AND SO THE POOR DOG HAD NONE: Our three part series on the Unethical Culture of some members of the Kaua`i Board of Ethics (BOE) detailed the cases of three members of that board who have and continue to violate the plain reading of the county charter’s Code of Ethics which prohibits members of boards and commissions from appearing on behalf of private interests before other boards and commissions, including the county council.
As we concluded. what was missing was that, in order to get the ball rolling to force them to either remove themselves from office or quit representing private interests was an actual complaint filed with the BOE.
So over the weekend, Rolf Bieber felt responsible as a BOE member to take matters into his own hands and file three complaints- two against his fellow BOE members Mark Hubbard and Judy Lenthall and one against attorney Lorna Nishimitsu who sits on the Cost Control Commission.
Bieber, who ran for mayor last fall, told us it wasn’t anything personal and that he respects the three immensely but that the board needed to move forward on the matter because, as it stands there was no enforcement whatsoever of the provision based on BOE decisions in other cases last and earlier this year.
His notarized complaints include the transcripts from the three county council meetings where the three represented private interests- Hubbard for the Kaua`i Action and Planning Alliance, Lenthall for the Kaua`i Food Bank and Nishimitsu for Kikia`ola Land Corporation.
Although none of them would comment for our series, that wasn’t the case when reporter for the local newspaper Michael Levine contacted them for comment on his story today regarding Bieber’s complaints.
And if anyone thought that perhaps Hubbard- the former Chair and now Vice Chair of the BOE- was in need of professional mental health after reading his ramblings in our article his comments to Levine certainly approximate the classic response of a paranoid schizophrenic.
There are apparently at least two Mark Hubbard’s existing nowhere but in Hubbard’s own mind depending on what covers the head that contains the various Hubbard’s.
In classic gibberish Hubbard told Levine:
“The way I read it (Section 20.02(D)) is very simple. When I was sitting there in front of the County Council, the hat I wore was Kaua`i Planning and Action Alliance. I made no representation, I was not considered, not looked upon as vice chair of Ethics. It had nothing to do with Ethics even though I am on that board.
“I didn’t appear as the Ethics person, I appeared as the treasurer of Kaua`i Planning and Action Alliance,” Hubbard said. “The Board of Ethics person wasn’t around. The treasurer of Kaua`i Planning and Action Alliance was around. Yes, it happens to be the same person.”
Hats? What awesome powers do bonnets bestow? They apparently give the wearer the ability to change identity like some kind of incognito emissary in a spy movie attempting to bamboozle his enemies.
Perhaps Hubbard has a secret collection of headwear that allows him to change personas whenever he chooses, much like Superman’s glasses can convince Lois Lane he’s actually mild mannered reporter Clark Kent.
One possible explanation is that it’s the good Mark Hubbard that selflessly appears on behalf of KPPA and his evil twin that sits on the BOE.
But we can only hope Hubbard guards his chapeau collection well lest they fall into the hands of those who do us harm. Imagine the problems it would pose for the courts if the criminal element could avoid prosecution by simply making the right choice at the haberdashers.
Good thing we can trust Hubbard not to abuse his Superhero status...uh he does belong to the Legion of Justice doesn’t he?... or does he simply have a hat for that.
He must have had Tom Terrific’s magic thinking cap to come up with what Levine reported he said next
Asked about the potential for the appearance of a conflict of interest if council members were to one day have to answer to the Board of Ethics, Hubbard said “there’s no such thing.”
“When people talk about the appearance of conflict of interest, to me, that has nothing to do with the Board of Ethics,” he said. “Is there a conflict of interest or isn’t there? There’s no such thing as appearance."
No such thing? Good thing the news hasn’t reached Kaua`i Mark because there 943,000 results for “appearance of a conflict of interest” at Google including the one at Wikipedia which starts off it’s “conflict of interest” entry by saying
A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization... has an interest that might compromise their reliability.
A conflict of interest exists even if no improper act results from it, and can create an appearance of impropriety that can undermine confidence in the conflicted individual or organization.
Ask yourself what you would do if appointed for a body that oversees ethics and deals with conflicts of interest. Would you not review what an appearance of conflict of interest actually is before you said it doesn’t exist?
Not our pal Mark- get this final gobbledy-gook
“There is no conflict because I went and asked the council for something. Their choice is to say yes or no. ... I could feel good about that, or bad about that, and I could act. I have some authority, I have a vote on the Board of Ethics. ... (but) I didn’t have a financial interest (in KPAA). That’s the charter and the county regs — it has to be financial.”
No financial interest? KPPA is one of the Kaua`i government’s favorite recipients of their largess, to be distributed to others for various planning projects at PPPA’s pleasure... quite the powerful position.
As a matter of fact, Levine’s article reports, Hubbard’s appearance was quite successful since an extra $14,500 appears in the supplemental budget that came after his “appearance on behalf of” KPPA.
The article also notes that Executive Director Lenthall got $20,000 more in the supplemental budget after her appearance on behalf of the Food Bank.
Lenthall for her part still clings to the inability to distinguish between a personal and private interest telling Levine:
Lenthall said it was unfair to her as an unpaid volunteer that she be expected to give up rights guaranteed to private citizens, citing as an example her right to appeal a property tax assessment, and said the language as currently written could discourage volunteers from helping the county, something she does “out of the goodness of my heart.”
What Lenthall fails to recognize is that it has nothing to do with the “goodness of her heart” and whether she wants to “help the county”. 99.9% of the residents of Kaua`i have and will never come before a board or commission asking for money or tangible considerations. The fact that a small handful of those who do populate these boards and commissions reflect the inherent moral bankruptcy and corrupt mindset of those who feed at the government trough is no coincident born of necessity.
The insinuation that Hubbard is not Hubbard at certain times or that there are multiple Hubbard’s stretches credulity to the breaking point, especially with the quasi-judicial nature of the BOE.
In any other judicial proceeding just the fact that a judge or juror even knows the defendant is cause for them to be excused from the proceedings.
The fact that Hubbard has ruled on the ethics complaints filed against member of the county council in the past makes his claim that he should be permitted to solicit funds from them the construction of an unethical if not criminal mind and one certainly not suited to sit on any county body much less the ethics board.
What are we- a bunch of freakin' idiots? You can certainly check off a big fat “yes” when it comes to what Hubbard and Lenthall think.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Levine. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Levine. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Thursday, September 23, 2010
NEW BLOOD ON THE TRACKS
NEW BLOOD ON THE TRACKS: Today’s announcement that two- count ‘em two- actual college graduates with journalism degrees have been employed by the local newspaper comes as a shocking yet pleasant surprise... sort of.
While it’s nice to see real journalists hired- Vanessa Van Voorhis covering “business” and Andrea Frainier, “lifestyle”- it doesn’t change the fact that the more newsy government and police reporters are a little- or maybe a lot- less professional, although the government reporter Leo Azambuja has shown some improvement.
Though unfortunately that hasn’t led him to obtain the kind of expertise possessed his predecessor Mike Levine- no shame there- we still sometimes wonder whether he’s even trying.
In all fairness his editor Nathan Eagle could have made sure coverage of the ethically-challenged and oft incompetent Board Of Ethics (BOE) continued when Levine left for big city climes. But apparently neither Eagle nor Azambuja seem interested in covering BOE meetings and more importantly continuing Levine’s quest for BOE documents beyond replacing Levine’s name with Azambuja’s at their document-containing “Sunshine” web page.
But lucky live Kaua`i and not Bell California where the lack of citizen oversight led to obscene salaries for county officials.
Next time you see the trolls start criticizing our “nitpickers” remember that the only news we’ve been getting about the BOE lately has come from Horace Stoessel whose latest report on the BOE’s September 17 meeting- in the form of an as yet unpublished letter to the editor- describes the latest round of fear and loathing.
Here’s Horace’s report- see ya on the other side.
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
In May Deputy County Attorney Mona Clark advised the Board of Ethics that County Code Section 3-1.7(d) absolutely prohibits the kinds of outside employment referenced in requests for advisory opinions involving four members of the Planning Department.
At its meeting on September 17 the Board reviewed a written opinion from Attorney Clark repeating and expanding the advice she gave in May and concluding: “It is the County Attorney’s opinion that an employee cannot create a work product for a private employer which the employee would reasonably expect the employer to submit to the Planning Department without a violation of K.C.C. 3-1.7 occurring.”
The Board acted accordingly and continued to set an example for other agencies by releasing the privileged opinion, which is available from the Office of Boards and Commissions.
I wish I could say that the quality of the May-to-September process leading to the Board’s decision matched the quality of the decision itself and the principled advice it was based on. However, the process left a trail of unanswered questions.
In light of the Charter requirement that a request for advisory opinion must be answered within thirty days, I think the most obvious question is, why did it take so long for the Board to answer this request, especially when its answer was based on the same advice it received on day one?
A short letter like this cannot do justice to the question. Suffice to say that it leads to numerous other questions pertaining to policies (and lack of policies), procedures and communication (or lack of communication) involving the Mayor’s office and Planning, Personnel, and County Attorney offices as well as the Board of Ethics.
I do not question the motives or integrity of county employees. I do say that there is plenty of room for improving governmental processes. One way to improve the processes is for agencies and citizens to extend mutual respect to and expect mutual accountability from each other.
What Horace doesn’t mention here is that rather than doing their job in a timely manner the BOE’s notorious inability to read plain English has caused them to request that the charter commission- another body whose meetings have been unattended by local newspaper reporters since Levine left- submit a charter amendment to voters to give the BOE more time to futz around.
The announcement of this year’s charter amendments will be forthcoming presently but if this change, and one to allow the mayor to consolidate power by taking away the police, fire and planning commissions’ ability to hire and fire their respective department heads, are typical of their work this year an across the board “no” vote from the electorate would seem to be a no-brainer.
Whether the news that will allow people to make informed decisions on proposed charter changes will reach them through their “newspaper of record” is anyone’s guess.
But at least they’ll have timely and accurate information about who opened a new scissors and scotch tape store and whose baby lu`ua served the best malasadas in Waimea.
While it’s nice to see real journalists hired- Vanessa Van Voorhis covering “business” and Andrea Frainier, “lifestyle”- it doesn’t change the fact that the more newsy government and police reporters are a little- or maybe a lot- less professional, although the government reporter Leo Azambuja has shown some improvement.
Though unfortunately that hasn’t led him to obtain the kind of expertise possessed his predecessor Mike Levine- no shame there- we still sometimes wonder whether he’s even trying.
In all fairness his editor Nathan Eagle could have made sure coverage of the ethically-challenged and oft incompetent Board Of Ethics (BOE) continued when Levine left for big city climes. But apparently neither Eagle nor Azambuja seem interested in covering BOE meetings and more importantly continuing Levine’s quest for BOE documents beyond replacing Levine’s name with Azambuja’s at their document-containing “Sunshine” web page.
But lucky live Kaua`i and not Bell California where the lack of citizen oversight led to obscene salaries for county officials.
Next time you see the trolls start criticizing our “nitpickers” remember that the only news we’ve been getting about the BOE lately has come from Horace Stoessel whose latest report on the BOE’s September 17 meeting- in the form of an as yet unpublished letter to the editor- describes the latest round of fear and loathing.
Here’s Horace’s report- see ya on the other side.
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
In May Deputy County Attorney Mona Clark advised the Board of Ethics that County Code Section 3-1.7(d) absolutely prohibits the kinds of outside employment referenced in requests for advisory opinions involving four members of the Planning Department.
At its meeting on September 17 the Board reviewed a written opinion from Attorney Clark repeating and expanding the advice she gave in May and concluding: “It is the County Attorney’s opinion that an employee cannot create a work product for a private employer which the employee would reasonably expect the employer to submit to the Planning Department without a violation of K.C.C. 3-1.7 occurring.”
The Board acted accordingly and continued to set an example for other agencies by releasing the privileged opinion, which is available from the Office of Boards and Commissions.
I wish I could say that the quality of the May-to-September process leading to the Board’s decision matched the quality of the decision itself and the principled advice it was based on. However, the process left a trail of unanswered questions.
In light of the Charter requirement that a request for advisory opinion must be answered within thirty days, I think the most obvious question is, why did it take so long for the Board to answer this request, especially when its answer was based on the same advice it received on day one?
A short letter like this cannot do justice to the question. Suffice to say that it leads to numerous other questions pertaining to policies (and lack of policies), procedures and communication (or lack of communication) involving the Mayor’s office and Planning, Personnel, and County Attorney offices as well as the Board of Ethics.
I do not question the motives or integrity of county employees. I do say that there is plenty of room for improving governmental processes. One way to improve the processes is for agencies and citizens to extend mutual respect to and expect mutual accountability from each other.
What Horace doesn’t mention here is that rather than doing their job in a timely manner the BOE’s notorious inability to read plain English has caused them to request that the charter commission- another body whose meetings have been unattended by local newspaper reporters since Levine left- submit a charter amendment to voters to give the BOE more time to futz around.
The announcement of this year’s charter amendments will be forthcoming presently but if this change, and one to allow the mayor to consolidate power by taking away the police, fire and planning commissions’ ability to hire and fire their respective department heads, are typical of their work this year an across the board “no” vote from the electorate would seem to be a no-brainer.
Whether the news that will allow people to make informed decisions on proposed charter changes will reach them through their “newspaper of record” is anyone’s guess.
But at least they’ll have timely and accurate information about who opened a new scissors and scotch tape store and whose baby lu`ua served the best malasadas in Waimea.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
JAWS OF DEFEAT/SAY IT AIN’T SO
JAWS OF DEFEAT: About a week or so back we got a thus-far-unpublished letter to the editor from Horace Stoessel, the father of the 20.02(D) controversy- the man who first had the temerity to ask the Kaua`i Board of Ethics (BOE) to enforce the charter.
In it he surprisingly said he would compromise and support the “carve out” exemption for charitable organizations when county officials appear on behalf of private interests before county boards, commissions and agencies in order to get the rest of the provision enforced.
So today’s news that the Ethics Board has (had a) change of heart and voted to uphold the law after all the silliness of the past couple of years came as something of a shock.
Even Mark Hubbard who fought the hardest to make a mockery of the law voted for it although, according to reporter Mike Levine he still has remnant schizophrenic, double-talking tendencies in refusing to admit the past rulings clearing Hubbard and others were a mistake.
And of course, as the people’s champion former BOE member Rolf Bieber told Levine the proof will be in the pudding since, as we’ve seen, just because a clear statue exists it doesn’t mean people with conflicts will do what Hubbard suggested in saying exactly what we’ve written dozens of times:
(W)ith this interpretive rule, it’s now different than we’ve voted in the past, and I would have been in error in going before the County Council. I should not do that again, or I should quit my position on the Board of Ethics. I have a choice.”
It’s certainly a black eye for the gang of administration stooges at County Attorney Alfred “E. what me worry” Castillo’s office who didn’t even bother to do enough research to turn up the state ethics commission letter that convinced the BOE that they didn’t have any cover to continue to carve out exemptions or create “absurd result” excuses for their illegal activities.
Throughout the whole debacle people have asked basically “what the heck is the difference?.. it’s not as if this will magically clean up the corrupt, old boy network of the board and commission system”.
No it won’t. They will still try to make sure that if you wear the kings uniform you carry the kings sword. We’ve spoken to four people currently serving as a mayoral appointees who confirm that board and commission chief John Isobe made sure that they “support the mayor” before getting an appointment.
But it will shake out the most conflicted- those with an obvious reason to play the “one hand washes the other”, revolving-door game.
It also gives heart to those who still believe that a small, dedicated, persistent group- in this case Bieber, Stoessel, Rob Abrew and Glenn Mickens who did what most or can’t do... show up- can effect change even if it is incremental. Their success couldn’t have come about without Levine’s detailed news coverage and others like Charley Foster and Joan Conrow whose blog posts helped keep the issue before the public.
If they’re anything like us, these people do battle with the entrenched cronies not for the rare victory like this but for the fight itself because they have trouble living with themselves if they don’t.
As the Happy Camper might say, “hats off”, “kudos” and “three cheers” for them the real service-oriented citizens of Kaua`i.
----------
SAY IT AIN’T SO: Speaking of Levine it looks like the inevitable is about to come to pass. According to John Temple, the editor of “Peer News”, the nascent online Hawai`i news venture (thanks to Ian Lind for the heads up):
I’m happy to report that we’ve now hired the editorial team that will launch our new news service for Honolulu and Hawaii...
(T)he reporter hosts at Peer News will include:
Mike Levine, currently a reporter and assistant news editor at The Garden Island newspaper on Kauai. Mike has worked as a journalist on Kauai for a couple of years, after picking lettuce and acting as a tour guide there. He also worked for Fodor’s to update the Kauai section of the 2010 Hawaii Guidebook and Kauai Guidebook 3rd Edition. Mike worked as a news desk editor and writer at NBA.com before moving to Kauai. He’s a graduate of Lehigh University and the rare reporter to have majored in journalism and minored in material science and engineering.
We’re not sure if this means Mike will be leaving the local newspaper and apparently he will still be covering Kaua`i even if he does. But a statewide news services is unlikely to cover the detail of local Kaua`i news that his reporting has provided.
---------
We’ve off for the weekend tracking how soon we’re eliminated from the basketball pool. We’ll be back with a tear-stained entry Monday.
In it he surprisingly said he would compromise and support the “carve out” exemption for charitable organizations when county officials appear on behalf of private interests before county boards, commissions and agencies in order to get the rest of the provision enforced.
So today’s news that the Ethics Board has (had a) change of heart and voted to uphold the law after all the silliness of the past couple of years came as something of a shock.
Even Mark Hubbard who fought the hardest to make a mockery of the law voted for it although, according to reporter Mike Levine he still has remnant schizophrenic, double-talking tendencies in refusing to admit the past rulings clearing Hubbard and others were a mistake.
And of course, as the people’s champion former BOE member Rolf Bieber told Levine the proof will be in the pudding since, as we’ve seen, just because a clear statue exists it doesn’t mean people with conflicts will do what Hubbard suggested in saying exactly what we’ve written dozens of times:
(W)ith this interpretive rule, it’s now different than we’ve voted in the past, and I would have been in error in going before the County Council. I should not do that again, or I should quit my position on the Board of Ethics. I have a choice.”
It’s certainly a black eye for the gang of administration stooges at County Attorney Alfred “E. what me worry” Castillo’s office who didn’t even bother to do enough research to turn up the state ethics commission letter that convinced the BOE that they didn’t have any cover to continue to carve out exemptions or create “absurd result” excuses for their illegal activities.
Throughout the whole debacle people have asked basically “what the heck is the difference?.. it’s not as if this will magically clean up the corrupt, old boy network of the board and commission system”.
No it won’t. They will still try to make sure that if you wear the kings uniform you carry the kings sword. We’ve spoken to four people currently serving as a mayoral appointees who confirm that board and commission chief John Isobe made sure that they “support the mayor” before getting an appointment.
But it will shake out the most conflicted- those with an obvious reason to play the “one hand washes the other”, revolving-door game.
It also gives heart to those who still believe that a small, dedicated, persistent group- in this case Bieber, Stoessel, Rob Abrew and Glenn Mickens who did what most or can’t do... show up- can effect change even if it is incremental. Their success couldn’t have come about without Levine’s detailed news coverage and others like Charley Foster and Joan Conrow whose blog posts helped keep the issue before the public.
If they’re anything like us, these people do battle with the entrenched cronies not for the rare victory like this but for the fight itself because they have trouble living with themselves if they don’t.
As the Happy Camper might say, “hats off”, “kudos” and “three cheers” for them the real service-oriented citizens of Kaua`i.
----------
SAY IT AIN’T SO: Speaking of Levine it looks like the inevitable is about to come to pass. According to John Temple, the editor of “Peer News”, the nascent online Hawai`i news venture (thanks to Ian Lind for the heads up):
I’m happy to report that we’ve now hired the editorial team that will launch our new news service for Honolulu and Hawaii...
(T)he reporter hosts at Peer News will include:
Mike Levine, currently a reporter and assistant news editor at The Garden Island newspaper on Kauai. Mike has worked as a journalist on Kauai for a couple of years, after picking lettuce and acting as a tour guide there. He also worked for Fodor’s to update the Kauai section of the 2010 Hawaii Guidebook and Kauai Guidebook 3rd Edition. Mike worked as a news desk editor and writer at NBA.com before moving to Kauai. He’s a graduate of Lehigh University and the rare reporter to have majored in journalism and minored in material science and engineering.
We’re not sure if this means Mike will be leaving the local newspaper and apparently he will still be covering Kaua`i even if he does. But a statewide news services is unlikely to cover the detail of local Kaua`i news that his reporting has provided.
---------
We’ve off for the weekend tracking how soon we’re eliminated from the basketball pool. We’ll be back with a tear-stained entry Monday.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
CHOKIN’ ON THOSE BONES:
CHOKIN’ ON THOSE BONES: Today’s follow-up on a for-the-most-part erroneous January 15 article in the local newspaper that has left the community- with the exception of our and Joan Conrow’s readers- thinking that Mayor Bernard Carvalho had acquiesced and removed the bike path from Wailua Beach does one thing.
It answers affirmatively the question of whether Carvalho and his administration has heard the old joke about ascertaining that their lips are moving in order to tell if they are lying.
They seemingly live by the motto “if you don’t speak no one can accuse you of deceit”.
Though the matter has gone from clear as mud to clear as muddy water it’s not as though it wasn’t a valiant effort on the part of ace reporter Mike Levine who seemingly couldn’t get anyone to give him a straight answer and couldn’t even get the protesters to admit they were duped by hizzonah.
Once again the headline is somewhat unclear in saying New path route to straddle shoulder, sand because, as we wrote the Monday following the original article, the definition of the “shoulder” is in question- it the shoulder the paved part or is there a shoulder” that’s on the sand? And what does straddle mean in that context? And what exactly does “straddle” mean in this context?
The lead seems to make it clear at least that:
A concrete multi-use path will still sit on the sand dunes in Wailua even after last month’s compromise moved the proposed route from the county park to the state highway right-of-way, officials recently confirmed.
But the next paragraph is again somewhat baffling:
“Based upon the preliminary plans for the path, the maximum distance from the edge of the current pavement out to the outer edge of the new path will be between four and five feet,” state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Tammy Mori said via e-mail after consulting with Kaua`i District Engineer Ray McCormick.
It would seem to say that part of the path is going to be where the paved shoulder currently sits and go to up to five feet onto the beach. But what the rest of the article says indicates is that no one but Mori would talk to Levine and she might not be too sure of her facts.
That’s followed by a roundabout quote from Building Division Chief Doug Haigh- one that had to be obtained through an email from the county’s public information officer Mary Daubert rather than through a conversation with Haigh himself.
And no wonder- it’s so confused and uninformative, it begs a few follow-up questions, ones which Haigh was of course unavailable to answer.
First he says:
“Along the middle of Wailua Beach, the path will essentially straddle the location of the existing rock wall (to be removed),”
The “middle” of Wailua Beach? The middle of what? And it does not say whether it will be fully on the beach since the rock wall is on the beach, not the paved shoulder.
Another key of the original deception was the use of the word “shoulder” without referring to the paved part so that when they said it was on the shoulder it was actually on the beach sands. When combined with the term “right of way” it seemed to indicate the paved shoulder.
But Haigh’s next statement confirms our suspicion that the use of the term “right of way” was being used by Carvalho and his mouthpiece Beth Tokioka to confuse people.
“The Kuhio Highway right-of-way is approximately four to five feet makai of the rock wall. Some vegetation may be removed and some earth shoulder may need grading.”
That confirms that the right of way extends onto the beach so that statement itself can’t be right either since the “right of way” includes all of the highway. To say the “right-of-way IS approximately four to five feet makai of the rock wall” can’t be true- only that it “extends” to that point.
We pick this apart to show the obvious attempt by county officials to try to cover for Carvalho’s and Tokioka’s attempted bamboozle by using confusing terms and seemingly contradictory statements.
Also note that Mori made her statement “via email after consulting with Kaua`i District Engineer Ray McCormick”. That means McCormick- who when cornered was quoted by participants at the mayors meeting with dissidents on Thursday Jan. 14 as saying the bike path would start where the pavement ends- also apparently wouldn’t take calls or answer Levine’s questions, pushing the question “upstairs” to Mori
What exactly did he tell Mori? And why was it different than what he told people at the meeting? Did Mori get it right? Did she even ask the question Levine wanted answered?
Who knows- we’ve danced this reporter’s dance before and can recognize it when it gets into print. Obviously Levine was stymied at every turn in attempting to get to the truth, as evidenced by the fact that it took him almost a month to get this much.
The mere fact that neither Haigh or McCormick- nor apparently Carvalho- would speak to him directly tells you that all is not as it appears and someone is fudging something.
And to make the whole thing even more confusing there was another paragraph with more of Mori’s statement.
(T)he state Department of Transportation is still planning to widen the road to four lanes. The widening project will add one 11-foot-wide lane to the Lihu`e-bound side of the road and a turn lane for Kuamo`o Road, and all the widening will take place on the mauka side, Mori said. The maximum distance from the existing edge of the pavement to the furthest point of new pavement will be approximately 15 feet. (emphasis added)
The question is of course does that refer to the “existing edge of the pavement” on the mauka side or makai side? To say “all the widening will take place on the mauka side” obviously isn’t true since she already admitted that it will be widened onto the beach.
Don’t forget- Mori is just a spokesperson, not an engineer and apparently has a very loose grasp on what is actually happening.
Well at least the wider community now knows that the bike path was not removed from the beach. But it’s still unclear how much of the beach it will take. Is it four or five feet?... is it 11 feet?.. is it more?
Don’t expect the truth from Carvalho’s lips. When they move they apparently speak only the words of his spinmeister Tokioka , warbling “Together We Can... Hoodwink Them All”.
--------
We’ll be taking a long weekend- unless something sets our hair on fire we’ll see ya Monday.
It answers affirmatively the question of whether Carvalho and his administration has heard the old joke about ascertaining that their lips are moving in order to tell if they are lying.
They seemingly live by the motto “if you don’t speak no one can accuse you of deceit”.
Though the matter has gone from clear as mud to clear as muddy water it’s not as though it wasn’t a valiant effort on the part of ace reporter Mike Levine who seemingly couldn’t get anyone to give him a straight answer and couldn’t even get the protesters to admit they were duped by hizzonah.
Once again the headline is somewhat unclear in saying New path route to straddle shoulder, sand because, as we wrote the Monday following the original article, the definition of the “shoulder” is in question- it the shoulder the paved part or is there a shoulder” that’s on the sand? And what does straddle mean in that context? And what exactly does “straddle” mean in this context?
The lead seems to make it clear at least that:
A concrete multi-use path will still sit on the sand dunes in Wailua even after last month’s compromise moved the proposed route from the county park to the state highway right-of-way, officials recently confirmed.
But the next paragraph is again somewhat baffling:
“Based upon the preliminary plans for the path, the maximum distance from the edge of the current pavement out to the outer edge of the new path will be between four and five feet,” state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Tammy Mori said via e-mail after consulting with Kaua`i District Engineer Ray McCormick.
It would seem to say that part of the path is going to be where the paved shoulder currently sits and go to up to five feet onto the beach. But what the rest of the article says indicates is that no one but Mori would talk to Levine and she might not be too sure of her facts.
That’s followed by a roundabout quote from Building Division Chief Doug Haigh- one that had to be obtained through an email from the county’s public information officer Mary Daubert rather than through a conversation with Haigh himself.
And no wonder- it’s so confused and uninformative, it begs a few follow-up questions, ones which Haigh was of course unavailable to answer.
First he says:
“Along the middle of Wailua Beach, the path will essentially straddle the location of the existing rock wall (to be removed),”
The “middle” of Wailua Beach? The middle of what? And it does not say whether it will be fully on the beach since the rock wall is on the beach, not the paved shoulder.
Another key of the original deception was the use of the word “shoulder” without referring to the paved part so that when they said it was on the shoulder it was actually on the beach sands. When combined with the term “right of way” it seemed to indicate the paved shoulder.
But Haigh’s next statement confirms our suspicion that the use of the term “right of way” was being used by Carvalho and his mouthpiece Beth Tokioka to confuse people.
“The Kuhio Highway right-of-way is approximately four to five feet makai of the rock wall. Some vegetation may be removed and some earth shoulder may need grading.”
That confirms that the right of way extends onto the beach so that statement itself can’t be right either since the “right of way” includes all of the highway. To say the “right-of-way IS approximately four to five feet makai of the rock wall” can’t be true- only that it “extends” to that point.
We pick this apart to show the obvious attempt by county officials to try to cover for Carvalho’s and Tokioka’s attempted bamboozle by using confusing terms and seemingly contradictory statements.
Also note that Mori made her statement “via email after consulting with Kaua`i District Engineer Ray McCormick”. That means McCormick- who when cornered was quoted by participants at the mayors meeting with dissidents on Thursday Jan. 14 as saying the bike path would start where the pavement ends- also apparently wouldn’t take calls or answer Levine’s questions, pushing the question “upstairs” to Mori
What exactly did he tell Mori? And why was it different than what he told people at the meeting? Did Mori get it right? Did she even ask the question Levine wanted answered?
Who knows- we’ve danced this reporter’s dance before and can recognize it when it gets into print. Obviously Levine was stymied at every turn in attempting to get to the truth, as evidenced by the fact that it took him almost a month to get this much.
The mere fact that neither Haigh or McCormick- nor apparently Carvalho- would speak to him directly tells you that all is not as it appears and someone is fudging something.
And to make the whole thing even more confusing there was another paragraph with more of Mori’s statement.
(T)he state Department of Transportation is still planning to widen the road to four lanes. The widening project will add one 11-foot-wide lane to the Lihu`e-bound side of the road and a turn lane for Kuamo`o Road, and all the widening will take place on the mauka side, Mori said. The maximum distance from the existing edge of the pavement to the furthest point of new pavement will be approximately 15 feet. (emphasis added)
The question is of course does that refer to the “existing edge of the pavement” on the mauka side or makai side? To say “all the widening will take place on the mauka side” obviously isn’t true since she already admitted that it will be widened onto the beach.
Don’t forget- Mori is just a spokesperson, not an engineer and apparently has a very loose grasp on what is actually happening.
Well at least the wider community now knows that the bike path was not removed from the beach. But it’s still unclear how much of the beach it will take. Is it four or five feet?... is it 11 feet?.. is it more?
Don’t expect the truth from Carvalho’s lips. When they move they apparently speak only the words of his spinmeister Tokioka , warbling “Together We Can... Hoodwink Them All”.
--------
We’ll be taking a long weekend- unless something sets our hair on fire we’ll see ya Monday.
Monday, August 25, 2008
BARKERS AND SHILLS
BARKERS AND SHILLS: When we saw the cockamamie intentionally-slanted push-poll in the local paper last week we detailed why we had a little more than a inkling that Adam Harju was now an official member of the United Superferry Military Command.
But Harju has left no doubt that his Garbage Island newspaper- one of the only two newspapers in the state along with the Maui News that wasn’t on the advertising-remunerated Superferry bandwagon- has now become a PR wing of the Hawaii Superferry (HSF).
In an inane editorial Sunday Harju makes up facts out of whole cloth and substitutes HSf and Chamber of Commerce (CofC) PR materials while citing his so-called poll results in an attempt to try to paint a rosy picture in service of HSf service on Kaua`i.
Harju has apparently taken reporter Nathan Eagle off the Superferry beat, substituting malahini Michael Levine, the new police and courts reporter, after Eagle apparently insisted on covering the actualities not the corporate spin regarding the HSf.
In the convoluted rare TGI editorial Harju tries to make the CofC’s case for the HSf’ as a panacea for curing the current downturn- a preposterous proposition to begin with- and cite the current EIS as being sufficient to allow the ferry on Kaua`i.
(I)n the battle to adhere to the state’s evolving environmental assessment process, the company is making strides. The argument from the beginning was nothing more than wanting the company to adhere to the process.
Now, a year later — after a Maui judge halted service in October of 2007, and an October Special Session of the state Legislature allowed service to continue as an Environmental Assessment is conducted — with Belt Collins, the company contracted to carry out the Environmental Impact Statement well into its work, is Kaua`i ready for a return of the Superferry?
The survival of our island’s residents has gone up a notch or two on the priority list over the last year. Unemployment is up, income is down and prices are rising. Will a return of service help ease any of those issues? We may get a chance to find out after the company is claiming a plan to come back after the EIS is complete in the spring of 2009. Is that not what people are concerned about? An EIS?
As Hawaii Superferry learns from its mistakes and attempts to recover from its PR blunder, will the people of Kaua`i forgive them? From the comments of island leaders in today’s front page article, it seems a possibility.
There will always be those who want no return of service and will equate the Superferry with a killing machine and anyone who gets near one a stormtrooper of corporate greed, but maybe, just maybe, it will lift some economic burden. If the environmental conditions are met, there should be no reason we can not find out.
Nowhere in TGI- or for that matter other papers- does the real information on the current EIS appear: the info that it is isn’t a real EIS as we’ve come to know them.
It is a watered down pseudo-version of one, based not on long standing National Environmental Protection act (NEPA) and state HEPA standards but one substituting a version detailed in the special legislation in Act 2 passed by the legislature last year that apparently does not contain the full identification of environmental, cultural and social impacts nor full plans for mitigation.
People who have demanded an “EIS First” are just beginning to find out that the Belt-Collins EIS is not going to address their concerns and mitigate them as a normal EIS does.
And, judging by the way they collected supposed community “input” that TGI cites it won’t even consider all the issues.
The words “public hearing” and “community input” were never heard in the very limited publicity before the never-identified-as-such “scoping meetings” last year which were billed and conducted as informational meetings.
No public speakers and no direct questions were permitted. As a matter of fact testimony was not permitted to be filed electronically, an absurdity in these days when public testimony via email is ubiquitous.
And if the poll and editorial wasn’t indicative enough of the unethical behavior at TGI, today’s article on yesterday’s “celebration” in Nawiliwili of the turning back of the HSf one year ago, half the article was taken up with unsubstantiated accusations in an interview with well-known nut-case James “Kimo” Rosen.
Not just was Rosen’s one man counter-demonstration dug up and reported- using half the article to detail his views- his ridiculous, unverified, un-witnessed claim of having had rocks thrown at him was given big play.
Despite the fact that the place was crawling with cops taking pictures according to those who attended and that Rosen was positioned far away from where the party goers were gathered TGI and the Honolulu Advertiser reported the rock throwing statement unchallenged in an unbelievable example of journalistic malfeasance.
Even though this kind of crap journalism is common these days when the paper is on a mission, we tend to doubt that if we made the claim Tom Fargo threw rocks at us it would have been plastered on the front page of the biggest newspaper in the state and the only local one.
The only decent coverage in the state today was, as usual, that of Tom Finnegan in the Honolulu Star Bulletin. He reported on what actually happened, not what some malahini right wing nut made up, as Levine in TGI and Diana Leone in the Honolulu Advertiser did..
But perhaps the worst attempt to misrepresent the community’s feelings on the issue by digging up some proponents who have deluded themselves into planning to line their pockets with Superferry trips to Kaua`i, was Sunday’s TGI front page article headlined “Superferry officials talk of possible return”
First Levine interviewed Tom Fargo quoting him as saying
“I’m really looking toward the future,” Tom Fargo, president and chief executive officer of Hawai`i Superferry, said in a Friday phone interview with The Garden Island. “My sense is that people would like to find a way forward. I’m always optimistic.”
Then he turns to the CofC, reporting
“Clearly the majority of our members are for the Superferry,” said Kaua`i Chamber of Commerce President Randy Francisco. “We also have members who are not for the ferry, but we understand their issues, which are related to the EIS, or some who just don’t want it.”
As we predicted last week, TGI used their ill-designed “poll” to try to say everyone loves the Ferry- or at least a majority. The poll as we detailed gave one “yes” choice, one “no” choice and three choices that were interpreted as “yes” answers, despite the fact those answering them could have been giving a qualified “no”
True to predictions the article said
A Web poll conducted by The Garden Island shows that 39 percent of votes were cast in favor of the Superferry’s presumably immediate return to Kaua`i; 11 percent more support a return to Kaua`i while an Environmental Impact Statement is conducted; 17 percent endorse a return only after an EIS is completed; and 5 percent recommend further outreach to the people of Kaua`i by Superferry officials.
Some 28 percent of votes were cast for an option saying the ferry should never return to Kaua`i.
Of course now the cheerleaders at the advertising beneficiaries at the Advertiser are claiming it’s 50% in favor and Fargo is now claiming a majority according to Leone’s article which feeds the self perpetuating fact-ignoring spin efforts of HSF and TGI by saying:
A recent nonscientific online poll in the Garden Island newspaper found that 50 percent of respondents favor the Superferry returning to Kaua`i; 17 percent want a return only after an EIS is completed; 5 percent recommend further outreach to the people of Kaua`i by Superferry officials; and 28 percent don't want the ferry on Kaua`i under any circumstances.
Fargo said he interprets that poll as "2-to-1 in favor of the Superferry returning" at some point. He didn't address ongoing court appeals by Maui and Kaua`i groups opposing the ferry.
And check out this little bit of spin from Levine, Harju’s and Lewis’ new Superferry shill.
Kaua`i resident Richard Hoeppner, who was central in last year’s protest and is organizing today’s “Ferry Free Kaua`i” anniversary celebration in Nawiliwili Park, agrees that the environmental review is critical.
“I would totally welcome them (the Superferry) with open arms if they completed an independent EIS. I never said anything like ‘sink the ferry,’” Hoeppner said Friday. “I tried to take the high road and said they should follow the law. Find out your environmental impact on our island and then come back, but not before.”
First he pulls a quote that says “I would totally welcome the Superferry” from Hoeppner and then links his objections to the EIS.
But he leaves out the fact that Hoeppner has been one of those shouting from the rooftops that the current EIS is not a valid or independent one, something the mainstream press has absolutely ignored but has been one of the main points opponent have been making for months.
We’d like to see Leone and Levine claim that Hoeppner didn’t try to make this the focal point of his interview. Then we’d know that they are not just biased shills but liars too.
And of course the choice of quotes allows Levine to continue by saying
For his part, Fargo agrees, at least when it comes to Kaua`i.
“The state just completed the rapid risk assessment that takes a look at our compliance with all of the environmental laws and processes,” he said. “It came out very positive, and I think it’ll be good when we have the EIS done because the EIS will reflect a lot of the same things as the rapid risk assessment.”
This report regurgitates unchallenged the HSf spin on the report, which actually found horribly lax standards and inspections of the ferry on it’s Maui trips as we detailed in the same piece in which we critiqued the poll, including some hair raising numbers from Maui Tomorrow’s Irene Bowie.
This is a new low in the junk reporting the Garbage Island has been known for since 1982. It’s a deliberate effort to cash in on the Superferry advertising dollars the Honolulu newspapers are rolling in by misrepresenting the issues and the pulse of the community.
Apparently Harju and publisher Mark Lewis know who’s buttering their bread. We would be willing to bet dollars to donuts that TGI was well represented in a meeting on August 4th that was not reported in TGI but was mentioned in Leone’s Advertiser article where, she says:
Adm. Thomas Fargo, president of the Hawaii Superferry, confirmed to The Advertiser Friday that he met Aug. 4 with business leaders and elected officials on Kaua`i to present information about how Superferry operations have been going between O`ahu and Maui.
"We will continue to answer questions and talk story" over coming months, Fargo said, "to get as much information (about Superferry operations) in front of leadership and of people as we possibly can."
We had no illusions when Harju flew in to take over TGI that he was at all interested in making it into a paper that represented the people on the island rather than the business community.
The trend in newspapers these day is in that direction. But like all of his predecessors over the past 25 years, even since “the people’s editor” Jean Holmes retired, he has taken the paper to new depths of ethical depravity in journalism.
It’s about time people all call out TGI and call out their prime advertisers. We need to put the economic hurt on them and shatter the visions of dollar signs that cause them to publish unrepentant advertiser supported spin.
Perhaps a boycott is in order. We don’t expect any real journalism at TGI but at least we don’t have to give them our money.
But Harju has left no doubt that his Garbage Island newspaper- one of the only two newspapers in the state along with the Maui News that wasn’t on the advertising-remunerated Superferry bandwagon- has now become a PR wing of the Hawaii Superferry (HSF).
In an inane editorial Sunday Harju makes up facts out of whole cloth and substitutes HSf and Chamber of Commerce (CofC) PR materials while citing his so-called poll results in an attempt to try to paint a rosy picture in service of HSf service on Kaua`i.
Harju has apparently taken reporter Nathan Eagle off the Superferry beat, substituting malahini Michael Levine, the new police and courts reporter, after Eagle apparently insisted on covering the actualities not the corporate spin regarding the HSf.
In the convoluted rare TGI editorial Harju tries to make the CofC’s case for the HSf’ as a panacea for curing the current downturn- a preposterous proposition to begin with- and cite the current EIS as being sufficient to allow the ferry on Kaua`i.
(I)n the battle to adhere to the state’s evolving environmental assessment process, the company is making strides. The argument from the beginning was nothing more than wanting the company to adhere to the process.
Now, a year later — after a Maui judge halted service in October of 2007, and an October Special Session of the state Legislature allowed service to continue as an Environmental Assessment is conducted — with Belt Collins, the company contracted to carry out the Environmental Impact Statement well into its work, is Kaua`i ready for a return of the Superferry?
The survival of our island’s residents has gone up a notch or two on the priority list over the last year. Unemployment is up, income is down and prices are rising. Will a return of service help ease any of those issues? We may get a chance to find out after the company is claiming a plan to come back after the EIS is complete in the spring of 2009. Is that not what people are concerned about? An EIS?
As Hawaii Superferry learns from its mistakes and attempts to recover from its PR blunder, will the people of Kaua`i forgive them? From the comments of island leaders in today’s front page article, it seems a possibility.
There will always be those who want no return of service and will equate the Superferry with a killing machine and anyone who gets near one a stormtrooper of corporate greed, but maybe, just maybe, it will lift some economic burden. If the environmental conditions are met, there should be no reason we can not find out.
Nowhere in TGI- or for that matter other papers- does the real information on the current EIS appear: the info that it is isn’t a real EIS as we’ve come to know them.
It is a watered down pseudo-version of one, based not on long standing National Environmental Protection act (NEPA) and state HEPA standards but one substituting a version detailed in the special legislation in Act 2 passed by the legislature last year that apparently does not contain the full identification of environmental, cultural and social impacts nor full plans for mitigation.
People who have demanded an “EIS First” are just beginning to find out that the Belt-Collins EIS is not going to address their concerns and mitigate them as a normal EIS does.
And, judging by the way they collected supposed community “input” that TGI cites it won’t even consider all the issues.
The words “public hearing” and “community input” were never heard in the very limited publicity before the never-identified-as-such “scoping meetings” last year which were billed and conducted as informational meetings.
No public speakers and no direct questions were permitted. As a matter of fact testimony was not permitted to be filed electronically, an absurdity in these days when public testimony via email is ubiquitous.
And if the poll and editorial wasn’t indicative enough of the unethical behavior at TGI, today’s article on yesterday’s “celebration” in Nawiliwili of the turning back of the HSf one year ago, half the article was taken up with unsubstantiated accusations in an interview with well-known nut-case James “Kimo” Rosen.
Not just was Rosen’s one man counter-demonstration dug up and reported- using half the article to detail his views- his ridiculous, unverified, un-witnessed claim of having had rocks thrown at him was given big play.
Despite the fact that the place was crawling with cops taking pictures according to those who attended and that Rosen was positioned far away from where the party goers were gathered TGI and the Honolulu Advertiser reported the rock throwing statement unchallenged in an unbelievable example of journalistic malfeasance.
Even though this kind of crap journalism is common these days when the paper is on a mission, we tend to doubt that if we made the claim Tom Fargo threw rocks at us it would have been plastered on the front page of the biggest newspaper in the state and the only local one.
The only decent coverage in the state today was, as usual, that of Tom Finnegan in the Honolulu Star Bulletin. He reported on what actually happened, not what some malahini right wing nut made up, as Levine in TGI and Diana Leone in the Honolulu Advertiser did..
But perhaps the worst attempt to misrepresent the community’s feelings on the issue by digging up some proponents who have deluded themselves into planning to line their pockets with Superferry trips to Kaua`i, was Sunday’s TGI front page article headlined “Superferry officials talk of possible return”
First Levine interviewed Tom Fargo quoting him as saying
“I’m really looking toward the future,” Tom Fargo, president and chief executive officer of Hawai`i Superferry, said in a Friday phone interview with The Garden Island. “My sense is that people would like to find a way forward. I’m always optimistic.”
Then he turns to the CofC, reporting
“Clearly the majority of our members are for the Superferry,” said Kaua`i Chamber of Commerce President Randy Francisco. “We also have members who are not for the ferry, but we understand their issues, which are related to the EIS, or some who just don’t want it.”
As we predicted last week, TGI used their ill-designed “poll” to try to say everyone loves the Ferry- or at least a majority. The poll as we detailed gave one “yes” choice, one “no” choice and three choices that were interpreted as “yes” answers, despite the fact those answering them could have been giving a qualified “no”
True to predictions the article said
A Web poll conducted by The Garden Island shows that 39 percent of votes were cast in favor of the Superferry’s presumably immediate return to Kaua`i; 11 percent more support a return to Kaua`i while an Environmental Impact Statement is conducted; 17 percent endorse a return only after an EIS is completed; and 5 percent recommend further outreach to the people of Kaua`i by Superferry officials.
Some 28 percent of votes were cast for an option saying the ferry should never return to Kaua`i.
Of course now the cheerleaders at the advertising beneficiaries at the Advertiser are claiming it’s 50% in favor and Fargo is now claiming a majority according to Leone’s article which feeds the self perpetuating fact-ignoring spin efforts of HSF and TGI by saying:
A recent nonscientific online poll in the Garden Island newspaper found that 50 percent of respondents favor the Superferry returning to Kaua`i; 17 percent want a return only after an EIS is completed; 5 percent recommend further outreach to the people of Kaua`i by Superferry officials; and 28 percent don't want the ferry on Kaua`i under any circumstances.
Fargo said he interprets that poll as "2-to-1 in favor of the Superferry returning" at some point. He didn't address ongoing court appeals by Maui and Kaua`i groups opposing the ferry.
And check out this little bit of spin from Levine, Harju’s and Lewis’ new Superferry shill.
Kaua`i resident Richard Hoeppner, who was central in last year’s protest and is organizing today’s “Ferry Free Kaua`i” anniversary celebration in Nawiliwili Park, agrees that the environmental review is critical.
“I would totally welcome them (the Superferry) with open arms if they completed an independent EIS. I never said anything like ‘sink the ferry,’” Hoeppner said Friday. “I tried to take the high road and said they should follow the law. Find out your environmental impact on our island and then come back, but not before.”
First he pulls a quote that says “I would totally welcome the Superferry” from Hoeppner and then links his objections to the EIS.
But he leaves out the fact that Hoeppner has been one of those shouting from the rooftops that the current EIS is not a valid or independent one, something the mainstream press has absolutely ignored but has been one of the main points opponent have been making for months.
We’d like to see Leone and Levine claim that Hoeppner didn’t try to make this the focal point of his interview. Then we’d know that they are not just biased shills but liars too.
And of course the choice of quotes allows Levine to continue by saying
For his part, Fargo agrees, at least when it comes to Kaua`i.
“The state just completed the rapid risk assessment that takes a look at our compliance with all of the environmental laws and processes,” he said. “It came out very positive, and I think it’ll be good when we have the EIS done because the EIS will reflect a lot of the same things as the rapid risk assessment.”
This report regurgitates unchallenged the HSf spin on the report, which actually found horribly lax standards and inspections of the ferry on it’s Maui trips as we detailed in the same piece in which we critiqued the poll, including some hair raising numbers from Maui Tomorrow’s Irene Bowie.
This is a new low in the junk reporting the Garbage Island has been known for since 1982. It’s a deliberate effort to cash in on the Superferry advertising dollars the Honolulu newspapers are rolling in by misrepresenting the issues and the pulse of the community.
Apparently Harju and publisher Mark Lewis know who’s buttering their bread. We would be willing to bet dollars to donuts that TGI was well represented in a meeting on August 4th that was not reported in TGI but was mentioned in Leone’s Advertiser article where, she says:
Adm. Thomas Fargo, president of the Hawaii Superferry, confirmed to The Advertiser Friday that he met Aug. 4 with business leaders and elected officials on Kaua`i to present information about how Superferry operations have been going between O`ahu and Maui.
"We will continue to answer questions and talk story" over coming months, Fargo said, "to get as much information (about Superferry operations) in front of leadership and of people as we possibly can."
We had no illusions when Harju flew in to take over TGI that he was at all interested in making it into a paper that represented the people on the island rather than the business community.
The trend in newspapers these day is in that direction. But like all of his predecessors over the past 25 years, even since “the people’s editor” Jean Holmes retired, he has taken the paper to new depths of ethical depravity in journalism.
It’s about time people all call out TGI and call out their prime advertisers. We need to put the economic hurt on them and shatter the visions of dollar signs that cause them to publish unrepentant advertiser supported spin.
Perhaps a boycott is in order. We don’t expect any real journalism at TGI but at least we don’t have to give them our money.
Monday, March 30, 2009
DERAILING THE GRAVY TRAINING:
DERAILING THE GRAVY TRAINING: Back sometime in the early 80’s when Ronnie Ray-Gun was busy chest-thumping at the Ruskies like Bonzo there was a particularly tense period when the frenzy was so whipped-up many of America’s rabble though attack was imminent.
It was during this period of profound fear-mongering that the skies of Kaua`i were suddenly and disturbingly full of presumably military fighter jets one day, annoyingly buzzing residential neighborhoods for hours on end.
The noise and indeed the earth-shaking became too much and we called the FAA to complain.
After a tirade basically asking “what the f--- is going on” we were put on hold for about five minutes before being told- and we kid you not- “don’t worry... they’re ours.”
“We don’t care who the hell’s they are” we screamed “stop it- now.”
We tell this story because even this clueless bit of federal paternalism had nothing on our very own local brand, as exhibited by Kaua`i Councilmembers Jay Furfaro and Dickie Chang at last Wednesday’s (3/25) meeting when discussion turned to a bill to appropriate a half a million dollars to shove down the rat hole of tourism promotion.
It’s bad enough that the county is once again throwing money at an industry that provides at best crappy jobs cleaning toilets with our tongues for substandard wages while it scoops up most of the wads of incoming cash for outgoing designation. It’s bad enough that there’s never any credible evidence that more advertising does anything to increase tourist numbers... assuming that’s a good thing in the first place. And it’s bad enough that the administration wants to do this while they are putting essential county services on the back burner by refusing to allow departments to fill vital open positions.
But when the bill came up for first reading before the council there was not only no specific information for the public- even after we requested it preceding the meeting- the reading was followed by a perfunctory “don’t worry your pretty little head- we’ve seen a plan... and it’s ok” from Furfaro and Chang.
But the public wasn’t even going to get that much until council watchdog Glenn Mickens got up and asked, as we asked the FAA, “what the f--- is going on“ eliciting the “don’t worry they’re ours” from the two tourism-industry, council-embedded shills.
Presumably if no one said anything the bill would, as we see all the time with “money bills”, go to a pubic hearing, one committee meeting and a final second reading, all without a peep out of anyone on the council or administration on anything but a barest of bones plan for spending... if that.
There is supposedly a plan- something about somehow bribing the “wholesalers” of vacation packages according to Furfaro and Chang who sought to hush Mickens up after his testimony by telling him they’d seen the plan and it was okay with them so shut up sit down and let us worry about it.
Mickens testimony described a few choice past rat holes for tourism promotion money which the industry has conned out of the county without any accountability or measurable “bang for the buck”.
Mickens asked a simple question that people have been asking for years- if we’re going to spend all this money why not do the one thing that will insure we get warm bodies on the ground... distribute vouchers for the tourists themselves for airfare, presumably on any flight into Kaua`i.
But we might never have even heard anything about the idiotic and thread-bare drivel-heavy plan had it not been for an article by a relatively new yet excellent reporter at the local paper, Michael Levine- asking some questions and apparently getting a hold of a “report” of sorts from new county Director of Economic Development George Costa after the meeting.
Levine describes the “plan” which is heavy on vague categorical generalities with a dearth of actual details of distribution of the money or any feedback or accountability mechanism.
Though it’s not apparent whether Levine actually saw a plan or just got a description of it, it appears to be another of these advertising based boondoggles throwing money at a bunch of pre-selected targeted “wholesalers” that will supposedly promote other unlisted pre-selected businesses, presumably corporate off-island owned hotels and tour businesses
Levine writes:
“The main emphasis of the program is working with wholesalers to drive new bookings to Kaua`i over a wide variety of properties and to encourage spending in local businesses through a coupon book that will be created in partnership with the Kaua`i Chamber of Commerce,” he said. “Based on Hawai`i Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism visitor spending statistics, the $500,000 being requested for the marketing program is estimated to generate approximately $15 to 17 million in our island economy.”
Oh, is that the same DBED&T that is slated by some legislators for demolition and is famous for erroneous statistics and throwing STATE money down their rat hole?
The proposal shows that the $500,000 described as “Phase I” would include $250,000 to be split evenly among five wholesale partners or online travel agencies, and the coupon book described by Costa will likely be a part of that plan.
Oh boy- coupon books- a bunch of worthless “buy one get one free” and “free gift with purchase” coupons that are 99% useless crap, as most tourists know.
The proposal listed the top five such partners for Kaua`i as Pleasant Holidays, Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and Blue Sky Tours.
And what exactly are we going to do- bribe them to get them to trick people into coming to Kaua`i?.. When you click-on Florida you get Kaua`i? What happens if Honolulu pays them $251,000 to send them to Waikiki?
“Sixty-five percent of our room nights on Kaua`i come from 12 major wholesalers,” said Council Vice Chair Jay Furfaro in response to Mickens’ testimony.
This isn’t being directed at trade shows, he said, it’s being directed at “key customers we refer to as wholesalers.”
Furfaro recently cut all his job-related ties to the tourism industry where he spent his whole life working as an executive, after being continually caught in conflicts of interest, and now that such ties require recusal.
Also included in the proposal was $170,000 for a kama`aina campaign encouraging locals on other Hawaiian Islands to visit Kaua`i, with a special focus on military personnel. The 50th anniversary celebration for South Pacific, scheduled for September, would receive $30,000, and $25,000 apiece would go to a radio show and to Kaua`i Visitors Bureau administration fees.
Oh boy- more advertising... and event support. That’ll work... and if it doesn’t how will we know? As usual the answer to that is unquantifiable... so shut up Parx.
Phase II, which would cost another $500,000 and could be funded through the upcoming budget process, would allocate another $250,000 to five wholesale partners, $170,000 to the kama`aina campaign, $40,000 to a “Northwest Blitz” and $25,000 apiece to a radio show and to Kaua`i Visitors Bureau administration fees.
Yes folks this only fills up half of the rat hole.
Only either a complete idiot or the recipients of kickbacks could possibly think that increasing advertising will get more people to come to Hawai`i or specifically Kaua`i these days.
Presumably these dunderheads have been to the mainland and talked to people there. Have they ever found one person who never heard of Hawai`i much less one who has to be convinced to come here, all else being equal?
Of course not. People on the mainland don’t need to be reminded how much they want to come here, possibly over every other single visitor destination around the world. It’s at the top of the list for everyone’s “dream vacation”.
So what’s stopping them?.. the fact that they didn’t see a 30 second clip of bikini clad beach-goers or fake hula dancers?
What are we- a bunch a freakin idiots? It’s the cost you shemageggis. “Everyone knows” the airfare is outrageous, the hotel rooms and rent-a-cars are out of sight and on and on.
Whether this is actually true doesn’t matter because people belive it is and no amount of advertising saying “no really- it’s not that expensive” will cause them to experience a pissy-foot as rain.
The only thing that will get them here is actual good-as-cash vouchers, as Glenn suggested. And not those lousy restricted ones that can only go to one or two specific business... which have already raised their prices by $200 in anticipation of participating in that kind of scam... a scam most mainlanders have seen and won’t get taken in with again.
$1 million would translate to 5000 $200 vouchers to be used unrestricted on any airline as Glenn suggested.
Actually we’d suggest they be used for any business on Kaua`i too and perhaps use them to leverage a “double your Kaua`i Voucher” program for participating airlines or businesses to get a bigger bang for the buck.
The boneheads in tourism promotion are quite obviously either clueless.. or corrupt.
With no accountability with strictly advertising-based promotions. That assures that there is no feedback mechanism to establish it’s effectiveness in solid verifiable numbers. So they can never be held accountable and hold their jobs forever whether they perform or not.
Just look at this hilarious paragraph from an article in the local paper this weekend from Sue Kanoho executive director of the Kaua`i Visitors Bureau:
The second assumption I often hear is that they think all KVB does is “just place print advertising” to get the word out about Kaua`i. In fact, KVB has a myriad of areas that we focus on to market the island. In addition to print advertising, KVB also does television spots and television programs, radio ads, outdoor advertising, e-marketing, webinars, travel trade advertising, trade shows, product launches, destination training, wholesaler cooperatives, event marketing, familiarization tours, research and last, but not least, and one of the most important elements…. public relations.
Uh, Sue, maybe the problem is that all you can think of to do is advertise, no matter what the medium.
It’s evocative of a line from the movie The Blues Brothers where the patrons of the chicken-wire bar where they’re about to play tell them “We like both kinds of music- country AND western”.
The reason for this mindset is perhaps that they belive the only way to get people here is to con them into doing it, implying that otherwise they would never come.
That may be true of other locales but these marketing geniuses, many of whom come from other places where they cut their visitors destination marketing teeth, have no understanding of the built in desirability of the local product- Hawai`i itself- whether in reality or through the fantasy that mainland denizens hold in their mind of the islands as the ultimate destination.
If you ask them the only obstacle in their minds is cost. So why not give them something real that will also assure the behavior we seek along with a built in unambiguous accounting of where the money went and exactly what we got for it?
Actually we shouldn’t be spending a nickel on promoting someone else’s business- it’s amazing how quickly entrepreneurial free-market zealots turn into promoters of a welfare state when the handout is for them.
But if these gullible politicians feel they have to spend money on tourism promotion it’s time to stop the corrupt kick-back-ready system of advertising a product that couldn’t be any more desirable... unless it were free.
It was during this period of profound fear-mongering that the skies of Kaua`i were suddenly and disturbingly full of presumably military fighter jets one day, annoyingly buzzing residential neighborhoods for hours on end.
The noise and indeed the earth-shaking became too much and we called the FAA to complain.
After a tirade basically asking “what the f--- is going on” we were put on hold for about five minutes before being told- and we kid you not- “don’t worry... they’re ours.”
“We don’t care who the hell’s they are” we screamed “stop it- now.”
We tell this story because even this clueless bit of federal paternalism had nothing on our very own local brand, as exhibited by Kaua`i Councilmembers Jay Furfaro and Dickie Chang at last Wednesday’s (3/25) meeting when discussion turned to a bill to appropriate a half a million dollars to shove down the rat hole of tourism promotion.
It’s bad enough that the county is once again throwing money at an industry that provides at best crappy jobs cleaning toilets with our tongues for substandard wages while it scoops up most of the wads of incoming cash for outgoing designation. It’s bad enough that there’s never any credible evidence that more advertising does anything to increase tourist numbers... assuming that’s a good thing in the first place. And it’s bad enough that the administration wants to do this while they are putting essential county services on the back burner by refusing to allow departments to fill vital open positions.
But when the bill came up for first reading before the council there was not only no specific information for the public- even after we requested it preceding the meeting- the reading was followed by a perfunctory “don’t worry your pretty little head- we’ve seen a plan... and it’s ok” from Furfaro and Chang.
But the public wasn’t even going to get that much until council watchdog Glenn Mickens got up and asked, as we asked the FAA, “what the f--- is going on“ eliciting the “don’t worry they’re ours” from the two tourism-industry, council-embedded shills.
Presumably if no one said anything the bill would, as we see all the time with “money bills”, go to a pubic hearing, one committee meeting and a final second reading, all without a peep out of anyone on the council or administration on anything but a barest of bones plan for spending... if that.
There is supposedly a plan- something about somehow bribing the “wholesalers” of vacation packages according to Furfaro and Chang who sought to hush Mickens up after his testimony by telling him they’d seen the plan and it was okay with them so shut up sit down and let us worry about it.
Mickens testimony described a few choice past rat holes for tourism promotion money which the industry has conned out of the county without any accountability or measurable “bang for the buck”.
Mickens asked a simple question that people have been asking for years- if we’re going to spend all this money why not do the one thing that will insure we get warm bodies on the ground... distribute vouchers for the tourists themselves for airfare, presumably on any flight into Kaua`i.
But we might never have even heard anything about the idiotic and thread-bare drivel-heavy plan had it not been for an article by a relatively new yet excellent reporter at the local paper, Michael Levine- asking some questions and apparently getting a hold of a “report” of sorts from new county Director of Economic Development George Costa after the meeting.
Levine describes the “plan” which is heavy on vague categorical generalities with a dearth of actual details of distribution of the money or any feedback or accountability mechanism.
Though it’s not apparent whether Levine actually saw a plan or just got a description of it, it appears to be another of these advertising based boondoggles throwing money at a bunch of pre-selected targeted “wholesalers” that will supposedly promote other unlisted pre-selected businesses, presumably corporate off-island owned hotels and tour businesses
Levine writes:
“The main emphasis of the program is working with wholesalers to drive new bookings to Kaua`i over a wide variety of properties and to encourage spending in local businesses through a coupon book that will be created in partnership with the Kaua`i Chamber of Commerce,” he said. “Based on Hawai`i Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism visitor spending statistics, the $500,000 being requested for the marketing program is estimated to generate approximately $15 to 17 million in our island economy.”
Oh, is that the same DBED&T that is slated by some legislators for demolition and is famous for erroneous statistics and throwing STATE money down their rat hole?
The proposal shows that the $500,000 described as “Phase I” would include $250,000 to be split evenly among five wholesale partners or online travel agencies, and the coupon book described by Costa will likely be a part of that plan.
Oh boy- coupon books- a bunch of worthless “buy one get one free” and “free gift with purchase” coupons that are 99% useless crap, as most tourists know.
The proposal listed the top five such partners for Kaua`i as Pleasant Holidays, Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and Blue Sky Tours.
And what exactly are we going to do- bribe them to get them to trick people into coming to Kaua`i?.. When you click-on Florida you get Kaua`i? What happens if Honolulu pays them $251,000 to send them to Waikiki?
“Sixty-five percent of our room nights on Kaua`i come from 12 major wholesalers,” said Council Vice Chair Jay Furfaro in response to Mickens’ testimony.
This isn’t being directed at trade shows, he said, it’s being directed at “key customers we refer to as wholesalers.”
Furfaro recently cut all his job-related ties to the tourism industry where he spent his whole life working as an executive, after being continually caught in conflicts of interest, and now that such ties require recusal.
Also included in the proposal was $170,000 for a kama`aina campaign encouraging locals on other Hawaiian Islands to visit Kaua`i, with a special focus on military personnel. The 50th anniversary celebration for South Pacific, scheduled for September, would receive $30,000, and $25,000 apiece would go to a radio show and to Kaua`i Visitors Bureau administration fees.
Oh boy- more advertising... and event support. That’ll work... and if it doesn’t how will we know? As usual the answer to that is unquantifiable... so shut up Parx.
Phase II, which would cost another $500,000 and could be funded through the upcoming budget process, would allocate another $250,000 to five wholesale partners, $170,000 to the kama`aina campaign, $40,000 to a “Northwest Blitz” and $25,000 apiece to a radio show and to Kaua`i Visitors Bureau administration fees.
Yes folks this only fills up half of the rat hole.
Only either a complete idiot or the recipients of kickbacks could possibly think that increasing advertising will get more people to come to Hawai`i or specifically Kaua`i these days.
Presumably these dunderheads have been to the mainland and talked to people there. Have they ever found one person who never heard of Hawai`i much less one who has to be convinced to come here, all else being equal?
Of course not. People on the mainland don’t need to be reminded how much they want to come here, possibly over every other single visitor destination around the world. It’s at the top of the list for everyone’s “dream vacation”.
So what’s stopping them?.. the fact that they didn’t see a 30 second clip of bikini clad beach-goers or fake hula dancers?
What are we- a bunch a freakin idiots? It’s the cost you shemageggis. “Everyone knows” the airfare is outrageous, the hotel rooms and rent-a-cars are out of sight and on and on.
Whether this is actually true doesn’t matter because people belive it is and no amount of advertising saying “no really- it’s not that expensive” will cause them to experience a pissy-foot as rain.
The only thing that will get them here is actual good-as-cash vouchers, as Glenn suggested. And not those lousy restricted ones that can only go to one or two specific business... which have already raised their prices by $200 in anticipation of participating in that kind of scam... a scam most mainlanders have seen and won’t get taken in with again.
$1 million would translate to 5000 $200 vouchers to be used unrestricted on any airline as Glenn suggested.
Actually we’d suggest they be used for any business on Kaua`i too and perhaps use them to leverage a “double your Kaua`i Voucher” program for participating airlines or businesses to get a bigger bang for the buck.
The boneheads in tourism promotion are quite obviously either clueless.. or corrupt.
With no accountability with strictly advertising-based promotions. That assures that there is no feedback mechanism to establish it’s effectiveness in solid verifiable numbers. So they can never be held accountable and hold their jobs forever whether they perform or not.
Just look at this hilarious paragraph from an article in the local paper this weekend from Sue Kanoho executive director of the Kaua`i Visitors Bureau:
The second assumption I often hear is that they think all KVB does is “just place print advertising” to get the word out about Kaua`i. In fact, KVB has a myriad of areas that we focus on to market the island. In addition to print advertising, KVB also does television spots and television programs, radio ads, outdoor advertising, e-marketing, webinars, travel trade advertising, trade shows, product launches, destination training, wholesaler cooperatives, event marketing, familiarization tours, research and last, but not least, and one of the most important elements…. public relations.
Uh, Sue, maybe the problem is that all you can think of to do is advertise, no matter what the medium.
It’s evocative of a line from the movie The Blues Brothers where the patrons of the chicken-wire bar where they’re about to play tell them “We like both kinds of music- country AND western”.
The reason for this mindset is perhaps that they belive the only way to get people here is to con them into doing it, implying that otherwise they would never come.
That may be true of other locales but these marketing geniuses, many of whom come from other places where they cut their visitors destination marketing teeth, have no understanding of the built in desirability of the local product- Hawai`i itself- whether in reality or through the fantasy that mainland denizens hold in their mind of the islands as the ultimate destination.
If you ask them the only obstacle in their minds is cost. So why not give them something real that will also assure the behavior we seek along with a built in unambiguous accounting of where the money went and exactly what we got for it?
Actually we shouldn’t be spending a nickel on promoting someone else’s business- it’s amazing how quickly entrepreneurial free-market zealots turn into promoters of a welfare state when the handout is for them.
But if these gullible politicians feel they have to spend money on tourism promotion it’s time to stop the corrupt kick-back-ready system of advertising a product that couldn’t be any more desirable... unless it were free.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
SIDESTEPPING THE OOZE
SIDESTEPPING THE OOZE: A stroll down Main Street, Anytown USA these days expose one to a panorama of boarded up windows and, with people furious at Washington over the federal bank bailouts and executive bonuses, the only store doing business is Ernie’s Pitchfork Sharpening and Torch Fuel Emporium.
Yet here on Kaua`i the we mushroom’s don’t seem to care we are being kept in the dark and fed a bunch of horse manure.
The Kaua`i County 2009-10 budget hearings are once again being conducted out of public view despite what sources say is the availability of funding for televising the all important sessions.
Despite promises by at least two councilmembers to make it their business to get them on pubic access TV, all powerful Chair Kaipo “the Minotaur” Asing, is apparently intent on, as the song says, keeping the dark as dark as can be and doing what’s wrong as long as he can.
But at least the local paper has seen fit this year to provide extensive cover of the first two sessions. In doing so reporter Michael Levine has highlighted how local governments like ours on Kaua`i are taking advantage of the so called “federal stimulus” money to stimulate nothing and rather, simply free up money already designated for essential services to spend, at best, on some “nice to have” but less than urgent needs of the people and at worst, paybacks for backing from well connected corrupt cronies and fat cat campaign contributors and supporters.
This highlights the absurdity of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act- aka the stimulus bill- as we discussed a couple of months ago and the whole issue of “earmarks” which somehow has become the dirtiest word in national politics.
For those who can’t remember the whole idea of the stimulus bill was to add to, not supplant, money for actual “shovel-ready” projects that state and local governments would not normally be able to fund, with a bottom line of “creating jobs”.
But instead of allowing our duly elected representatives to designate these projects in the bill, because of the media-directed populist denigration of these “earmarks”, the bill instead just divides up $700 million among the various state and local jurisdictions to essentially use as they please.
In our Feb 17 column we detailed the projects Kaua`i designated for the “stimulus” funding showing how most were projects already in the pipeline and in most cases already funded, demonstrating how they simply freed up money for other things, whether essential or not, in the budget rather than making the tough choices on how to spend limited resources in a time of decreased revenues.
And sure enough Levine tell us that’s exactly what at least one of not all councilmembers are planning. Levine writes:
Budget and Finance Committee Chair Daryl Kaneshiro, who led the meeting, said potential stimulus funds should be looked at largely as a means of assistance, arguing the council should not rely heavily on the help it might receive from the federal government as it makes budgeting decisions.
Councilman Tim Bynum disagreed, saying the ARRA funds are “not just gravy” and will be an integral part of the county’s general fund, encouraging all departments to take a serious look at evolving stimulus grants for any and all opportunities.
“In the past, Kaua`i has not gotten its fair share of state and federal funds because we didn’t stand up and ask for them,” he said. “You have not because you ask not.
”Using county funds to finance programs that could be covered by stimulus grants with the expectation that if the stimulus funds eventually come through, the county funds can be moved elsewhere is dangerous because it could remove the motivation for departments to push hard for those grants, Bynum said, citing “the human factor.”
We don’t doubt that this same thought is driving local government budgets across the nation. It certainly is doing so statewide as our governor and legislature have been anything but shy about using the money to “balance the budget” rather than to “create jobs”.
They are actually taking the money and eliminating jobs by trying to balance the budget by carving savings out of the butts of their employees, setting the worst possible example for the business community by emulating the penchant for making human resources the most expendable.
But while the cruel businessperson discards their formerly “valued employees” like a dirty dishrag in order to maintain enough profits so the owner doesn’t have to forgo that ivory backscratcher he had his eye on, politicians use the excess to maintain that “free lunch” that comes with the demand for more services in one breath and lower taxes in the next.
Recovery and Reinvestment Act? More like another Incumbency Preservation Act.
Its all thanks to the Play-Dough-Factory type results of congress’s capitulation to the “earmark equals pork” fervor resulting in their refusal to specifically designate funding for important local projects that are politically tough but absolutely essential- something our congresspersons and senators should be well aware of if they are doing they representational jobs correctly.
Sure the system is abused by the corrupt to pay off campaign contributors. But the vast majority of earmarks are used for things like this week’s $5 million plus in monk seal protection funds that came from the federal government.
While these projects might be ridiculed by other jurisdictions they are often needed and popular but orphan projects locally.
What happens is that while we are busy hand-wringing over the potential for corruption by our federal representatives- where the scrutiny is magnified 100 times by all the public interest groups and investigative reporters from all over the country concentrated on the national’s capitol- the potential for a thousand crooked flowers to bloom at the local level remains unscrutinized and virtually unchecked.
As Levine wrote:
With essentially no members of the public in attendance and the Ho`ike television cameras powered off and covered up, the seven-member council started its work on likely its most important function and the task its members are elected primarily to manage: divvying out more than $150 million in projected expenditures for the year starting July 1.
While many scream for “home rule” the fact remains that the closer to home the government entity, the more the opportunity for corruption.
And on Kaua`i, where no one shows up and the machinations of the council’s budget sessions are out-of-sight, out-of-mind, where corruption is rampant and incumbency virtually guarantees re-election as long as it serves the greedy desires of the revolving-door, inbred, nepotistic barons, you can bet that as the finances shake-out the “stimulus money” will go directly into the pockets of the shake-down constituency.
Yet here on Kaua`i the we mushroom’s don’t seem to care we are being kept in the dark and fed a bunch of horse manure.
The Kaua`i County 2009-10 budget hearings are once again being conducted out of public view despite what sources say is the availability of funding for televising the all important sessions.
Despite promises by at least two councilmembers to make it their business to get them on pubic access TV, all powerful Chair Kaipo “the Minotaur” Asing, is apparently intent on, as the song says, keeping the dark as dark as can be and doing what’s wrong as long as he can.
But at least the local paper has seen fit this year to provide extensive cover of the first two sessions. In doing so reporter Michael Levine has highlighted how local governments like ours on Kaua`i are taking advantage of the so called “federal stimulus” money to stimulate nothing and rather, simply free up money already designated for essential services to spend, at best, on some “nice to have” but less than urgent needs of the people and at worst, paybacks for backing from well connected corrupt cronies and fat cat campaign contributors and supporters.
This highlights the absurdity of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act- aka the stimulus bill- as we discussed a couple of months ago and the whole issue of “earmarks” which somehow has become the dirtiest word in national politics.
For those who can’t remember the whole idea of the stimulus bill was to add to, not supplant, money for actual “shovel-ready” projects that state and local governments would not normally be able to fund, with a bottom line of “creating jobs”.
But instead of allowing our duly elected representatives to designate these projects in the bill, because of the media-directed populist denigration of these “earmarks”, the bill instead just divides up $700 million among the various state and local jurisdictions to essentially use as they please.
In our Feb 17 column we detailed the projects Kaua`i designated for the “stimulus” funding showing how most were projects already in the pipeline and in most cases already funded, demonstrating how they simply freed up money for other things, whether essential or not, in the budget rather than making the tough choices on how to spend limited resources in a time of decreased revenues.
And sure enough Levine tell us that’s exactly what at least one of not all councilmembers are planning. Levine writes:
Budget and Finance Committee Chair Daryl Kaneshiro, who led the meeting, said potential stimulus funds should be looked at largely as a means of assistance, arguing the council should not rely heavily on the help it might receive from the federal government as it makes budgeting decisions.
Councilman Tim Bynum disagreed, saying the ARRA funds are “not just gravy” and will be an integral part of the county’s general fund, encouraging all departments to take a serious look at evolving stimulus grants for any and all opportunities.
“In the past, Kaua`i has not gotten its fair share of state and federal funds because we didn’t stand up and ask for them,” he said. “You have not because you ask not.
”Using county funds to finance programs that could be covered by stimulus grants with the expectation that if the stimulus funds eventually come through, the county funds can be moved elsewhere is dangerous because it could remove the motivation for departments to push hard for those grants, Bynum said, citing “the human factor.”
We don’t doubt that this same thought is driving local government budgets across the nation. It certainly is doing so statewide as our governor and legislature have been anything but shy about using the money to “balance the budget” rather than to “create jobs”.
They are actually taking the money and eliminating jobs by trying to balance the budget by carving savings out of the butts of their employees, setting the worst possible example for the business community by emulating the penchant for making human resources the most expendable.
But while the cruel businessperson discards their formerly “valued employees” like a dirty dishrag in order to maintain enough profits so the owner doesn’t have to forgo that ivory backscratcher he had his eye on, politicians use the excess to maintain that “free lunch” that comes with the demand for more services in one breath and lower taxes in the next.
Recovery and Reinvestment Act? More like another Incumbency Preservation Act.
Its all thanks to the Play-Dough-Factory type results of congress’s capitulation to the “earmark equals pork” fervor resulting in their refusal to specifically designate funding for important local projects that are politically tough but absolutely essential- something our congresspersons and senators should be well aware of if they are doing they representational jobs correctly.
Sure the system is abused by the corrupt to pay off campaign contributors. But the vast majority of earmarks are used for things like this week’s $5 million plus in monk seal protection funds that came from the federal government.
While these projects might be ridiculed by other jurisdictions they are often needed and popular but orphan projects locally.
What happens is that while we are busy hand-wringing over the potential for corruption by our federal representatives- where the scrutiny is magnified 100 times by all the public interest groups and investigative reporters from all over the country concentrated on the national’s capitol- the potential for a thousand crooked flowers to bloom at the local level remains unscrutinized and virtually unchecked.
As Levine wrote:
With essentially no members of the public in attendance and the Ho`ike television cameras powered off and covered up, the seven-member council started its work on likely its most important function and the task its members are elected primarily to manage: divvying out more than $150 million in projected expenditures for the year starting July 1.
While many scream for “home rule” the fact remains that the closer to home the government entity, the more the opportunity for corruption.
And on Kaua`i, where no one shows up and the machinations of the council’s budget sessions are out-of-sight, out-of-mind, where corruption is rampant and incumbency virtually guarantees re-election as long as it serves the greedy desires of the revolving-door, inbred, nepotistic barons, you can bet that as the finances shake-out the “stimulus money” will go directly into the pockets of the shake-down constituency.
Friday, May 1, 2009
BEG, CATCH, SHAKE... NOW ROLL OVER AND PLAY DEAD
BEG, CATCH, SHAKE... NOW ROLL OVER AND PLAY DEAD: The half-million-dollar flush down the tourism rat-hole bill that’s been igniting our unruly hair for the last month or so is apparently headed for passage at next Wednesday’s council meeting despite the lack of anything but sketchy details of exactly how the money spent is supposed to increase what was called “heads in beds” by Sue Kanoho, head of the Kaua`i Visitor’s Bureau (KVB) which will reportedly receive $10,000 to forward the checks.
We say “reportedly” and “apparently” because the always incompetent- and probably complicit in keeping the public in the dark- Ho`ike TV has been running black screens where the council meeting is scheduled since the meeting.
But judging by reporter Michael Levine’s story in the local paper, despite attempts by Councilperson Lani Kawahara- who voted “no” on the bill- to bring some sanity to the table, the appropriation, to be matched in next year’s budget for a cool million total, remains wildly popular with the six admittedly brainless councilmembers, one of whom, Finance Committee Chair Darryl Kaneshiro, defended the dearth of pia mater around the table, aptly describing the consideration given the measure by calling it a "no-brainer", according to Levine.
Though presumably, from the two useless (and unreadable) past-visitor-arrivals graphs accompanying the article, something was available to the public, nothing was forthcoming this past Monday at council services when we asked for the details promised the week before.
Levine reports that there is some kind of breakdown, if not any real explanation, of how throwing money will miraculously spur more vacationers to come to Kaua`i.
He reports that
the biggest chunk — $250,000 — would be split among five wholesalers and online travel agent partners in an effort to create additional visitors to the island. Examples of wholesalers include Pleasant Holidays and Blue Sky Tours. Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz are among the online travel agents, according to a list provided by the Kaua`i Visitors Bureau to the council.
And talk about the soft prejudice of lower expectations it’s hard to “see” what this means- other than in a “blind leading the blind” sense of the word.
Kanoho told the council that the promotional efforts would likely not result in any increases, but would instead help stop the bleeding.
“Flat is the new up,” Kanoho joked.
Yeah, and dumb is the new smart.
That’s not the only joke- which unfortunately is on the taxpayer. Because, speaking of bad jokes, those whose needed government services will certainly be left in the cold with the proposed cuts in next year’s proposed budget.
Meanwhile the homeless have nowhere to go except the beaches, public transportation remains a joke for shift workers and dogs have more rights than workers.
Here’s some more nonsensical “projections” apparently pulled out of someone’s ass
(County Economic Development Director George) Costa projected a “conservative” 20 percent differential in room nights produced by five wholesalers or online travel agents — from nearly 17,000 per month during the first quarter of 2009 to a projected amount of more than 20,000 per month.Each room night, on average, features 2.3 visitors, and each visitor, on average, spends $157.40 per day, according to state data.
A differential of more than 3,000 room nights per month would translate to $7.2 million over the six-month duration of the plan, Costa said. That figure does not factor in the multiplier effect of some of that money filtering back through the local economy.
Oooo- he can read a state data chart. He’s a keeper.
Just don’t ask him how the data even remotely relates to the specifics of how this cash fling will, if it does anything at all, just drive visitors from privately and locally-owned bed and breakfasts and vacation rentals to prominently-sponsored, more expensive mainland owned resorts like the Hyatt, Sheridan ,and Regency so they can pay poor, brown people crap wages to tongue-clean rich, white tourists' toilets.
Where were we?
There has been absolutely no explanation at all of how throwing money at these “wholesalers” makes for more tourists and therefore money spent on the island - despite paternalistic unsupported assurances that it will from ex-tourism honcho Vice-Chair Jay Furfaro, Costa and Kanoho.
What exactly do these wholesalers propose to do? Do they place “Kaua`i?” in a physically higher position on their web page? Yeah, that’ll do it. Or maybe if you click on “Mexico” or “Jamaica” it gives you a “did you mean Kaua`i?” redirection- maybe once you buy your Florida package they give you tickets to Lihu`e.
Do they place a special “ad” in their site- yeah, we all know how well on-web-site advertising is... just ask the newspaper industry... or anyone but Google.
Even assuming that they have some sort of scam where when you ask about any vacation elsewhere Kaua`i pops up, what happens when the Bermuda Tourism Authority pays them a million and ONE dollars to make theirs the “choice” destination.
We and others have suggested that if they were going to spend a million dollars. we give out 10,000, hundred dollar vouchers redeemable for cash at Lihu`e airport- or maybe 5000, $200 ones or 3700 for $300.
Of course then they would need competent in-house marketers who can figure out the perfect amount that will successfully entice cash conscious travelers...something they obviously lack considering the harebrained nature of their current scheme.
Knowing the county they’d probably go out and to hire a private hundred-thousand-dollar consultant to find out what the right amount is.
Maybe they should set up some kind of competent and skilled central agency- maybe devoted just to bringing in tourists, .. a sort of bureau- yeah, that’s it- just for visitors, to Kaua`i.
Well it’s just a thought.
So half the cash goes down one single rat-hole. The other half? Levine reports there’s
-$25,000 for a 50th anniversary celebration of iconic film South Pacific,
-$170,000 for a kama`aina campaign encouraging Hawai`i residents and military to travel to Kaua`i from other islands,
-$20,000 for a remote radio show hosted on Kaua`i,
-$25,000 for a “Pacific Northwest Blitz,” as well as the
-$10,000 for a Kaua`i Visitors Bureau Administration fee.
The $170,000 for kama`aina and military are apparently for more proven-to-do-nothing advertising- a stupid side flush where a free interisland air ticket might actually get them here.
And if we’re going to flush 25 grand down the already corporately sponsored “South Pacific” celebration let’s be out front with it with a real appropriation and not hide it by slipping it in with a released-on-the-day-of-committee-approval list that apparently became public only after Kawahara tried unsuccessfully to amend the bill to remove it.
We can only hope the six-to-one vote is a sign of things to come.... no, seriously- that’s progress.
Is the “South Pacific” party and a “radio show” (don’t get us started on that one- we’re sure wondering what that will look like... maybe Dickie Chang will host it) the best way to spend tax dollars when we’re lucky we got national stimulus money for “meals on wheels” or the kupuna served might starve when county money runs out because they spent it on this nonsense.
Few who don’t stand to directly financially benefit would disagree that these two items should be the first kind of frivolous expenditure to be cut during lean tax collection times.
But that might run afoul of the state’s “Incumbency Preservation Act” so of course it’s a “no- brainer” for the council to line up at the trough.
What’s disappointing is that no one seems to care. Though as we said we haven’t seen the meeting, we’ll bet dollars to Krispy Kreems that, as happened during the public hearing, no one but the council regulars objected to the expenditure perhaps hoping against hope that it will trickle down – or “domino-down” as one tourism honcho called it at the hearing- to them.
Bones and piss- not even bread and water, just bones and piss... and we have to delude ourselves to think we’ll get that.
The “do something-anything!” hysteria isn’t just local- the hapless pols in congress are even worse, throwing hundreds of billions at the banking and Wall Street crooks who already robbed so that they can keep on doing so. But if we can’t do much to stop it happening 5000 miles away there’s no excuse for this kind of ostrich behavior here at home.
We say “reportedly” and “apparently” because the always incompetent- and probably complicit in keeping the public in the dark- Ho`ike TV has been running black screens where the council meeting is scheduled since the meeting.
But judging by reporter Michael Levine’s story in the local paper, despite attempts by Councilperson Lani Kawahara- who voted “no” on the bill- to bring some sanity to the table, the appropriation, to be matched in next year’s budget for a cool million total, remains wildly popular with the six admittedly brainless councilmembers, one of whom, Finance Committee Chair Darryl Kaneshiro, defended the dearth of pia mater around the table, aptly describing the consideration given the measure by calling it a "no-brainer", according to Levine.
Though presumably, from the two useless (and unreadable) past-visitor-arrivals graphs accompanying the article, something was available to the public, nothing was forthcoming this past Monday at council services when we asked for the details promised the week before.
Levine reports that there is some kind of breakdown, if not any real explanation, of how throwing money will miraculously spur more vacationers to come to Kaua`i.
He reports that
the biggest chunk — $250,000 — would be split among five wholesalers and online travel agent partners in an effort to create additional visitors to the island. Examples of wholesalers include Pleasant Holidays and Blue Sky Tours. Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz are among the online travel agents, according to a list provided by the Kaua`i Visitors Bureau to the council.
And talk about the soft prejudice of lower expectations it’s hard to “see” what this means- other than in a “blind leading the blind” sense of the word.
Kanoho told the council that the promotional efforts would likely not result in any increases, but would instead help stop the bleeding.
“Flat is the new up,” Kanoho joked.
Yeah, and dumb is the new smart.
That’s not the only joke- which unfortunately is on the taxpayer. Because, speaking of bad jokes, those whose needed government services will certainly be left in the cold with the proposed cuts in next year’s proposed budget.
Meanwhile the homeless have nowhere to go except the beaches, public transportation remains a joke for shift workers and dogs have more rights than workers.
Here’s some more nonsensical “projections” apparently pulled out of someone’s ass
(County Economic Development Director George) Costa projected a “conservative” 20 percent differential in room nights produced by five wholesalers or online travel agents — from nearly 17,000 per month during the first quarter of 2009 to a projected amount of more than 20,000 per month.Each room night, on average, features 2.3 visitors, and each visitor, on average, spends $157.40 per day, according to state data.
A differential of more than 3,000 room nights per month would translate to $7.2 million over the six-month duration of the plan, Costa said. That figure does not factor in the multiplier effect of some of that money filtering back through the local economy.
Oooo- he can read a state data chart. He’s a keeper.
Just don’t ask him how the data even remotely relates to the specifics of how this cash fling will, if it does anything at all, just drive visitors from privately and locally-owned bed and breakfasts and vacation rentals to prominently-sponsored, more expensive mainland owned resorts like the Hyatt, Sheridan ,and Regency so they can pay poor, brown people crap wages to tongue-clean rich, white tourists' toilets.
Where were we?
There has been absolutely no explanation at all of how throwing money at these “wholesalers” makes for more tourists and therefore money spent on the island - despite paternalistic unsupported assurances that it will from ex-tourism honcho Vice-Chair Jay Furfaro, Costa and Kanoho.
What exactly do these wholesalers propose to do? Do they place “Kaua`i?” in a physically higher position on their web page? Yeah, that’ll do it. Or maybe if you click on “Mexico” or “Jamaica” it gives you a “did you mean Kaua`i?” redirection- maybe once you buy your Florida package they give you tickets to Lihu`e.
Do they place a special “ad” in their site- yeah, we all know how well on-web-site advertising is... just ask the newspaper industry... or anyone but Google.
Even assuming that they have some sort of scam where when you ask about any vacation elsewhere Kaua`i pops up, what happens when the Bermuda Tourism Authority pays them a million and ONE dollars to make theirs the “choice” destination.
We and others have suggested that if they were going to spend a million dollars. we give out 10,000, hundred dollar vouchers redeemable for cash at Lihu`e airport- or maybe 5000, $200 ones or 3700 for $300.
Of course then they would need competent in-house marketers who can figure out the perfect amount that will successfully entice cash conscious travelers...something they obviously lack considering the harebrained nature of their current scheme.
Knowing the county they’d probably go out and to hire a private hundred-thousand-dollar consultant to find out what the right amount is.
Maybe they should set up some kind of competent and skilled central agency- maybe devoted just to bringing in tourists, .. a sort of bureau- yeah, that’s it- just for visitors, to Kaua`i.
Well it’s just a thought.
So half the cash goes down one single rat-hole. The other half? Levine reports there’s
-$25,000 for a 50th anniversary celebration of iconic film South Pacific,
-$170,000 for a kama`aina campaign encouraging Hawai`i residents and military to travel to Kaua`i from other islands,
-$20,000 for a remote radio show hosted on Kaua`i,
-$25,000 for a “Pacific Northwest Blitz,” as well as the
-$10,000 for a Kaua`i Visitors Bureau Administration fee.
The $170,000 for kama`aina and military are apparently for more proven-to-do-nothing advertising- a stupid side flush where a free interisland air ticket might actually get them here.
And if we’re going to flush 25 grand down the already corporately sponsored “South Pacific” celebration let’s be out front with it with a real appropriation and not hide it by slipping it in with a released-on-the-day-of-committee-approval list that apparently became public only after Kawahara tried unsuccessfully to amend the bill to remove it.
We can only hope the six-to-one vote is a sign of things to come.... no, seriously- that’s progress.
Is the “South Pacific” party and a “radio show” (don’t get us started on that one- we’re sure wondering what that will look like... maybe Dickie Chang will host it) the best way to spend tax dollars when we’re lucky we got national stimulus money for “meals on wheels” or the kupuna served might starve when county money runs out because they spent it on this nonsense.
Few who don’t stand to directly financially benefit would disagree that these two items should be the first kind of frivolous expenditure to be cut during lean tax collection times.
But that might run afoul of the state’s “Incumbency Preservation Act” so of course it’s a “no- brainer” for the council to line up at the trough.
What’s disappointing is that no one seems to care. Though as we said we haven’t seen the meeting, we’ll bet dollars to Krispy Kreems that, as happened during the public hearing, no one but the council regulars objected to the expenditure perhaps hoping against hope that it will trickle down – or “domino-down” as one tourism honcho called it at the hearing- to them.
Bones and piss- not even bread and water, just bones and piss... and we have to delude ourselves to think we’ll get that.
The “do something-anything!” hysteria isn’t just local- the hapless pols in congress are even worse, throwing hundreds of billions at the banking and Wall Street crooks who already robbed so that they can keep on doing so. But if we can’t do much to stop it happening 5000 miles away there’s no excuse for this kind of ostrich behavior here at home.
Monday, September 21, 2009
OH WHAT SMALL TEETH YOU HAVE GRANDMAMA:
OH WHAT SMALL TEETH YOU HAVE GRANDMAMA: We had our say in Saturday’s local newspaper when reporter Michael Levine asked us what we thought of the appointment of long time Deputy County Clerk Ernie Pasion to the newly created position of county auditor.
As Levine wrote:
(S)ome have said the veteran of county government will have difficulty asserting his independence when it comes to reviewing the performance of people he has worked with in the past.“The idea was to hire somebody totally independent from outside the county,” said Kaua`i government watchdog and blogger Andy Parx in a phone interview Friday, adding that Pasion was the “ultimate insider” and that his appointment was “a huge disappointment.”
“This guy has been a political appointee of the council for 12 years. That’s the only reason he has the job,” Parx said. “I don’t see that he’ll do anything except exactly what the council tells him to do. That’s exactly what he’s done for 12 years, and he serves at their pleasure.”
The article and the Sunday editorial further point to many of the issues we raised with appointment of a long time council sycophant to, for the most part, investigate the actions of county administrative departments.
Perhaps the placement of the auditor position under council services is a fatal flaw- one that the council could not have missed when drafting the measure. But then the position was never designed to investigate the council, even though it could have been.
Our discussion with Levine spurred us to relate the story of how we got to the point where the council put the charter measure on the ballot last November in the first place.
The new county auditor position is not just something that came up recently. Indeed it goes back almost 10 years to the grubbing and grading Pflueger/McCloskey scandal and the year-plus long series of “Developers Gone Wild” oral and video presentations to the council, as the item was continually deferred and so kept on the agenda meeting after meeting.
At that time the council tried to initiate an investigation of the Department of Public Works (DPW) under charter section 3.17- the only allowable “interference” by the council into administrative affairs.
But although people were demanding the investigation the council’s appetite for confrontation was low and when Gary Hooser moved to the state senate the investigation's main proponent was gone. And with a new Mayor- Democrat Bryan Batiste- the democratic council didn’t feel up to investigating the then-past administration of Mayor Maryanne Kusaka.
So instead they bickered over setting up procedures for the investigation after having appropriated a half a million dollars to investigate just a small section of the massive DPW- a move destined to examine select trees but not the forest.
Finally when Mel Rapozo came onto the council, despite his campaign promises to push the investigation he instead pushed for an investigation of the Kaua`i Police Department (KPD) where the past officer had been allowed to quit after his involvement with the lap dancer episode, as detailed in the book KPD Blue (see right rail for the serialization of the book).
After Rapozo allegedly “went off” in the infamous ES-177 and the council and its chair Kaipo Asing decided to fight release of the potential embarrassing content of the meeting, Rapozo suddenly dropped his calls to continue the DPW investigation... an investigation that Asing, who had exposed many of the misdeeds of DPW, had little taste for, calling the suspect DPW personnel “my good friends” at every available opportunity.
While the council switched its attention to the KPD investigating instead of pulling the trigger on the DPW investigation, the public clamor for a DPW investigation continued so the council then appropriated money for a position of a county auditor under council services control and then spent two years doing nothing- seemingly incapable of appointing one.
Finally instead of just appointing an auditor the council decided to kick the can down the road once more by putting the idea of an auditor on the ballot as a charter amendment despite the fact that they had already created the position internally.
At any point during this debacle Pasion could have used his alleged skills to step in and get it done. But that would have taken the political independence that his new job requires.
The position of any performance or “management auditor”- quite different from a financial auditor which is the job of the independent firms that do that every year as the charter requires- is usually filled by someone independent of either the administrative or the legislative branch, not an insider who has developed political relationships with the legislators and the department heads and civil service personnel that may compromise his or her impartiality.
The model people are most familiar with in Hawai`i is state auditor Marion Higa whose scathing analyses of various state departments and programs has shed the light that neither the Legislative Reference Bureau in the legislature or the administration’s ombudsman or other accountability mechanisms within the administration can do since they are generally too enmeshed in the daily machination of government to get a clear view... or more importantly criticize when criticism is due.
The job does not entail simply giving the subject of investigation a pass when the people or entities being investigated object by say “we’re doing the best we can” and present a laundry list of excuses- as they usually do.
Time will certainly tell whether Pasion has the skills for the job- his background is apparently not in management auditing but rather financial audits.
But even if he has the skills or magically obtains them it is doubtful that he can muster the political guts it takes to cut to the chase and issue a biting report about those who his boss Asing still calls “my good friends”- the same ones he declined to investigate when he was mayor last year despite him many “presentations” exposing administration wrongdoing.
Ernie is a nice guy and knows all the players and is pals with all of them. But this position calls for the exact opposite.
The fact is Ernie could have been assisting the council all these past 12 years in investigating and auditing the performance of various administration entitles but has done the opposite- schmoozing and making excuses for their inaction or even corruption- has to put up red flags regarding his appointment.
Some say to give him a chance and obviously we don’t have a choice. But we would have to be idiots to think he can do the job and not think that when the time is up it will not inform the story we’ve told here.
As Levine wrote:
(S)ome have said the veteran of county government will have difficulty asserting his independence when it comes to reviewing the performance of people he has worked with in the past.“The idea was to hire somebody totally independent from outside the county,” said Kaua`i government watchdog and blogger Andy Parx in a phone interview Friday, adding that Pasion was the “ultimate insider” and that his appointment was “a huge disappointment.”
“This guy has been a political appointee of the council for 12 years. That’s the only reason he has the job,” Parx said. “I don’t see that he’ll do anything except exactly what the council tells him to do. That’s exactly what he’s done for 12 years, and he serves at their pleasure.”
The article and the Sunday editorial further point to many of the issues we raised with appointment of a long time council sycophant to, for the most part, investigate the actions of county administrative departments.
Perhaps the placement of the auditor position under council services is a fatal flaw- one that the council could not have missed when drafting the measure. But then the position was never designed to investigate the council, even though it could have been.
Our discussion with Levine spurred us to relate the story of how we got to the point where the council put the charter measure on the ballot last November in the first place.
The new county auditor position is not just something that came up recently. Indeed it goes back almost 10 years to the grubbing and grading Pflueger/McCloskey scandal and the year-plus long series of “Developers Gone Wild” oral and video presentations to the council, as the item was continually deferred and so kept on the agenda meeting after meeting.
At that time the council tried to initiate an investigation of the Department of Public Works (DPW) under charter section 3.17- the only allowable “interference” by the council into administrative affairs.
But although people were demanding the investigation the council’s appetite for confrontation was low and when Gary Hooser moved to the state senate the investigation's main proponent was gone. And with a new Mayor- Democrat Bryan Batiste- the democratic council didn’t feel up to investigating the then-past administration of Mayor Maryanne Kusaka.
So instead they bickered over setting up procedures for the investigation after having appropriated a half a million dollars to investigate just a small section of the massive DPW- a move destined to examine select trees but not the forest.
Finally when Mel Rapozo came onto the council, despite his campaign promises to push the investigation he instead pushed for an investigation of the Kaua`i Police Department (KPD) where the past officer had been allowed to quit after his involvement with the lap dancer episode, as detailed in the book KPD Blue (see right rail for the serialization of the book).
After Rapozo allegedly “went off” in the infamous ES-177 and the council and its chair Kaipo Asing decided to fight release of the potential embarrassing content of the meeting, Rapozo suddenly dropped his calls to continue the DPW investigation... an investigation that Asing, who had exposed many of the misdeeds of DPW, had little taste for, calling the suspect DPW personnel “my good friends” at every available opportunity.
While the council switched its attention to the KPD investigating instead of pulling the trigger on the DPW investigation, the public clamor for a DPW investigation continued so the council then appropriated money for a position of a county auditor under council services control and then spent two years doing nothing- seemingly incapable of appointing one.
Finally instead of just appointing an auditor the council decided to kick the can down the road once more by putting the idea of an auditor on the ballot as a charter amendment despite the fact that they had already created the position internally.
At any point during this debacle Pasion could have used his alleged skills to step in and get it done. But that would have taken the political independence that his new job requires.
The position of any performance or “management auditor”- quite different from a financial auditor which is the job of the independent firms that do that every year as the charter requires- is usually filled by someone independent of either the administrative or the legislative branch, not an insider who has developed political relationships with the legislators and the department heads and civil service personnel that may compromise his or her impartiality.
The model people are most familiar with in Hawai`i is state auditor Marion Higa whose scathing analyses of various state departments and programs has shed the light that neither the Legislative Reference Bureau in the legislature or the administration’s ombudsman or other accountability mechanisms within the administration can do since they are generally too enmeshed in the daily machination of government to get a clear view... or more importantly criticize when criticism is due.
The job does not entail simply giving the subject of investigation a pass when the people or entities being investigated object by say “we’re doing the best we can” and present a laundry list of excuses- as they usually do.
Time will certainly tell whether Pasion has the skills for the job- his background is apparently not in management auditing but rather financial audits.
But even if he has the skills or magically obtains them it is doubtful that he can muster the political guts it takes to cut to the chase and issue a biting report about those who his boss Asing still calls “my good friends”- the same ones he declined to investigate when he was mayor last year despite him many “presentations” exposing administration wrongdoing.
Ernie is a nice guy and knows all the players and is pals with all of them. But this position calls for the exact opposite.
The fact is Ernie could have been assisting the council all these past 12 years in investigating and auditing the performance of various administration entitles but has done the opposite- schmoozing and making excuses for their inaction or even corruption- has to put up red flags regarding his appointment.
Some say to give him a chance and obviously we don’t have a choice. But we would have to be idiots to think he can do the job and not think that when the time is up it will not inform the story we’ve told here.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN
REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN: We haven’t heard much about our crony-addled, bored of ethics, Board of Ethics (BOE) since local newspaper reporter Mike Levine left for a real job in journalism.
Levine’s coverage during the infamous “20.02(D)” debacle (see right rail for our three-part report) would have been nothing extraordinary in the rest of country but around here- especially lately- merely attending meetings and reporting accurately IS extraordinary by any measure.
Nowadays if it weren’t for a few dedicated “nitpicking” community watchdogs that darkest of black holes for ethical violations might go it’s merry ethically-challenged way.
Some might think that the BOE’s inability to read and apply simple ethics laws could indicate a distinct lack of literacy. For those Pollyannas, well, we have a few select scenic lookouts for sale.
The reality is that after Mayor Bernard Carvalho’s unceremonious dumping of BOE member (and current county council candidate) Rolf Bieber it became quite obvious that if you’re going to wear the king’s uniform you’d better carry the king’s sword.
So when members of the planning department decided it was okay for them to seek outside employment preparing permit applications for their fellow department employees’ to approve, instead of trying to stop the plainly unethical practice that the law forbids, Planning Director Ian Costa knew he could turn to the BOE for a some kind of tortured process whereby his underlings could continue their corrupt practices.
Horace Stoessel has been doing the job the local newspaper abandoned after Levine’s departure and today, without further comment, we present his latest report.
-------
YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK
I have attended meetings of the Board of Ethics for the better part of three years. I offer these comments for the information of those interested in a matter currently before the Board.
In May Planning Director Ian Costa requested an advisory opinion from the Board of Ethics regarding the outside employment of four departmental employees engaged variously in drafting, site inspection, architectural drawings, design and consultation.
Since then, in an end run around the Charter requirement that a request for advisory opinion must be answered within 30 days, the request has been withdrawn twice by mutual agreement between the Board and the Department, in each case to be resubmitted at a later date. The main reason given for the five-months-and-counting process was to allow Director Costa a chance to consult the County Attorney ’s office.
So far the County Attorney ’s office has participated in the Board’s process as follows:
In May Deputy County Attorney Mona Clark, who is regularly assigned to the Board, advised the Board that County Code Section 3-1.7(d) expresses an absolute prohibition against the activities referenced in the request for advisory opinion and told the Board that aside from enforcing the section its only option is to ask the Council to change the language of 3-1.7. The Board took no action based on her advice, arranging instead with Director Costa to withdraw the request and resubmit it later.
In July Attorney Clark volunteered to provide the Board with a (written) opinion if the Board requested it. The Board did not request it.
In August Director Costa’s request reappeared on the agenda, leading some of us in the public to believe that the way was clear for the Board to act on the request. However, County Attorney Al Castillo appeared long enough to tell the Board that Attorney Clark was in court and to apologize for his being unprepared to address the agenda item.
In July Board member Paul Weil had moved that the Board request the County Attorney to provide the Board with the same information provided to Mr. Costa. The motion was seconded by Warren Perry and unanimously adopted. That request also went unanswered in August.
In August it was agreed that Mr. Costa would resubmit the department’s request at the September 17 meeting.
Levine’s coverage during the infamous “20.02(D)” debacle (see right rail for our three-part report) would have been nothing extraordinary in the rest of country but around here- especially lately- merely attending meetings and reporting accurately IS extraordinary by any measure.
Nowadays if it weren’t for a few dedicated “nitpicking” community watchdogs that darkest of black holes for ethical violations might go it’s merry ethically-challenged way.
Some might think that the BOE’s inability to read and apply simple ethics laws could indicate a distinct lack of literacy. For those Pollyannas, well, we have a few select scenic lookouts for sale.
The reality is that after Mayor Bernard Carvalho’s unceremonious dumping of BOE member (and current county council candidate) Rolf Bieber it became quite obvious that if you’re going to wear the king’s uniform you’d better carry the king’s sword.
So when members of the planning department decided it was okay for them to seek outside employment preparing permit applications for their fellow department employees’ to approve, instead of trying to stop the plainly unethical practice that the law forbids, Planning Director Ian Costa knew he could turn to the BOE for a some kind of tortured process whereby his underlings could continue their corrupt practices.
Horace Stoessel has been doing the job the local newspaper abandoned after Levine’s departure and today, without further comment, we present his latest report.
-------
YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK
I have attended meetings of the Board of Ethics for the better part of three years. I offer these comments for the information of those interested in a matter currently before the Board.
In May Planning Director Ian Costa requested an advisory opinion from the Board of Ethics regarding the outside employment of four departmental employees engaged variously in drafting, site inspection, architectural drawings, design and consultation.
Since then, in an end run around the Charter requirement that a request for advisory opinion must be answered within 30 days, the request has been withdrawn twice by mutual agreement between the Board and the Department, in each case to be resubmitted at a later date. The main reason given for the five-months-and-counting process was to allow Director Costa a chance to consult the County Attorney ’s office.
So far the County Attorney ’s office has participated in the Board’s process as follows:
In May Deputy County Attorney Mona Clark, who is regularly assigned to the Board, advised the Board that County Code Section 3-1.7(d) expresses an absolute prohibition against the activities referenced in the request for advisory opinion and told the Board that aside from enforcing the section its only option is to ask the Council to change the language of 3-1.7. The Board took no action based on her advice, arranging instead with Director Costa to withdraw the request and resubmit it later.
In July Attorney Clark volunteered to provide the Board with a (written) opinion if the Board requested it. The Board did not request it.
In August Director Costa’s request reappeared on the agenda, leading some of us in the public to believe that the way was clear for the Board to act on the request. However, County Attorney Al Castillo appeared long enough to tell the Board that Attorney Clark was in court and to apologize for his being unprepared to address the agenda item.
In July Board member Paul Weil had moved that the Board request the County Attorney to provide the Board with the same information provided to Mr. Costa. The motion was seconded by Warren Perry and unanimously adopted. That request also went unanswered in August.
In August it was agreed that Mr. Costa would resubmit the department’s request at the September 17 meeting.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
LETTING LYIN’ DOGS LIE
LETTING LYIN’ DOGS LIE: We’ve been an unabashed fan of reporter Michael Levine whose clear informative prose in covering, first the police and courts beat and now county government, has been a breath of fresh air, joining now-Editor Nathan Eagle in bringing long needed professionalism and basic literacy to the local paper.
But today’s four-part report (here, here, here, and here) on last Thursday’s Board of Ethics (BOE) session was, in the parlance, off the hook. We struggled for days to make sense of three different reports from attendees and it was like the proverbial blind men describing the elephant.
The details of the “through the looking glass” session- with Levine playing Alice- are a must read for anyone who doubts the “incestuous” nature of the population of boards and commissions on Kaua`i (as Levine reports Cost Commission Chair Randy Finlay “acknowledged”). And it’s but the latest chapter in the associated Tales of the Minotaur’s Labyrinth.
One new wrinkle to the effort to butcher the language and make a mockery of critical reading skills came disappointingly from new BOE member Paul Weil who has usually been a breath of clean air on the board.
Weil is trying to interpret the infamous 20.02(d) charter provision banning board and commission (B &C) members from “appearing” before other Bs and Cs on behalf of “private interests”, using the word not as opposed to “personal interest” in the broad definition of a private interest, but by claiming that non-profit organizations operate in the “public interest”- a notion about non-profits that, even if it did apply, is patently absurd what with trade organizations and other private interest non-profits.
But that matter notwithstanding, one thing is clear- there is no longer doubt that any hope that new county Attorney Al Castillo might ignore those who butter his bread, lies face down in the dust bunnies in the corner of the maze.
To insist that an ordinance can change the plain reading of a charter provision is something that can only happen on Kaua`i where rule of law is notoriously a “wonderland” experience and “execution first, trial later” is the order of the day.
Yet despite original promises by Castillo that he would reverse such holdings, his position has now morphed into a validation of the crooked opinions of the past on the matter. Not only that but he didn’t even have the guts to do it himself and sent a henchman, new Deputy County Attorney Mauna Kea Track, to deliver the bad news.
The fact is that the ordinance- which like the controlling charter provision and the state constructional section on ethics- is confusingly called the "Code of Ethics"- is flawed, written by sycophants of the revolving-door, old boys and girls network, intentionally and illegally to reverse a charter provision barring them from doing their dirty work though quid pro quos and mutual handwashing.
The ones that would act to change that- the county council-certainly don’t seem like it’s even on their radar screen- they like it just the way it is and wouldn’t want to upset the ethical apple cart that routinely clears them of serious charges under absurd BOE rulings
Apparently the only avenue left is to have a judge strike down the ordinance since, even by Castillo’s own admission, it muddies a clear and controlling charter provision
Although we’ve been loath to report this fact because of dubious relevance it now seems more than relevant given Castillo’s 180. According to a reliable source Castillo has said he consulted with former Councilperson and current Circuit Court judge Randall Valenciano on the subject.
That apparently “ex-parte” communication seems to have changed Castillo’s mind because right after it he was quoted as worrying that if the charter provision is enforced “no one will be able to serve” citing that as an “absurd” result even though there are literally tens of thousand of people on the island who would have no problem meeting the standards.
And guess who would most likely hear a suit to enforce the notorious 20.02(d)? You got it- Valenciano, with the other 5th Circuit Judge Kathleen Watanabe (yes- we’ve finally started spelling it right) having set aside most of her calendar for the next year for the “Pflueger vs. everyone on gods formerly green earth” series of lawsuits.
But assuming that even Valenciano couldn’t dispute basic supremacy laws and if he does that that he would be reversed on appeal, the little red hen’s question stands out.... And who will file the suit?
“Not I” said the sustainability organization.
“Not I” said the land use non profit.
“Not I” said the beach clean-up brigade.
“Not I” said the coastal path enthusiasts.
“Not I” said the organic farmer.
“Not I” said the head in the said new-age “too spiritual to care” minions.
But you can be. If someone did file suit the refrain to the question of who will help me to enjoy the benefits of this now-functional, responsive, open government would be “I will, I will, I will, I will”
As always on Kaua`i the $64 question is “who will help...”. For some reason this island is unique in all the country in that no one seems care enough any more about good governance issues, at least enough to get some basic insane and illegal practices before the judiciary.
And guess what? As far as the council and administration are concerned, the name of the place is I like it like that.
The corporate elite routinely intimidates the council into actions that favor them with threats of a lawsuit.
Attorney for the Board of Realtors Jonathan Chun threatened suit last summer if the council didn’t flout the law in grandfathering apparent illegal vacation rental in residential areas and viola- vacation rentals in residential neighborhoods that were forbidden by controlling state law to start with.
And now suing in the public interest? Introducing... nobody.
It’s happening again right now with attorneys Lorna Nishimitsu and, disappointingly, Dan Hempey doing the same for owners of vacation rentals on ag land where state law specifically forbids “overnight accommodations” on ag land ancillary operations.
Yet the council seems poised to pass a bill to, if not give them illegal “use permits” as the planning commission recommended, actually require the planning department to enter into (get this) “non enforcement agreements”, as stated in the original council bill
Years ago citizens had some leverage when Kaua`i activist extraordinaire Ray Chuan’s "Limu Coalition" dared to file suit a few times and put the county on notice that someone was willing to challenge their patently illegal actions in court. He and the rest of the 90’s set of community advocates found out how easy it was to get positive injunctions and rulings regarding many of these absurd abuses perpetrated by county government.
That led to actions such as the opening of the access to “Queen’s Bath” where just the threat of a lawsuit by Limu-guys led to repeal of an action by the county engineer in closing the access.
But currently there seems to be no one who does anything but nibble around the edges when filing suit, such as 1000 Friends vs. County of Kaua`i suit which is still in court over the minutia surrounding the development across the street from Safeway. Even if they win it will little or nothing to change county policies although it could relatively slightly add some cost to the developers.
We’ve listed umpteen blatant abused of process over the last year and a half that are easily winnable in court, from the non enforcement of the citizen’s petition "enforcement of the General Plan" charter amendment to a slew of Sunshine Law violations with dozens of cases in between similar to the ethics situation where ordinances fly in the face of superior charter, state law and constructional provisions.
All have their root in a corrupt self-serving county attorney’s office that spins opinion out of whole cloth. Yet even with a now perpetual charter commission there has been no public advocacy- much less outcry- for changing the charter provisions for the county attorney to provide for a public component to the job or even- gasp- electing the CA to provide for autonomy.
No one seems motivated to dig into their pockets to file suit on these broad issues. Until we do, no amount of great reporting will do anything but cause more head shaking and a deeper sense of helplessness and apathy.
But today’s four-part report (here, here, here, and here) on last Thursday’s Board of Ethics (BOE) session was, in the parlance, off the hook. We struggled for days to make sense of three different reports from attendees and it was like the proverbial blind men describing the elephant.
The details of the “through the looking glass” session- with Levine playing Alice- are a must read for anyone who doubts the “incestuous” nature of the population of boards and commissions on Kaua`i (as Levine reports Cost Commission Chair Randy Finlay “acknowledged”). And it’s but the latest chapter in the associated Tales of the Minotaur’s Labyrinth.
One new wrinkle to the effort to butcher the language and make a mockery of critical reading skills came disappointingly from new BOE member Paul Weil who has usually been a breath of clean air on the board.
Weil is trying to interpret the infamous 20.02(d) charter provision banning board and commission (B &C) members from “appearing” before other Bs and Cs on behalf of “private interests”, using the word not as opposed to “personal interest” in the broad definition of a private interest, but by claiming that non-profit organizations operate in the “public interest”- a notion about non-profits that, even if it did apply, is patently absurd what with trade organizations and other private interest non-profits.
But that matter notwithstanding, one thing is clear- there is no longer doubt that any hope that new county Attorney Al Castillo might ignore those who butter his bread, lies face down in the dust bunnies in the corner of the maze.
To insist that an ordinance can change the plain reading of a charter provision is something that can only happen on Kaua`i where rule of law is notoriously a “wonderland” experience and “execution first, trial later” is the order of the day.
Yet despite original promises by Castillo that he would reverse such holdings, his position has now morphed into a validation of the crooked opinions of the past on the matter. Not only that but he didn’t even have the guts to do it himself and sent a henchman, new Deputy County Attorney Mauna Kea Track, to deliver the bad news.
The fact is that the ordinance- which like the controlling charter provision and the state constructional section on ethics- is confusingly called the "Code of Ethics"- is flawed, written by sycophants of the revolving-door, old boys and girls network, intentionally and illegally to reverse a charter provision barring them from doing their dirty work though quid pro quos and mutual handwashing.
The ones that would act to change that- the county council-certainly don’t seem like it’s even on their radar screen- they like it just the way it is and wouldn’t want to upset the ethical apple cart that routinely clears them of serious charges under absurd BOE rulings
Apparently the only avenue left is to have a judge strike down the ordinance since, even by Castillo’s own admission, it muddies a clear and controlling charter provision
Although we’ve been loath to report this fact because of dubious relevance it now seems more than relevant given Castillo’s 180. According to a reliable source Castillo has said he consulted with former Councilperson and current Circuit Court judge Randall Valenciano on the subject.
That apparently “ex-parte” communication seems to have changed Castillo’s mind because right after it he was quoted as worrying that if the charter provision is enforced “no one will be able to serve” citing that as an “absurd” result even though there are literally tens of thousand of people on the island who would have no problem meeting the standards.
And guess who would most likely hear a suit to enforce the notorious 20.02(d)? You got it- Valenciano, with the other 5th Circuit Judge Kathleen Watanabe (yes- we’ve finally started spelling it right) having set aside most of her calendar for the next year for the “Pflueger vs. everyone on gods formerly green earth” series of lawsuits.
But assuming that even Valenciano couldn’t dispute basic supremacy laws and if he does that that he would be reversed on appeal, the little red hen’s question stands out.... And who will file the suit?
“Not I” said the sustainability organization.
“Not I” said the land use non profit.
“Not I” said the beach clean-up brigade.
“Not I” said the coastal path enthusiasts.
“Not I” said the organic farmer.
“Not I” said the head in the said new-age “too spiritual to care” minions.
But you can be. If someone did file suit the refrain to the question of who will help me to enjoy the benefits of this now-functional, responsive, open government would be “I will, I will, I will, I will”
As always on Kaua`i the $64 question is “who will help...”. For some reason this island is unique in all the country in that no one seems care enough any more about good governance issues, at least enough to get some basic insane and illegal practices before the judiciary.
And guess what? As far as the council and administration are concerned, the name of the place is I like it like that.
The corporate elite routinely intimidates the council into actions that favor them with threats of a lawsuit.
Attorney for the Board of Realtors Jonathan Chun threatened suit last summer if the council didn’t flout the law in grandfathering apparent illegal vacation rental in residential areas and viola- vacation rentals in residential neighborhoods that were forbidden by controlling state law to start with.
And now suing in the public interest? Introducing... nobody.
It’s happening again right now with attorneys Lorna Nishimitsu and, disappointingly, Dan Hempey doing the same for owners of vacation rentals on ag land where state law specifically forbids “overnight accommodations” on ag land ancillary operations.
Yet the council seems poised to pass a bill to, if not give them illegal “use permits” as the planning commission recommended, actually require the planning department to enter into (get this) “non enforcement agreements”, as stated in the original council bill
Years ago citizens had some leverage when Kaua`i activist extraordinaire Ray Chuan’s "Limu Coalition" dared to file suit a few times and put the county on notice that someone was willing to challenge their patently illegal actions in court. He and the rest of the 90’s set of community advocates found out how easy it was to get positive injunctions and rulings regarding many of these absurd abuses perpetrated by county government.
That led to actions such as the opening of the access to “Queen’s Bath” where just the threat of a lawsuit by Limu-guys led to repeal of an action by the county engineer in closing the access.
But currently there seems to be no one who does anything but nibble around the edges when filing suit, such as 1000 Friends vs. County of Kaua`i suit which is still in court over the minutia surrounding the development across the street from Safeway. Even if they win it will little or nothing to change county policies although it could relatively slightly add some cost to the developers.
We’ve listed umpteen blatant abused of process over the last year and a half that are easily winnable in court, from the non enforcement of the citizen’s petition "enforcement of the General Plan" charter amendment to a slew of Sunshine Law violations with dozens of cases in between similar to the ethics situation where ordinances fly in the face of superior charter, state law and constructional provisions.
All have their root in a corrupt self-serving county attorney’s office that spins opinion out of whole cloth. Yet even with a now perpetual charter commission there has been no public advocacy- much less outcry- for changing the charter provisions for the county attorney to provide for a public component to the job or even- gasp- electing the CA to provide for autonomy.
No one seems motivated to dig into their pockets to file suit on these broad issues. Until we do, no amount of great reporting will do anything but cause more head shaking and a deeper sense of helplessness and apathy.
Monday, May 18, 2009
A LITTLE LIGHT DOG WAGGING
A LITTLE LIGHT DOG WAGGING: Last Thursday the Kaua`i Board of Ethics (BOE) finally and unexpectedly released the county attorney opinion that had apparently caused them to ignore the plain reading of the ethics section of the county charter in favor of the subordinate county code provisions on ethics
It confirms the suspicions we expressed in our three part series on the “Unethical Culture” (see left rail) of the BOE- that somehow, despite a strict ban in the charter on county officials- including board and commission (B&Cs) members- appearing on behalf of private interests before other B&Cs, the opinion lets the tail wag the dog by giving legitimacy to provisions of subservient law that seek to contradict the charter.
And indeed in the second paragraph of the opinion it says
Section 20.02(D) of the Charter reads: "No officer or employee of the county shall appear in behalf of private interests before any county board, commission or agency." On its face, this language appears to be a complete prohibition, preventing any officer or employee from acting for the benefit of any private interest before a county agency, board or commission.
But the next sentence is key to the disconnect, penned by former Deputy CA Margaret Sueoka who, perhaps not so coincidentally, was recently fired by Castillo and has filed a discrimination complaint against the county over the firing.
She wrote:
The language of the Code elaborates upon the Charter provision, and identifies more specifically those types of conduct which would constitute conflicts of interest
And there lies one of the “fatal flaws” apparently cited by BOE member Paul Weil, according to Michael Levine’s article on the meeting in the local paper.
The language of the “code” or ordinance, does not “elaborate” on the charter- which is what an ordinance is supposed to do- but rather, at best is silent on the charter provision and if applied, would contradict the charter.
As we discussed on our three part series Section 3-1.7 of the county code details many specific conflict of interest situations that are strictly prohibited. But the code specifically says these are based on Charter Section 20.01 which bans acts to confer special benefits on one’s self or others among other things.
In fact the code does not even mention 20.02(D) specifically anywhere, leaving unaddressed the matters brought up by what Sueoka admitted is a strict prohibition,.
The opinion seeks to use the state constitution and out-of-state court rulings to say that the charter and code must be read together and while that is true it’s the relevant sections of each that must be read together.
It would sort of be like reading a strict charter prohibition on robbing banks and saying because it isn’t addressed in the dog leash ordinance, bank robbery is ok.
But, even of there were a confluence of the specific conflicts in the code and the strict prohibitions of the charter, just because there are specifically described “conflict of interest” prohibitions in the code does not make the code a complete list of actions banned in the charter and in fact that contention is never made in the code.
Also on Thursday the BOE called on Castillo to look at the opinion with an eye toward “withdrawing it, affirming it, or modifying it” according to Levine’s article. But it appears our hopes for an honest legal look at the provisions from Castillo might have been dashed if comments from Castillo are indicative of his intentions.
Instead of addressing the legal ramification of the plain reading of 20.02(D) and the existing CA opinion Castillo seems infatuated with the political ramifications.
He’s quoted by Levine as saying
“What does this legal mumbo jumbo mean?” Castillo said when discussing the issue less than an hour before the board released the opinion. “To me, what this means is, to read Section 20.02 by itself would give an unwarranted chilling effect to contributing members of our society who desire to volunteer their time and their expertise to help this county become a better place.”
In the interview, (BOE Member and Food Bank ED Judith)Lenthall said it was not fair that she be expected to give up the rights of a private citizen, including the right, for example, to challenge a property tax assessment.
That “right” as we said before is not being challenged by anyone. What is being challenged in a complaint filed by fellow BOE member Rolf Bieber is the privilege of sitting on a county board that may in fact sit in judgment of a county councilperson while she is also asking the council for money for the Food Bank.
“That’s where I drew the line regarding the absurdity of just sticking to 20.02,” Castillo said. “That’s why we’re saying that the County Charter and the County Code should be read in conjunction because to do otherwise would create absurd results.”
It appears that Castillo is buying into the tail “wagging the dog” interpretations by saying that because the law has results that are perhaps politically uncomfortable, it is up to him to issue a quasi-judicial “opinion” to correct that “absurdity” rather than doing it legislatively- by ordinance if possible or by changing the charter.
The reason for this attempt to hijack the political process may be that last fall the citizens were asked to exempt board and commission members from the onus of 20.02(D) but that measure was soundly defeated.
After the citing of the legal need to read the code and charter together the opinion goes on to make one of its more absurd arguments regarding “intent”.
It cites the charters of Maui and Hawai`i counties saying
as we can see from the Charters of Maui and the Big Island, the effect of reading our Charter and Code provisions together is to achieve the same basic scope as those of the Charters of these other Counties.
This is a another “fatal flaw”, coming from a 1976 letter from then CA Michael Belles as the council debated and later passed Sect. 3 of the county code.
The flaw becomes immediately apparent because it then quotes the charters of those others counties which are substantially different from ours on Kaua`i. Theirs start out with the same type of prohibitions as 20.02(D) but go on to say
An officer serving the county without compensation, however, may appear for compensation in behalf of private interests before county agencies other than the one on which the officer serves and other than those agencies that have the power to review the actions of the agency on which the officer serves or to act on the same subject matter as the agency on which the officer serves.
If the intent in the Kaua`i Charter was to do that they obviously would have done it- and could easily have done it as the other counties did. The fact that they didn’t include the language shows if anything a desire for a higher ethical standard than the other counties.
Perhaps by wrongly reading some intent that wasn’t there the council that passed the code on Kaua`i sought to make believe that provision was in the charter. But wishing doesn’t make them suddenly appear in the charter- only an illusionist can do that.
An email that arrived today from BOE watchdog Horace Stoessel states it clearly and unambiguously
He states:
Like the charters of Maui and Big Island , the Kaua’i County Charter prohibits members of government from appearing in behalf of private interests before County agencies. But whereas the other charters exempt members of boards and commissions from having to comply with the prohibition, our Charter Section 20.02D does not exempt them.
Last year the Charter Commission proposed exempting board/commission members from having to comply with 20.02D. The voters rejected the proposed charter amendment.
No matter how much Castillo- and apparently last year’s Charter Commission- wishes that the Kaua`i Charter read differently the strict prohibition remains in place today and will for at least the next year and a half.
The code addresses only specific concrete conflicts of interest that are specifically banned and then, as it states, based only on the “special favors” provisions in 20.01 of the charter. Nowhere does it say it is an exclusive list and nowhere does it address the prohibitions of 20.02(D) which are included to ensure Kaua`i officials conduct business with the highest possible level of ethics.
20.02(D) is signed to avoid even the appearance of the type of impropriety that could result in a tit-for-tat approval by a member of one B&C, of a request from a member of another B&C- who would then presumably be tempted to turn around and approve the request of a member of the first B&C.
The Kaua`i provision is specifically to remove those temptations.
County attorney options have as close to the effective weight of an actual judicial ruling as one can get. All county entities are expected to abide by them as if they were case law and indeed can lose protections against lawsuits if they don’t.
They become the de facto “law of the land” and can only be challenged by going to an actual judge or having them reversed by, most likely, a subsequent CA.
It is the responsibility of the county attorney to opine only on the law and to separate out the political considerations and notify the political entities that the have two choices- to either change or abide by the law as it stands.
It is not the bailiwick of the County Attorney to make those political decisions for elected officials by attempting to read into the law what should be or what they would like to see in the law.
That right is reserved for the political apparatus of the county- the council and mayor.
Castillo would do well to remember the fact that 99% of the residents of Kaua`i would never have the types of conflicts that people like the Bieber-complaints-cited Lenthall, Mark Hubbard and Lorna Nishimitsu because 99% of Kaua`i residents never appear “on behalf of” others before county entities and only occasionally if at all, appear as themselves.
The availability of that 99% for county service is the blind spot in Castillo’s claim that the law, as it stands, yields “absurd results”. Indeed it is the opposite of absurd- it denotes the highest of ethical standards are expected of those that serve the county.
Castillo’s “absurdity” claim is valid only if one is intent on supplanting government by the people and- more importantly OF the people- with a handful of revolving-door, paternalistic oligarchs.
It confirms the suspicions we expressed in our three part series on the “Unethical Culture” (see left rail) of the BOE- that somehow, despite a strict ban in the charter on county officials- including board and commission (B&Cs) members- appearing on behalf of private interests before other B&Cs, the opinion lets the tail wag the dog by giving legitimacy to provisions of subservient law that seek to contradict the charter.
And indeed in the second paragraph of the opinion it says
Section 20.02(D) of the Charter reads: "No officer or employee of the county shall appear in behalf of private interests before any county board, commission or agency." On its face, this language appears to be a complete prohibition, preventing any officer or employee from acting for the benefit of any private interest before a county agency, board or commission.
But the next sentence is key to the disconnect, penned by former Deputy CA Margaret Sueoka who, perhaps not so coincidentally, was recently fired by Castillo and has filed a discrimination complaint against the county over the firing.
She wrote:
The language of the Code elaborates upon the Charter provision, and identifies more specifically those types of conduct which would constitute conflicts of interest
And there lies one of the “fatal flaws” apparently cited by BOE member Paul Weil, according to Michael Levine’s article on the meeting in the local paper.
The language of the “code” or ordinance, does not “elaborate” on the charter- which is what an ordinance is supposed to do- but rather, at best is silent on the charter provision and if applied, would contradict the charter.
As we discussed on our three part series Section 3-1.7 of the county code details many specific conflict of interest situations that are strictly prohibited. But the code specifically says these are based on Charter Section 20.01 which bans acts to confer special benefits on one’s self or others among other things.
In fact the code does not even mention 20.02(D) specifically anywhere, leaving unaddressed the matters brought up by what Sueoka admitted is a strict prohibition,.
The opinion seeks to use the state constitution and out-of-state court rulings to say that the charter and code must be read together and while that is true it’s the relevant sections of each that must be read together.
It would sort of be like reading a strict charter prohibition on robbing banks and saying because it isn’t addressed in the dog leash ordinance, bank robbery is ok.
But, even of there were a confluence of the specific conflicts in the code and the strict prohibitions of the charter, just because there are specifically described “conflict of interest” prohibitions in the code does not make the code a complete list of actions banned in the charter and in fact that contention is never made in the code.
Also on Thursday the BOE called on Castillo to look at the opinion with an eye toward “withdrawing it, affirming it, or modifying it” according to Levine’s article. But it appears our hopes for an honest legal look at the provisions from Castillo might have been dashed if comments from Castillo are indicative of his intentions.
Instead of addressing the legal ramification of the plain reading of 20.02(D) and the existing CA opinion Castillo seems infatuated with the political ramifications.
He’s quoted by Levine as saying
“What does this legal mumbo jumbo mean?” Castillo said when discussing the issue less than an hour before the board released the opinion. “To me, what this means is, to read Section 20.02 by itself would give an unwarranted chilling effect to contributing members of our society who desire to volunteer their time and their expertise to help this county become a better place.”
In the interview, (BOE Member and Food Bank ED Judith)Lenthall said it was not fair that she be expected to give up the rights of a private citizen, including the right, for example, to challenge a property tax assessment.
That “right” as we said before is not being challenged by anyone. What is being challenged in a complaint filed by fellow BOE member Rolf Bieber is the privilege of sitting on a county board that may in fact sit in judgment of a county councilperson while she is also asking the council for money for the Food Bank.
“That’s where I drew the line regarding the absurdity of just sticking to 20.02,” Castillo said. “That’s why we’re saying that the County Charter and the County Code should be read in conjunction because to do otherwise would create absurd results.”
It appears that Castillo is buying into the tail “wagging the dog” interpretations by saying that because the law has results that are perhaps politically uncomfortable, it is up to him to issue a quasi-judicial “opinion” to correct that “absurdity” rather than doing it legislatively- by ordinance if possible or by changing the charter.
The reason for this attempt to hijack the political process may be that last fall the citizens were asked to exempt board and commission members from the onus of 20.02(D) but that measure was soundly defeated.
After the citing of the legal need to read the code and charter together the opinion goes on to make one of its more absurd arguments regarding “intent”.
It cites the charters of Maui and Hawai`i counties saying
as we can see from the Charters of Maui and the Big Island, the effect of reading our Charter and Code provisions together is to achieve the same basic scope as those of the Charters of these other Counties.
This is a another “fatal flaw”, coming from a 1976 letter from then CA Michael Belles as the council debated and later passed Sect. 3 of the county code.
The flaw becomes immediately apparent because it then quotes the charters of those others counties which are substantially different from ours on Kaua`i. Theirs start out with the same type of prohibitions as 20.02(D) but go on to say
An officer serving the county without compensation, however, may appear for compensation in behalf of private interests before county agencies other than the one on which the officer serves and other than those agencies that have the power to review the actions of the agency on which the officer serves or to act on the same subject matter as the agency on which the officer serves.
If the intent in the Kaua`i Charter was to do that they obviously would have done it- and could easily have done it as the other counties did. The fact that they didn’t include the language shows if anything a desire for a higher ethical standard than the other counties.
Perhaps by wrongly reading some intent that wasn’t there the council that passed the code on Kaua`i sought to make believe that provision was in the charter. But wishing doesn’t make them suddenly appear in the charter- only an illusionist can do that.
An email that arrived today from BOE watchdog Horace Stoessel states it clearly and unambiguously
He states:
Like the charters of Maui and Big Island , the Kaua’i County Charter prohibits members of government from appearing in behalf of private interests before County agencies. But whereas the other charters exempt members of boards and commissions from having to comply with the prohibition, our Charter Section 20.02D does not exempt them.
Last year the Charter Commission proposed exempting board/commission members from having to comply with 20.02D. The voters rejected the proposed charter amendment.
No matter how much Castillo- and apparently last year’s Charter Commission- wishes that the Kaua`i Charter read differently the strict prohibition remains in place today and will for at least the next year and a half.
The code addresses only specific concrete conflicts of interest that are specifically banned and then, as it states, based only on the “special favors” provisions in 20.01 of the charter. Nowhere does it say it is an exclusive list and nowhere does it address the prohibitions of 20.02(D) which are included to ensure Kaua`i officials conduct business with the highest possible level of ethics.
20.02(D) is signed to avoid even the appearance of the type of impropriety that could result in a tit-for-tat approval by a member of one B&C, of a request from a member of another B&C- who would then presumably be tempted to turn around and approve the request of a member of the first B&C.
The Kaua`i provision is specifically to remove those temptations.
County attorney options have as close to the effective weight of an actual judicial ruling as one can get. All county entities are expected to abide by them as if they were case law and indeed can lose protections against lawsuits if they don’t.
They become the de facto “law of the land” and can only be challenged by going to an actual judge or having them reversed by, most likely, a subsequent CA.
It is the responsibility of the county attorney to opine only on the law and to separate out the political considerations and notify the political entities that the have two choices- to either change or abide by the law as it stands.
It is not the bailiwick of the County Attorney to make those political decisions for elected officials by attempting to read into the law what should be or what they would like to see in the law.
That right is reserved for the political apparatus of the county- the council and mayor.
Castillo would do well to remember the fact that 99% of the residents of Kaua`i would never have the types of conflicts that people like the Bieber-complaints-cited Lenthall, Mark Hubbard and Lorna Nishimitsu because 99% of Kaua`i residents never appear “on behalf of” others before county entities and only occasionally if at all, appear as themselves.
The availability of that 99% for county service is the blind spot in Castillo’s claim that the law, as it stands, yields “absurd results”. Indeed it is the opposite of absurd- it denotes the highest of ethical standards are expected of those that serve the county.
Castillo’s “absurdity” claim is valid only if one is intent on supplanting government by the people and- more importantly OF the people- with a handful of revolving-door, paternalistic oligarchs.
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