ALL AROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH

ALL AROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH: Sometime you've gotta wonder what's up when it comes to our state judiciary.

No, we're not talking about the scandal plagued sheriff’s division or the "we be's" who populate the offices and act as if they own the process, if not the judges themselves. No, it's not the probation department that thinks that "field work" is going hunting and fishing on weekends.

If you want to know what plaguing our state's courts just look at the actual rulings of some of the men and women wearing the robes.

Today's decision by the newly reinvigorated Hawai`i Intermediate Court of Appeals (ICA) overturning 5th Circuit Court Judge Randall Valenciano's ruling that allowed the Republican party to "replace" a candidate for the 14th House District who intentionally filed and withdrew just before the deadline, is a case in point detailing how politics often rules the courthouse roost.

The problem is that rather than sort out what the law really is trying to say, they simply shirked that responsibility and disqualified the original candidate for not completing his application.

As Mina Morita- the one who then held the 14th district seat at the time and eventually won reelection- said at the time:

Simply put, Hamman did not file nomination papers for the District 14 House race by the close of the filing deadline because he withdrew on July 19. And, there was no way he could because he filed his nomination papers for the Senate race and a person cannot run in more than one race. The Republicans did not have a candidate qualified for the ballot for the District 14 House race at the close of the filing deadline, therefore, no candidate vacancy exists to allow Harry R. Williams to run as a legitimate candidate.

We went a little further in explaining the way the law leaves room for interpretation, citing Hawai`i Revised Statutes (HRS) 11-117 and 118 as well as Hawai`i Administrative Rule (HAR) Chapter 3-173-1 to explain the mess and in addition mentioned that it wasn't the first time the ambiguity in the law had caused a musical chairs brouhaha at the filing deadline. Two years previously, in the case of Kirk Caldwell, the same lack of clarity squeezed him out of candidacy in any election as the "resign to run" law did its dirty work.

We won't bore you by repeating the technical explanation here again, but we will say that in between the Caldwell and Morita fiascoes, the legislature sat around with their thumbs up their butts, kow-towing to the churches, who had their noses in proximate climes over civil unions.

And as if to reiterate that inaction isn't just a mistake at the Capitol but is a carefully planned result of the Hawai`i legislative committee system, remedial bills weren't even scheduled for a hearing during the session following the Morita-Hamman mess.

Now we haven't seen the decision yet, but if the press reports are correct, the ICA didn't bother to tell the legislature to get its act together and clarify the law - as the appellate courts are wont to do on occasion- so we don't have to go through this again in 2012. Instead they decided the case based on a lack of sufficiency in the application itself, virtually saying "we won't touch this political football" even to say the law is unclear on process thus leaving the matter flapping in the wind.

So when the legislature fails to act again this January and the filing deadline comes around next year, expect yet another debacle consisting of candidates waving competing sections of law at each other and the chief elections officer. And don't worry- we'll be here with the distinctly unsatisfying chance to once again say "we told you so."

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN...

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN...: State Auditor extraordinaire Marion Higa gets her head into the machinery of government and spits out the details of what’s broken in excruciating detail.

But woe is us when state legislators start coming up with ways to fix it.

A good example of this just might play out next January after yesterday’s joint hearing of the Senate and House public safety committees’ reaction to Higa’s audit of the Sheriffs’ Division of the Department of Public Safety.

At the end of the newspaper report on the hearings was this quote:

In response to a question from Senate Public Safety Chairman Will Espero, (Department of Public Safety Director Clayton) Frank and Deputy Director Jim Propotnick said they would support splitting the sheriffs' law enforcement function from corrections responsibilities.

Espero (D, Ewa-Kapolei-Ewa Beach) said after the meeting that he will introduce legislation to create what in effect would be a stand-alone law enforcement agency combining sheriffs with those with police powers now currently in the Office of the Attorney General, the Department of Land and Natural Resources and Department of Transportation.

For years, not just the Sheriffs' Division but the DLNR’s Division of Conservation and Recourse Enforcement along with the DOTs harbor police have been anything but ethical and competent models of law enforcement with each force answerable only to their respective department heads. That has created private police forces without any of the civilian oversight that is required of accredited law enforcement agencies across the nation.

That’s led to abuses that spur an inordinate number of complaints about specific actions of specific officers without any accountability beyond an arbitrary and often capricious decision by the politically appointed department head

Just combining these law enforcement agencies and presumably putting them under the governor’s office- as one television news report suggested was part of Espero’s plan- will only create an even bigger monster with even less accountability than the current setup.

All too often legislators- not just at the state but county level too- take the easy way out by giving their respective administrations more power than is wise and then wind up complaining about the abuses of that power.

Certainly something is broken with all these paramilitary groups. But unless accreditation and a civilian board or commission is part of any reform plan it’s bound to be ripped a new one by a future Higa audit.