ZVN to the County Clerk, with the intent that it would later be made public and used against BYNUM in the coming 2010 election.

The Planning Department's April 15, 2010 ZVN form, alleged that a zoning violation had been found to "exist" on the Plaintiffs property. Such language, alleging the actual existence of a violation of the CZO, is necessary for such a Zoning Violation Notice to have legal effect — as due process requires the existence of an actual violation before civil or criminal prosecution for a violation of the CZO.

However, in BYNUM's case, the PLANNING DEPARTMENT caused the standard ZVN form originally issued in April 2010 to be altered on or about November 10, 2010 to change the sentence "we have found that a zoning 13 violation exists" to "we have found that a zoning violation may exist." (emphasis added).

At the time of the November 10, 2010 ZVN, there was no probable cause to believe that an actual zoning violation existed on BYNUM's property.

Upon information and belief, the Zoning Notice Violation prepared against BYNUM was the only such notice ever issued by the County of Kaua'i that had alleged a violation based on what "may" exist - instead of what actually did exist.

On or about November 10, 2010, then-Planning Director Ian Costa sent BYNUM a letter stating, "This notice shall supersede our letter dated April 15, 2010," and stating that "we believe ... violations of Chapter 8, Kaua'i County Code may exist."

The November 10, 2010 ZVN did not allege probable cause to believe that either a civil or a criminal zoning violation had occurred.

Defendant MIYAKE then sent the uniquely modified November 10, 2010 Zoning Violation Notice, which claimed only that the Planning Department "believed" that a violation "may" exist to the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney.

Prior to the uniquely altered ZVN, the PLANNING DEPARTMENT routinely cc'd ZVN's to the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney. However, until the BYNUM ZVN, the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney has never filed criminal 14 charges until and unless the Planning Department had made a specific request for such criminal charges to be filed.

So Miyake had created quite the legal mess for those around her. And Iseri's First Deputy PA Jake Delaplane was taking no chances on letting himself or his boss be the fall guy, even though Iseri was key in pushing Miyake into the hole in the first place.

In November 2010, Jacob Delaplane, Esq. worked under the supervision and direction of defendant ISERI-CARVALHO at the Kaua'i Office of the Prosecuting Attorney, as a deputy prosecuting attorney. 64. In November 2010, Defendant MIYAKE met with deputy prosecuting Attorney Delaplane to discuss the BYNUM zoning matter, in depth.

Delaplane was an attorney licensed to practice law in Hawai'i at the time he met with MIYAKE.

Delaplane secretly recorded the approximately two-hour long conversation with Defendant MIYAKE.

During the November 2010 meeting with deputy prosecuting attorney Delaplane, MIYAKE informed Delaplane that deputy county attorneys Jung and Dahilig had previously advised MIYAKE that she had illegally trespassed on the BYNUM property, and engaged in an illegal search when she entered Plaintiffs property without a warrant in April 2010 and allegedly saw the portable ricecooker inside the BYNUM family home.

A portable rice-cooker is not an "installed appliance" within the meaning of the Kaua'i CZO.

Miyake, unaware she was being set up by being taped of course, spoke freely with Delaplane who wasn't about to do jail time for anyone- Miyake, or even apparently Iseri, if it came to that.

During the November 2010 meeting with Delaplane, MIYAKE informed Delaplane that deputy county attorneys Jung and Dahilig had previously advised her that the evidence that she had allegedly observed during her warrantless search (a refrigerator and a rice-cooker in the family room addition) did not constitute a second kitchen with "installed appliances" as contemplated by the Kaua'i CZO.

During the surreptitiously recorded meeting between MIYAKE and Delaplane, MIYAKE told Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Delaplane: "It is all political but I will never say on stand that it is political. It will be my demise." The prosecution of BYNUM was indeed for political reasons. MIYAKE also opined on the secretly-recorded tape that "the good guys lost" in the 2010 election. Knowing that a new Planning Director was taking over the Planning Department as a result of the 2010 election, MIYAKE and DOE defendants then arbitrarily and capriciously issued the second ZVN against Plaintiff so that she could "cc" it to the Prosecuting Attorney just before the new Planning Director (i.e., Dahilig - the former County Attorney who had concluded that MIYAKE had trespassed, engaged in an illegal search, and who had questioned whether Plaintiffs home had a second kitchen within the meaning of the Kaua'i CZO) took office.

Finally Miyake fingered "the Godfather" naming the then Council Chair as the one at whose behest she was acting when she issued the violation notice- an action on Asing's part that, if true, would be a violation of the County Code of Ethics and punishable by fines and even jail time described in the county charter.

Mr. Kaipo Asing was the Chair or the County Council at the time the revised ZVN was issued to BYNUM.

After MIYAKE told Delaplane about the advice she had received from deputy county attorneys JUNG and DAHILIG, (regarding trespass, illegal search and the definition of kitchen) and in response to further taped questioning by Delaplane, MIYAKE stated that she and PLANNING director Ian Costa issued the ZCN in November 2010: "Because Kaipo wanted it. Kaipo was asking. And I gotta answer to the Council Chair."

In fact, Defendant MIYAKE had no obligation as a Planning Inspector to "answer" to the Council Chair as to who was charged with zoning violations by the Planning Department. To the extent that MIYAKE based her decision-making as a Planning Inspector on the malicious political wishes of the Kaua'i County Council Chair at the time, her decision to issue the ZVN was arbitrary, capricious and malicious.

The November 2010 ZVN was not a valid ZVN based on admissible evidence of an actual zoning violation, but rather was a uniquely altered document that had no legal effect, did not state probable cause, and simply alleged a "belief' that a violation "may" have existed.

The November 2010 ZVN was issued against legal advice of at least one deputy County Attorney and was instead issued for political reasons at the urging of then Kaua'i County Council chair - as established by MIYAKE's taped admissions to Delaplane.

Meanwhile, back at the OPA ranch Iseri was drunk with, among other things, power. And, she was just getting started. Her dominoes were set up, and it was finally time to knock them over

76. Despite having learned that the two deputy county attorneys who were tasked with advising the PLANNING DEPARTMENT had already advised that there was no probable cause to believe that BYNUM had violated any zoning ordinance, and despite knowing that the alleged rice cooker and refrigerator were only discovered as a result of an illegal warrantless search, and although the November 10, 2010 ZVN did not allege probable cause to believe that either a civil or a criminal zoning violation had occurred - Defendant ISERI-CARVALHO waited approximately one year (until the next election-year cycle) and then filed four criminal zoning charges against BYNUM in the District Court for the 5th Judicial Circuit.

Two of the four alleged criminal acts were based on the alleged presence of a rice-cooker and a refrigerator approximately one year and a half years earlier, and the other two charges were based on the alleged presence of a lock on the door between the addition and the original house - even though Planning Director Costa had already informed Defendant ISERI-CARVALHO that there was no law governing which doors inside a private home could or could not have locks, and even though the subject lock was the same lock that existed at the time the addition was permitted and the certificate of occupancy issued, years earlier.

Oblivious to everything but getting Bynum, Iseri had set the seeds of her own demise because there was "no there there." No matter how hard they squint, when rational people look at a rice cooker none of them are going to see an installed stove.

There was no probable cause for Kaua'i Prosecuting Attorney ISERI-CARVALHO to charge BYNUM with any crimes based on the alleged presence of a rice cooker and refrigerator in his lawfully permitted addition.

ISERI-CARVALHO would not have charged BYNUM with a crime had the Planning Department and MIYAKE not sent an unsolicited copy of the November 2010 ZVN to the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney.

Prior to charging BYNUM with four zoning crimes, ISERI-CARVALHO, or Delaplane, acting under her authority, had an investigator interview Victory YOKOTAKE about the BYNUM home. Although YOKOTAKE told the investigator that BYNUM was unaware of the rice-cooker in the addition and that she was welcome to use the BYNUM kitchen (such that she did not need a second kitchen) neither Delaplane nor ISERI-CARVALHO provided that investigator's report to BYNUM or his attorney while ISERI-CARVALHO was prosecuting him, despite written requests for exculpatory information and the constitutional requirement that such material must be provided to a criminal defendant.

During ISERI-CARVALHO' s investigation into whether BYNUM had committed misdemeanors in connection with the rice-cooker and door lock, deputy prosecuting attorney Jake Delaplane ordered Lucas Burns, another deputy prosecuting attorney, to interview Victory Yokotake, the pretext of the interview being that the interview was to assist with the prosecution of the earlier alleged assault against her, but with the real purpose of bolstering ISERI-CARVALHO'S case against BYNUM. The deputy prosecuting attorney was instructed to surreptitiously tape record the interview.

In April 2012, Lucas Burns testified about the unusually aggressive investigation technique involving misleading and surreptitiously recording a victim of an assault with the real intent of extracting from the assault victim, evidence against BYNUM's alleged zoning violations - having no real intent to bolster the assault case in any way.

Iseri had created quite the mess with "Rice Cooker Gate" stories circulating in "the blogs," as this and Joan Conrow's "KauaiEclectic" site are often cumulatively referred to in government circles.

But Iseri had other things to hide and when the budget for the 2012-2013 fiscal year came around things blew up publicly despite her attempts to keep aspects of her department's budget under wraps... not to mention her almost wacky attempts to keep Bynum from questioning her during the yearly departmental budget review hearings.

From January 2012 until approximately May 2012, while the criminal zoning charges were pending against Plaintiff BYNUM, the Kaua'i County Council was simultaneously considering various matters related to the operations and budget of the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney.

BYNUM had previously been a critic of many of Prosecuting Attorney ISERI-CARVALHO's decisions and he had planned to question ISERI-CARVALHO about her operations and budget as was relevant to the matters pending on the Kaua'i Council's agenda during these council meetings in early 2012.

Plaintiff BYNUM had constitutional rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Hawai'i State Constitution to speak about and debate, as an elected member of the Kaua'i County Council, the operations and budget of the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney at official Kaua'i

County Council meetings.

However, on January 19, 2012, while the false criminal charges were pending against BYNUM, prosecuting attorney ISERI-CARVALHO wrote a letter to the entire Kaua'i County Council, on Office of the Prosecuting Attorney letterhead, demanding that BYNUM be recused from County Council meetings involving legislative oversight of the prosecutor's office, while the BYNUM's criminal case was pending.

ISERI-CARVALHO initially stamped this January 19, 2012 letter as "confidential" but later released it to the public and to the mass media and press, with some names redacted.

The January 19, 2012 letter to the Council contained various erroneous statements of law to support ISERI-CARVALHO's demand that BYNUM should be recused from legislative matters concerning the OPA.

Iseri had reached the point where she had lost all contact with reality, living in her own self-constructed World of Shay- aka the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney. The letter read like the rantings of a lunatic. The only problem is that the lunatic in this case had- and still has, until at least December 1- the discretionary power to imprison people.

The January 19, 2012 letter also contained numerous statements that are disparaging of Mr. BYNUM's integrity including that "[Councilman BYNUM] has a clear financial interest in the operations of the OPA, as he would directly benefit if the OPA's operations were negatively impacted by any action of the Council. By virtue of being a criminal defendant, he has a vested interest in ensuring that the OPA not operate at peak efficiency" and "BYNUM's paranoid belief that the actions taken by our office were calculated personal attacks against him is without any merit and is completely baseless." ISERI-CARVALHO intentionally withheld from the public or the Council that the Director of the Planning Department had already "cleared" BYNUM of any violation or that BYNUM was innocent unless proven guilty.

90. When ISERI-CARVALHO demanded BYNUM's recusal on the basis that ISERI-CARVALHO had charged BYNUM in a criminal case that was premised on an illegal warrantless search, without probable cause, and on an interpretation of the CZO that was contrary to that stated by then Planning Director Costa and contrary to the advice of deputy county attorneys Jung and Dahilig, she was acting under the color of state law.

BYNUM had a clearly established constitutional and statutory right to fulfill his responsibilities as an elected councilman and to fully participate in 2012 Council hearings related to the operations and budget of the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney.

ISERI-CARVALHO wrote the January 19, 2012 with the intent of denying BYNUM his rights guaranteed statutes and under the U.S. Constitution and the Hawai'i State Constitution.

ISERI-CARVALHO wrote the January 19,2012 under the color of her authority under state law as an elected public prosecutor.

94. ISERI-CARVALHO wrote the January 19, 2012 with the intent of silencing BYNUM in his capacity as an elected official with respect to the operations and budget of the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney.

ISERI-CARVALHO's conduct, in writing and publishing the January 19, 2012 letter and her making her comments derogatory comments about BYNUM on the Council floor would have chilled or silenced a person of ordinary firmness from future First Amendment activities.

Fearful of the Prosecutor's unprincipled ire, and not wanting to risk violating the law related to recusal as it was presented to the Kaua'i County Council by the Prosecuting Attorney, BYMJM ceded to ISERI-CARVALHO's demand for his recusal from the January, 2012 County Council Meeting. Thereafter BYNUM solicited an opinion from the County of Kaua'i Board of Ethics, which later concluded, contrary to the legal assertions made by ISERICARVALHO to the Kaua'i County Council, that BYNUM did not have a conflict of interest such that he should not be recused from fulfilling his duties as an elected councilman with respect to questioning ISERI-CARVALHO, as would any other elected member of the Kaua'i County Council, with respect to the OPA operations and budget.

But it wasn't like Iseri didn't have a couple of loyal supporters on the council: members Mel Rapozo and Kipukai Kuali`i did their best to throw up smoke screens and throw down oil slicks to obscure, slow down and, they hoped, eliminate challenges to Iseri.

On March 14, 2012 and again on March 21, 2012 there was a Special Council meeting item involving the Prosecuting Attorney's request for Council permission to hire a Law Office Assistant. At the opening of the latter meeting ISERI-CARVALHO notified the Council, through counsel, that she would be asking questions of BYNUM before she would agree to testify before the Council. The proposed questions to councilman BYNUM included whether he would "waive [his] rights" and if [he was] aware that "statements that you make can be used against you in the criminal proceeding."

This March 14, 2012 questioning of BYNUM on behalf of ISERI-CARVALHO would have chilled or silenced a person of ordinary firmness from future First Amendment activities.

During these 2012 County Council meetings ISERI-CARVALHO repeatedly referred to the charges that her Office had filed against BYNUM as the primary basis for removing him from any legislative oversight of the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney. In none of these references did ISERI-CARVALHO reference any presumption of innocence or acknowledge the fact of Plaintiff s innocence as established by the legal opinions of deputy County Attorney's Jung and Dahilig.

In addition to the pressures Iseri was maliciously causing in Bynum's public life her actions made a mess of his personal financial affairs when he put his home up for sale.

While all of these matters were happening, BYNUM had listed his home for sale. In the spring of 2012, he entered into a contract for the sale of his home. The sale went into escrow. The buyers, however, became concerned that the house may not have been properly permitted after reading about the prosecution of BYNUM in the local newspaper. In response, the buyers went to the PLANNING DEPARTMENT and inquired whether there were problems with the permitting of the BYNUM property. The representative of the PLANNING DEPARTMENT wrongly and maliciously informed the buyers that the alleged zoning violations would run with the land and transfer to any new owners. The PLANNING DEPARTMENT employee then falsely informed the buyers that they would not be permitted to rent out any rooms in the residence if they bought the home. In response to these, and other false representations from the PLANNING DEPARTMENT, the buyers cancelled (sic) escrow. The house remains unsold. The loss of the sale of the home caused BYNUM to suffer significant financial damages to be proven at trial.

Finally Bynum had his day in court so a judge could ostensibly say to Iseri "what are you, nuckin futz?"

So Oye, Oye. All rise for the courtroom scene- Take One:

On April 5, 2012 a hearing was held in the Fifth Circuit Court, State of Hawai'i, after which the Honorable Kathleen N.A. Watanabe ordered that the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney was disqualified from further involvement in the criminal zoning case against BYNUM.

Thereafter, the State of Hawai'i Office of the Attorney General appointed a Special Deputy Attorney General to take over the case from the disqualified Office of the Prosecuting Attorney. The Special Deputy re-investigated the facts and circumstances related to the alleged zoning crimes and very rapidly concluded that there was no provable case against BYNUM.

The Circuit Court, with the agreement and written consent of the Special Deputy Attorney General, dismissed the entire criminal case against BYNUM with prejudice.

Thereafter, First Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Delaplane, working under the authority of ISERI-CARVALHO told the local newspaper reporter that the dismissal did not equate to innocence.

Iseri is opposed by Deputy County Attorney Justin Kollar in the November 6 election.