MAYOR'S POLITICAL ADVISOR TOKIOKA CAUGHT EXCHANGING TEXTS,
DISCUSSING STRATEGY, WITH NAKAMURA, YUKIMURA, DURING FINAL 2491
MEETING;
COUNTY MANAGER-TO-BE SEEN COMMUNICATING WITH MAYOR THROUGH
GO-BETWEEN PRIOR TO "FINAL" VOTE
It was just before 3 a.m., about 45 minutes before Bill 2491 was
passed by the Kaua`i County Council last Oct. 16, when
then-Councilmember, and soon-to-be top deputy to Mayor Bernard
Carvalho Jr, Nadine Nakamura, told the assembled that she was going
to move to defer the bill based on considerations of her future job
rather than her then-current one.
But if the bill's introducer Councilmember Gary Hooser was, as he
said "flabbergasted" at what co-introducer Tim Bynum
called Nakamura's "highly inappropriate and unethical"
intentions, their heads might have spun around a few times with steam
emanating from their ears if they had known that Nakamura had been
discussing strategy with and taking directions from Carvalho's chief
political adviser, Beth Tokioka, with whom Nakamura had been texting
all day on the 15th and into the night.
According to Jennifer Ruggles, who was attending the meeting on
behalf of "Pesticide Action Network," one of the many
members of the "Pass the Bill Coalition," she was sitting
behind Tokioka and began to notice something out of the ordinary was
taking place.
Ruggles told PNN in an email that she noticed Nakamura and
Councilmember JoAnn Yukimura seemed to keep looking in her direction.
"At first it seemed like they were looking at me but then I
realized they were constantly making eye contact with Beth. All three
of them had their phones in their hands. I could see Beth's phone
clearly with Nadine Nakamura's name in big letters at the top and I
could see they were texting back and forth. They did this through out
the entire meeting. Beth copied and pasted messages received from
Nadine and JoAnn and pasted them into a group message with (then
County Manager) Gary Heu and Mayor Carvalho. Sometimes she explained
to Gary and Bernard what was happening in the meeting."
Ruggles said she jotted down snippets of the conversation as
Tokioka and Nakamura discussed, among other things, strategy, how
other councilmembers indicated to Nakamura they would vote and what
Nakamura had discussed with other councilmembers regarding the
mayor's deferral request. Tokioka also exchanged texts with Yukimura
pushing her to ask the mayor, as he was testifying before the
council, about a potential veto.
"I felt concerned because it didn't seem ethical that the
person who works most closely with the mayor, who after his
presentation revealed the administration's agenda in opposition to
the bill, should be lobbying JoAnn Yukimura and conspiring for a
deferral with Nadine Nakamura during a public hearing," Ruggles
said.
"The lobbying was especially inappropriate because it was
happening during public testimony. Beth initiated these conversations
disregarding the many people who had slept overnight to have their
voice heard."
The texts made plain that Tokioka was directing Nakamura as to the
political machinations that might lead to a deferral of the scheduled
final vote on the bill- communications which might well be seen as a
quid pro quo and a violation of the county's Code of Ethics in
offering her vote to defer in exchange for appointment to the
position which Nakamura would take 16 days hence.
"Defer and delay" had been the way proponents of the
bill characterized the tactics used by opponents of the bill as it
wound its way through a first reading, a public hearing, multiple
committee meetings and scores of hours of testimony. A deferral of
the scheduled final vote was seen by most to be the potential "death"
of the bill.
The revelation of the texts also make apparent that the mayor had
already decided that if it wasn't deferred he would veto the bill
with Tokioka telling Yukimura to make sure that if she asked the
mayor about a possible veto that she put it in the context of a
deferral as an alternative.
The bill- which was eventually vetoed by the mayor and is up for
an override vote at a special council meeting this Thursday Nov. 14
at 9 a.m.- would require detailed disclosure of the use of
"Restricted Use Pesticides (RUP)" and the associated
"Genetically Modified Organisms" (GMO) by the five chemical
companies at their west Kaua`i experimental facilities where they
claim to be "seed corn farmers."
The chemical spraying is alleged to take place 240 days a year
with multiple RUPs used each spraying day, on fields adjacent to
homes, schools, hospitals, waterways and roads according to
disclosures made in a federal court lawsuit against one company,
DuPont-Pioneer, on behalf of Waimea residents.
The bill also calls for buffer zones as well as a study of the use
of RUPs and GMOs which contain genetic pesticides designed to
withstand the poisons used to kill surrounding weeds.
Dozens of Kaua`i physicians have said that they have noticed a
spike in illnesses such as skin lesions, respiratory problems and
certain rare birth defects which, they say, requires further study.
RUPs are more dangerous than unrestricted pesticides- a term
inclusive of herbicides- that can be purchased over-the-counter at
any hardware store or garden shop. RUPs require a permit to purchase
and use.
According to the
real-time
captions of the meeting (the minutes are not yet available),
shortly before 3 a.m. at the meeting which had begun at 10 a.m. the
previous day, the sleep deprived Nakamura told the council of her
fidelity to her future employer, the mayor, as opposed to her
then-current job representing her constituents as a councilmember,
saying:
You know, earlier, and I'm proposing this, just because I know
that in a few weeks I'm going to have to be involved in implementing
this law. And I believe based on the transient vacation rental
experience, that if we do not pay attention to how we enforce the
laws that this body creates, we run into a lot of problems. Just in
the number of contested case hearings (in
enforcing out the law) that is a result of not good
implementation, the number of appeals that our county attorneys have
to deal with, the hearings for renewals, cease and desist orders all
because we did not pay attention to the implementation of a law.
So the mayor asked for time to establish and clarify roles and
responsibilities to develop a memorandum of agreement, a cooperative
agreement and I just feel that we should -- this is not a political
ploy as people have made it out to be. The killing of this bill or
standing down to bullies, this is about really taking a close look
and developing relationships with the state entities, who we have to
work with to implement this law and unfortunately, that is something
that I need to consider. So I'm just putting that on the table.
Hooser responded to Nakamura's
statement saying that he was:
"flabbergasted to put it mildly after getting here to 10
to 3:00 A.M. And looking through the amendments and having the
vice-chair lead the efforts on the amendments and then to hear
support for the mayor's deferral after we had such extended
discussion earlier. Yeah, flabbergasted, disappointed, you know? It
is no question and this is not to put to anybody's personal intent,
but a motion to defer in my opinion is a motion to kill the
bill.
And again, it's not to intent, if the audience could
please bear with me, this is my opinion. I think if we defer this
bill, given the circumstances of a change on the council, it will be
deferred again. If we wait to the department of Ag, it will be
deferred again. And we have come so far and this community has come
so far. They have been here for three days, some of these people,
okay? 36 hours. Counting on us to do what is our responsibility. We
have talked about it for months. The genesis of this bill is about a
year. We have crafted amendments which significantly weaken the bill.
and we continue to weaken the bill, catering to the industry and I
have accepted that.
As disappointed as I am, I have accepted
that because the core of what we need to do, the right to know is
still intact. And we cannot count on the state to do this. We cannot
count on the mayor to do this. We cannot count on Russell Kokubun to
do this and it's up to us. So I am hopeful that we will not have the
votes to sustain or to carry a vote to defer and I think that would
be just an affront is to put it mildly to our community and to the
work that we have done on this issue. And that is it. Thank you.
But if Hooser wasn't direct enough, Bynum made no bones about how
he felt about Nakamura's shirking of her responsibilities as a
council member in favor of her boss-to-be's request for deferral.
After asking her if she intended to move and vote for a deferral and
getting an answer of "yes," Bynum said:
I don't even know how to respond to that, but I have to
respond from my heart. It's no secret that I'm a huge supporter of
Nadine Nakamura. I have made positive statements about her leadership
and her work many times. I'm disappointed she is not going to be here
on the council to provide that leadership, but I honor the decision
that she made to work for the mayor. But until you resign, you
represent the people of Kaua`i. And for you to say that you have to
consider that next week you are going to work for the mayor and have
to implement this is highly inappropriate and unethical.
As
soon as you resign from this body, then you need to do the mayor's
bidding. But until then, you already voted for this bill, Nadine and
stated your intention as a councilmember. That is all I have to say.
The mayor had said in earlier testimony
that day that he was asking for the deferral so that the state could
have time to work out a deal for "voluntary," and broad
"aggregate" disclosures by the chemical companies sometime
in the undetermined future. That would presumably be done via the HRS
Chapter 91 Administrative Rules process which can sometimes take
years especially if there's opposition which of course is expected
from the chemical companies.
That proposal had been ridiculed by
bill proponents after Governor Neil Abercrombie proposed it at the
behest of state legislators from Kaua`i in what many saw as an
attempt to derail the bill which, on the other hand, requires that
the public to be notified of the specific day, time, type and
location of each spraying of chemicals.
Abercrombie took $34,400 in campaign
money from the biotech industry in the last election cycle.
Carvalho, who
recently took $4000
himself, eventually vetoed the bill on the last possible day
to do so, October 31st- the day before Nakamura took office as his
new "County Manager," the mayor's second in command.
This ensured that the override session would take place after
Nakamura left the council leaving it with only six members and little
margin for error after the 6-1 vote to pass the bill.
Had the mayor vetoed the bill the day after it passed it would
have left plenty of time for Nakamura, who eventually voted for the
bill that night, to vote on the override which specifically requires
five votes according to the county charter. It was presumed that
Nakamura would have voted to override the veto despite her intention
to defer it on the 15th especially since she had been one of the two
authors of the amendments that so severely changed the bill,
including substituting the self-styled, facilitated-roundtable, group
of stakeholders type of study that wound up in the bill in the stead
of the a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that was proposed
in the original bill.
But in his veto
message Carvalho barely cited the "voluntary disclosure"
state proposal and rather, based his veto on a county
attorney's (CA) opinion essentially taken from opinions
written by the lawyers for the chemical companies, Marjery Bronster
and Paul Alston.
Most points in the CA's opinion
were refuted in a letter to the mayor and council signed by dozens of
local attorneys. No private attorneys not associated with the
chemical companies that we could find have said they agree with the
CA's opinion while slews of lawyers across the island and country
have roundly rejected it.
As to Thursday's override meeting of a six-member council most
political observers think that there are at lest four votes to
override the veto but the fifth of the six that voted "aye"
(Nakamura being the sixth in the 6-1 vote), Councilmember Ross
Kagawa, has said he hasn't made up his mind as to whether he will
vote to override the veto.
A meeting is scheduled for Friday to pick a seventh councilmember
after the council rejected a request from Hooser and Bynum last week
that a seventh member be named by the council before the override
meeting.
The first irony in all of this, one that Bynum and Hooser
intimated at, is that most of the midnight-hours at the Oct. 15-16
meeting had been spent proposing and passing amendments that were
written, researched and insisted upon by Nakamura. She and Yukimura
had worked together throughout the process since discussion with one
other councilmember is permitted under the state's Sunshine Law.
Although virtually every one of the bill's supporters acknowledged
that these amendment "watered down" the bill, almost all of
the bills proponents still support the bill as a "step in the
right direction."
Those amendments were personally rammed onto the bill by Yukimura
who, during an uncharacteristic, often contentious and anger-tinged,
hours-long "tour-de-force," managed to foist them on the
other three "yes-vote" councilmembers because without her
and Nakamura's "yes" votes the bill would have only had the
three votes- Hooser's, Bynum's and Furfaro's.
Kagawa, based on prior statements and actions, was at the time not
expected to support the bill but, apparently at the last minute, he
decided to vote against deferral and for the bill. The other
Councilmember, Mel Rapozo, voted against the bill as he had indicated
he probably would ever since the bill was introduced.
Kagawa and Rapozo were the ones who approached the Kaua`i
legislative contingent to ask them to ask the governor for the
"voluntary disclosure" measure.
The second irony is that much of the content of the
Nakamura/Yukimura amendments was cited by Carvalho in his veto
message as being the very provisions that were "legally
deficient" and the reasons for his override.
In essence, Nakamura had set up the bill for veto by crafting and
introducing the measures that her future boss would use as a reason
to veto the bill.
PNN plans on filing an open record UIPA request for Tokioka's
texts.
Thursday's meeting is expected to be a long one with public
testimony by both the bill's proponents and the chemical company
employees and their families and friends taking one more day off to
be there and speak. Although each is actually permitted by law to
speak for a total of six minutes Chair Furfaro has limited testimony
to three minutes throughout the process.
Councilmembers have said that if the mayor's veto is not
overridden they will introduce the bill again once a seventh member
is appointed. Members of the community have also begun organizing a
ballot initiative on the matter.
The county will be
live
streaming the meeting (at
http://kauai.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=1211)
and we will be live blogging and providing commentary and discussion
on
Facebook starting
at 9 a.m.
