FERC YOU: Anyone surprised at the FERC KIUC debacle wave your electricity bill in the air.
Okay- you can go back to sleep now. Because unless you were under the proverbial rock for the past decade you must have been fast asleep to be shocked at anything "this co-op" does.
Since day one when barnacle-on-the-butt-of-Kaua`i Gregg Gardiner convinced a group of good old boys and girls and Democratic Party bosses to pay way too much for the liability that was Citizen’s Electric- and stick the resultant debt on the backs of the island working people- the hew and cry of warnings has been a loud if ineffective undercurrent of stomach churning rage from rate payers.
"We're all for a co-op- just not THIS co-op" was the slogan of the original "nitpickers" whose moniker was proudly taken from former Mayor Marianne Kusaka's attempt to denigrate the effort that saved members $50 million and should have brought the price down by another hundred million.
But the makeup of the board was a who's who of the then, two factions of the Democratic Party- the old guard represented by aging, "442nd" party boss Turk Tokita vs the new guard of then-former Mayor and then-out-of-politics progressive JoAnn Yukimura.
And when the bylaws and rules were forced down the throats of members in an all-or-nothing vote- removing the promised precepts of the Sunshine law and giving all power to the board- the course was set for today's dictatorial decision-making by a handful of the power elite.
With today's news from Pacific Business News (via the local newspaper) that William Tam, deputy director for water at DLNR said that "the state does not want Hawai‘i's (sic) in-stream flow standards to be decided by a federal agency in Washington D.C. that does not have any experience with or understand Hawai‘i’s streams" and the announcement of an effort from anti-FREC forces leader Adam Asquith to get signatures to a full page ad fully explaining all that's insanely stupid about going through the feds, the tide seems to be turning- that despite the "that's my story and I'm stickin' to it" stance of the stumble-bums on the KIUC board.
And that includes the original three opponents- Carol Bain, Ben Sullivan and Jan TenBruggencate who were elected to be the voice of reason but who now, reportedly, have switched sides.
What the board seems to have forgotten are the lessons of another recent debacle- the ill-conceived and supremely bungled Superferry and the resultant battle.
The reason why, shockingly, the people of Kaua`i seemed to oppose the big bad boat was not the boat itself but for the way it usurped the processes that, although usually ineffective, are at least supposedly there to protect us from deregulatory invasion from Washington D.C. and Honolulu.
Just as the feds and state conspired to remove the environmental assessment and impact statement process for the Superferry, once again a bunch of power mongers have decided to allow a federal process to negate the unique water rights and management laws that have been carefully developed over decades in Hawai`i.
Then when challenged the powerful wielded their power to lie and deceive in such a blatant way that nobody failed to get the "sit down and shut up" message that General Linda Lingle and her unified command threw in the faces of those who usually, unless riled up by a lack of respect, act like sheeple.
And now though few understand the ins and outs of water usage, citizens feel the same kind of "like it or lump it" missive coming from elected officials who fail to get the message that their arrogance, not the project, is the becoming the issue.
Though it's too early to tell the rising tide of indignation over the attempted FERC KIUC sleight-of-hand indicates that the same kind of outrage that swept the island over the Superferry fiasco might just be at hand.
Because, as "this co-op" circles the wagons, the natives are getting restless.
Showing posts with label Marianne Kusaka. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marianne Kusaka. Show all posts
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
THE CUL-DE-SAC OF THE GOLDEN ROAD TO UNLIMITED DEACCELERATION
THE CUL-DE-SAC OF THE GOLDEN ROAD TO UNLIMITED DEACCELERATION: Glenn Mickens thought after 17 1/2 years he finally had 'um.
Silly coach.
For almost two decades the former Brooklyn Dodger pitcher and UCLA coach pitched the council a scandal of major proportion, occasionally bringing the mountain to Mohammad by hauling in pieces of asphalt and dumping them on the council's table to show that, not only our our potholed roads in terrible shape but someone was skimming said asphalt off the top resulting in the county getting less coverage per ton than the standard- as we described in detail a couple of years ago.
But that was only the beginning. Mickens suggested that- gasp- politics might be determining the way the roads made the yearly county repaving list after Hale `Ilio Road, where both Mayors Marianne Kusaka and Bryan Baptiste lived, made the list over and over during their years in office while his own Waipouli Road remained on the Tire Warehouse Enrichment and Preservation list.
Over the years, each time the yearly road resurfacing list came up for council approval Glenn tried to corral at least one councilmember into championing his cause and to get to the bottom of the apparent corruption- all to no avail.
Until, it seemed, this year.
For the last few years Coach had been unusually silent on his pet peeve. The reason? The list was never on the agenda. And the reason for that was that, while the council dutifully appropriated money for resurfacing no one in Public Works even bothered to make a list much less spend the money.
So now there was a cool $8 million accumulated in the fund. And that got someone's attention.
After hounding Chair Jay Furfaro for months to find out why on February 23 Mickens tenaciousness was rewarded with an item on the council's agenda saying
C 2011-76 Communication (02/16/2011) from Council Chair Furfaro, requesting the Administration's presence to provide the Council with an update on the County's Islandwide Road Resurfacing Program.
But as we reported on March 16 and again on March 22 new County Engineer Larry Dill didn't seem to be coming up with answers to satisfy anyone so Furfaro kept deferring the matter on March 9, March 23, April 6, April 20, and Dill kept coming up with excuses for why he couldn't answer the questions fully.
So Furfaro finally put them in writing and came up with a list of 8 questions based on Mickens' evolving 17 1/2-year-old list of queries.
And, as county engineers have done for decades, Dill kept stalling whether by just not showing up or pulling the old shuffle saying someone else had to answer the question but that person was (check one) in `O`ahu, on vacation, busy in an important meeting or some other lame excuse in the official County Engineers' Big Book of Bullsh*t Answers.
On May 3 Furfaro gave Dill two weeks so of course on May 18 Dill himself was off island.
And finally, last Wednesday, when the agenda item was called by the clerk (not in advance) the sheet with answers to the eight questions was distributed to councilmembers... all SIX of them.
Seems that June 1 was the day that, as everyone in the county knew- including of course Dill- Furfaro was in San Francisco negotiating a lower rate on the county's bonds.
The answers themselves were absurdly brief and non-responsive such as #2 which read
Q- Who is responsible for compiling and maintaining the data regarding paving and repaving
County roads?
A- The Roads Maintenance Division of the Department of Public Works.
The answer to Question #7 was quite revelatory regarding how the roads were chosen for repaving
Q- How does the Department of Public Works determine which roads should be resurfaced?
How are these roads prioritized and what type of criteria is followed?
A- A list of roads to be considered for resurfacing is maintained by the Roads Maintenance
Division. Roads are added to this last due to input from Roads Maintenance personnel or the
public. The Division Head inspects all the roads and prioritizes the roads for resurfacing,
considering:
* Pavement condition
• Volume of traffic
• Potential liability if deferred
• Grouping of roads
In other words using a totally subjective method leaving out "the ones the Mayor wants done".
The rest were a combination of double-talk and non-answers.
You'd think the six remaining councilmembers, having sat through all the crap of the past few months would be champing at the bit to tear Dill a new one. But this being Kaua`i, you'd be thinking wrong.
With Furfaro gone, a quick "Thank you Mr. Dill. Any questions? Hearing none we'll take a vote on the motion to receive this matter. All in favor say aye Motion carried" from Acting Chair Yukimura which brought an end to Mickens' hope that this year- his 80th- might be the one that yields answers and, god forbid, better roads.
Meanwhile back in his labyrinth, the Minotaur turned over, munched a few bones and went back to sleep thinking "life is good"
Silly coach.
For almost two decades the former Brooklyn Dodger pitcher and UCLA coach pitched the council a scandal of major proportion, occasionally bringing the mountain to Mohammad by hauling in pieces of asphalt and dumping them on the council's table to show that, not only our our potholed roads in terrible shape but someone was skimming said asphalt off the top resulting in the county getting less coverage per ton than the standard- as we described in detail a couple of years ago.
But that was only the beginning. Mickens suggested that- gasp- politics might be determining the way the roads made the yearly county repaving list after Hale `Ilio Road, where both Mayors Marianne Kusaka and Bryan Baptiste lived, made the list over and over during their years in office while his own Waipouli Road remained on the Tire Warehouse Enrichment and Preservation list.
Over the years, each time the yearly road resurfacing list came up for council approval Glenn tried to corral at least one councilmember into championing his cause and to get to the bottom of the apparent corruption- all to no avail.
Until, it seemed, this year.
For the last few years Coach had been unusually silent on his pet peeve. The reason? The list was never on the agenda. And the reason for that was that, while the council dutifully appropriated money for resurfacing no one in Public Works even bothered to make a list much less spend the money.
So now there was a cool $8 million accumulated in the fund. And that got someone's attention.
After hounding Chair Jay Furfaro for months to find out why on February 23 Mickens tenaciousness was rewarded with an item on the council's agenda saying
C 2011-76 Communication (02/16/2011) from Council Chair Furfaro, requesting the Administration's presence to provide the Council with an update on the County's Islandwide Road Resurfacing Program.
But as we reported on March 16 and again on March 22 new County Engineer Larry Dill didn't seem to be coming up with answers to satisfy anyone so Furfaro kept deferring the matter on March 9, March 23, April 6, April 20, and Dill kept coming up with excuses for why he couldn't answer the questions fully.
So Furfaro finally put them in writing and came up with a list of 8 questions based on Mickens' evolving 17 1/2-year-old list of queries.
And, as county engineers have done for decades, Dill kept stalling whether by just not showing up or pulling the old shuffle saying someone else had to answer the question but that person was (check one) in `O`ahu, on vacation, busy in an important meeting or some other lame excuse in the official County Engineers' Big Book of Bullsh*t Answers.
On May 3 Furfaro gave Dill two weeks so of course on May 18 Dill himself was off island.
And finally, last Wednesday, when the agenda item was called by the clerk (not in advance) the sheet with answers to the eight questions was distributed to councilmembers... all SIX of them.
Seems that June 1 was the day that, as everyone in the county knew- including of course Dill- Furfaro was in San Francisco negotiating a lower rate on the county's bonds.
The answers themselves were absurdly brief and non-responsive such as #2 which read
Q- Who is responsible for compiling and maintaining the data regarding paving and repaving
County roads?
A- The Roads Maintenance Division of the Department of Public Works.
The answer to Question #7 was quite revelatory regarding how the roads were chosen for repaving
Q- How does the Department of Public Works determine which roads should be resurfaced?
How are these roads prioritized and what type of criteria is followed?
A- A list of roads to be considered for resurfacing is maintained by the Roads Maintenance
Division. Roads are added to this last due to input from Roads Maintenance personnel or the
public. The Division Head inspects all the roads and prioritizes the roads for resurfacing,
considering:
* Pavement condition
• Volume of traffic
• Potential liability if deferred
• Grouping of roads
In other words using a totally subjective method leaving out "the ones the Mayor wants done".
The rest were a combination of double-talk and non-answers.
You'd think the six remaining councilmembers, having sat through all the crap of the past few months would be champing at the bit to tear Dill a new one. But this being Kaua`i, you'd be thinking wrong.
With Furfaro gone, a quick "Thank you Mr. Dill. Any questions? Hearing none we'll take a vote on the motion to receive this matter. All in favor say aye Motion carried" from Acting Chair Yukimura which brought an end to Mickens' hope that this year- his 80th- might be the one that yields answers and, god forbid, better roads.
Meanwhile back in his labyrinth, the Minotaur turned over, munched a few bones and went back to sleep thinking "life is good"
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: We’re still counting our blessings that the local newspaper’s Editor Nathan Eagle has taken an “if you want something done right, do it yourself” attitude toward covering county government- a fear-struck moment of seeing Leo Azambuja’s name on an article yesterday notwithstanding.
Although it’s a bit ambiguous, his rewrite of a county press release on the hiring of former Planning Director Dee Crowell as new Director Mike Dahilig’s deputy contained this tidbit the county release left out.
Crowell will replace current Deputy Planning Director Imai Aiu.
We’re not sure whether that’s just a good assumption on Eagle’s part- since the deputy job is non civil service and there’s only one “deputy director” budgeted in planning- or whether the other shoe has actually dropped due to the FBI probe of former Director Ian Costa and Aiu which we reported Monday and so is confirmation that Aiu is actually out of a job too.
It’s not unheard of on Kaua`i to see a former appointee who was forced out to be hired in a civil service position in the same department as happened with County Engineer Cesar Portugal during the Kusaka administration.
But Eagle’s by-lined article was even more revelatory, reporting that the Kaua`i County Council “met behind closed doors” yesterday to discuss the fate of County Clerk Peter Nakamura who apparently cost the county a quarter million dollars in a recently settled EEOC case.
Eagle fails to mention that the meeting was apparently not duly agendaed, as it does not appear on the county council web site, perhaps not trying to toot his own horn in ferreting out the secret confab.
But Eagle’s main story is one he’s been championing since last week- including in a weekend editorial- regarding whether the council should hire an executive search team to look for a county clerk, writing”
Community members have voiced their concerns over the cost of an executive search while others have said such a process is necessary in this instance.
But the question for the council may not be a matter of best practices vs. cost but a matter of fear and necessity.
In the wake of Police Commission Chair Michael Ching’s ethics case- where Ching was unceremoniously dumped for merely stating his preference for former Chief KC Lum during the process of the commission’s deliberations on hiring a new chief- local boards who hire and fire department heads are apparently scared bleepless to do the job themselves.
When the police commission hired a chief after Lum’s departure they indeed got the council to appropriate money for a professional search for a new chief even though they had apparently already decided to hire current Chief Darryl Perry, who had come in second in the process of hiring Lum.
Since then there have been no other hirings or firings by boards or commissions- the heads of the Fire, Liquor, and Personnel Departments remain on the job- although now of course the planning commission will be hiring a new permanent planning director too.
Any taint of favoritism of one candidate over another during the hiring process will naturally be seen as an ethics violation based on the precedent of the Ching case- which is, according to the county charter, binding on future cases until and unless it’s overturned by the Board of Ethics (BOE).
And indeed what the council does will also be seen as a precedent for the planning commission who will either take a hiring of a county clerk without a search as a green light for a simple selection process or take the hiring of professional search consultant as a signal they had better follow suit.
Though of course it’s silly to think that hiring a consultant is now going to be mandatory for all county boards and commissions that hire their department heads, so was the ethics case against Ching who was essential skewered for doing what he was supposed to do- picking one candidate and convincing the others that the person is the best one for the job.
The political repercussions of spending money on a search may be minor compared to those of going through a process of another trumped up ethics case based on the political persecutions of the past.
But of course the Ching case was a bed made by a past council- one that included the two new council returnees- and one in which the current members will have to lay.
Although it’s a bit ambiguous, his rewrite of a county press release on the hiring of former Planning Director Dee Crowell as new Director Mike Dahilig’s deputy contained this tidbit the county release left out.
Crowell will replace current Deputy Planning Director Imai Aiu.
We’re not sure whether that’s just a good assumption on Eagle’s part- since the deputy job is non civil service and there’s only one “deputy director” budgeted in planning- or whether the other shoe has actually dropped due to the FBI probe of former Director Ian Costa and Aiu which we reported Monday and so is confirmation that Aiu is actually out of a job too.
It’s not unheard of on Kaua`i to see a former appointee who was forced out to be hired in a civil service position in the same department as happened with County Engineer Cesar Portugal during the Kusaka administration.
But Eagle’s by-lined article was even more revelatory, reporting that the Kaua`i County Council “met behind closed doors” yesterday to discuss the fate of County Clerk Peter Nakamura who apparently cost the county a quarter million dollars in a recently settled EEOC case.
Eagle fails to mention that the meeting was apparently not duly agendaed, as it does not appear on the county council web site, perhaps not trying to toot his own horn in ferreting out the secret confab.
But Eagle’s main story is one he’s been championing since last week- including in a weekend editorial- regarding whether the council should hire an executive search team to look for a county clerk, writing”
Community members have voiced their concerns over the cost of an executive search while others have said such a process is necessary in this instance.
But the question for the council may not be a matter of best practices vs. cost but a matter of fear and necessity.
In the wake of Police Commission Chair Michael Ching’s ethics case- where Ching was unceremoniously dumped for merely stating his preference for former Chief KC Lum during the process of the commission’s deliberations on hiring a new chief- local boards who hire and fire department heads are apparently scared bleepless to do the job themselves.
When the police commission hired a chief after Lum’s departure they indeed got the council to appropriate money for a professional search for a new chief even though they had apparently already decided to hire current Chief Darryl Perry, who had come in second in the process of hiring Lum.
Since then there have been no other hirings or firings by boards or commissions- the heads of the Fire, Liquor, and Personnel Departments remain on the job- although now of course the planning commission will be hiring a new permanent planning director too.
Any taint of favoritism of one candidate over another during the hiring process will naturally be seen as an ethics violation based on the precedent of the Ching case- which is, according to the county charter, binding on future cases until and unless it’s overturned by the Board of Ethics (BOE).
And indeed what the council does will also be seen as a precedent for the planning commission who will either take a hiring of a county clerk without a search as a green light for a simple selection process or take the hiring of professional search consultant as a signal they had better follow suit.
Though of course it’s silly to think that hiring a consultant is now going to be mandatory for all county boards and commissions that hire their department heads, so was the ethics case against Ching who was essential skewered for doing what he was supposed to do- picking one candidate and convincing the others that the person is the best one for the job.
The political repercussions of spending money on a search may be minor compared to those of going through a process of another trumped up ethics case based on the political persecutions of the past.
But of course the Ching case was a bed made by a past council- one that included the two new council returnees- and one in which the current members will have to lay.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
ON MONKEYS AND WEASELS
ON MONKEYS AND WEASELS: The music is playing and to no one’s surprise one of the oldest if not the goodest of boys Ron Kouchi has publicly announced he is circling the state senate seat being vacated by Gary Hooser, who is running for lieutenant governor.
Despite what many might think long time Councilmember and sometimes Chair Kouchi is anything but a shoo-in after his recent identity crisis blew up in his face when he lost his first council election after one term that followed a hiatus when he lost his first race ever to Bryan Baptiste in 2002 when the “developer’s best friend” suddenly attempted a chameleon-like rebirth as a slow growth, environmental champion- in an unsuccessful attempt to end the Republican reign of Maryanne Kusaka.
Kouchi lost the mayor’s race because, despite the utter disgust with Baptiste among much of the populace his attempt to corral the “JoAnn Yukimura vote”- while she was absent from the political scene following her mayoral loss in 1994- was greeted with more than cynicism and derision when many kept their promises to themselves to never vote for Kouchi, who was the main thorn in the side of Yukimura during her six year administration.
The result is that Kouchi’s mostly local base of support now sees him of something of a traitor and opportunist who abandoned them for the “haole vote” while the controlled-growth crowd had their suspicions of his intent confirmed when he went to work for the developers of whatever-the-heck they’re calling the Westin these days after his mayoral race loss.
There his crowning achievement was bamboozling the council into giving up massive development rights to the area above Nawiliwili in exchange for the donation of a “park” along the coastline, giving up only an area that was a tax liability that could never have been built upon and yielding a county run- and taxpayer maintained- amenity for the patrons of the development.
Kouchi learned this ploy during the Trojan horse “gift” of the Kealia to Kuna Bay (donkey beach) area by Kealia Kai developer Tom McCloskey.
Because areas by the beach are generally in the state conservation district they are a two sided sword for developers these days. Though they are desirable areas for those patronizing an ocean front property they are not only undevelopable without a severe setback- out of the conservation district- but the property taxes on conservation land are the highest of all.
That plus “recent” (over the past 20 years) legislation requiring pubic access – including lateral access- leads to a great expense for a developer- a virtual public park on their private property which they must not only pay to build but pay to maintain.
McCloskey came up with the idea of the gift horse of the ocean front land to the county- along with restrictions that would have turned it into a county owned and run private beach with severely restricted access- and it was only the mouth examination of then councilperson Gary Hooser (over the objections of then councilperson Bryan Baptiste) that put a stop to a quick, first blanch approval making sure access would be maintained.
That was the time when, as public outrage over the restrictions grew so did the idea of “the bike path”. Kusaka- whose support of McCloskey was similar to that of Jimmy Pflueger in terms of the “hands off” directive to Public Works Department personnel- came up with the plan and convinced the none too swift Baptiste to accept the land to serve as “matching funds” for federal transportation bike path money sitting untouched in the state highways division coffers.
Few really understood the true motivation behind McCloskey’s gift at the time but it was not lost on Kouchi who used the same gift ploy to earn his big bucks for the Nawiliwili developer in obtaining massive, previously-denied development rights in a win-win for the developer and a lose-lose for the county which would have had a virtual public park with no development rights if they would have refused the “gift”.
Kouchi’s public announcement comes at a time when his notorious “war chest” is down to $725.01 according to his recent Supplemental (July 1 - December 31, 2009) filing for the 2008-2010 period which shows he somehow spent $3,552.54 since the last election.
His early announcement is quite obviously designed to scare off competition, depending on his reputation as a prodigious cash producer in the past.
And his actions over the past eight years portend well for his continuing to lead the money race for the Senate seat.
Despite what many might think long time Councilmember and sometimes Chair Kouchi is anything but a shoo-in after his recent identity crisis blew up in his face when he lost his first council election after one term that followed a hiatus when he lost his first race ever to Bryan Baptiste in 2002 when the “developer’s best friend” suddenly attempted a chameleon-like rebirth as a slow growth, environmental champion- in an unsuccessful attempt to end the Republican reign of Maryanne Kusaka.
Kouchi lost the mayor’s race because, despite the utter disgust with Baptiste among much of the populace his attempt to corral the “JoAnn Yukimura vote”- while she was absent from the political scene following her mayoral loss in 1994- was greeted with more than cynicism and derision when many kept their promises to themselves to never vote for Kouchi, who was the main thorn in the side of Yukimura during her six year administration.
The result is that Kouchi’s mostly local base of support now sees him of something of a traitor and opportunist who abandoned them for the “haole vote” while the controlled-growth crowd had their suspicions of his intent confirmed when he went to work for the developers of whatever-the-heck they’re calling the Westin these days after his mayoral race loss.
There his crowning achievement was bamboozling the council into giving up massive development rights to the area above Nawiliwili in exchange for the donation of a “park” along the coastline, giving up only an area that was a tax liability that could never have been built upon and yielding a county run- and taxpayer maintained- amenity for the patrons of the development.
Kouchi learned this ploy during the Trojan horse “gift” of the Kealia to Kuna Bay (donkey beach) area by Kealia Kai developer Tom McCloskey.
Because areas by the beach are generally in the state conservation district they are a two sided sword for developers these days. Though they are desirable areas for those patronizing an ocean front property they are not only undevelopable without a severe setback- out of the conservation district- but the property taxes on conservation land are the highest of all.
That plus “recent” (over the past 20 years) legislation requiring pubic access – including lateral access- leads to a great expense for a developer- a virtual public park on their private property which they must not only pay to build but pay to maintain.
McCloskey came up with the idea of the gift horse of the ocean front land to the county- along with restrictions that would have turned it into a county owned and run private beach with severely restricted access- and it was only the mouth examination of then councilperson Gary Hooser (over the objections of then councilperson Bryan Baptiste) that put a stop to a quick, first blanch approval making sure access would be maintained.
That was the time when, as public outrage over the restrictions grew so did the idea of “the bike path”. Kusaka- whose support of McCloskey was similar to that of Jimmy Pflueger in terms of the “hands off” directive to Public Works Department personnel- came up with the plan and convinced the none too swift Baptiste to accept the land to serve as “matching funds” for federal transportation bike path money sitting untouched in the state highways division coffers.
Few really understood the true motivation behind McCloskey’s gift at the time but it was not lost on Kouchi who used the same gift ploy to earn his big bucks for the Nawiliwili developer in obtaining massive, previously-denied development rights in a win-win for the developer and a lose-lose for the county which would have had a virtual public park with no development rights if they would have refused the “gift”.
Kouchi’s public announcement comes at a time when his notorious “war chest” is down to $725.01 according to his recent Supplemental (July 1 - December 31, 2009) filing for the 2008-2010 period which shows he somehow spent $3,552.54 since the last election.
His early announcement is quite obviously designed to scare off competition, depending on his reputation as a prodigious cash producer in the past.
And his actions over the past eight years portend well for his continuing to lead the money race for the Senate seat.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
KPD Blue- Chapter 26: What Boddah You?
KPD Blue
By Anthony Sommer
(Note: Today’s post marks the last regular chapter in our serialization of KPD Blue.
Over the next three weeks we will post three addenda from the book-
1) Regarding Sources,
2) About the Author and
3) An extensive Index
We’d like to thank author Anthony Sommer for allowing us to serialize his tome and for writing the book in the first place.
We ask those who have read the book here to also buy a copy through Amazon.com and support the author’s efforts to open the eyes of the people of Kaua`i with the “real” story regarding events- as opposed to the “spin” put on them by the local press and county officials at the time
We serialized KPD Blue in hopes that the disinfectant of sunshine would cause some changes in the way the political powers that be conduct the people’s business.
Although some have decided to instead blame the messenger we would do it again any time- and we’re sure Sommer feels the same way.
We’d like to thank the many people who lived the nightmares described in the book and hope that in the long run their battles- whether winning or losing- were not fought in vain.
The book has been a bombshell in the community and an eye-opener for all who read it. Its factual content is, overall, irrefutably accurate. Its characterizations and opinions have spurred island-wide dialogue regarding racism and other biases in both the Kaua`i Police Department and county government- especially in employment.
We also hope the book serves as a vindication of Chief’s KC Lum and George Freitas.
We will continue to follow the story of the current FBI investigation into matters raised by Sommer as more facts become available.
Andy Parx,
Publisher/Editor;
Parx News Net)
Chapter 26: What Boddah You?
“What boddah you?” is a Hawaii Pidgin expression meaning, literally, “What is bothering you?” or “What is your problem?” or “What are you upset about?”
“It’s the United States, but it’s not America,” a former newspaper editor on Kauai is fond of saying.
Another veteran Kauai journalist puts it this way: “Kauai is like the Wild, Wild West. The Constitution and the laws only apply here when it’s convenient. Otherwise, they make it up as they go along.”
Kauai lies 100 miles to the northwest of and 100 years behind the rest of the 50th state. Kauai is the most remote and the least developed (in every way) of the main Hawaiian Islands.
Look up the word “insular” in the dictionary and there is Kauai: 1) Suggestive of the isolated life of an island. 2) Circumscribed and detached in outlook and experience; narrow or provincial (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language).
Tourists like to pretend they “discover” Kauai: Rural and quaint and, of course, stunningly beautiful. They take home pretty pictures.
Visiting Kauai is like dining at a fine restaurant. The ambience is superb. The food tastes delicious.
But, unless the yelling is especially loud that evening, tourists never would guess at the mayhem going on back in the kitchen.
Bigotry and racism, of course, exist throughout the United States and the world. What makes Kauai particularly unique is that racism, sexism and bigotry are ignored, indeed applauded, both officially and as a cultural norm.
Discrimination on Kauai is exactly the opposite of the racism found on the mainland. On Kauai, brown-skinned people are the majority and (for now, but not for much longer) whites are the minority.
Racism in any form is just as ugly.
Discrimination never is discussed on Kauai. It never is written about. No one wants to admit it exists.
In the recorded history of Kauai, no county employee ever has been disciplined for making racist comments or showing favoritism to locals with brown skin while discriminating against haoles with white skin.
To the contrary, discrimination and bigotry are rewarded in Kauai County government. Racism is what keeps Kauai’s politicians in office.
Consider this:
The overall labor force on Kauai is 40 percent white but only 8 percent of the employees in Kauai County government are Caucasian.
A visitor can walk around the Kauai County Building all day without seeing a white face.
Much more important: It is equally true that 60 percent of Kauai voters are local (meaning native Hawaiians and descendants of sugar workers, almost all with brown skin), not white.
And local—not white—approval is what Kauai’s politicians seek because, after all, the majority rules. So the government jobs all go to locals, and they and their families and friends and neighbors all remember that on Election Day.
What politics really is all about, always and everywhere, is power. The key to winning an election—and thus power— on Kauai is pandering to local voters and their dislike and distrust of outsiders.
That is the context in which the KPD exists. The police—a club that on Kauai is almost exclusively local and almost exclusively male—are both a creation and a reflection of both the government and the island’s society.
The KPD is run by and for locals. A haole police chief attempting to diversify the department is almost certain to run afoul of the local majority, and thus be opposed by politicians.
The inevitable result is a racist police department with a stamp of approval from Kauai County.
Government sponsored and approved racial discrimination is particularly hideous when it exists in the police department.
The KPD is the only county agency with the power to use deadly force, the power to incarcerate, and, especially, the power to intimidate.
The police also have the power to “look the other way” when a friend or relative is breaking the law. And, on Kauai, they often do.
Kauai County government operates outside the normal checks and balances designed into American democracy.
There is no friction and no separation of powers between the executive and legislative and judicial branches of government. Everything is agreed on in illegal secret meetings. And the court on Kauai approves.
Even the press, the Fourth Estate, doesn’t question. It serves as a lap dog rather than a watch dog. If there is a helicopter crash or a shark bite or a bursting dam, Honolulu reporters and photographers descend on Kauai in great herds. No expenses are spared to cover tragedy and
catastrophe.
But coverage of social issues is considered “boring.” It doesn’t sell newspapers (at least in the minds of publishers, none of whom ever have worked a day in a newsroom).
And that is where the Hawaii press abdicates its most important role in a democratic society.
Kauai is the extreme example of a part of Hawaii stuck in the plantation past. It deserves inquiry.
Racial and ethnic conflict between locals and haoles is the single most dominant theme of life on Kauai, which is the furthest away, both geographically and socially, from the mainland United States.
In Asian-Pacific Islander culture, which dominates Kauai, the blade of grass that sticks up is cut off; the nail that sticks out is pounded in. Public acknowledgement of good deeds is just as bad as accusing a person of an evil act.
Asians and Pacific Islanders are much more likely to embrace leaders who are despots (as long as they remain reasonably benign).
If the island’s political leaders (and its courts) can choose which laws to obey and which laws to ignore, there really is no cultural conflict in the minds of Kauai locals. It’s perfectly acceptable. It’s what’s expected of the royalty (or alii, as the ruling class is called in Hawaii): They are free to make their own rules, at least up to a point..
It’s democracy that’s the stranger on Kauai. It’s the haoles, the outsiders and activists and protestors who deviate from the Kauai norm.
“The haoles never stay very long,” former Kauai Mayor Maryanne Kusaka is fond of pointing out, as though it is a criticism of white people. She openly advises employers on Kauai not to hire haoles and choose locals instead.
In fact, she should be asking why so many haoles— especially those with school-age children—leave Kauai. Maybe the answer lies in the way Kauai’s locals treat the haoles.
“Kill Haole Day” has been outlawed in the public schools, officially at least, but the brown kids beat up the white kids on a regular basis and the KPD officers assigned to the schools conveniently look the other way. So the white parents pack up their children and move to the mainland where the schools are both better and safer.
Maybe the Kauai government should set the example for tolerance and sensitivity and inclusion—but it doesn’t.
Bad government, bad schools and no opportunities (beyond making hotel beds and cutting resort lawns) result in what is called throughout Hawaii “The Brain Drain”:
The best and the brightest of Kauai’s children flee the island for better opportunities in Honolulu or the mainland as soon as they can.
Those left behind suffer from a massive inferiority complex. Kauai locals feel disempowered when they deal with the ever-increasing number of whites buying property and developing subdivisions and condos for even more whites. There is an anger born of past injustices (mostly real and mostly by whites).
Locals on Kauai are terrified of change and the very traditional island rapidly is morphing into something they don’t want: Becoming another Maui, over-commercialized and controlled by outside interests.
But that’s the way the haole developers and their local token hirelings are pointing them. The local officials gladly cozy up to the developers in hopes of payoffs, much like the Hawaiian royalty sold their kingdom to outsiders two centuries ago.
Local culture becomes dysfunctional is when it is layered on democracy. It’s just not a good fit, largely because the democracy never operates with all of the checks and balances it’s supposed to have.
Locals show great deference to authority and never openly challenge it. It is not in their cultural heritage and in a place as isolated as Kauai, their assimilation into the American mainstream has been painfully slow.
Kauai is one of very few places in the United States where the citizens—with good reason—fear their government:
Retaliation is essential for the government to keep the peasants in line.
The vast majority of Kauai’s locals want to go through life unnoticed. Certainly they would never speak up to defy authority.
It’s called “humility” but, in reality, it’s an attempt at hiding, as anonymously as possible, within the herd, the flock or the pack.
The island is remote and ignored, especially by the Honolulu news media and state and federal prosecutors, which should be paying more attention because Kauai is unique in all the wrong ways and thus worthy of at least some minimal attention.
The overall culture in Kauai County government and at the KPD is racist and sexist and corrupt. And the local politicians keep it that way.
And the local voters keep returning the same politicians to office.
By Anthony Sommer
(Note: Today’s post marks the last regular chapter in our serialization of KPD Blue.
Over the next three weeks we will post three addenda from the book-
1) Regarding Sources,
2) About the Author and
3) An extensive Index
We’d like to thank author Anthony Sommer for allowing us to serialize his tome and for writing the book in the first place.
We ask those who have read the book here to also buy a copy through Amazon.com and support the author’s efforts to open the eyes of the people of Kaua`i with the “real” story regarding events- as opposed to the “spin” put on them by the local press and county officials at the time
We serialized KPD Blue in hopes that the disinfectant of sunshine would cause some changes in the way the political powers that be conduct the people’s business.
Although some have decided to instead blame the messenger we would do it again any time- and we’re sure Sommer feels the same way.
We’d like to thank the many people who lived the nightmares described in the book and hope that in the long run their battles- whether winning or losing- were not fought in vain.
The book has been a bombshell in the community and an eye-opener for all who read it. Its factual content is, overall, irrefutably accurate. Its characterizations and opinions have spurred island-wide dialogue regarding racism and other biases in both the Kaua`i Police Department and county government- especially in employment.
We also hope the book serves as a vindication of Chief’s KC Lum and George Freitas.
We will continue to follow the story of the current FBI investigation into matters raised by Sommer as more facts become available.
Andy Parx,
Publisher/Editor;
Parx News Net)
Chapter 26: What Boddah You?
“What boddah you?” is a Hawaii Pidgin expression meaning, literally, “What is bothering you?” or “What is your problem?” or “What are you upset about?”
“It’s the United States, but it’s not America,” a former newspaper editor on Kauai is fond of saying.
Another veteran Kauai journalist puts it this way: “Kauai is like the Wild, Wild West. The Constitution and the laws only apply here when it’s convenient. Otherwise, they make it up as they go along.”
Kauai lies 100 miles to the northwest of and 100 years behind the rest of the 50th state. Kauai is the most remote and the least developed (in every way) of the main Hawaiian Islands.
Look up the word “insular” in the dictionary and there is Kauai: 1) Suggestive of the isolated life of an island. 2) Circumscribed and detached in outlook and experience; narrow or provincial (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language).
Tourists like to pretend they “discover” Kauai: Rural and quaint and, of course, stunningly beautiful. They take home pretty pictures.
Visiting Kauai is like dining at a fine restaurant. The ambience is superb. The food tastes delicious.
But, unless the yelling is especially loud that evening, tourists never would guess at the mayhem going on back in the kitchen.
Bigotry and racism, of course, exist throughout the United States and the world. What makes Kauai particularly unique is that racism, sexism and bigotry are ignored, indeed applauded, both officially and as a cultural norm.
Discrimination on Kauai is exactly the opposite of the racism found on the mainland. On Kauai, brown-skinned people are the majority and (for now, but not for much longer) whites are the minority.
Racism in any form is just as ugly.
Discrimination never is discussed on Kauai. It never is written about. No one wants to admit it exists.
In the recorded history of Kauai, no county employee ever has been disciplined for making racist comments or showing favoritism to locals with brown skin while discriminating against haoles with white skin.
To the contrary, discrimination and bigotry are rewarded in Kauai County government. Racism is what keeps Kauai’s politicians in office.
Consider this:
The overall labor force on Kauai is 40 percent white but only 8 percent of the employees in Kauai County government are Caucasian.
A visitor can walk around the Kauai County Building all day without seeing a white face.
Much more important: It is equally true that 60 percent of Kauai voters are local (meaning native Hawaiians and descendants of sugar workers, almost all with brown skin), not white.
And local—not white—approval is what Kauai’s politicians seek because, after all, the majority rules. So the government jobs all go to locals, and they and their families and friends and neighbors all remember that on Election Day.
What politics really is all about, always and everywhere, is power. The key to winning an election—and thus power— on Kauai is pandering to local voters and their dislike and distrust of outsiders.
That is the context in which the KPD exists. The police—a club that on Kauai is almost exclusively local and almost exclusively male—are both a creation and a reflection of both the government and the island’s society.
The KPD is run by and for locals. A haole police chief attempting to diversify the department is almost certain to run afoul of the local majority, and thus be opposed by politicians.
The inevitable result is a racist police department with a stamp of approval from Kauai County.
Government sponsored and approved racial discrimination is particularly hideous when it exists in the police department.
The KPD is the only county agency with the power to use deadly force, the power to incarcerate, and, especially, the power to intimidate.
The police also have the power to “look the other way” when a friend or relative is breaking the law. And, on Kauai, they often do.
Kauai County government operates outside the normal checks and balances designed into American democracy.
There is no friction and no separation of powers between the executive and legislative and judicial branches of government. Everything is agreed on in illegal secret meetings. And the court on Kauai approves.
Even the press, the Fourth Estate, doesn’t question. It serves as a lap dog rather than a watch dog. If there is a helicopter crash or a shark bite or a bursting dam, Honolulu reporters and photographers descend on Kauai in great herds. No expenses are spared to cover tragedy and
catastrophe.
But coverage of social issues is considered “boring.” It doesn’t sell newspapers (at least in the minds of publishers, none of whom ever have worked a day in a newsroom).
And that is where the Hawaii press abdicates its most important role in a democratic society.
Kauai is the extreme example of a part of Hawaii stuck in the plantation past. It deserves inquiry.
Racial and ethnic conflict between locals and haoles is the single most dominant theme of life on Kauai, which is the furthest away, both geographically and socially, from the mainland United States.
In Asian-Pacific Islander culture, which dominates Kauai, the blade of grass that sticks up is cut off; the nail that sticks out is pounded in. Public acknowledgement of good deeds is just as bad as accusing a person of an evil act.
Asians and Pacific Islanders are much more likely to embrace leaders who are despots (as long as they remain reasonably benign).
If the island’s political leaders (and its courts) can choose which laws to obey and which laws to ignore, there really is no cultural conflict in the minds of Kauai locals. It’s perfectly acceptable. It’s what’s expected of the royalty (or alii, as the ruling class is called in Hawaii): They are free to make their own rules, at least up to a point..
It’s democracy that’s the stranger on Kauai. It’s the haoles, the outsiders and activists and protestors who deviate from the Kauai norm.
“The haoles never stay very long,” former Kauai Mayor Maryanne Kusaka is fond of pointing out, as though it is a criticism of white people. She openly advises employers on Kauai not to hire haoles and choose locals instead.
In fact, she should be asking why so many haoles— especially those with school-age children—leave Kauai. Maybe the answer lies in the way Kauai’s locals treat the haoles.
“Kill Haole Day” has been outlawed in the public schools, officially at least, but the brown kids beat up the white kids on a regular basis and the KPD officers assigned to the schools conveniently look the other way. So the white parents pack up their children and move to the mainland where the schools are both better and safer.
Maybe the Kauai government should set the example for tolerance and sensitivity and inclusion—but it doesn’t.
Bad government, bad schools and no opportunities (beyond making hotel beds and cutting resort lawns) result in what is called throughout Hawaii “The Brain Drain”:
The best and the brightest of Kauai’s children flee the island for better opportunities in Honolulu or the mainland as soon as they can.
Those left behind suffer from a massive inferiority complex. Kauai locals feel disempowered when they deal with the ever-increasing number of whites buying property and developing subdivisions and condos for even more whites. There is an anger born of past injustices (mostly real and mostly by whites).
Locals on Kauai are terrified of change and the very traditional island rapidly is morphing into something they don’t want: Becoming another Maui, over-commercialized and controlled by outside interests.
But that’s the way the haole developers and their local token hirelings are pointing them. The local officials gladly cozy up to the developers in hopes of payoffs, much like the Hawaiian royalty sold their kingdom to outsiders two centuries ago.
Local culture becomes dysfunctional is when it is layered on democracy. It’s just not a good fit, largely because the democracy never operates with all of the checks and balances it’s supposed to have.
Locals show great deference to authority and never openly challenge it. It is not in their cultural heritage and in a place as isolated as Kauai, their assimilation into the American mainstream has been painfully slow.
Kauai is one of very few places in the United States where the citizens—with good reason—fear their government:
Retaliation is essential for the government to keep the peasants in line.
The vast majority of Kauai’s locals want to go through life unnoticed. Certainly they would never speak up to defy authority.
It’s called “humility” but, in reality, it’s an attempt at hiding, as anonymously as possible, within the herd, the flock or the pack.
The island is remote and ignored, especially by the Honolulu news media and state and federal prosecutors, which should be paying more attention because Kauai is unique in all the wrong ways and thus worthy of at least some minimal attention.
The overall culture in Kauai County government and at the KPD is racist and sexist and corrupt. And the local politicians keep it that way.
And the local voters keep returning the same politicians to office.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
THEY LIKE THE DARK AS DARK AS CAN BE
THEY LIKE THE DARK AS DARK AS CAN BE: Former mayoral candidate and open government advocate Rolf Bieber has been nominated to the Kaua`i Board of Ethics by Mayor Bernard Carvalho, PNN has learned.
Although in typical secretive fashion there has been no official announcement by the administration, Bieber’s name and those of eight other nominees for various boards and commissions appear on an agenda for a “special” council meeting to “interview” them, set for next Tuesday January 27.
Bieber, who has in the past testified before the council in support of enforcement by the Ethics Board of conflict of interest provisions and in opposition to executive sessions to discuss public policy, said that he is “honored to be able to serve” and thanked Carvalho for the nomination.
Bieber endorsed Carvalho’s mayoral bid in the closing days of the campaign last fall.
“Ethics in county government is an issue near and dear to me” said Bieber in a telephone interview this morning. “I ran on open and good governance and hope to take that platform to the Ethics Board.“
But while, if confirmed Bieber’s nomination might put a fresh face on the Ethics Board some of the others nominated as straight from a list of the same old faces- cronies of Carvalho’s and past Mayors Bryan Baptiste and Marianne Kusaka.
One of the most bizarre nominations is that of former County Attorney under Kusaka, Hartwell Blake, to the Planning Commission to fill the “environmental” slot.
The county charter calls for planning commission members to come from three sectors- two from business, two from labor and two from the environmental community- in addition to one “at large” slot.
It is a real head-scratchier is what Blake’s environmental credentials might be but the charter is silent on the criteria and past administrations and councils have failed to develop any criteria leaving the provision all but a joke.
Other cronies and campaign stalwarts include former civil defense coordinator under Kusaka, Cayetano “Sonny” Gerardo who served as Carvalho’s attack dog on former Mayor and again mayoral candidate Joann Yukimura during last year’s campaign.
In the closing days of the campaign Gerardo wrote a series of letters and emails in conducting a smear campaign rehashing unsubstantiated and often fabricated rumors regarding Yukimura’s actions following Hurricane ‘Iniki, alleging that she “took care of her north shore friends and ignored the west side” claiming she “bungled” the clean up.
Yukimura won national awards for her handling of the aftermath of the storm, especially her handling of the debris.
Gerardo is up for confirmation to the Board of Review, which hears property tax appeals, along with another familiar name- former prosecutor Craig DeCosta who declined to run for another term last year.
The full list of nominees and their terms includes:
BOARD OF ETHICS:
•Paul Weil – First Term to expire 12/31/2011
•Rolf Bieber – Partial Term to expire 12/31/2009
BOARD OF REVIEW:
•Cayetano “Sonny” Gerardo – First Term to expire 12/31/2011
•Craig DeCosta – First Term to expire 12/31/2011
CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION:
•Cathy Adams – First Term to expire 12/31/2011
LIQUOR CONTROL COMMISSION:
•Gary Pacheco – First Term to expire 12/31/2011
POLICE COMMISSION:
•Charles Iona – First Term to expire 12/31/2010
PLANNING COMMISSION:
•Hartwell Blake – (Environmental Designee) First Term to expire 12/31/2011
CHARTER REVIEW COMMISSION:
•Carol Suzawa – First Term to expire 12/31/2011
But if anyone wants to hear what questions the council asks the nominees don’t look for them to be televised.
The council has for years done all it could to keep secret these confirmation hearings- euphemistically called interviews- including refusing to fund their taping and, instead of scheduling them during regular council meetings, has used “special council meetings” to perpetuate the secrecy of the interviews after losing a battle with the Office of Information Practices (OIP) to keep them in executive session.
Back before January of 2002 the council refused to open the interviews to the public citing a provision in the county charter- part of the infamous Section 3.07(e) which was removed from the charter by voters this past fall after surreptitious wording gave the false impression that it would require the council to abide by the state sunshine law.
But after four years of testimony as to the illegal nature of the interviews and requests of OIP for enforcement of the state sunshine law by PNN, in January of 2002 a request was made by then-returning councilperson Yukimura asking the OIP if indeed they were allowed to go into executive session for the “interviews”.
The matter blew up that month when the year’s list of nominees were scheduled for interviews in executive session.
That stormy morning, despite a series of frantic phone calls from OIP forbidding the council from holding the interviews behind closed doors the council did so anyway causing an angry rebuke via fax and a subsequent written opinion from the toothless-tiger OIP.
That left the humid hallways of the historic county building full of dozens of soaking wet nominees standing around (for lack of seats) in foul weather gear, while the council sat in their air-conditioned chambers and invited them in one by one.
Since then the hearings have been technically open to the public but have been kept out of the purview of the general public as much as possible by a prohibition of televising the meetings.
Although councilmembers have cited the cost of taping and captioning meetings as a reason for keeping interviews off the air there appears to be no such concern over the endless hours of televised and captioned “awards” and “certificates”.
These little self promotional grandstanding events for councilmembers are not even part of the official agenda yet are routinely scheduled at the beginning or even during the middle of council meetings. They serve as free campaigning when members of the community are fawned over by the council before posing for the mandatory grip and grin photo to fill the local paper’s news hole.
Despite promises from candidates during the intervening years to make sure the confirmation sessions are televised the budget never seems to have enough money for them. And of course since what gets taped and doesn’t get taped is up to the famously secretive and paternalistic Council Chair Kaipo Asing, these interviews will most likely be hidden for the foreseeable future.
The public may come and testify or attempt to ask their own questions of the nominees at the 8:30 a.m. meeting and will most likely be able to testify on camera when the council confirms the nominations which, although the agenda isn’t out yet, will probably occur at the full council meeting scheduled for the next day, Wednesday January 28.
Although in typical secretive fashion there has been no official announcement by the administration, Bieber’s name and those of eight other nominees for various boards and commissions appear on an agenda for a “special” council meeting to “interview” them, set for next Tuesday January 27.
Bieber, who has in the past testified before the council in support of enforcement by the Ethics Board of conflict of interest provisions and in opposition to executive sessions to discuss public policy, said that he is “honored to be able to serve” and thanked Carvalho for the nomination.
Bieber endorsed Carvalho’s mayoral bid in the closing days of the campaign last fall.
“Ethics in county government is an issue near and dear to me” said Bieber in a telephone interview this morning. “I ran on open and good governance and hope to take that platform to the Ethics Board.“
But while, if confirmed Bieber’s nomination might put a fresh face on the Ethics Board some of the others nominated as straight from a list of the same old faces- cronies of Carvalho’s and past Mayors Bryan Baptiste and Marianne Kusaka.
One of the most bizarre nominations is that of former County Attorney under Kusaka, Hartwell Blake, to the Planning Commission to fill the “environmental” slot.
The county charter calls for planning commission members to come from three sectors- two from business, two from labor and two from the environmental community- in addition to one “at large” slot.
It is a real head-scratchier is what Blake’s environmental credentials might be but the charter is silent on the criteria and past administrations and councils have failed to develop any criteria leaving the provision all but a joke.
Other cronies and campaign stalwarts include former civil defense coordinator under Kusaka, Cayetano “Sonny” Gerardo who served as Carvalho’s attack dog on former Mayor and again mayoral candidate Joann Yukimura during last year’s campaign.
In the closing days of the campaign Gerardo wrote a series of letters and emails in conducting a smear campaign rehashing unsubstantiated and often fabricated rumors regarding Yukimura’s actions following Hurricane ‘Iniki, alleging that she “took care of her north shore friends and ignored the west side” claiming she “bungled” the clean up.
Yukimura won national awards for her handling of the aftermath of the storm, especially her handling of the debris.
Gerardo is up for confirmation to the Board of Review, which hears property tax appeals, along with another familiar name- former prosecutor Craig DeCosta who declined to run for another term last year.
The full list of nominees and their terms includes:
BOARD OF ETHICS:
•Paul Weil – First Term to expire 12/31/2011
•Rolf Bieber – Partial Term to expire 12/31/2009
BOARD OF REVIEW:
•Cayetano “Sonny” Gerardo – First Term to expire 12/31/2011
•Craig DeCosta – First Term to expire 12/31/2011
CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION:
•Cathy Adams – First Term to expire 12/31/2011
LIQUOR CONTROL COMMISSION:
•Gary Pacheco – First Term to expire 12/31/2011
POLICE COMMISSION:
•Charles Iona – First Term to expire 12/31/2010
PLANNING COMMISSION:
•Hartwell Blake – (Environmental Designee) First Term to expire 12/31/2011
CHARTER REVIEW COMMISSION:
•Carol Suzawa – First Term to expire 12/31/2011
But if anyone wants to hear what questions the council asks the nominees don’t look for them to be televised.
The council has for years done all it could to keep secret these confirmation hearings- euphemistically called interviews- including refusing to fund their taping and, instead of scheduling them during regular council meetings, has used “special council meetings” to perpetuate the secrecy of the interviews after losing a battle with the Office of Information Practices (OIP) to keep them in executive session.
Back before January of 2002 the council refused to open the interviews to the public citing a provision in the county charter- part of the infamous Section 3.07(e) which was removed from the charter by voters this past fall after surreptitious wording gave the false impression that it would require the council to abide by the state sunshine law.
But after four years of testimony as to the illegal nature of the interviews and requests of OIP for enforcement of the state sunshine law by PNN, in January of 2002 a request was made by then-returning councilperson Yukimura asking the OIP if indeed they were allowed to go into executive session for the “interviews”.
The matter blew up that month when the year’s list of nominees were scheduled for interviews in executive session.
That stormy morning, despite a series of frantic phone calls from OIP forbidding the council from holding the interviews behind closed doors the council did so anyway causing an angry rebuke via fax and a subsequent written opinion from the toothless-tiger OIP.
That left the humid hallways of the historic county building full of dozens of soaking wet nominees standing around (for lack of seats) in foul weather gear, while the council sat in their air-conditioned chambers and invited them in one by one.
Since then the hearings have been technically open to the public but have been kept out of the purview of the general public as much as possible by a prohibition of televising the meetings.
Although councilmembers have cited the cost of taping and captioning meetings as a reason for keeping interviews off the air there appears to be no such concern over the endless hours of televised and captioned “awards” and “certificates”.
These little self promotional grandstanding events for councilmembers are not even part of the official agenda yet are routinely scheduled at the beginning or even during the middle of council meetings. They serve as free campaigning when members of the community are fawned over by the council before posing for the mandatory grip and grin photo to fill the local paper’s news hole.
Despite promises from candidates during the intervening years to make sure the confirmation sessions are televised the budget never seems to have enough money for them. And of course since what gets taped and doesn’t get taped is up to the famously secretive and paternalistic Council Chair Kaipo Asing, these interviews will most likely be hidden for the foreseeable future.
The public may come and testify or attempt to ask their own questions of the nominees at the 8:30 a.m. meeting and will most likely be able to testify on camera when the council confirms the nominations which, although the agenda isn’t out yet, will probably occur at the full council meeting scheduled for the next day, Wednesday January 28.
Friday, December 12, 2008
THEY CALL ME A DOG WHEN I’M DOWN:
THEY CALL ME A DOG WHEN I’M DOWN: While the patronage system in Chicago is making national headlines, the thought of similar news reports on Kaua`i is almost laughable. As one friend said this week the FBI could make a cottage industry out of investigating the hiring practices of Kaua`i county government.
And as if to underscore the way the personnel decisions are made here we were left shaking our head at something that happened while taking care of personal business at a Kaua`i county office this week.
We’re not going to name the person involved because their name isn’t really important and they are but a cog in the machine. But we were surprised to see this county employee emerge to meet us, not from the usual clerk’s desk but from an office with “Assistant Manager” on the door.
“Oh- a promotion, eh?” we asked.
“No I’m doing two jobs right now because of retirements and others who have left... and of course no one is being hired right now because of the change in administration so the new mayor can get whoever he wants in these jobs.”
It’s not often that something actually leaves us speechless but the matter-of-fact way we were told- with a tone of voice saying “are you dumb; doesn’t everyone know that” just added to the tongue tying.
It’s one of those things that you know must be true but still is staggering hear out loud. It’s so entrenched in our local personnel department that the mayor, not merit, determines who gets the civil service jobs on Kaua`i that no one seems to care if everyone knows
Although of course the department heads are the ones who officially manipulate the system they are political appointees whose jobs depend on the good graces of the mayor so it’s likely that when they are told to hire “so and so” they do it.
It’s so engrained that they didn’t even wait to see if the new mayor might want to clean up the way people get jobs but just presumed that the system would continue under Bernard Carvalho the way is did under Maryanne Kusaka and Bryan Baptiste.
Will it ever change? Well that depends on whether the new county council follows up on the exposure of the system that started last year during the budgeting sessions.
That’s when a couple of councilmembers who are gone now- Mel Rapozo and Shaylene Iseri- Carvalho- finally got fed up with funding or even creating a skilled position at the behest of a department head only to find that that job was never filled and the money for it was used to fill another less skilled personnel slot.
One of the things that Rapozo and Iseri put into last year’s budget ordinance was a measure that requires the Department of Personnel Services (DPS) to notify the council of all changes when jobs go though what they call “downward relocation to entry level”,
We described how it really works after an astounding council meeting took place on Sept. 10.
What apparently occurs is that handpicked, unskilled but connected people are given civil service jobs that were appropriated to accomplish tasks that require skilled experienced people..
The “merit system” calls for promoting qualified people already working for the county if they exist and if not going “outside” and taking applications and actually hiring someone to do the job that they told the council needed doing when they asked for the money.
But it is rare that these jobs are ever advertised at all. Instead DPS takes the newly appropriated job slot and changes it to an entry level position in order to hire whomever the department head wants... usually at the “request” of the mayor.
Mel and Shaylene were just beginning to uncover and expose the system last fall but it’s anyone’s guess how the new council will handle it.... but we’re not holding our breath.
Much has been said both here and on other local blogs as to the apparent racial aspects to the hiring and firing practices that are exposed in many ways in the book KPD Blue.
Many see the blatant race bias in the county’s hiring practices and call it racism. But others question whether the race bias in local hiring can be called racism in what is essentially the wider “white privilege” of American society.
As we’ve said before there is a difference between race bias and racism. Race bias happens when someone simply doesn’t like people of another race. Often it’s expressed when actions are taken to deny a person their rights. When it’s done in hiring or public accommodation or other select areas, it is illegal.
But there is also real racISM that is not as easy to regulate. It confers privilege to those having white skin and confers benefits in daily life that may not seem to exist for those who have the privilege but is overtly obvious to those who aren’t a member of that group.
It expresses itself in things from racial profiling to even less overtly obvious acts that suppress and oppress non-whites often forcing them into less advantageous socioeconomic groups.
It doesn’t take a group of people practicing race bias to create an institution that confers white privilege on the members. Protestations of “I am not a racist” from individual members a group of whites that systematically excludes non-whites -whether consciously or not- doesn’t change the effective racism of the institution they belong to and are therefore responsible for..
The question many ask is whether the hiring practices at the county amount to a form of “brown privilege” in the very limited circle of county government. (We use the term brown-privilege” as a contrivance to mean non-white and not to exclude any group that doesn’t present a skin pigment that isn’t of European descent, whether African, Asian Latino, Native American/Pacific Islander or any other).
We can’t forget that this local system serves a larger white privileged power structure imposed by generations of white missionaries, sugar growers, developers, the military and others who in a larger sense “run” this island and state no matter who serves them.
And it can be said that a system such as the one of patronage-in-the-extreme on Kaua`i -whether race based on not- can make for a severely incompetent work force, one which is easy to surpress and control and serves the white power structure very well in many ways.
But many who say it’s impossible to have any real “brown privilege” in a white privileged society- a prevalent line of reasoning in academia and intellectual circles when discussing race- say that the system on Kaua`i is but one of provincialism and geocentric discrimination that centers it benefits on those who are born and raised here, especially with multi-generational roots
And, they say, that population just happens to be primarily non-white on Kaua`i.
But isn’t that the same thing that’s been said for a century when mainland institutions oppress non-whites. “It not that they are (fill-in-the-blank)” they say ”it’s just that they aren’t “one of ‘us’ here in Podunk”.
And certainly if you take your nose out of the “trees” of downtown Lihu`e and look at the “forest” of the island as a whole, even though whites are technically a minority none are lacking for job or economic opportunity because they are white.
As a matter of fact they have much of the same privilege they have on the mainland because the whole financial and wider “plantation mentality” political system here is still white controlled.
We don’t pretend to know the answer as to whether this “brown privilege” that some- like KPD Blue author Tony Sommer- see is a valid concept.
While it probably depends on your definition of racism, in the context of the wider circle of our society both on the mainland and here the answer is seemingly no.
But tell that to someone who has been told they can’t have a government job because of a bias against their skin color and you might not get the agreement that we intellectuals and academics seek.
And as if to underscore the way the personnel decisions are made here we were left shaking our head at something that happened while taking care of personal business at a Kaua`i county office this week.
We’re not going to name the person involved because their name isn’t really important and they are but a cog in the machine. But we were surprised to see this county employee emerge to meet us, not from the usual clerk’s desk but from an office with “Assistant Manager” on the door.
“Oh- a promotion, eh?” we asked.
“No I’m doing two jobs right now because of retirements and others who have left... and of course no one is being hired right now because of the change in administration so the new mayor can get whoever he wants in these jobs.”
It’s not often that something actually leaves us speechless but the matter-of-fact way we were told- with a tone of voice saying “are you dumb; doesn’t everyone know that” just added to the tongue tying.
It’s one of those things that you know must be true but still is staggering hear out loud. It’s so entrenched in our local personnel department that the mayor, not merit, determines who gets the civil service jobs on Kaua`i that no one seems to care if everyone knows
Although of course the department heads are the ones who officially manipulate the system they are political appointees whose jobs depend on the good graces of the mayor so it’s likely that when they are told to hire “so and so” they do it.
It’s so engrained that they didn’t even wait to see if the new mayor might want to clean up the way people get jobs but just presumed that the system would continue under Bernard Carvalho the way is did under Maryanne Kusaka and Bryan Baptiste.
Will it ever change? Well that depends on whether the new county council follows up on the exposure of the system that started last year during the budgeting sessions.
That’s when a couple of councilmembers who are gone now- Mel Rapozo and Shaylene Iseri- Carvalho- finally got fed up with funding or even creating a skilled position at the behest of a department head only to find that that job was never filled and the money for it was used to fill another less skilled personnel slot.
One of the things that Rapozo and Iseri put into last year’s budget ordinance was a measure that requires the Department of Personnel Services (DPS) to notify the council of all changes when jobs go though what they call “downward relocation to entry level”,
We described how it really works after an astounding council meeting took place on Sept. 10.
What apparently occurs is that handpicked, unskilled but connected people are given civil service jobs that were appropriated to accomplish tasks that require skilled experienced people..
The “merit system” calls for promoting qualified people already working for the county if they exist and if not going “outside” and taking applications and actually hiring someone to do the job that they told the council needed doing when they asked for the money.
But it is rare that these jobs are ever advertised at all. Instead DPS takes the newly appropriated job slot and changes it to an entry level position in order to hire whomever the department head wants... usually at the “request” of the mayor.
Mel and Shaylene were just beginning to uncover and expose the system last fall but it’s anyone’s guess how the new council will handle it.... but we’re not holding our breath.
Much has been said both here and on other local blogs as to the apparent racial aspects to the hiring and firing practices that are exposed in many ways in the book KPD Blue.
Many see the blatant race bias in the county’s hiring practices and call it racism. But others question whether the race bias in local hiring can be called racism in what is essentially the wider “white privilege” of American society.
As we’ve said before there is a difference between race bias and racism. Race bias happens when someone simply doesn’t like people of another race. Often it’s expressed when actions are taken to deny a person their rights. When it’s done in hiring or public accommodation or other select areas, it is illegal.
But there is also real racISM that is not as easy to regulate. It confers privilege to those having white skin and confers benefits in daily life that may not seem to exist for those who have the privilege but is overtly obvious to those who aren’t a member of that group.
It expresses itself in things from racial profiling to even less overtly obvious acts that suppress and oppress non-whites often forcing them into less advantageous socioeconomic groups.
It doesn’t take a group of people practicing race bias to create an institution that confers white privilege on the members. Protestations of “I am not a racist” from individual members a group of whites that systematically excludes non-whites -whether consciously or not- doesn’t change the effective racism of the institution they belong to and are therefore responsible for..
The question many ask is whether the hiring practices at the county amount to a form of “brown privilege” in the very limited circle of county government. (We use the term brown-privilege” as a contrivance to mean non-white and not to exclude any group that doesn’t present a skin pigment that isn’t of European descent, whether African, Asian Latino, Native American/Pacific Islander or any other).
We can’t forget that this local system serves a larger white privileged power structure imposed by generations of white missionaries, sugar growers, developers, the military and others who in a larger sense “run” this island and state no matter who serves them.
And it can be said that a system such as the one of patronage-in-the-extreme on Kaua`i -whether race based on not- can make for a severely incompetent work force, one which is easy to surpress and control and serves the white power structure very well in many ways.
But many who say it’s impossible to have any real “brown privilege” in a white privileged society- a prevalent line of reasoning in academia and intellectual circles when discussing race- say that the system on Kaua`i is but one of provincialism and geocentric discrimination that centers it benefits on those who are born and raised here, especially with multi-generational roots
And, they say, that population just happens to be primarily non-white on Kaua`i.
But isn’t that the same thing that’s been said for a century when mainland institutions oppress non-whites. “It not that they are (fill-in-the-blank)” they say ”it’s just that they aren’t “one of ‘us’ here in Podunk”.
And certainly if you take your nose out of the “trees” of downtown Lihu`e and look at the “forest” of the island as a whole, even though whites are technically a minority none are lacking for job or economic opportunity because they are white.
As a matter of fact they have much of the same privilege they have on the mainland because the whole financial and wider “plantation mentality” political system here is still white controlled.
We don’t pretend to know the answer as to whether this “brown privilege” that some- like KPD Blue author Tony Sommer- see is a valid concept.
While it probably depends on your definition of racism, in the context of the wider circle of our society both on the mainland and here the answer is seemingly no.
But tell that to someone who has been told they can’t have a government job because of a bias against their skin color and you might not get the agreement that we intellectuals and academics seek.
Friday, November 14, 2008
DIGGING UP THE DIRT
DIGGING UP THE DIRT: The grand jury looking into criminal charges against Jimmy Pflueger in the Ka Loko dam break tragedy seems as leaky as the dam itself was, as press reports of immunity for former Kaua`i Mayor Marianne Kusaka and details of evidence presented pepper press reports.
One report in particular today from Malia Zimmerman of Hawaii Reporter lays out a lot of history and background of the case revealing more details from an interview with Pflueger about his allegation of a $9,000 bribe paid to Kusaka to protect him- an interview that Zimmerman revealed for the first time was “recorded”.
But though the press reports and apparent focus of the investigation has been on Pflueger’s contention that the state bears some responsibility for not stopping him from causing the circumstances that led to the dam break, there is more news on the culpability of Kaua`i County.
She writes
Where Was County Enforcement?
(T)he county of Kauai was notified by at least two concerned citizens of Pflueger’s unpermitted grading around the dam. A County’s Department of Public Works inspector was dispatched to investigate the Ka Loko property on Nov. 7, 1997.
The inspector documented illegal grading with heavy equipment on the hilltop adjacent to Ka Loko Reservoir, and 11 days later, sent a “Notice of Grading Violation” by a certified letter to Pflueger saying inspectors “observed and verified the grading on the subject property to be in violation” of the County’s ordinances. Pflueger was ordered to “stop work immediately with the exception of work to correct any hazards to public safety and health.”
But Pflueger did not stop work. Instead, John Buist, Jr., a civil engineer for the county, says on Nov. 26, 1997, he was “summoned by Mayor (Maryanne) Kusaka” to her office for a meeting to discuss the grading violation for Mr. Pflueger. Buist’s memo says: “Buist informed the Mayor that the investigation was prompted by an anonymous phone call, but that the inspector saw and took a picture of the equipment being used for the work and the cut mountain top.”
Buist continues: “I was questioned (by the mayor) as to why we responded to an anonymous phone call and responded that it was our procedure to respond with an investigation. She questioned as to the other wasted manhours to follow up on anonymous tips and that no other County Agency responded to anonymous tips. Mayor Kusaka asked whether Mr. Pflueger had applied for a grading permit, and was told that a permit application had been filed, but without any grubbing plans. The Mayor and the Assistant Administrator, Wallace Rezentes, Sr., questioned why Mr. Pflueger should be required to obtain a permit for work in such a remote area. Mr. Buist explained that the ordinance applied no matter how remote the site may be, and noted that this was not the first violation for which Mr. Pflueger had been cited. ... In closing, Mr. Portugal instructed me that I was to stop all actions involving Mr. Pflueger and all further communications from or to Mr. Pflueger are to go directly to Mr. Portugal.”
Buist notes Caesar Portugal was in charge of handling Pflueger’s case for the county, and also that Yolanda Portugal-Cabral was under contract with Pflueger in November 1997 to help him submit the grubbing plans to the county. What is not disclosed in this correspondence - because the county officials already knew - Yolanda Portugal-Cabral ran the family engineering business for her father Caesar Portugal and ultimately it would be up to him to approve Pflueger’s plans that his daughter submitted.
Many pieces of evidence that so far have seemingly escaped scrutiny sit in the minutes of a series of Kaua`i County Council meetings from 2000-2002 during which Portugal and former acting head of the Department of Public Works (DPW) and now Planning Director Ian Costa answered questions from the council.
During many months of testimony- almost every week for more than a year- the two were grilled over another Pflueger-caused disaster in Pila`a, which PNN detailed at the time.
But included at some hearings was the issue of the illegal grubbing and grading Pflueger had done just above the Ka Loko dam and the seeming inability of the DPW engineers and inspectors to enter the Ka Loko property to search for violations.
During those sessions various DPW personnel including Portugal, Costa and engineer Wally Kudo were asked about Kusaka’s involvement and did indeed reveal extensively the pressure they received from her regarding Pflueger and developer Tom McCloskey who was also accused of illegal grubbing and grading in Moloa`a and Kealia.
Any examination of the verbatim minutes or video of council meetings and the notes of council committee meetings would provide a gold mine for the questioning of Kusaka and would indicate exactly who else needs to be questioned under oath by the grand jury to get to the truth. But it is doubtful that the minutes have been reviewed.
The council was on the verge of launching an investigation in late 2002 before many of them- including now Senator Gary Hooser, who initiated and pushed the investigation forward- left the council after the 2002 election.. The investigation would have allowed them to compel witnesses and get sworn testimony.
Council records show just what the criminal case is as PNN reported at the time. but no such investigation took place.
Another passage in Zimmerman’s piece gives a picture of Pflueger’s attitude toward his properties.
She writes
In a July 2006 exclusive interview with Hawaii Reporter on his property at Ka Loko and Pilaa on Kauai, Pflueger talked about his love for grubbing and grading the land so he could make it more “beautiful.”
He says he had a special tractor made, 44 feet wide and 17 feet tall, which can literally bury trees and shrubs and create a smooth and manicured look to the grass. “You know, you see all these weeds, we buried them. Anything you see here you can knock down and bury them,” he said, motioning across his beach side property at Pilaa.
Pflueger also said he didn’t remember ever seeing a spillway at Ka Loko, but admitted he could have covered it himself.
"And that reservoir around it is beautiful because I mowed it right down there to the edge. I did, mowed everything. I mowed everything. And if I filled something up or if somebody filled it up – tell me. Tell me. I mean, tell me," Pflueger said.
(The day after talking with Hawaii Reporter, Pflueger arranged another meeting and asked that this conversation not be disclosed, however, the interview was recorded and on the record.)
One of the lines of questioning of the DPW by the council was as to why they couldn’t just take a helicopter and inspect at the lands from above if they couldn’t get land access as they claimed at the time.
So, during the height of those “Developer Gone Wild” council meetings as they were dubbed, we were invited to tail along with activist extraordinaire Ray Chuan on a helicopter trip over Pflueger’s and McCloskey’s lands.
And what struck us was expressed in a question we asked during the flight- “What are all those ponds?” having never seen anything like it in island watersheds.
After the Ka Loko catastrophe we all to painfully figured it out- they’re reservoirs
It is quite obvious Pflueger didn’t do all the land moving by himself and in fact, as PNN has reported in the past, various “friends of Jimmy” were privy to what was at the heart of all of the damage- Jimmy Pflueger’s love for “water-skiing” on his “lakes”
We chanced upon to one of those friends who has requested anonymity who said that he and another friend of Jimmy were invited to go water skiing with Pflueger.
There, Pflueger regaled them with tales of how much effort he was putting into building up the water levels of the lakes by moving earth around the edges so that the water skiing would be better.
If there was one witness there were surely two and more but that, as yet, doesn’t seem to be a focus of the jury.
The other person there with our source was one of the closest “friends of Jimmy”- none other than the notorious Gary Baldwin the economic development guru of the Kusaka administration that left Kaua`i in disgrace after it was learned that he was a scam artist wanted by the law in connection with some deals in Colorado.
Baldwin was also a close associate of Kusaka’s- one whose Kaua`i Economic Development Board was lavished with money from the county’s largess, as PNN detailed in the 90’s on “The Parxist Conspiracy” TV news magazine.
Whether Baldwin- who we hear is out of jail and living in the northwest- has been subpoenaed in unknown but improbable.
One report in particular today from Malia Zimmerman of Hawaii Reporter lays out a lot of history and background of the case revealing more details from an interview with Pflueger about his allegation of a $9,000 bribe paid to Kusaka to protect him- an interview that Zimmerman revealed for the first time was “recorded”.
But though the press reports and apparent focus of the investigation has been on Pflueger’s contention that the state bears some responsibility for not stopping him from causing the circumstances that led to the dam break, there is more news on the culpability of Kaua`i County.
She writes
Where Was County Enforcement?
(T)he county of Kauai was notified by at least two concerned citizens of Pflueger’s unpermitted grading around the dam. A County’s Department of Public Works inspector was dispatched to investigate the Ka Loko property on Nov. 7, 1997.
The inspector documented illegal grading with heavy equipment on the hilltop adjacent to Ka Loko Reservoir, and 11 days later, sent a “Notice of Grading Violation” by a certified letter to Pflueger saying inspectors “observed and verified the grading on the subject property to be in violation” of the County’s ordinances. Pflueger was ordered to “stop work immediately with the exception of work to correct any hazards to public safety and health.”
But Pflueger did not stop work. Instead, John Buist, Jr., a civil engineer for the county, says on Nov. 26, 1997, he was “summoned by Mayor (Maryanne) Kusaka” to her office for a meeting to discuss the grading violation for Mr. Pflueger. Buist’s memo says: “Buist informed the Mayor that the investigation was prompted by an anonymous phone call, but that the inspector saw and took a picture of the equipment being used for the work and the cut mountain top.”
Buist continues: “I was questioned (by the mayor) as to why we responded to an anonymous phone call and responded that it was our procedure to respond with an investigation. She questioned as to the other wasted manhours to follow up on anonymous tips and that no other County Agency responded to anonymous tips. Mayor Kusaka asked whether Mr. Pflueger had applied for a grading permit, and was told that a permit application had been filed, but without any grubbing plans. The Mayor and the Assistant Administrator, Wallace Rezentes, Sr., questioned why Mr. Pflueger should be required to obtain a permit for work in such a remote area. Mr. Buist explained that the ordinance applied no matter how remote the site may be, and noted that this was not the first violation for which Mr. Pflueger had been cited. ... In closing, Mr. Portugal instructed me that I was to stop all actions involving Mr. Pflueger and all further communications from or to Mr. Pflueger are to go directly to Mr. Portugal.”
Buist notes Caesar Portugal was in charge of handling Pflueger’s case for the county, and also that Yolanda Portugal-Cabral was under contract with Pflueger in November 1997 to help him submit the grubbing plans to the county. What is not disclosed in this correspondence - because the county officials already knew - Yolanda Portugal-Cabral ran the family engineering business for her father Caesar Portugal and ultimately it would be up to him to approve Pflueger’s plans that his daughter submitted.
Many pieces of evidence that so far have seemingly escaped scrutiny sit in the minutes of a series of Kaua`i County Council meetings from 2000-2002 during which Portugal and former acting head of the Department of Public Works (DPW) and now Planning Director Ian Costa answered questions from the council.
During many months of testimony- almost every week for more than a year- the two were grilled over another Pflueger-caused disaster in Pila`a, which PNN detailed at the time.
But included at some hearings was the issue of the illegal grubbing and grading Pflueger had done just above the Ka Loko dam and the seeming inability of the DPW engineers and inspectors to enter the Ka Loko property to search for violations.
During those sessions various DPW personnel including Portugal, Costa and engineer Wally Kudo were asked about Kusaka’s involvement and did indeed reveal extensively the pressure they received from her regarding Pflueger and developer Tom McCloskey who was also accused of illegal grubbing and grading in Moloa`a and Kealia.
Any examination of the verbatim minutes or video of council meetings and the notes of council committee meetings would provide a gold mine for the questioning of Kusaka and would indicate exactly who else needs to be questioned under oath by the grand jury to get to the truth. But it is doubtful that the minutes have been reviewed.
The council was on the verge of launching an investigation in late 2002 before many of them- including now Senator Gary Hooser, who initiated and pushed the investigation forward- left the council after the 2002 election.. The investigation would have allowed them to compel witnesses and get sworn testimony.
Council records show just what the criminal case is as PNN reported at the time. but no such investigation took place.
Another passage in Zimmerman’s piece gives a picture of Pflueger’s attitude toward his properties.
She writes
In a July 2006 exclusive interview with Hawaii Reporter on his property at Ka Loko and Pilaa on Kauai, Pflueger talked about his love for grubbing and grading the land so he could make it more “beautiful.”
He says he had a special tractor made, 44 feet wide and 17 feet tall, which can literally bury trees and shrubs and create a smooth and manicured look to the grass. “You know, you see all these weeds, we buried them. Anything you see here you can knock down and bury them,” he said, motioning across his beach side property at Pilaa.
Pflueger also said he didn’t remember ever seeing a spillway at Ka Loko, but admitted he could have covered it himself.
"And that reservoir around it is beautiful because I mowed it right down there to the edge. I did, mowed everything. I mowed everything. And if I filled something up or if somebody filled it up – tell me. Tell me. I mean, tell me," Pflueger said.
(The day after talking with Hawaii Reporter, Pflueger arranged another meeting and asked that this conversation not be disclosed, however, the interview was recorded and on the record.)
One of the lines of questioning of the DPW by the council was as to why they couldn’t just take a helicopter and inspect at the lands from above if they couldn’t get land access as they claimed at the time.
So, during the height of those “Developer Gone Wild” council meetings as they were dubbed, we were invited to tail along with activist extraordinaire Ray Chuan on a helicopter trip over Pflueger’s and McCloskey’s lands.
And what struck us was expressed in a question we asked during the flight- “What are all those ponds?” having never seen anything like it in island watersheds.
After the Ka Loko catastrophe we all to painfully figured it out- they’re reservoirs
It is quite obvious Pflueger didn’t do all the land moving by himself and in fact, as PNN has reported in the past, various “friends of Jimmy” were privy to what was at the heart of all of the damage- Jimmy Pflueger’s love for “water-skiing” on his “lakes”
We chanced upon to one of those friends who has requested anonymity who said that he and another friend of Jimmy were invited to go water skiing with Pflueger.
There, Pflueger regaled them with tales of how much effort he was putting into building up the water levels of the lakes by moving earth around the edges so that the water skiing would be better.
If there was one witness there were surely two and more but that, as yet, doesn’t seem to be a focus of the jury.
The other person there with our source was one of the closest “friends of Jimmy”- none other than the notorious Gary Baldwin the economic development guru of the Kusaka administration that left Kaua`i in disgrace after it was learned that he was a scam artist wanted by the law in connection with some deals in Colorado.
Baldwin was also a close associate of Kusaka’s- one whose Kaua`i Economic Development Board was lavished with money from the county’s largess, as PNN detailed in the 90’s on “The Parxist Conspiracy” TV news magazine.
Whether Baldwin- who we hear is out of jail and living in the northwest- has been subpoenaed in unknown but improbable.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
KPD Blue- Chapter 14: A Stampede to the Courthouse; Part I: Jackie Tokashiki versus KPD
KPD Blue
By Anthony Sommer
Chapter 14: A Stampede to the Courthouse; Part I: Jackie Tokashiki versus KPD
On May 14, 2002, Jackie Tokashiki filed lawsuits in both state and federal court against Freitas and Kauai County.
Beyond the dispute in the lawsuit, Tokashiki’s case demonstrates (again) the absurdity of many parts of the hopelessly muddled Kauai County Charter.
Since 1980, Tokashiki had been the private secretary to the police chief (actually a parade of police chiefs) including Freitas. Tokashiki was an “at will” employee, meaning she had no civil service protection and could be fired at the chief’s whim.
Under the County Charter, the secretary to the police chief also is the secretary to the Police Ccommission. The concepts of “conflict of interest” and “separation of powers” apparently never entered the head of the long-ago and long-departed county attorney who first drafted the Kauai County Charter.
Working for both the police chief and the commission that sets policy for the police department was not a conflict Jackie Tokashiki spent any time fretting about for her first 21 years on the job.
But one day in July 2001, Lt. Alvin Seto and Inspector Mel Morris showed up on her doorstep with their laundry list of complaints about Chief Freitas.
According to court records, Tokashiki took off her chief’s secretary hat, put on her Police Commission’s secretary hat and processed the complaint, sending copies to the members of the commission (including Mayor Kusaka, an ex officio member) and the county attorney.
And she scheduled a special (and obviously closed-door) Commission meeting for Aug. 10, 2001.
She did not send a courtesy copy to the chief.
The reason for the executive session was not posted, a violation, again, of the state Open Meeting Law.
At the same time, still typing away in the chief’s office, she prepared a memo for the commissioners outlining the procedure for handling complaints, sent an invitation to Kusaka to attend the meeting (as if she would skip it…) and researched the issue of leave (really suspension) both with and without pay.
She also drafted a letter requesting, apparently by name, John Ko, one of the three investigators for the Honolulu Police Commission, be loaned to Kauai County.
On Aug. 10, the Commission suspended Freitas, although he didn’t learn of it until Aug. 13. The written directive Kusaka gave him, drafted by Tokashiki, required Freitas to turn in his gun, badge, identification, pager, cell phone, vehicle and office keys.
When Freitas went to his office a week later, his gun, which he had left in his desk when he was suspended, was gone.
Tokashiki had locked it in a safe, but she lied to Freitas and said she didn’t know where it was.
In fact, She had searched Freitas’s desk looking for evidence against the chief without any warrant or any authority at all.
Freitas requested the Commission bar Tokashiki from future Commission meetings regarding the investigation of him, and the county attorney told her to stay away.
Ko showed up to conduct the investigation, was given the keys to the chief’s car for his use and unpacked at the Kauai Marriott Beach Resort where he would spend the next two months with the county paying all of his expenses.
Ko asked for members of the department to step forward and talk to him about Freitas. Unlike Honolulu, where Ko usually worked, “stepping forward” is not something any local does on Kauai.
Tokashiki was then enlisted to “encourage” members of the department to be interviewed by Ko. She also gave a statement to Ko and was a key witness in the case.
As already noted, the ultimate result of all this sound and fury was two letters of reprimand in the chief’s personnel folder: One for giving his fiancé a ride in his police car and the other for yelling at Inspector Mel Morris in a private meeting.
On Jan. 7, 2002, Freitas returned to work as police chief and immediately reassigned Tokashiki to a position as secretary in the Administrative and Technical Services Bureau. Her pay and benefits were unaffected.
On April 26, 2002, Freitas told Tokashiki she was terminated effective May 31.
Two weeks later Tokashiki filed lawsuits in state and federal courts claiming that, even though she was an “at will” employee and could be fired by Freitas at any time, the chief’s retaliatory firing of her had violated her job protections under the Hawaii Whistleblower’s Protection Act.
In February 2004, Tokashiki’s attorney Clayton Ikei (a Honolulu lawyer who for decades has sued Kauai County on behalf of many employees in many departments and come away with many large settlements from the county) took the depositions of the key figures in the case.
Although the facts discovered in the deposition would not become public for another two years, Ikei obtained the first up close look at what was going on at all those closed door Police Commission sessions.
What the “secret” Police Commission transcripts revealed was that after Nelson Gabriel was acquitted of molesting his stepdaughter, it had become quite clear that Freitas had been on solid legal ground when he refused to allow Lt. Alvin Seto to attempt to coerce Gabriel’s wife into lying on the stand.
Here’s what happened next that the public never was told:
Commission Chairwoman Dede Wilhelm testified in her deposition that the Commission appeared ready to consider the charge against Freitas of “hindering the prosecution” of Gabriel.
But County Attorney Hartwell Blake slammed on the brakes.
Masuoka issued his ruling in the case against Nelson Gabriel. He found Gabriel innocent.
As a direct result of Masuoka’s decision, Blake told the Commission to “lay low on this and cool it” because he had become convinced the charge by Seto and Morris was unfounded.
If the Commission voted to dismiss Freitas for “hindering prosecution,” and Freitas sued the Commission, Blake told them his office would not represent them and the county would not pay any damages awarded Freitas.
That little gem had been hidden in the Police Commission’s secret executive session minutes for five years until it was revealed by the Hawaii Supreme Court in 2006.
Circuit Judge Masuoka, to no one’s amazement, ruled in favor of the county and dismissed Tokashiki’s lawsuit. Masuoka ruled her actions were not protected by the Whistleblower’s Protection Act.
But her lawyer appealed Masuoka’s decision, and on April 11, 2006, the Hawaii Supreme Court overturned Masuoka and ordered the case be set for trial.
As usual, the trial never took place. Kauai County was willing to pay a lot of taxpayer dollars to keep its dirty laundry from public view.
More than a year later, in May 2007, Kauai County settled the lawsuit and paid Tokashiki $325,000.
Once again, the settlement was approved by the County Council in an executive session that should have been conducted in public. The topic was not noted on the Council agenda for the meeting.
And the county made no announcement of the settlement. It was leaked to the local newspaper on Kauai.
By Anthony Sommer
Chapter 14: A Stampede to the Courthouse; Part I: Jackie Tokashiki versus KPD
On May 14, 2002, Jackie Tokashiki filed lawsuits in both state and federal court against Freitas and Kauai County.
Beyond the dispute in the lawsuit, Tokashiki’s case demonstrates (again) the absurdity of many parts of the hopelessly muddled Kauai County Charter.
Since 1980, Tokashiki had been the private secretary to the police chief (actually a parade of police chiefs) including Freitas. Tokashiki was an “at will” employee, meaning she had no civil service protection and could be fired at the chief’s whim.
Under the County Charter, the secretary to the police chief also is the secretary to the Police Ccommission. The concepts of “conflict of interest” and “separation of powers” apparently never entered the head of the long-ago and long-departed county attorney who first drafted the Kauai County Charter.
Working for both the police chief and the commission that sets policy for the police department was not a conflict Jackie Tokashiki spent any time fretting about for her first 21 years on the job.
But one day in July 2001, Lt. Alvin Seto and Inspector Mel Morris showed up on her doorstep with their laundry list of complaints about Chief Freitas.
According to court records, Tokashiki took off her chief’s secretary hat, put on her Police Commission’s secretary hat and processed the complaint, sending copies to the members of the commission (including Mayor Kusaka, an ex officio member) and the county attorney.
And she scheduled a special (and obviously closed-door) Commission meeting for Aug. 10, 2001.
She did not send a courtesy copy to the chief.
The reason for the executive session was not posted, a violation, again, of the state Open Meeting Law.
At the same time, still typing away in the chief’s office, she prepared a memo for the commissioners outlining the procedure for handling complaints, sent an invitation to Kusaka to attend the meeting (as if she would skip it…) and researched the issue of leave (really suspension) both with and without pay.
She also drafted a letter requesting, apparently by name, John Ko, one of the three investigators for the Honolulu Police Commission, be loaned to Kauai County.
On Aug. 10, the Commission suspended Freitas, although he didn’t learn of it until Aug. 13. The written directive Kusaka gave him, drafted by Tokashiki, required Freitas to turn in his gun, badge, identification, pager, cell phone, vehicle and office keys.
When Freitas went to his office a week later, his gun, which he had left in his desk when he was suspended, was gone.
Tokashiki had locked it in a safe, but she lied to Freitas and said she didn’t know where it was.
In fact, She had searched Freitas’s desk looking for evidence against the chief without any warrant or any authority at all.
Freitas requested the Commission bar Tokashiki from future Commission meetings regarding the investigation of him, and the county attorney told her to stay away.
Ko showed up to conduct the investigation, was given the keys to the chief’s car for his use and unpacked at the Kauai Marriott Beach Resort where he would spend the next two months with the county paying all of his expenses.
Ko asked for members of the department to step forward and talk to him about Freitas. Unlike Honolulu, where Ko usually worked, “stepping forward” is not something any local does on Kauai.
Tokashiki was then enlisted to “encourage” members of the department to be interviewed by Ko. She also gave a statement to Ko and was a key witness in the case.
As already noted, the ultimate result of all this sound and fury was two letters of reprimand in the chief’s personnel folder: One for giving his fiancé a ride in his police car and the other for yelling at Inspector Mel Morris in a private meeting.
On Jan. 7, 2002, Freitas returned to work as police chief and immediately reassigned Tokashiki to a position as secretary in the Administrative and Technical Services Bureau. Her pay and benefits were unaffected.
On April 26, 2002, Freitas told Tokashiki she was terminated effective May 31.
Two weeks later Tokashiki filed lawsuits in state and federal courts claiming that, even though she was an “at will” employee and could be fired by Freitas at any time, the chief’s retaliatory firing of her had violated her job protections under the Hawaii Whistleblower’s Protection Act.
In February 2004, Tokashiki’s attorney Clayton Ikei (a Honolulu lawyer who for decades has sued Kauai County on behalf of many employees in many departments and come away with many large settlements from the county) took the depositions of the key figures in the case.
Although the facts discovered in the deposition would not become public for another two years, Ikei obtained the first up close look at what was going on at all those closed door Police Commission sessions.
What the “secret” Police Commission transcripts revealed was that after Nelson Gabriel was acquitted of molesting his stepdaughter, it had become quite clear that Freitas had been on solid legal ground when he refused to allow Lt. Alvin Seto to attempt to coerce Gabriel’s wife into lying on the stand.
Here’s what happened next that the public never was told:
Commission Chairwoman Dede Wilhelm testified in her deposition that the Commission appeared ready to consider the charge against Freitas of “hindering the prosecution” of Gabriel.
But County Attorney Hartwell Blake slammed on the brakes.
Masuoka issued his ruling in the case against Nelson Gabriel. He found Gabriel innocent.
As a direct result of Masuoka’s decision, Blake told the Commission to “lay low on this and cool it” because he had become convinced the charge by Seto and Morris was unfounded.
If the Commission voted to dismiss Freitas for “hindering prosecution,” and Freitas sued the Commission, Blake told them his office would not represent them and the county would not pay any damages awarded Freitas.
That little gem had been hidden in the Police Commission’s secret executive session minutes for five years until it was revealed by the Hawaii Supreme Court in 2006.
Circuit Judge Masuoka, to no one’s amazement, ruled in favor of the county and dismissed Tokashiki’s lawsuit. Masuoka ruled her actions were not protected by the Whistleblower’s Protection Act.
But her lawyer appealed Masuoka’s decision, and on April 11, 2006, the Hawaii Supreme Court overturned Masuoka and ordered the case be set for trial.
As usual, the trial never took place. Kauai County was willing to pay a lot of taxpayer dollars to keep its dirty laundry from public view.
More than a year later, in May 2007, Kauai County settled the lawsuit and paid Tokashiki $325,000.
Once again, the settlement was approved by the County Council in an executive session that should have been conducted in public. The topic was not noted on the Council agenda for the meeting.
And the county made no announcement of the settlement. It was leaked to the local newspaper on Kauai.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
KPD Blue- Chapter 13 : Kaipo Asing
KPD Blue
By Anthony Sommer
Chapter 13 : Kaipo Asing
For a decade and a half, Kauai County Council member Bill “Kaipo” Asing was the hero of the small band of “good government” activists on Kauai: A reformer and a smiter of mayors.
Asing cast a bright light into the dark corners of Kauai County government.
The old Asing was the picture of a passionate minority leader, of the loyal opposition, of the independent politician with no ties to special interests (he never spent more than $100 on any campaign).
Asing’s own probing of county government’s shortcomings was the equal of any investigative journalist.
In one instance, his digging—literally—discovered a pipe serving a fire hydrant at a county dump was not the standard high-capacity, high-volume hardware usually associated with fire fighting. Instead, it was the diameter of the water pipes in a residential home.
Someone in county government had installed a cheap substitute and probably pocketed the difference. The loser was the Kauai Fire Department when the dump caught fire. Typically, though, there was no investigation by the county to follow up on Asing’s allegations. There never is. The fingers might all point to the top.
One of the real failings of Kauai County government is its inability to understand the checks and balances built into American democracy.
There is supposed to be friction between the mayor and the council and the courts and the press.
On Kauai there are no checks or balances. Everyone— including the lapdog press—signs on before any votes are taken. The Council passes a bill, the mayor signs it, the reporters sing its praises.
If it is challenged in court (highly unlikely), the judge blesses it.
In his days as the “Conscience of the County Council,” Kaipo Asing was the only one willing to say the emperor was naked.
When Maryanne Kusaka was mayor, she was Asing’s favorite target during his televised long-winded “chalk talks” on government ineptitude and corruption at the blackboard during Council meetings.
In turn, Kusaka and her department heads did not conceal the special loathing they reserved only for Asing. But a funny thing happened when the County Council handed Asing the gavel in 2002. The position was vacated when Ron Kouchi left the Council to run for mayor.
In the blink of an eye, Chairman Asing transformed into a petty tyrant, a champion of closed-door deal-making, and a close ally of newly-elected Mayor Bryan Baptiste in Baptiste’s campaign to purge the Kauai Police Department of haole influence.
The activists who show up at every Council meetings to rail against county government all, without exception, adored Kaipo Asing.
For many years, Asing had been saying the things they would say if they could get a seat on the Council. The instant Asing became Council chairman, everything changed.
The rants Asing formerly aimed at mayors and department heads suddenly were pointed at activists and journalists.
The mere holding of power rather than actually using it for anything constructive appeared to be sufficient reward for Asing. Perhaps he felt he earned it for his many years of being the outsider. He guarded it jealously.
In his first year as chairman, the Council did little at its meetings except approve the minutes of the prior meeting.
When asked about the inaction of the Council, Asing pointed at the mayor and said (correctly) that Baptiste hadn’t asked for a single bill during that year. In 2006, Asing was elected to his 12th term on the Council and his third term as Council chairman.
Between January 2003 and July 2005, the first two and a half years of Asing’s chairmanship, the Kauai Council conducted more than 140 executive sessions, according to activist Ray Chuan, who keeps score.
That’s an average of 58 executive sessions per year. In the last two years of Ron Kouchi’s chairmanship, the Council averaged 20 executive sessions a year. sing had almost tripled the number of executive sessions.
The result was a war between Kauai County and the state Office of Information Practices (OIP), the agency charged with interpreting Hawaii’s open meetings and public records laws.
Sadly (although it is clear the politicians want it this way), the OIP has no enforcement powers. If it orders a government agency to open a meeting or its file cabinets, there is nothing the OIP can do if the agency refuses. It is often said that Hawaii has the best open government laws and the worst enforcement of those laws in the United States.
Under state law, the state Attorney General’s Office is supposed to file lawsuits when the OIP is ignored. In practice, Republican Gov. Linda Lingle’s appointed Attorney General Mark Bennett refused to do anything to enforce the open meetings and public records laws unless a private citizen has first taken the agency to court and won.
In keeping the Council chamber door and the file cabinets locked, Asing was ably abetted by County Clerk Peter Nakamura, a career bureaucrat whose main tactic is to ignore legitimate requests for county records as if they never had been made.
Alternatively, Nakamura charges huge sums for “staff” time to retrieve public records.
When the OIP ordered Nakamura to turn over the 140-plus executive session minutes to two private citizens, Nakamura finally did so and billed them $2,886.75 for “staff time” to look up public records.
In most jurisdictions, a reporter or private citizen wanting to look through government files is pointed to the file cabinets and turned loose, often with a sarcastic “Knock yourself out.” comment from the chief bureaucrat in charge.
Not on Kauai.
On Jan. 11, 2005, an OIP attorney told the Kauai County Council staff that the Council would be violating the law if it went ahead with closed-door confirmation hearings for a roster of Baptiste appointee to boards and commissions. An hour later, Asing thumbed his nose at the OIP and went ahead with the secret sessions.
The previous month, Councilwoman (and former Mayor) JoAnn Yukimura asked OIP for an opinion as to whether closed-door confirmation hearings were legal.
In early January, OIP Director Les Kondo said he was informing Yukimura that the hearings had to be public.
On the morning of January 11, OIP attorney Lorna Aratani told Council staff the planned hearings later that day would violate the law.
“I told them the hearings should not be done in executive session,” she said in an interview that day. “I told them a written opinion was being drafted and the OIP’s conclusion would be the same as the verbal opinion I was giving them. “If they insisted on something in writing, I could have written ‘No Executive Session’ on a piece of paper and faxed it to them,” she said.
The Council ran 18 Baptiste appointees through the closed confirmation hearings that day.
Nine days later, on Jan. 20, 2005, the County Council met in what became the highly controversial Executive Session 177. (As a means of identifying them, executive sessions were numbered).
ES 177 was all about the Council investigating the KPD. The OIP later ruled ES 177 was illegal and ordered the county to make the minutes public.
On April 14, 2005, the OIP answered a request for an opinion from Police Commission Chairman Mike Ching, who was one of the subjects of the ES177 meeting. After reviewing the secret transcript, the OIP noted: “It appears a significant portion of that meeting involved discussion of whether the Council should in fact be considering ES 177 in an executive meeting and what specific matter the Council was considering in ES 177.”
The OIP ruled that debate should have taken place in public before the Council voted on going into ES 177. “The situation raises the question of how the council can vote to discuss a particular issue in executive session when the particular issue has not been identified,” the OIP opinion said.
The second question was whether the matters addressed in ES 177 fit into one or more of the eight specific reasons in state law that allow executive sessions.
The OIP opinion states:
“Prior to convening ES 177, the county attorney represented to OIP that the executive session would include discussions related to sensitive ongoing investigations involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the State Attorney General.
“It was further represented that these ongoing investigations involved confidential informants and undercover officers.
“It was asserted that discussions regarding these investigations in a public forum would jeopardize the investigations.
“Based upon the representations made by the county attorney, OIP indicated that it did not appear to be inappropriate for the Council to convene an executive meeting.”
Well, guess what? The county attorney lied. There were no “ongoing investigations” discussed.
The OIP opinion goes on to say:
“Upon reviewing the ES 177 minutes there is no indication that the Council considered or discussed any such investigations described by the county attorney.”
The OIP said the minutes show the Council discussed three investigations:
• An investigation being conducted by the County of Kauai Ethics Board.
• A KPD investigation that had been turned over to the Kauai county prosecutor.
• A proposed investigation into the termination of a KPD recruit.
The exception to the public meeting law that the county attorney claimed allowed the Council to go into executive session involves “sensitive matters related to public safety or security.”
The OIP concluded:
“It is OIP’s opinion that the actual matters discussed by the Council in ES 177 fall short of constituting ‘related to public safety and security.’ Therefore, it is OIP’s opinion that the matters discussed and decided on therein should have been done so in a public meeting.”
The Kauai County attorney claimed the executive session also was legal under a provision in the law that allows a board to go into closed-door meetings “to consult with its attorney on questions and issues pertaining to the board’s powers, duties, privileges, immunities and liabilities.” The Kauai County attorney uses this boilerplate for every executive session conducted by every Kauai county board or commission.
In the sole instance where executive session minutes for a closed County Council meeting “to consult with the board’s attorney” were obtained (through the lawsuit filed by the author of this book), the vast majority of the discussion had nothing to do with consulting with the board’s attorney.
It’s very likely (there’s no way to know for sure with minutes that remain eternally sealed) that “consulting with the board’s attorney” is simply a Kauai County attorney smokescreen to hide many, many illegally closed meetings on Kauai.
From the OIP opinion on ES 177, that certainly was true in this closed meeting:
“In reviewing the ES 177 minutes, it is OIP’s opinion that only an extremely limited portion of the discussion that occurred during ES 177 can reasonably fall within the attorney-client privilege.
“It is our strong recommendation that the Council act to immediately remedy its violation of the Sunshine Law (the public meetings statute) by making public the ES 177 minutes, subject only to the redaction of those limited portions which constitute attorney-client privilege communications.”
At Asing’s (and County Attorney Lani Nakazawa’s) urging, the Kauai County then sued the OIP in an effort to keep the transcript sealed.
Here was an amazing (everywhere except on Kauai) situation: A county government was suing the state to keep public documents from the public.
Even more amazing (but not surprising), the court on Kauai sided with the County. It ruled that items involving attorney-client privilege between the Council and the county attorney were so intermingled with the non-privileged parts of the transcript that it was impossible to determine what was public and what wasn’t.
The OIP appealed to the State Intermediate Court of Appeals where a decision still is pending. Even if the OIP eventually wins, the transcripts will be several years old and of little news value. But that’s what the Kauai County attorney was hoping for when she sued the OIP.
There are many, many government attorneys outside of Kauai County who would stand up in those instances and say to their client: “No! You can’t do that! It’s wrong!”
Neither Kauai County Attorney Lani Nakazawa nor any of her staff attorneys appeared to have had that brand of moral fiber. They believed it was their jobs to make the county’s illegal acts look legal, even if they knew the law had been violated.
By Anthony Sommer
Chapter 13 : Kaipo Asing
For a decade and a half, Kauai County Council member Bill “Kaipo” Asing was the hero of the small band of “good government” activists on Kauai: A reformer and a smiter of mayors.
Asing cast a bright light into the dark corners of Kauai County government.
The old Asing was the picture of a passionate minority leader, of the loyal opposition, of the independent politician with no ties to special interests (he never spent more than $100 on any campaign).
Asing’s own probing of county government’s shortcomings was the equal of any investigative journalist.
In one instance, his digging—literally—discovered a pipe serving a fire hydrant at a county dump was not the standard high-capacity, high-volume hardware usually associated with fire fighting. Instead, it was the diameter of the water pipes in a residential home.
Someone in county government had installed a cheap substitute and probably pocketed the difference. The loser was the Kauai Fire Department when the dump caught fire. Typically, though, there was no investigation by the county to follow up on Asing’s allegations. There never is. The fingers might all point to the top.
One of the real failings of Kauai County government is its inability to understand the checks and balances built into American democracy.
There is supposed to be friction between the mayor and the council and the courts and the press.
On Kauai there are no checks or balances. Everyone— including the lapdog press—signs on before any votes are taken. The Council passes a bill, the mayor signs it, the reporters sing its praises.
If it is challenged in court (highly unlikely), the judge blesses it.
In his days as the “Conscience of the County Council,” Kaipo Asing was the only one willing to say the emperor was naked.
When Maryanne Kusaka was mayor, she was Asing’s favorite target during his televised long-winded “chalk talks” on government ineptitude and corruption at the blackboard during Council meetings.
In turn, Kusaka and her department heads did not conceal the special loathing they reserved only for Asing. But a funny thing happened when the County Council handed Asing the gavel in 2002. The position was vacated when Ron Kouchi left the Council to run for mayor.
In the blink of an eye, Chairman Asing transformed into a petty tyrant, a champion of closed-door deal-making, and a close ally of newly-elected Mayor Bryan Baptiste in Baptiste’s campaign to purge the Kauai Police Department of haole influence.
The activists who show up at every Council meetings to rail against county government all, without exception, adored Kaipo Asing.
For many years, Asing had been saying the things they would say if they could get a seat on the Council. The instant Asing became Council chairman, everything changed.
The rants Asing formerly aimed at mayors and department heads suddenly were pointed at activists and journalists.
The mere holding of power rather than actually using it for anything constructive appeared to be sufficient reward for Asing. Perhaps he felt he earned it for his many years of being the outsider. He guarded it jealously.
In his first year as chairman, the Council did little at its meetings except approve the minutes of the prior meeting.
When asked about the inaction of the Council, Asing pointed at the mayor and said (correctly) that Baptiste hadn’t asked for a single bill during that year. In 2006, Asing was elected to his 12th term on the Council and his third term as Council chairman.
Between January 2003 and July 2005, the first two and a half years of Asing’s chairmanship, the Kauai Council conducted more than 140 executive sessions, according to activist Ray Chuan, who keeps score.
That’s an average of 58 executive sessions per year. In the last two years of Ron Kouchi’s chairmanship, the Council averaged 20 executive sessions a year. sing had almost tripled the number of executive sessions.
The result was a war between Kauai County and the state Office of Information Practices (OIP), the agency charged with interpreting Hawaii’s open meetings and public records laws.
Sadly (although it is clear the politicians want it this way), the OIP has no enforcement powers. If it orders a government agency to open a meeting or its file cabinets, there is nothing the OIP can do if the agency refuses. It is often said that Hawaii has the best open government laws and the worst enforcement of those laws in the United States.
Under state law, the state Attorney General’s Office is supposed to file lawsuits when the OIP is ignored. In practice, Republican Gov. Linda Lingle’s appointed Attorney General Mark Bennett refused to do anything to enforce the open meetings and public records laws unless a private citizen has first taken the agency to court and won.
In keeping the Council chamber door and the file cabinets locked, Asing was ably abetted by County Clerk Peter Nakamura, a career bureaucrat whose main tactic is to ignore legitimate requests for county records as if they never had been made.
Alternatively, Nakamura charges huge sums for “staff” time to retrieve public records.
When the OIP ordered Nakamura to turn over the 140-plus executive session minutes to two private citizens, Nakamura finally did so and billed them $2,886.75 for “staff time” to look up public records.
In most jurisdictions, a reporter or private citizen wanting to look through government files is pointed to the file cabinets and turned loose, often with a sarcastic “Knock yourself out.” comment from the chief bureaucrat in charge.
Not on Kauai.
On Jan. 11, 2005, an OIP attorney told the Kauai County Council staff that the Council would be violating the law if it went ahead with closed-door confirmation hearings for a roster of Baptiste appointee to boards and commissions. An hour later, Asing thumbed his nose at the OIP and went ahead with the secret sessions.
The previous month, Councilwoman (and former Mayor) JoAnn Yukimura asked OIP for an opinion as to whether closed-door confirmation hearings were legal.
In early January, OIP Director Les Kondo said he was informing Yukimura that the hearings had to be public.
On the morning of January 11, OIP attorney Lorna Aratani told Council staff the planned hearings later that day would violate the law.
“I told them the hearings should not be done in executive session,” she said in an interview that day. “I told them a written opinion was being drafted and the OIP’s conclusion would be the same as the verbal opinion I was giving them. “If they insisted on something in writing, I could have written ‘No Executive Session’ on a piece of paper and faxed it to them,” she said.
The Council ran 18 Baptiste appointees through the closed confirmation hearings that day.
Nine days later, on Jan. 20, 2005, the County Council met in what became the highly controversial Executive Session 177. (As a means of identifying them, executive sessions were numbered).
ES 177 was all about the Council investigating the KPD. The OIP later ruled ES 177 was illegal and ordered the county to make the minutes public.
On April 14, 2005, the OIP answered a request for an opinion from Police Commission Chairman Mike Ching, who was one of the subjects of the ES177 meeting. After reviewing the secret transcript, the OIP noted: “It appears a significant portion of that meeting involved discussion of whether the Council should in fact be considering ES 177 in an executive meeting and what specific matter the Council was considering in ES 177.”
The OIP ruled that debate should have taken place in public before the Council voted on going into ES 177. “The situation raises the question of how the council can vote to discuss a particular issue in executive session when the particular issue has not been identified,” the OIP opinion said.
The second question was whether the matters addressed in ES 177 fit into one or more of the eight specific reasons in state law that allow executive sessions.
The OIP opinion states:
“Prior to convening ES 177, the county attorney represented to OIP that the executive session would include discussions related to sensitive ongoing investigations involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the State Attorney General.
“It was further represented that these ongoing investigations involved confidential informants and undercover officers.
“It was asserted that discussions regarding these investigations in a public forum would jeopardize the investigations.
“Based upon the representations made by the county attorney, OIP indicated that it did not appear to be inappropriate for the Council to convene an executive meeting.”
Well, guess what? The county attorney lied. There were no “ongoing investigations” discussed.
The OIP opinion goes on to say:
“Upon reviewing the ES 177 minutes there is no indication that the Council considered or discussed any such investigations described by the county attorney.”
The OIP said the minutes show the Council discussed three investigations:
• An investigation being conducted by the County of Kauai Ethics Board.
• A KPD investigation that had been turned over to the Kauai county prosecutor.
• A proposed investigation into the termination of a KPD recruit.
The exception to the public meeting law that the county attorney claimed allowed the Council to go into executive session involves “sensitive matters related to public safety or security.”
The OIP concluded:
“It is OIP’s opinion that the actual matters discussed by the Council in ES 177 fall short of constituting ‘related to public safety and security.’ Therefore, it is OIP’s opinion that the matters discussed and decided on therein should have been done so in a public meeting.”
The Kauai County attorney claimed the executive session also was legal under a provision in the law that allows a board to go into closed-door meetings “to consult with its attorney on questions and issues pertaining to the board’s powers, duties, privileges, immunities and liabilities.” The Kauai County attorney uses this boilerplate for every executive session conducted by every Kauai county board or commission.
In the sole instance where executive session minutes for a closed County Council meeting “to consult with the board’s attorney” were obtained (through the lawsuit filed by the author of this book), the vast majority of the discussion had nothing to do with consulting with the board’s attorney.
It’s very likely (there’s no way to know for sure with minutes that remain eternally sealed) that “consulting with the board’s attorney” is simply a Kauai County attorney smokescreen to hide many, many illegally closed meetings on Kauai.
From the OIP opinion on ES 177, that certainly was true in this closed meeting:
“In reviewing the ES 177 minutes, it is OIP’s opinion that only an extremely limited portion of the discussion that occurred during ES 177 can reasonably fall within the attorney-client privilege.
“It is our strong recommendation that the Council act to immediately remedy its violation of the Sunshine Law (the public meetings statute) by making public the ES 177 minutes, subject only to the redaction of those limited portions which constitute attorney-client privilege communications.”
At Asing’s (and County Attorney Lani Nakazawa’s) urging, the Kauai County then sued the OIP in an effort to keep the transcript sealed.
Here was an amazing (everywhere except on Kauai) situation: A county government was suing the state to keep public documents from the public.
Even more amazing (but not surprising), the court on Kauai sided with the County. It ruled that items involving attorney-client privilege between the Council and the county attorney were so intermingled with the non-privileged parts of the transcript that it was impossible to determine what was public and what wasn’t.
The OIP appealed to the State Intermediate Court of Appeals where a decision still is pending. Even if the OIP eventually wins, the transcripts will be several years old and of little news value. But that’s what the Kauai County attorney was hoping for when she sued the OIP.
There are many, many government attorneys outside of Kauai County who would stand up in those instances and say to their client: “No! You can’t do that! It’s wrong!”
Neither Kauai County Attorney Lani Nakazawa nor any of her staff attorneys appeared to have had that brand of moral fiber. They believed it was their jobs to make the county’s illegal acts look legal, even if they knew the law had been violated.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
KPD BLUE- Chapter 11: A New Mayor
(With “A New Mayor” in 2002 came a new era of mind boggling and often illegal secrecy and legal deception initiated by Bryan Baptiste’s new County Attorney, Lani Nakazawa.
In Chapter 11 of KPD Blue by Anthony Sommer we meet Nakazawa, the Red Queen of the Smokescreen and initiator of a new era of secret meetings and padlocked records, who now represents Kaua`i as a state “legislative liaison”- a cushy, low-work, high-pay, unbudgeted, lobbying position created by Baptiste without council approval- or knowledge
Despite months of requests from the county council to have Nakazawa appear before them to go over the agenda for the last and the coming legislative sessions, she’s refused to appear with a new excuse every two weeks.
Meet her and get to know the real Bryan Baptiste in this week’s serialization of KPD Blue)
-------------
KPD BLUE
By Anthony Sommer
Chapter 11: A New Mayor
George Freitas’ reinstatement as police chief came early in 2002, the last year of Maryanne Kusaka’s term as mayor. By 2002, Kusaka was very much a lame duck and had little incentive to reopen her war with the chief. She left it to her successor to try again to get rid of Freitas.
Bryan Baptiste, a member of the County Council and Maryanne Kusaka’s protégé, was elected mayor in the fall of 2002. He was known in some circles (not very flatteringly) as “Son of Kusaka.”
Baptiste was so accomplished at fleecing Kauai taxpayers that he managed one last grab at the public coffers even in death.
After Baptiste died following heart surgery in June 2008, his cabinet put on a huge memorial service at the Kauai Convention Center.
The county paid overtime for drivers and fuel costs for special buses to collect anyone anywhere on the island who wanted to attend. Additional buses were added to ferry mourners from a nearby parking lot to the convention center.
Obviously, there was no money for a “state funeral” in the county’s budget, the costs were not made public and the Council never approved the funding beforehand.
Baptiste’s cronies simply spent the tax dollars without approval from anyone.
Baptiste won Kusaka’s favor while he was on the County Council. He volunteered to head one of her pet projects: The beautification of the entrance to Lihue Airport.
Never mind the fact that Lihue Airport was a state airport and the entrance was on a state highway and maybe the state, not Kauai County, should have paid for it.
Baptiste rounded up a large roster of clubs and organizations. Each “adopted” an area of the project with a promise of perpetual care.
When completed, the area, formerly fallow cane fields, had been transformed into a beautiful garden. Signs welcomed tourists driving out of the airport when they arrived and thanked tourists entering the airport when they departed.
On Kauai, tourists are indeed the geese that lay golden eggs.
But the “perpetual care” didn’t last long.
AMFAC (long ago shortened from American Factors and then bought by a real estate company in Chicago), the onetime huge sugar plantation that had promised to provide free water for the flowers, went out of business.
The clubs soon ignored the project and the gardens started to become tangled masses of weeds.
When he became mayor, Baptiste put county work crews to work repairing and maintaining the project. No one mentioned the “volunteerism” that vanished or the fact the county taxpayers were stuck with the maintenance bill. Kusaka didn’t publicly endorse Baptiste as her choice for the next mayor until late in the campaign.
But that was all for show. The same business interests that backed Kusaka had found their new puppet in Baptiste and were pouring money into his coffers.
Largely thanks to what he claimed was a sizable lastminute “loan” from a wealthy relative on Oahu, Baptiste was able to launch a media blitz in the final weeks of the campaign.
The roadsides of Kauai were blanketed with placards promoting “Honest Bryan Baptiste.”
Baptiste narrowly defeated long-time Council Chairman Ron Kouchi, easily the brightest and most politically intuitive politician on Kauai. Drop a pebble in a pond, and Kouchi could accurately predict where and when every ripple would
touch the shore.
The early favorite, Kouchi’s greatest strength, his intellect, also was his Achilles’ heel. In the eyes of Kauai locals who pride themselves on their very minimal education, Kouchi was “scary smart.”
He operated on a level most locals couldn’t comprehend (he used a lot of big words) and hinted at support for changes. Kouchi became a potential threat to the “Kauai Style” that true locals want to remain forever fixed.
Kouchi, a member of the wealthy family that owned and operated Kauai’s largest private waste disposal company, exuded more than a little arrogance.
He was and remains an elitist. In an Asian culture in which perceived humility is the greatest virtue, Kouchi’s lack of appropriate modesty fatally flawed his campaign for mayor.
Exhibit A: Rarely would anyone come up and hug Ron Kouchi.
Exhibit B: Everyone hugged Bryan Baptiste.
Shaped somewhat like a brown Pillsbury Doughboy, bald and with a wispy mustache, Baptiste appeared not the least bit threatening: The very portrait of a benign despot, a Kauai local’s dream leader.
The fact that he was not terribly bright or articulate actually was a political plus on Kauai. He was an “everyman,” the candidate most like the voters.
And he had a political pedigree.
Baptiste’s father, Tony Baptiste, had been chairman of the county board of supervisors in the 1950s and ‘60s, before the counties all switched to a municipal form of government. In effect, he was the equivalent of the mayor.
Tony Baptiste ran Kauai County from a jail cell for a year while serving a term for tax evasion, and that says a great deal about the forgiving nature of the Kauai electorate.
“The voters were so angry at him, they only re-elected him three more times,” Bryan Baptiste liked to point out. That boast says a whole lot more about Bryan Baptiste and his lack of a moral compass than it does about his father.
As long as the voters love you, it doesn’t matter how crooked you are. That was the mindset Baptiste carried into the mayor’s office.
Like Kusaka, who became a Republican to run for mayor in the 1994 primary, Baptiste was a Democrat who turned Republican.
RINO (Republican In Name Only) is what both Kusaka and Baptiste were called.
Just as Kauai County government is almost exclusively a brown-skinned club, a conclave of Kauai Republicans is a vast sea of white faces drinking punch and eating cookies in a resort conference room.
Many were members of the Navy League (which won them free joyrides on Navy ships), and it was this constituency retired Capt. Bob Mullins had brought to Kusaka’s front door. When Mullins left to sell military hardware, they remained true to Kusaka and later to Baptiste.
Kusaka and Baptiste certainly looked out of place in the great haole herd but they got what they wanted: The GOP faithful believed each of the mayors were one of them. No need to look any further.
Events would prove exactly the opposite was true, but that “R” behind a politician’s name carries a lot of weight in the wealthy retirement communities of Princeville and Poipu.
Baptiste’s conversion came after Kusaka gave him the job of managing the county’s convention center, a large meeting facility that never actually hosted a major convention. Many people who went to the convention center mistook Baptiste for the janitor.
And so, Baptiste became a Republican.
“The mayor was a Republican, so switching parties when I took the job just seemed the polite thing to do,” Baptiste said.
Baptiste was hardly a true believer in the GOP. Nor was he philosophically a true Democrat.
The longer Baptiste served as mayor, the more it seemed he became convinced he had been chosen to rule by “Divine Right.”
It didn’t hurt him at all that Republican Linda Lingle had just become the first GOP governor of Hawaii since the 1960s in the same election in which Baptiste became Republican mayor of Kauai.
He brought in several new department heads—all of them born on Kauai, although some had migrated to Honolulu and had to be “brought home.”
Included was County Attorney Lani Nakazawa, a Stanford classmate of former mayor (now Council Member) JoAnn Yukimura.
Nakazawa brought to the office both a keen intellect and a philosophy that it was the role of an attorney to do anything (and everything) to protect her client, no matter what laws or ethical codes she violated.
And she brought with her a very mean and vindictive spirit that she cloaked behind a benign and constant smile. Under Nakazawa’s guidance, virtually any complaint to the Council or a board or commission instantly became “a possible subject for future litigation.” The topic of the complaint thus was forever barred from becoming a matter of public record.
This was true even if the person complaining was simply exerting a First Amendment right and had no intention of filing a lawsuit against the county.
Similarly (although this was true during Kusaka’s reign as well), any time a board or commission met in executive session to discuss its powers, duties, liabilities and limitations with the County Attorney (an exemption from the open meetings statutory requirement that appeared on every agenda of every board and commission), the entire meeting was closed and the minutes forever kept secret.
The fact is, usually only a tiny fraction of the meetings involved getting advice from the lawyer (sometimes none of it at all because the lawyer wasn’t even in the meeting room). There is no doubt that most (or all) of the executive sessions consisted of discussions that legally should have been in open session.
Hawaii’s Open Meeting Law contains a preamble that states the statute should be “liberally construed” and errors, if they are made, should be in the direction of keeping meetings open to the public.
Give Kusaka’s County Attorney Hartwell Blake credit, at least, for honesty. “I construe that statute very conservatively,” he explained. He was admitting he was violating the law, or at least its stated intent.
Nakazawa did the same but she was much more devious than Blake.
Nakazawa also introduced a new fad, already popular on the mainland, which sealed records because personal information about private citizens was discussed in executive sessions: “Privacy Rights.”
She encouraged members of boards and commissions to toss out a few tidbits of gossip about private individuals so the executive session minutes could be forever sealed because there were “privacy issues” involved.
And she had a sense of humor, of sorts.
Asked whether there was any case law in Hawaii or elsewhere to back up any of her constant advice to the county officials to keep meetings closed and file cabinets locked, her response, given with her trademark smile, was: “Well that’s why they’re called county attorney’s opinions, not county attorney’s facts.”
Translation: “If you don’t like it, sue me.”
Nakazawa knew the chances of any journalist or any political activist challenging her methods in court was just about zero.
And, if they did sue, Kauai County has unlimited taxpayer dollars to hire outside lawyers to keep its secrets from public scrutiny.
The County Council repeatedly appropriated sums of $100,000 and more to hire outside legal counsel for her to fight any legal challenges in court. No individual challenger could match the county’s war chest and no news editor had the backbone.
The number of executive sessions skyrocketed. The news media editors continued to sit on their hands and their publishers’ wallets.
A study by The Garden Island newspaper found Kauai County paid $1.9 million to private law firms defending the county and KPD against lawsuits in 2006. That’s out of a total county budget of only $122 million.
And in every case but one (the only one that went to trial), Kauai County settled all of the lawsuits against KPD for large sums of taxpayer money.
Rather than risking public trials with the press covering highly embarrassing public testimony of witnesses— including county officials—Kauai County agreed to pay huge sums of money to almost anyone who sued the police department.
In Chapter 11 of KPD Blue by Anthony Sommer we meet Nakazawa, the Red Queen of the Smokescreen and initiator of a new era of secret meetings and padlocked records, who now represents Kaua`i as a state “legislative liaison”- a cushy, low-work, high-pay, unbudgeted, lobbying position created by Baptiste without council approval- or knowledge
Despite months of requests from the county council to have Nakazawa appear before them to go over the agenda for the last and the coming legislative sessions, she’s refused to appear with a new excuse every two weeks.
Meet her and get to know the real Bryan Baptiste in this week’s serialization of KPD Blue)
-------------
KPD BLUE
By Anthony Sommer
Chapter 11: A New Mayor
George Freitas’ reinstatement as police chief came early in 2002, the last year of Maryanne Kusaka’s term as mayor. By 2002, Kusaka was very much a lame duck and had little incentive to reopen her war with the chief. She left it to her successor to try again to get rid of Freitas.
Bryan Baptiste, a member of the County Council and Maryanne Kusaka’s protégé, was elected mayor in the fall of 2002. He was known in some circles (not very flatteringly) as “Son of Kusaka.”
Baptiste was so accomplished at fleecing Kauai taxpayers that he managed one last grab at the public coffers even in death.
After Baptiste died following heart surgery in June 2008, his cabinet put on a huge memorial service at the Kauai Convention Center.
The county paid overtime for drivers and fuel costs for special buses to collect anyone anywhere on the island who wanted to attend. Additional buses were added to ferry mourners from a nearby parking lot to the convention center.
Obviously, there was no money for a “state funeral” in the county’s budget, the costs were not made public and the Council never approved the funding beforehand.
Baptiste’s cronies simply spent the tax dollars without approval from anyone.
Baptiste won Kusaka’s favor while he was on the County Council. He volunteered to head one of her pet projects: The beautification of the entrance to Lihue Airport.
Never mind the fact that Lihue Airport was a state airport and the entrance was on a state highway and maybe the state, not Kauai County, should have paid for it.
Baptiste rounded up a large roster of clubs and organizations. Each “adopted” an area of the project with a promise of perpetual care.
When completed, the area, formerly fallow cane fields, had been transformed into a beautiful garden. Signs welcomed tourists driving out of the airport when they arrived and thanked tourists entering the airport when they departed.
On Kauai, tourists are indeed the geese that lay golden eggs.
But the “perpetual care” didn’t last long.
AMFAC (long ago shortened from American Factors and then bought by a real estate company in Chicago), the onetime huge sugar plantation that had promised to provide free water for the flowers, went out of business.
The clubs soon ignored the project and the gardens started to become tangled masses of weeds.
When he became mayor, Baptiste put county work crews to work repairing and maintaining the project. No one mentioned the “volunteerism” that vanished or the fact the county taxpayers were stuck with the maintenance bill. Kusaka didn’t publicly endorse Baptiste as her choice for the next mayor until late in the campaign.
But that was all for show. The same business interests that backed Kusaka had found their new puppet in Baptiste and were pouring money into his coffers.
Largely thanks to what he claimed was a sizable lastminute “loan” from a wealthy relative on Oahu, Baptiste was able to launch a media blitz in the final weeks of the campaign.
The roadsides of Kauai were blanketed with placards promoting “Honest Bryan Baptiste.”
Baptiste narrowly defeated long-time Council Chairman Ron Kouchi, easily the brightest and most politically intuitive politician on Kauai. Drop a pebble in a pond, and Kouchi could accurately predict where and when every ripple would
touch the shore.
The early favorite, Kouchi’s greatest strength, his intellect, also was his Achilles’ heel. In the eyes of Kauai locals who pride themselves on their very minimal education, Kouchi was “scary smart.”
He operated on a level most locals couldn’t comprehend (he used a lot of big words) and hinted at support for changes. Kouchi became a potential threat to the “Kauai Style” that true locals want to remain forever fixed.
Kouchi, a member of the wealthy family that owned and operated Kauai’s largest private waste disposal company, exuded more than a little arrogance.
He was and remains an elitist. In an Asian culture in which perceived humility is the greatest virtue, Kouchi’s lack of appropriate modesty fatally flawed his campaign for mayor.
Exhibit A: Rarely would anyone come up and hug Ron Kouchi.
Exhibit B: Everyone hugged Bryan Baptiste.
Shaped somewhat like a brown Pillsbury Doughboy, bald and with a wispy mustache, Baptiste appeared not the least bit threatening: The very portrait of a benign despot, a Kauai local’s dream leader.
The fact that he was not terribly bright or articulate actually was a political plus on Kauai. He was an “everyman,” the candidate most like the voters.
And he had a political pedigree.
Baptiste’s father, Tony Baptiste, had been chairman of the county board of supervisors in the 1950s and ‘60s, before the counties all switched to a municipal form of government. In effect, he was the equivalent of the mayor.
Tony Baptiste ran Kauai County from a jail cell for a year while serving a term for tax evasion, and that says a great deal about the forgiving nature of the Kauai electorate.
“The voters were so angry at him, they only re-elected him three more times,” Bryan Baptiste liked to point out. That boast says a whole lot more about Bryan Baptiste and his lack of a moral compass than it does about his father.
As long as the voters love you, it doesn’t matter how crooked you are. That was the mindset Baptiste carried into the mayor’s office.
Like Kusaka, who became a Republican to run for mayor in the 1994 primary, Baptiste was a Democrat who turned Republican.
RINO (Republican In Name Only) is what both Kusaka and Baptiste were called.
Just as Kauai County government is almost exclusively a brown-skinned club, a conclave of Kauai Republicans is a vast sea of white faces drinking punch and eating cookies in a resort conference room.
Many were members of the Navy League (which won them free joyrides on Navy ships), and it was this constituency retired Capt. Bob Mullins had brought to Kusaka’s front door. When Mullins left to sell military hardware, they remained true to Kusaka and later to Baptiste.
Kusaka and Baptiste certainly looked out of place in the great haole herd but they got what they wanted: The GOP faithful believed each of the mayors were one of them. No need to look any further.
Events would prove exactly the opposite was true, but that “R” behind a politician’s name carries a lot of weight in the wealthy retirement communities of Princeville and Poipu.
Baptiste’s conversion came after Kusaka gave him the job of managing the county’s convention center, a large meeting facility that never actually hosted a major convention. Many people who went to the convention center mistook Baptiste for the janitor.
And so, Baptiste became a Republican.
“The mayor was a Republican, so switching parties when I took the job just seemed the polite thing to do,” Baptiste said.
Baptiste was hardly a true believer in the GOP. Nor was he philosophically a true Democrat.
The longer Baptiste served as mayor, the more it seemed he became convinced he had been chosen to rule by “Divine Right.”
It didn’t hurt him at all that Republican Linda Lingle had just become the first GOP governor of Hawaii since the 1960s in the same election in which Baptiste became Republican mayor of Kauai.
He brought in several new department heads—all of them born on Kauai, although some had migrated to Honolulu and had to be “brought home.”
Included was County Attorney Lani Nakazawa, a Stanford classmate of former mayor (now Council Member) JoAnn Yukimura.
Nakazawa brought to the office both a keen intellect and a philosophy that it was the role of an attorney to do anything (and everything) to protect her client, no matter what laws or ethical codes she violated.
And she brought with her a very mean and vindictive spirit that she cloaked behind a benign and constant smile. Under Nakazawa’s guidance, virtually any complaint to the Council or a board or commission instantly became “a possible subject for future litigation.” The topic of the complaint thus was forever barred from becoming a matter of public record.
This was true even if the person complaining was simply exerting a First Amendment right and had no intention of filing a lawsuit against the county.
Similarly (although this was true during Kusaka’s reign as well), any time a board or commission met in executive session to discuss its powers, duties, liabilities and limitations with the County Attorney (an exemption from the open meetings statutory requirement that appeared on every agenda of every board and commission), the entire meeting was closed and the minutes forever kept secret.
The fact is, usually only a tiny fraction of the meetings involved getting advice from the lawyer (sometimes none of it at all because the lawyer wasn’t even in the meeting room). There is no doubt that most (or all) of the executive sessions consisted of discussions that legally should have been in open session.
Hawaii’s Open Meeting Law contains a preamble that states the statute should be “liberally construed” and errors, if they are made, should be in the direction of keeping meetings open to the public.
Give Kusaka’s County Attorney Hartwell Blake credit, at least, for honesty. “I construe that statute very conservatively,” he explained. He was admitting he was violating the law, or at least its stated intent.
Nakazawa did the same but she was much more devious than Blake.
Nakazawa also introduced a new fad, already popular on the mainland, which sealed records because personal information about private citizens was discussed in executive sessions: “Privacy Rights.”
She encouraged members of boards and commissions to toss out a few tidbits of gossip about private individuals so the executive session minutes could be forever sealed because there were “privacy issues” involved.
And she had a sense of humor, of sorts.
Asked whether there was any case law in Hawaii or elsewhere to back up any of her constant advice to the county officials to keep meetings closed and file cabinets locked, her response, given with her trademark smile, was: “Well that’s why they’re called county attorney’s opinions, not county attorney’s facts.”
Translation: “If you don’t like it, sue me.”
Nakazawa knew the chances of any journalist or any political activist challenging her methods in court was just about zero.
And, if they did sue, Kauai County has unlimited taxpayer dollars to hire outside lawyers to keep its secrets from public scrutiny.
The County Council repeatedly appropriated sums of $100,000 and more to hire outside legal counsel for her to fight any legal challenges in court. No individual challenger could match the county’s war chest and no news editor had the backbone.
The number of executive sessions skyrocketed. The news media editors continued to sit on their hands and their publishers’ wallets.
A study by The Garden Island newspaper found Kauai County paid $1.9 million to private law firms defending the county and KPD against lawsuits in 2006. That’s out of a total county budget of only $122 million.
And in every case but one (the only one that went to trial), Kauai County settled all of the lawsuits against KPD for large sums of taxpayer money.
Rather than risking public trials with the press covering highly embarrassing public testimony of witnesses— including county officials—Kauai County agreed to pay huge sums of money to almost anyone who sued the police department.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
KPD Blue: Chapter 10 : George Freitas
(Our post yesterday about Chief Darryl Perry’s recent comments on whether he was the one who “got a raw deal” in long process of becoming KPD’s Chief provides the background- or perhaps foreground- of Chapter 10 of Sommer’s book.
It tells the story of former Chief George Freitas, graphically and accurately describing what faced both KC Lum and Chief and Police Commissioner Michael Ching when they were first appointed.)
KPD Blue
by Anthony Sommer
Chapter 10 : George Freitas
Mayor Maryanne Kusaka liked to portray herself as a kindly retired school teacher, which she certainly is, although many former students will dispute how kindly she was. For those not familiar with government in Hawaii, there is no city government, only county government. There are four counties: Hawaii, Maui, Oahu and Kauai.
All of the counties have a “strong mayor” system in which the mayor is the chief executive and runs the administrative branch of the government in a manner similar to the federal government and most state governments. The mayor has veto power and the Council may override the mayor’s vetoes.
In most jurisdictions of similar size on the mainland, there is a Council-Manager (or Weak Mayor) form of government in which a professional manager runs the administration and the mayor presides at council meetings and cuts ribbons. So, a mayor in Hawaii has considerably more power than most mainland mayors.
Another major difference is the Kauai County Charter. Most city charters on the mainland are the size of a metropolitan phone book and spell out in great detail the powers, duties and limitations of every official. Each procedure for each agency is outlined. The Charter is a “Government for Dummies” manual for city employees.
The Kauai County Charter is barely more than a pamphlet. The wording is purposely general and purposely vague. The County Attorney’s Office enjoys more than ample wiggle room to interpret it in a way guaranteed to please the incumbent mayor and County Council.
“I like a county charter without a lot of detail. The charter we have gives me a lot of flexibility,” said Bryan Baptiste (Kusaka’s protégé who replaced her as mayor).
It certainly does. Although a few holes in the charter were patched in the 2006 elections, the whole document is in need of a complete rewrite and major expansion.
Among the many vague sections of the Kauai County Charter is the part covering the removal of the police chief. It’s quite clear the chief is hired and fired by the Police Commission, which is appointed by the mayor.
In short, the mayor is not the police chief’s boss. The Police Commission is. And that is a galling fact to an insecure mayor (like both Kusaka and Baptiste) who insists on absolute control of all facets of government.
One of the many things unclear in the Kauai County Charter is a provision that states the police chief only can be removed “for cause.”
The Charter never defines the term “cause.”
Does “cause” mean commission of a felony? Commission of a misdemeanor? Giving his girlfriend a ride in his police car?
The Kauai Charter doesn’t say. The charters of all the other counties do.
The definition of “cause” is left entirely up to the county attorney, who is appointed by the mayor, and who, first and foremost, is a hired gun for the mayor.
The county attorney always says what the mayor does is legal, even if it’s not.
So, ultimately, the mayor decides.
This brings us to Kauai Police Chief George Freitas, the first police chief in the history of Kauai who was not born and raised on Kauai.
It is impossible to overstate how important it is in Kauai culture to be a native of the island. Anyone who comes from the outside is considered by locals to be taking a job that should have gone to a native Kauaian (even if no one from Kauai is qualified for the job).
Whether Freitas saw the trap he was walking into when he took the job is not clear. But, certainly, Freitas appeared on the scene as an outsider in the wrong time and the wrong place.
He was appointed by a lame duck Police Commission (the police commissioners’ terms in office are staggered and overlap the term of the mayor) in 1995, Kusaka’s first year in office. The majority of the Police Commission that hired Freitas had been appointed by Mayor JoAnn Yukimura, a liberal and reformer, who had been defeated for re-election in 1994.
(picture)
George Freitas, an Oahu native who had spent his entire police career in a California police department was hired by the Kauai Police Commision as KPD chief in the wake of a discrimination lawsuit against former Chief Cal Fujita. He never had the support of either the mayor or the Kauai County Council. Mayor Maryanne Kusaka attempted to force Freitas out but failed. Her protege, Mayor Bryan Baptiste finally forced Freitas to resign when the chief finally ran out of money to hire lawyers to fight the county.
George Freitas was hired by a lame duck Police Commission entirely different from the political culture Kusaka brought back to the mayor’s office.
Freitas was doomed to failure the first day he pinned on his KPD badge.
Freitas was an outsider who didn’t bow down to the mayor.
She hadn’t hired him, she couldn’t fire him. He didn’t work for her, and he didn’t much like her.
The loathing was mutual. She had no use for him. By the time her second (and last due to term limits) term began in 1999, there had been considerable grumbling among the locals in the KPD who comprised middle and upper management and who were not at all keen on being “modernized” by Freitas.
More important in Kusaka’s scheme to keep a tight rein on the KPD, the majority of police commissioners were now Kusaka appointees. Freitas’s bosses now were Kusaka’s cronies.
Freitas had been hired as a reform chief to reverse the racist hiring policies of previous chiefs.
Problem was, both Kusaka and the KPD old guard feared diversity. They weren’t anxious for change at all.
Freitas’ record, particularly regarding sexual discrimination, was less than spectacular, as pointed out in previous chapters.
What is interesting is that Kusaka did not go after Freitas on that issue, even though he was highly vulnerable.
Perhaps Kusaka didn’t recognize discrimination as an issue she could use to rid herself of her less-than-obedient police chief.
Freitas’ efforts in adding diversity to the KPD were impressive, especially since Kusaka had pretty much limited Freitas to recruiting only on Kauai.
By 1999, Freitas had recruited a considerable number of Filipinos and even a few white officers and a few women to the KPD. The monopoly of the Hawaiian and Japanese men on the force was beginning to erode.
The power struggle between the chief and at least some of his subordinate supervisors already was underway by the beginning of Kusaka’s second term.
Enter Lt. Alvin Seto and Inspector Mel Morris.
When the County Prosecutor’s Office refused to press charges on Seto’s claim that Freitas had “hindered prosecution” in the Nelson Gabriel case, Seto and his boss, Inspector Mel Morris, began shopping around for a more sympathetic ear.
In late July, 2001, they found an ally in Mayor Maryanne Kusaka. They handed Auntie Maryanne what she believed was the “cause” to get rid of her unwanted haole police chief. She took it straight to her handpicked gang of police commissioners.
It is instructive to note that, from that day forward, with only one exception, Kusaka used her “ex officio” status to attend all of the Police Commission meetings, something she never did before or would do afterward.
In a secret meeting on Aug. 10, the Kauai Police Commission—with Kusaka present—voted to place Freitas on involuntary leave with pay.
Freitas was off island that day. He didn’t have a chance to answer the charges. He never would.
Later, Freitas said he probably could have answered all of the Commission’s questions if he had been invited to their meeting.
But Kusaka had an ambush in mind.
This was going to be Kusaka’s most glorious moment in ethnically cleansing Kauai government of outsiders. Although it later was brought to her attention that the FBI is the agency with the jurisdiction to investigate state and local government corruption cases, Kusaka’s staff said she never considered that option.
Kusaka has no control over the FBI but the police commissioners all were her loyal and grateful appointees, as was the county attorney who was advising the commission.
A month after suspending Freitas, Kauai “borrowed” John Ko, an investigator, from the Honolulu Police Commission. At taxpayer expense, Ko for two months lived at one of Kauai’s most posh resorts, drove an unmarked Kauai police car and interviewed more than 150 KPD officers and civilian employees—pretty much the entire department.
Many of those interviewed said privately that the questions asked by Ko were mostly open-ended and not about specific incidents.
Clearly, Ko was looking for additional charges against Freitas. Just as clearly, he was on a very expensive (to Kauai taxpayers) fishing expedition. Judging from subsequent events, he never even got a nibble.
The county has refused numerous requests to release the files covering the cost to taxpayers of Ko’s stay on Kauai. As usual, the state’s news organizations would not pony up for a lawyer to try to pry what should have been public record out of Kauai. Challenging the government and fighting for open meetings and public records is not in the tradition of Hawaii journalism.
Ko produced a report that found nothing new, but he appended to it an enormous stack of interview transcripts that obviously had nothing incriminating in any of them.
Although it really was nothing more than a stage prop for the island-wide television audience, Ko’s gigantic but meaningless report sat on the conference table at every Police Commission meeting about Freitas.
It never was opened. No one ever quoted it. But its sheer mass was quite impressive and proof (or at least a hint) that there had been a thorough investigation, even if it found nothing.
Ko’s masterpiece also never has been made public despite repeated requests. Hawaii state public records law says the documents related to any investigation are public record once the case is concluded.
Even more amazing, the Police Commission refused to give Freitas a copy of Ko’s report or state in writing the charges against him. And that was a violation of the County Charter.
On Nov. 23, 2001, more than three months after he was suspended (a term Kusaka’s people repeatedly objected to—“placed on involuntary leave” was what they wanted to see in the newspapers), the Police Commission for the first time publicly unveiled the charges against Freitas and even voted to toss some of them out.
The most serious charge was the “hindering prosecution” complaint involving Gabriel, which in the end proved to be totally bogus.
A lot of jaws dropped in the room when the rest of the list was read aloud:
• That Freitas violated the Americans with Disabilities Act when he brought up a medical condition of an officer (Seto) during a private departmental meeting on officer assignments.
• That Freitas showed disrespect toward an officer (again, Seto) when he hung up on him during a telephone conversation.
• That Freitas improperly transported a civilian (his girlfriend and later wife Elizabeth Goynes, a retired California police officer) in his unmarked police car for non-police purposes on July 21, 2001.
• That Freitas and Goynes used the unmarked KPD car to house hunt on that date and that, while looking at houses, he parked illegally.
• That on Aug. 2, 2001, a few days after Seto and Morris had filed the complaint against Freitas but before he was suspended, Freitas allegedly had yelled at Morris during a private meeting in Freitas’ office, causing Morris to suffer a “nervous breakdown” that required him to take several days off of work.
• That in the same meeting, Freitas had violated Morris’s rights by ordering him to keep what they discussed in the meeting confidential.
That was it.
After two months of questioning everyone in the department, that was all Seto and Morris and John Ko and Maryanne Kusaka could come up with.
But, again, there is no definition of “cause” in the County Charter and Kusaka figured she had enough to convince the Police Commission to fire Freitas.
In the meanwhile, Freitas had hired Margery Bronster as his attorney.
During her tenure as Hawaii attorney general, Bronster had prosecuted members of the board of trustees of the Bishop Trust (the richest trust fund in the world, which was established to educate Native Hawaiians) for fraud. She ranks among Hawaii’s “superstar” lawyers.
One of the Kauai Police Commission (aided and abetted, of course, by the County Attorney’s Office) tactics was to refuse to announce when Freitas’ case was on its agenda for an executive session. State law requires the subject of executive sessions be clearly stated.
This agenda camouflage began to be applied after Freitas waived his right to privacy in Commission proceedings involving him. He wanted the public and press to witness the Commission at work.
But if his name didn’t appear on an agenda and no one knew if or when Freitas would be discussed, the public didn’t show up.
Reporters, Freitas and Bronster spent a lot of time together in the hallway outside the locked Commission door waiting.
“Is it always like this in Kauai government?” Bronster asked the first time the Commission pulled this stunt. “Every day,” a reporter told her.
Bronster immediately filed a lawsuit in federal court, claiming Kauai County violated Freitas’ civil rights (and his rights clearly guaranteed in the County Charter) by suspending him without providing any written charges to him and by failing to conduct a hearing at which he could face his accusers, Seto and Morris.
In his lawsuit, Freitas denied all the accusations against him except one: He admitted he had given Goynes a ride in his police car but denied they had ever used the county car to go shopping for a house.
U.S. District Judge Susan Mollway asked the attorneys for both Freitas and Kauai County for more detailed briefs.
The judge also blocked a hearing the Police Commission had scheduled for Dec. 28 at which Freitas was scheduled to be the only witness. None of his accusers was to testify. The Police Commission still met, it just didn’t conduct a hearing. As usual, Mayor Maryanne Kusaka attended the lengthy executive session. She remained for the public session but did not speak.
At that meeting, the Police Commission voted to drop the charges against Freitas involving allegedly violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, hanging up on Seto, telling Morris to keep the subject of his meeting with Freitas confidential, and illegally parking his police car.
That left the hindering prosecution charge, the giving his fiancé a ride in his police car charge, and the yelling at Morris charge.
Then, on Jan. 2, 2002, Deputy County Attorney Laurel Loo wrote Freitas advising he could return to work the following Monday, even though three charges against him were still pending before the Police Commission.
The Police Commission, which is the only entity that can, under the County Charter, hire and fire and suspend and reinstate a police chief, did not vote to put Freitas back to work. The County Attorney’s Office reinstated Freitas without a vote of the Police Commission.
In fact, the commission refused at its previous meeting to consider a request from Freitas that he be allowed to return to work until the case was resolved.
It never has been made clear who made that decision but clearly it was blessed by Kusaka and, just as clearly, the mayor was beginning her retreat.
Freitas went back to work.
Meanwhile, back in federal court, Judge Mollway on Jan. 18, 2002, turned down a request from Kauai County to dismiss Freitas’s lawsuit.
The judge took a shot at lawyer Loo’s somewhat diminished skills at writing legal briefs and reasoning: “Defendants appear to be asserting (less than clearly) that counties and county officials acting in their official capacities are not ‘persons’…and therefore cannot be held liable for claims. That assertion is wrong.”
The judge also raised questions about the confidentiality of information in the case: “They (Kauai County’s lawyers) do not explain what state or federal law, or what court order, requires them to keep information regarding the charge against Freitas confidential.”
In effect, the judge kicked the door open on Kauai’s efforts to keep both documents and meetings out of the public eye.
The tiny Kauai press corps cheered the judge’s ruling. But their editors just hunkered further down behind their desks.
Once again, no news organization would spend the money to hire a lawyer to pursue the court’s favorable inclination.
On Jan. 24, 2002, Judge Masuoka announced his decision that Nelson Gabriel was innocent on all 22 felony counts against him.
Five days later, the Kauai Police Commission resolved all the remaining charges against Freitas.
Masuoka repeatedly had said he would not rule on the Gabriel case until the Police Commission concluded the investigation of Freitas.
When Masuoka ruled a few days before the Police Commission acted, it was a clear indication the outcome of the Freitas probe had been decided before the Commission met for a formal vote. There can be no doubt Masuoka was told beforehand what the Commission would decide. Most important, the Police Commission absolved Freitas of the hindering prosecution charge.
The Commission found Freitas had violated department policy by giving Goynes a ride in his police car and was disrespectful to Inspector Morris (who, along with Seto, had by this time retired from the KPD) by yelling at him during a private meeting in Freitas’ office.
The Commission voted to send Freitas two letters of reprimand on the two policy violations.
Freitas, however, was fuming.
The County Charter guarantees a Kauai police chief be given a written statement of the charges against him and receive a hearing before the Police Commission votes. Freitas had received neither the statement nor the hearing.
“I’d still like to know exactly what I’m supposed to have done so I can answer the complaint,” Freitas said. “More than 150 interviews (by investigator John Ko) and this is the best we can do?”
Freitas said the whole matter could have been resolved the previous summer if the Police Commission “had the courage” to show him the complaint and discuss it with him at the outset.
“Who drove this thing?” Freitas asked. “I have no idea.” Of course, Freitas knew. The whole island knew. Not by accident, this was the only meeting of the Police Commission that Mayor Maryanne Kusaka did not attend since the Freitas affair began.
Clearly, the outcome had been decided before the commissioners ever voted and Kusaka didn’t want to be around to witness (or be interviewed by the press about) her own defeat.
Because he was reinstated and lost no pay, Freitas’ lawsuit against Kauai County became moot. But it had served its purpose.
Bronster said she was convinced the filing of the lawsuit in federal court by Freitas was the only reason he kept his job. She said she believed the commission records, which still were being kept secret, would “reveal that the plan from the outset was to hunt for an excuse to fire him.”
The commission records remain sealed. The news media would not pay for a lawyer to go to court to force Kauai County to make them public.
It tells the story of former Chief George Freitas, graphically and accurately describing what faced both KC Lum and Chief and Police Commissioner Michael Ching when they were first appointed.)
KPD Blue
by Anthony Sommer
Chapter 10 : George Freitas
Mayor Maryanne Kusaka liked to portray herself as a kindly retired school teacher, which she certainly is, although many former students will dispute how kindly she was. For those not familiar with government in Hawaii, there is no city government, only county government. There are four counties: Hawaii, Maui, Oahu and Kauai.
All of the counties have a “strong mayor” system in which the mayor is the chief executive and runs the administrative branch of the government in a manner similar to the federal government and most state governments. The mayor has veto power and the Council may override the mayor’s vetoes.
In most jurisdictions of similar size on the mainland, there is a Council-Manager (or Weak Mayor) form of government in which a professional manager runs the administration and the mayor presides at council meetings and cuts ribbons. So, a mayor in Hawaii has considerably more power than most mainland mayors.
Another major difference is the Kauai County Charter. Most city charters on the mainland are the size of a metropolitan phone book and spell out in great detail the powers, duties and limitations of every official. Each procedure for each agency is outlined. The Charter is a “Government for Dummies” manual for city employees.
The Kauai County Charter is barely more than a pamphlet. The wording is purposely general and purposely vague. The County Attorney’s Office enjoys more than ample wiggle room to interpret it in a way guaranteed to please the incumbent mayor and County Council.
“I like a county charter without a lot of detail. The charter we have gives me a lot of flexibility,” said Bryan Baptiste (Kusaka’s protégé who replaced her as mayor).
It certainly does. Although a few holes in the charter were patched in the 2006 elections, the whole document is in need of a complete rewrite and major expansion.
Among the many vague sections of the Kauai County Charter is the part covering the removal of the police chief. It’s quite clear the chief is hired and fired by the Police Commission, which is appointed by the mayor.
In short, the mayor is not the police chief’s boss. The Police Commission is. And that is a galling fact to an insecure mayor (like both Kusaka and Baptiste) who insists on absolute control of all facets of government.
One of the many things unclear in the Kauai County Charter is a provision that states the police chief only can be removed “for cause.”
The Charter never defines the term “cause.”
Does “cause” mean commission of a felony? Commission of a misdemeanor? Giving his girlfriend a ride in his police car?
The Kauai Charter doesn’t say. The charters of all the other counties do.
The definition of “cause” is left entirely up to the county attorney, who is appointed by the mayor, and who, first and foremost, is a hired gun for the mayor.
The county attorney always says what the mayor does is legal, even if it’s not.
So, ultimately, the mayor decides.
This brings us to Kauai Police Chief George Freitas, the first police chief in the history of Kauai who was not born and raised on Kauai.
It is impossible to overstate how important it is in Kauai culture to be a native of the island. Anyone who comes from the outside is considered by locals to be taking a job that should have gone to a native Kauaian (even if no one from Kauai is qualified for the job).
Whether Freitas saw the trap he was walking into when he took the job is not clear. But, certainly, Freitas appeared on the scene as an outsider in the wrong time and the wrong place.
He was appointed by a lame duck Police Commission (the police commissioners’ terms in office are staggered and overlap the term of the mayor) in 1995, Kusaka’s first year in office. The majority of the Police Commission that hired Freitas had been appointed by Mayor JoAnn Yukimura, a liberal and reformer, who had been defeated for re-election in 1994.
(picture)
George Freitas, an Oahu native who had spent his entire police career in a California police department was hired by the Kauai Police Commision as KPD chief in the wake of a discrimination lawsuit against former Chief Cal Fujita. He never had the support of either the mayor or the Kauai County Council. Mayor Maryanne Kusaka attempted to force Freitas out but failed. Her protege, Mayor Bryan Baptiste finally forced Freitas to resign when the chief finally ran out of money to hire lawyers to fight the county.
George Freitas was hired by a lame duck Police Commission entirely different from the political culture Kusaka brought back to the mayor’s office.
Freitas was doomed to failure the first day he pinned on his KPD badge.
Freitas was an outsider who didn’t bow down to the mayor.
She hadn’t hired him, she couldn’t fire him. He didn’t work for her, and he didn’t much like her.
The loathing was mutual. She had no use for him. By the time her second (and last due to term limits) term began in 1999, there had been considerable grumbling among the locals in the KPD who comprised middle and upper management and who were not at all keen on being “modernized” by Freitas.
More important in Kusaka’s scheme to keep a tight rein on the KPD, the majority of police commissioners were now Kusaka appointees. Freitas’s bosses now were Kusaka’s cronies.
Freitas had been hired as a reform chief to reverse the racist hiring policies of previous chiefs.
Problem was, both Kusaka and the KPD old guard feared diversity. They weren’t anxious for change at all.
Freitas’ record, particularly regarding sexual discrimination, was less than spectacular, as pointed out in previous chapters.
What is interesting is that Kusaka did not go after Freitas on that issue, even though he was highly vulnerable.
Perhaps Kusaka didn’t recognize discrimination as an issue she could use to rid herself of her less-than-obedient police chief.
Freitas’ efforts in adding diversity to the KPD were impressive, especially since Kusaka had pretty much limited Freitas to recruiting only on Kauai.
By 1999, Freitas had recruited a considerable number of Filipinos and even a few white officers and a few women to the KPD. The monopoly of the Hawaiian and Japanese men on the force was beginning to erode.
The power struggle between the chief and at least some of his subordinate supervisors already was underway by the beginning of Kusaka’s second term.
Enter Lt. Alvin Seto and Inspector Mel Morris.
When the County Prosecutor’s Office refused to press charges on Seto’s claim that Freitas had “hindered prosecution” in the Nelson Gabriel case, Seto and his boss, Inspector Mel Morris, began shopping around for a more sympathetic ear.
In late July, 2001, they found an ally in Mayor Maryanne Kusaka. They handed Auntie Maryanne what she believed was the “cause” to get rid of her unwanted haole police chief. She took it straight to her handpicked gang of police commissioners.
It is instructive to note that, from that day forward, with only one exception, Kusaka used her “ex officio” status to attend all of the Police Commission meetings, something she never did before or would do afterward.
In a secret meeting on Aug. 10, the Kauai Police Commission—with Kusaka present—voted to place Freitas on involuntary leave with pay.
Freitas was off island that day. He didn’t have a chance to answer the charges. He never would.
Later, Freitas said he probably could have answered all of the Commission’s questions if he had been invited to their meeting.
But Kusaka had an ambush in mind.
This was going to be Kusaka’s most glorious moment in ethnically cleansing Kauai government of outsiders. Although it later was brought to her attention that the FBI is the agency with the jurisdiction to investigate state and local government corruption cases, Kusaka’s staff said she never considered that option.
Kusaka has no control over the FBI but the police commissioners all were her loyal and grateful appointees, as was the county attorney who was advising the commission.
A month after suspending Freitas, Kauai “borrowed” John Ko, an investigator, from the Honolulu Police Commission. At taxpayer expense, Ko for two months lived at one of Kauai’s most posh resorts, drove an unmarked Kauai police car and interviewed more than 150 KPD officers and civilian employees—pretty much the entire department.
Many of those interviewed said privately that the questions asked by Ko were mostly open-ended and not about specific incidents.
Clearly, Ko was looking for additional charges against Freitas. Just as clearly, he was on a very expensive (to Kauai taxpayers) fishing expedition. Judging from subsequent events, he never even got a nibble.
The county has refused numerous requests to release the files covering the cost to taxpayers of Ko’s stay on Kauai. As usual, the state’s news organizations would not pony up for a lawyer to try to pry what should have been public record out of Kauai. Challenging the government and fighting for open meetings and public records is not in the tradition of Hawaii journalism.
Ko produced a report that found nothing new, but he appended to it an enormous stack of interview transcripts that obviously had nothing incriminating in any of them.
Although it really was nothing more than a stage prop for the island-wide television audience, Ko’s gigantic but meaningless report sat on the conference table at every Police Commission meeting about Freitas.
It never was opened. No one ever quoted it. But its sheer mass was quite impressive and proof (or at least a hint) that there had been a thorough investigation, even if it found nothing.
Ko’s masterpiece also never has been made public despite repeated requests. Hawaii state public records law says the documents related to any investigation are public record once the case is concluded.
Even more amazing, the Police Commission refused to give Freitas a copy of Ko’s report or state in writing the charges against him. And that was a violation of the County Charter.
On Nov. 23, 2001, more than three months after he was suspended (a term Kusaka’s people repeatedly objected to—“placed on involuntary leave” was what they wanted to see in the newspapers), the Police Commission for the first time publicly unveiled the charges against Freitas and even voted to toss some of them out.
The most serious charge was the “hindering prosecution” complaint involving Gabriel, which in the end proved to be totally bogus.
A lot of jaws dropped in the room when the rest of the list was read aloud:
• That Freitas violated the Americans with Disabilities Act when he brought up a medical condition of an officer (Seto) during a private departmental meeting on officer assignments.
• That Freitas showed disrespect toward an officer (again, Seto) when he hung up on him during a telephone conversation.
• That Freitas improperly transported a civilian (his girlfriend and later wife Elizabeth Goynes, a retired California police officer) in his unmarked police car for non-police purposes on July 21, 2001.
• That Freitas and Goynes used the unmarked KPD car to house hunt on that date and that, while looking at houses, he parked illegally.
• That on Aug. 2, 2001, a few days after Seto and Morris had filed the complaint against Freitas but before he was suspended, Freitas allegedly had yelled at Morris during a private meeting in Freitas’ office, causing Morris to suffer a “nervous breakdown” that required him to take several days off of work.
• That in the same meeting, Freitas had violated Morris’s rights by ordering him to keep what they discussed in the meeting confidential.
That was it.
After two months of questioning everyone in the department, that was all Seto and Morris and John Ko and Maryanne Kusaka could come up with.
But, again, there is no definition of “cause” in the County Charter and Kusaka figured she had enough to convince the Police Commission to fire Freitas.
In the meanwhile, Freitas had hired Margery Bronster as his attorney.
During her tenure as Hawaii attorney general, Bronster had prosecuted members of the board of trustees of the Bishop Trust (the richest trust fund in the world, which was established to educate Native Hawaiians) for fraud. She ranks among Hawaii’s “superstar” lawyers.
One of the Kauai Police Commission (aided and abetted, of course, by the County Attorney’s Office) tactics was to refuse to announce when Freitas’ case was on its agenda for an executive session. State law requires the subject of executive sessions be clearly stated.
This agenda camouflage began to be applied after Freitas waived his right to privacy in Commission proceedings involving him. He wanted the public and press to witness the Commission at work.
But if his name didn’t appear on an agenda and no one knew if or when Freitas would be discussed, the public didn’t show up.
Reporters, Freitas and Bronster spent a lot of time together in the hallway outside the locked Commission door waiting.
“Is it always like this in Kauai government?” Bronster asked the first time the Commission pulled this stunt. “Every day,” a reporter told her.
Bronster immediately filed a lawsuit in federal court, claiming Kauai County violated Freitas’ civil rights (and his rights clearly guaranteed in the County Charter) by suspending him without providing any written charges to him and by failing to conduct a hearing at which he could face his accusers, Seto and Morris.
In his lawsuit, Freitas denied all the accusations against him except one: He admitted he had given Goynes a ride in his police car but denied they had ever used the county car to go shopping for a house.
U.S. District Judge Susan Mollway asked the attorneys for both Freitas and Kauai County for more detailed briefs.
The judge also blocked a hearing the Police Commission had scheduled for Dec. 28 at which Freitas was scheduled to be the only witness. None of his accusers was to testify. The Police Commission still met, it just didn’t conduct a hearing. As usual, Mayor Maryanne Kusaka attended the lengthy executive session. She remained for the public session but did not speak.
At that meeting, the Police Commission voted to drop the charges against Freitas involving allegedly violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, hanging up on Seto, telling Morris to keep the subject of his meeting with Freitas confidential, and illegally parking his police car.
That left the hindering prosecution charge, the giving his fiancé a ride in his police car charge, and the yelling at Morris charge.
Then, on Jan. 2, 2002, Deputy County Attorney Laurel Loo wrote Freitas advising he could return to work the following Monday, even though three charges against him were still pending before the Police Commission.
The Police Commission, which is the only entity that can, under the County Charter, hire and fire and suspend and reinstate a police chief, did not vote to put Freitas back to work. The County Attorney’s Office reinstated Freitas without a vote of the Police Commission.
In fact, the commission refused at its previous meeting to consider a request from Freitas that he be allowed to return to work until the case was resolved.
It never has been made clear who made that decision but clearly it was blessed by Kusaka and, just as clearly, the mayor was beginning her retreat.
Freitas went back to work.
Meanwhile, back in federal court, Judge Mollway on Jan. 18, 2002, turned down a request from Kauai County to dismiss Freitas’s lawsuit.
The judge took a shot at lawyer Loo’s somewhat diminished skills at writing legal briefs and reasoning: “Defendants appear to be asserting (less than clearly) that counties and county officials acting in their official capacities are not ‘persons’…and therefore cannot be held liable for claims. That assertion is wrong.”
The judge also raised questions about the confidentiality of information in the case: “They (Kauai County’s lawyers) do not explain what state or federal law, or what court order, requires them to keep information regarding the charge against Freitas confidential.”
In effect, the judge kicked the door open on Kauai’s efforts to keep both documents and meetings out of the public eye.
The tiny Kauai press corps cheered the judge’s ruling. But their editors just hunkered further down behind their desks.
Once again, no news organization would spend the money to hire a lawyer to pursue the court’s favorable inclination.
On Jan. 24, 2002, Judge Masuoka announced his decision that Nelson Gabriel was innocent on all 22 felony counts against him.
Five days later, the Kauai Police Commission resolved all the remaining charges against Freitas.
Masuoka repeatedly had said he would not rule on the Gabriel case until the Police Commission concluded the investigation of Freitas.
When Masuoka ruled a few days before the Police Commission acted, it was a clear indication the outcome of the Freitas probe had been decided before the Commission met for a formal vote. There can be no doubt Masuoka was told beforehand what the Commission would decide. Most important, the Police Commission absolved Freitas of the hindering prosecution charge.
The Commission found Freitas had violated department policy by giving Goynes a ride in his police car and was disrespectful to Inspector Morris (who, along with Seto, had by this time retired from the KPD) by yelling at him during a private meeting in Freitas’ office.
The Commission voted to send Freitas two letters of reprimand on the two policy violations.
Freitas, however, was fuming.
The County Charter guarantees a Kauai police chief be given a written statement of the charges against him and receive a hearing before the Police Commission votes. Freitas had received neither the statement nor the hearing.
“I’d still like to know exactly what I’m supposed to have done so I can answer the complaint,” Freitas said. “More than 150 interviews (by investigator John Ko) and this is the best we can do?”
Freitas said the whole matter could have been resolved the previous summer if the Police Commission “had the courage” to show him the complaint and discuss it with him at the outset.
“Who drove this thing?” Freitas asked. “I have no idea.” Of course, Freitas knew. The whole island knew. Not by accident, this was the only meeting of the Police Commission that Mayor Maryanne Kusaka did not attend since the Freitas affair began.
Clearly, the outcome had been decided before the commissioners ever voted and Kusaka didn’t want to be around to witness (or be interviewed by the press about) her own defeat.
Because he was reinstated and lost no pay, Freitas’ lawsuit against Kauai County became moot. But it had served its purpose.
Bronster said she was convinced the filing of the lawsuit in federal court by Freitas was the only reason he kept his job. She said she believed the commission records, which still were being kept secret, would “reveal that the plan from the outset was to hunt for an excuse to fire him.”
The commission records remain sealed. The news media would not pay for a lawyer to go to court to force Kauai County to make them public.
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