HE CAN’T DREAM WELL BECAUSE OF HIS HORNS: The new Kaua`i County Council will have their hands full next Wed with a jam-packed agenda that will include one - not two as the local newspaper reported- bill up for final passage with an illegal, although really good, amendment and a new bill to direct the planning department to not enforce the law against transient vacation rentals (TVRs) on agricultural lands.
As we described Wednesday, the one that is up for passage on second reading was originally supposed to deal with signage and local contact persons for the newly-legal “grandfathered” TVRs outside of visitor destination areas according to the purpose section of the bill
But where we speculated that perhaps the bill might be illegally amended to include those “non-enforcement agreements” for the state-forbidden ag land TVRs, while it doesn’t do that it does attempt to put the important provision to make public the names of those applying for the grandfathered TVRs into the signage and contact info bill.
The Kauai County Charter states that “(n)o bill shall be so amended as to change its original purpose”.
That means that the provision needs a whole new and separate bill for it to become law.... if the council cared about legalities.
Although the public notification measure is a good one and deserves passage the question is one that we tire of asking: why must the council chair in the persons of Chair Asing- and recent "temporary" Chair Jay Furfaro- do these things illegally as a matter of routine..
But if this Minotaur “do what’s wrong as long as he can” behavior is made slightly palatable by the positive nature of the illegal amendment in Bill 2294 Draft 1, Chair Asing has done it again- no “oops" about it- with a request on the agenda to take the first discussion of the new “citizen’s charter amendment” behind closed doors for it’s first discussion among the new councilmembers
Down at the bottom of this week’s agenda is the following notice
ES-369 Pursuant to Haw. Rev. Stat. §§92-4, 92-5(a)(4) and (8), and Kaua`i County Charter section 3.07(E), the purpose of this executive session is to provide the Council a briefing on the legal ramifications and/or requirements and/or claims and/or potential claims relating to charter amendments adopted in the 2008 general election and other related matters.
Here we go again. While the State Sunshine Law strictly prohibits closed meetings in order to discuss public policy it does have a provision to allow the council to
To consult with the board's attorney on questions and issues pertaining to the board's powers, duties, privileges, immunities, and liabilities;
and one that says
To deliberate or make a decision upon a matter that requires the consideration of information that must be kept confidential pursuant to a state or federal law, or a court order.
So in his usual vestigial paternalistic plantation mentality way Asing has used this as a guise to discuss politically sensitive public policy behind closed doors by dragging in an attorney and claiming “attorney-client privilege”.
This mockery of the law makes anything Asing wants to hide from the public a subject to discuss with the new County Attorney who, by “requesting” this executive session- presumably at Asing’s request that he request it- has let us all know it will be business as unusual unless the rest of the council stops him by refusing to meet illegally.
As we detailed both before and after the election, the “monkey-wrench” charter amendment, put on the ballot via petition, would restrict tourism-accommodation zoning permits to a number consistent with the projection in the General Plan (GP). It forces the council to process those zoning permits unless they return that function to the Planning Department with a law restricting the number of permits the to the GP’s numbers.
Currently the Planning Department is way past the numbers in the 2000 update with some estimates that they have approved as many as 500% more than what would be allowed if the GP had “teeth”..
Of course, as we mentioned previously, the Planning Department employs dozens of planners, clerks and assorted personnel to process and make recommendations to the commission on these zoning permits and the council has... well, none.
This presumably means that the charter provision requiring the processing of zoning permits be done by the council- a separate branch of government forbidden by the charter from performing or directing administrative functions- would require the establishment of a mirror mini-planning department in Council Services.
That would at least require appropriations, legislation and HRS Chapter 91 administrative rules... if not another charter amendment to allow the council to perform an administrative function.
But until the council or the Planning Department drafts a bill to properly transfer the permitting power back to the Planning Department- and it is introduced and goes through it’s public hearing committee meetings and final passage- it remains illegal according to the new charter amendment for any action on zoning permitting by the Planning Commission.
And a discussion by the council regarding what to do about that sticky wicket is what Asing seeks to hide from the public.
For their part, the Planning Department seems to be oblivious to the new law and continues to process Class IV zoning permits even after December 4 when the charter provision became law.
On the Planning commission agenda for its January 13 meeting are no less than three items dealing with Class IV zoning permits for
1) Coconut Plantation Holdings, LLC. To allow the construction of an apartment hotel complex with 192 multi-family units, 6 hotel rooms (in) Waipouli.
2) Coconut Beach Development, LLC. To allow the construction of an apartment hotel resort complex with 343 multi-family units, 6 hotel rooms (in)Waipouli.
3) Waimea Plantation Cottages,... Zoning Amendment ZA-2001-3 relating to an extension of time to complete the master planned resort-residential development of Waimea.
The lawlessness of Kaua`i government apparently knows no bounds whether it’s the legislative or administrative branch. To try to take this matter behind closed doors and deny the public their right to know what has gone into the deliberation on this public policy matter violates the spirit, intent and very letter state Sunshine Law in the most fundamental of ways.
But there is hope. There are three new council members who will have to show their card this week and let the public know if their pledges during the campaign to support open governance were just a lot of bunk or whether they will- possibly with the support councilperson Tim Bynum who has not hidden his exasperation with “Uncle Chair” Asing’s penchant for secrecy- strike a blow for the open governance by refusing to meet in secret to discuss public policy.
We’ll take a gander at last Wednesday's meeting and look closer at some of the other council agenda items over the weekend and have a pre-meeting round-up of some high and low lights on Monday.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
FERRETING OUT THE TRUTH
FERRETING OUT THE TRUTH: Leave it to a mainland outsider to come in and start asking questions to raise some hackles and renew some old, ahem, disagreements.
Seems that a student from New York City is here in the island nosing around about a question that caused some fierce disagreements during the run up to the Superferry operation on Maui and the lack thereof here on Kaua`i- why is the ferry running to Maui and not Kaua`i and what happened to make the difference?
Yesterday Joan Conrow published- pretty much in whole- the perspective of Karen Chun of Maui which is an interesting read. But it barely addresses what the student, Michelle Nitafan of the Department of Geography at NYC’s Hunter College really wants to know about for her master’s thesis (and an article by her professor).
Chun gives a perspective that more or less makes it seem like it was just a matter of two different circumstances on two different islands. citing culture, demographics and the differences in legal approaches with a lawsuit filed on Maui but not here
We won’t repeat the letter here but urge anyone reading this to read Chun’s letter for a better understanding of what Nitafan is likely to hear if she speaks to the so-called “leaders” on Maui.
In fact what made the difference was a concerted effort on the part of those Maui “leaders” to ban all non-violent civil disobedience (NVCD) at “their” demonstrations when the ferry came to Maui.
Juxtapose that with the Kaua`i concerted effort by a few activists to not preclude NVCD and not tell people what to do or don’t do- and do it in the face of attempts to “lead” the protests in a “legal and respectful manner” by organizations a politicians here on Kaua`i
Seems Nitafan and her professor wrote to Superferry activist Jimmy Trujillo after finding his name prominently in newspapers from the time and wrote the following
My name is Michelle Nitafan. I'm a post-graduate student working with the Geography Department at Hunter College of the City University of New York. I'm currently doing some thesis work in regards to the recent Super Ferry issue there.
My research is concerned with the discussion (and if I'm lucky, with a resolution) of why the Environmental Assessment was waived why Kauai and Maui took different steps in opposing the Super Ferry (strike through a surfing blockade at sea and court petition, respectively) how the different islands felt about it, then and now... I'm interested in gaining insight into Kauai's position in all this.
But the problem is that she is apparently speaking with most of the very people who almost thwarted the non-violent civil disobedience and lack of respect for Governor Lingle’s “Unified Command” that made for the difference in outcomes between Kaua`i and Maui.
Although some would like to believe that it was through the efforts of people like Rich Hoepner of People for the Preservation of Kaua`i (PPK) and David Dinner of 1000 Friends and politicians like JoAnn Yukimura and Mina Motrita that the protesters stopped the Superferry, those are in fact the very people who tried hard- and fortunately failed- to corral Kaua`i people into keeping all protests “legal and respectful”.
It was no accident though that people like Trujillo, Katy Rose, PNN and a handful of others- including many actual members of PPK and 1000 friends who were less than happy about the direction their leaders were taking- that the “message” on Kaua`i was not to listen to self appointed “leaders” here who were publicly urging the “legal and respectful” protest and instead urge people, through email and the grassroots “coconut wireless”, to “do your own thing” by refusing to condemn or try to prohibit NVCD.
And that was the difference in turning back the ferry here. It wasn’t the people who spent months gathering petitions or meeting night after night to plot strategy but it was the people who just showed up and felt they had the freedom to put their lives on the line by physically blocking the big bad boat and thumbing their nose at the state’s militaristic threats.
Apparently, from emails sent to PNN, the people Nitafan is thus far scheduled to meet with are people like Dinner, Yukimura- who fiercely fought for legal and respectful protest, especially at the Convention Hall appearance when Lingle was cursed and shouted down- and Irene Bowie Executive Director of Maui Tomorrow who was the chief of the “no illegal or disrespectful activity” at `our’ protest” on that island
Was it just the circumstances that Chun- who actually did get into her canoe and try to block the boat on Maui along with people like Hannah Bernard and a small handful of others- cited that led to things just “happening” as they did?
Or did the concerted efforts of a handful of Kaua`i people- experienced organizers who saw early on the pent up hostility to the ferry on the streets of Kaua`i and saw the probably that an organized leadership could actually hurt the chances of involvement by an already agitated populace- pay off.
After reading Chun’s essay at Conrow’s KauaiEcletic blog Rose put it this way in an email today.
I'm a little concerned that Nitafan isn't talking to more grassroots people who have deeper roots on Kaua`i.
A lot of malahini (like me) like to get out front and get in the limelight when in reality the young folks with the deep roots were the ones who stopped the boat right there with their bodies. I just hope that some of the people she sought out to talk to have the humility to direct her to the real heroes and heroines of August 26 and 27...
The fact is, by a large margin, the folks in the water never came to any of our haole-dominated organizing meetings where people with big egos blathered on for hours! And it's the people [from] those meetings who are "interpreting" the struggle for this research assistant!"
Both Rose and we have attempted to contact Nitafan by phone in Rose’s case and email in ours and we have not heard back from her. She is scheduled to be on KKCR Radio to speak about her project as we go to press, at 4 p.m. today.
It’s nice to know that someone is questioning what the difference was between Kaua`i and Maui and why the outcomes were so different. It would be a shame to see history written so that no one would see the real story behind the blockade here and the lack of one on Maui.
Many see it as a matter of the fact that Maui took the legal approach with Maui Tomorrow and the Sierra Club’s lawsuit where there was no such suit at the time from Kaua`i.
As a matter of fact that the ruling that the lawsuit only covered Maui Harbor and not Kaua`i had not been determined in the Supreme Court ruling made two days before the ferry attempted to enter Nawiliwili harbor and wasn’t a “fact” until the circuit court ruled such on Maui after the SC sent it to them for adjudication..
Yet they mistakenly say that was a factor if not the main reason why many here chose to put their lives in danger, saying that Kaua`i had no lawsuit of its own and so were less inclined to “legal” protest.
But really it comes down to the fact that many of those who were less involved in “organizations” and “meetings” and more into an anarchical style of grassroots organizing saw the obstacle as being the timidity of those organized leaders and worked hard to counteract it by not condemning- and in fact in some cases encouraging- civil disobedience.
They refused to “join up” with those who sought to control of what happened at the Nawiliwili those two fateful nights and it was their efforts that gave “permission” for it to happen that way.
It’s one thing to rabble rouse and organize and whip up a frenzied protest. It’s quite another to just let it happen.
Seems that a student from New York City is here in the island nosing around about a question that caused some fierce disagreements during the run up to the Superferry operation on Maui and the lack thereof here on Kaua`i- why is the ferry running to Maui and not Kaua`i and what happened to make the difference?
Yesterday Joan Conrow published- pretty much in whole- the perspective of Karen Chun of Maui which is an interesting read. But it barely addresses what the student, Michelle Nitafan of the Department of Geography at NYC’s Hunter College really wants to know about for her master’s thesis (and an article by her professor).
Chun gives a perspective that more or less makes it seem like it was just a matter of two different circumstances on two different islands. citing culture, demographics and the differences in legal approaches with a lawsuit filed on Maui but not here
We won’t repeat the letter here but urge anyone reading this to read Chun’s letter for a better understanding of what Nitafan is likely to hear if she speaks to the so-called “leaders” on Maui.
In fact what made the difference was a concerted effort on the part of those Maui “leaders” to ban all non-violent civil disobedience (NVCD) at “their” demonstrations when the ferry came to Maui.
Juxtapose that with the Kaua`i concerted effort by a few activists to not preclude NVCD and not tell people what to do or don’t do- and do it in the face of attempts to “lead” the protests in a “legal and respectful manner” by organizations a politicians here on Kaua`i
Seems Nitafan and her professor wrote to Superferry activist Jimmy Trujillo after finding his name prominently in newspapers from the time and wrote the following
My name is Michelle Nitafan. I'm a post-graduate student working with the Geography Department at Hunter College of the City University of New York. I'm currently doing some thesis work in regards to the recent Super Ferry issue there.
My research is concerned with the discussion (and if I'm lucky, with a resolution) of why the Environmental Assessment was waived why Kauai and Maui took different steps in opposing the Super Ferry (strike through a surfing blockade at sea and court petition, respectively) how the different islands felt about it, then and now... I'm interested in gaining insight into Kauai's position in all this.
But the problem is that she is apparently speaking with most of the very people who almost thwarted the non-violent civil disobedience and lack of respect for Governor Lingle’s “Unified Command” that made for the difference in outcomes between Kaua`i and Maui.
Although some would like to believe that it was through the efforts of people like Rich Hoepner of People for the Preservation of Kaua`i (PPK) and David Dinner of 1000 Friends and politicians like JoAnn Yukimura and Mina Motrita that the protesters stopped the Superferry, those are in fact the very people who tried hard- and fortunately failed- to corral Kaua`i people into keeping all protests “legal and respectful”.
It was no accident though that people like Trujillo, Katy Rose, PNN and a handful of others- including many actual members of PPK and 1000 friends who were less than happy about the direction their leaders were taking- that the “message” on Kaua`i was not to listen to self appointed “leaders” here who were publicly urging the “legal and respectful” protest and instead urge people, through email and the grassroots “coconut wireless”, to “do your own thing” by refusing to condemn or try to prohibit NVCD.
And that was the difference in turning back the ferry here. It wasn’t the people who spent months gathering petitions or meeting night after night to plot strategy but it was the people who just showed up and felt they had the freedom to put their lives on the line by physically blocking the big bad boat and thumbing their nose at the state’s militaristic threats.
Apparently, from emails sent to PNN, the people Nitafan is thus far scheduled to meet with are people like Dinner, Yukimura- who fiercely fought for legal and respectful protest, especially at the Convention Hall appearance when Lingle was cursed and shouted down- and Irene Bowie Executive Director of Maui Tomorrow who was the chief of the “no illegal or disrespectful activity” at `our’ protest” on that island
Was it just the circumstances that Chun- who actually did get into her canoe and try to block the boat on Maui along with people like Hannah Bernard and a small handful of others- cited that led to things just “happening” as they did?
Or did the concerted efforts of a handful of Kaua`i people- experienced organizers who saw early on the pent up hostility to the ferry on the streets of Kaua`i and saw the probably that an organized leadership could actually hurt the chances of involvement by an already agitated populace- pay off.
After reading Chun’s essay at Conrow’s KauaiEcletic blog Rose put it this way in an email today.
I'm a little concerned that Nitafan isn't talking to more grassroots people who have deeper roots on Kaua`i.
A lot of malahini (like me) like to get out front and get in the limelight when in reality the young folks with the deep roots were the ones who stopped the boat right there with their bodies. I just hope that some of the people she sought out to talk to have the humility to direct her to the real heroes and heroines of August 26 and 27...
The fact is, by a large margin, the folks in the water never came to any of our haole-dominated organizing meetings where people with big egos blathered on for hours! And it's the people [from] those meetings who are "interpreting" the struggle for this research assistant!"
Both Rose and we have attempted to contact Nitafan by phone in Rose’s case and email in ours and we have not heard back from her. She is scheduled to be on KKCR Radio to speak about her project as we go to press, at 4 p.m. today.
It’s nice to know that someone is questioning what the difference was between Kaua`i and Maui and why the outcomes were so different. It would be a shame to see history written so that no one would see the real story behind the blockade here and the lack of one on Maui.
Many see it as a matter of the fact that Maui took the legal approach with Maui Tomorrow and the Sierra Club’s lawsuit where there was no such suit at the time from Kaua`i.
As a matter of fact that the ruling that the lawsuit only covered Maui Harbor and not Kaua`i had not been determined in the Supreme Court ruling made two days before the ferry attempted to enter Nawiliwili harbor and wasn’t a “fact” until the circuit court ruled such on Maui after the SC sent it to them for adjudication..
Yet they mistakenly say that was a factor if not the main reason why many here chose to put their lives in danger, saying that Kaua`i had no lawsuit of its own and so were less inclined to “legal” protest.
But really it comes down to the fact that many of those who were less involved in “organizations” and “meetings” and more into an anarchical style of grassroots organizing saw the obstacle as being the timidity of those organized leaders and worked hard to counteract it by not condemning- and in fact in some cases encouraging- civil disobedience.
They refused to “join up” with those who sought to control of what happened at the Nawiliwili those two fateful nights and it was their efforts that gave “permission” for it to happen that way.
It’s one thing to rabble rouse and organize and whip up a frenzied protest. It’s quite another to just let it happen.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
BARELY LEGAL
BARELY LEGAL: Apparently the ugly draft bill to allow illegal Transient Vacation Rentals (TVRs) on agricultural land which we reported upon twice in December is about to illegally rear it’s ugly head at today’s county council’s Planning Committee meeting if a post about it at Mel Rapozo’s newly re-activated Kaua`i Politics turns out to be true
He says that:
I heard a disturbing rumor today. I heard that there will be an amendment on the Council agenda next week that will grandfather transient vacation rentals on agriculture lands until the Important Ag Land (IAL) study is completed.
This info comes along with Joan Conrow’s coverage today of an issue we’ve been lax in reporting upon regarding this year’s ordinance grandfathering illegal TVRs in non-visitor destination (VDA) areas.
Conrow details how, despite the fact that the ordinance says that “any member of the public may initiate proceedings to revoke a non-conforming use certificate or to stop an un-permitted use.”, the Planning Department has been denying those members of the public- some of whom have been fighting TVRs on the North Shore for years- the names of the owners and the locations of the TVRs that are applying for the “use permits” required to get “grandfathered”.
The eligible TVRs, according to the ordinance, have to prove that they had been operating for a year as of the date the bill became law.
But three times now North Shore land use advocates Karen Diamond and former Planning Commissioner Barbara Robeson have appeared before the council with excellent presentations detailing the problems they ran into in finding out who was applying and showing pictures and documents that prove that many apparent TVRs they suspect are applying don’t meet the requirements set out in the ordinance.
To get a full description of their presentation Conrow’s post today is a must read.
Today Bill 2294 is on the council’s agenda. It would tighten up some of the language to force proper scrutiny from the planning department which has just illegally made up rules for the use permitting on the fly without going through the required HRS Chapter 91 administrative rules.
Diamond and Robeson testified at the first reading and the Public Hearing for the bill last year detailing the lack of access to the planning applications, presenting pictures and testimony showing certain owners- including some of those who were finally outed by Conrow today in seven pdf documents that are linked in the article today- would have to be fudging the facts if not outright lying on their application to be eligible for use permits.
Nowhere along the line has Bill 2294 mentioned anything about allowing TVRs on ag land which would be illegal under state law (HRS 205) as we detailed in December when then Council Chair, now vice Chair Jay Furfaro illegally circulated a secret draft of a bill to all seven councilmembers that would do just that by requiring so-called “non-enforcement agreements” between the offending ag land TVR owner and the Planning Department be created.
According to the Kauai County Charter “No bill shall be so amended as to change its original purpose”.
The stated “purpose” of Bill 2294 speaks only of changes in regulations for signage inside and outside the TVR and includes provisions for 24/7 contact information for management persons on the island.
We’ll have to wait and see what happens at today’s Planning Committee meeting which will be chaired by Furfaro but the correct process would be to reintroduce a separate bill. not to sneak in this provision without allowing the public the opportunity to have their usual four chances to testify.
If passed out of committee today the bill would be up for final “second reading” passage at next week’s full council meeting
The absurdity of trying to pass a law that actually directs a county department to not enforce and abide by state law is another one of those “only on Kaua`i” machinations that have marked county council and administration activity for decades.
And for those who are wondering what’s happening with our complaint to the OIP regarding the illegal circulation of the “TVR on ag land non-enforcement agreement” draft bill by Furfaro, we still cannot even get a confirmation that the OIP has received the complaint... much less find out if they are pursuing it... much less find out whether they have even opened a case.
He says that:
I heard a disturbing rumor today. I heard that there will be an amendment on the Council agenda next week that will grandfather transient vacation rentals on agriculture lands until the Important Ag Land (IAL) study is completed.
This info comes along with Joan Conrow’s coverage today of an issue we’ve been lax in reporting upon regarding this year’s ordinance grandfathering illegal TVRs in non-visitor destination (VDA) areas.
Conrow details how, despite the fact that the ordinance says that “any member of the public may initiate proceedings to revoke a non-conforming use certificate or to stop an un-permitted use.”, the Planning Department has been denying those members of the public- some of whom have been fighting TVRs on the North Shore for years- the names of the owners and the locations of the TVRs that are applying for the “use permits” required to get “grandfathered”.
The eligible TVRs, according to the ordinance, have to prove that they had been operating for a year as of the date the bill became law.
But three times now North Shore land use advocates Karen Diamond and former Planning Commissioner Barbara Robeson have appeared before the council with excellent presentations detailing the problems they ran into in finding out who was applying and showing pictures and documents that prove that many apparent TVRs they suspect are applying don’t meet the requirements set out in the ordinance.
To get a full description of their presentation Conrow’s post today is a must read.
Today Bill 2294 is on the council’s agenda. It would tighten up some of the language to force proper scrutiny from the planning department which has just illegally made up rules for the use permitting on the fly without going through the required HRS Chapter 91 administrative rules.
Diamond and Robeson testified at the first reading and the Public Hearing for the bill last year detailing the lack of access to the planning applications, presenting pictures and testimony showing certain owners- including some of those who were finally outed by Conrow today in seven pdf documents that are linked in the article today- would have to be fudging the facts if not outright lying on their application to be eligible for use permits.
Nowhere along the line has Bill 2294 mentioned anything about allowing TVRs on ag land which would be illegal under state law (HRS 205) as we detailed in December when then Council Chair, now vice Chair Jay Furfaro illegally circulated a secret draft of a bill to all seven councilmembers that would do just that by requiring so-called “non-enforcement agreements” between the offending ag land TVR owner and the Planning Department be created.
According to the Kauai County Charter “No bill shall be so amended as to change its original purpose”.
The stated “purpose” of Bill 2294 speaks only of changes in regulations for signage inside and outside the TVR and includes provisions for 24/7 contact information for management persons on the island.
We’ll have to wait and see what happens at today’s Planning Committee meeting which will be chaired by Furfaro but the correct process would be to reintroduce a separate bill. not to sneak in this provision without allowing the public the opportunity to have their usual four chances to testify.
If passed out of committee today the bill would be up for final “second reading” passage at next week’s full council meeting
The absurdity of trying to pass a law that actually directs a county department to not enforce and abide by state law is another one of those “only on Kaua`i” machinations that have marked county council and administration activity for decades.
And for those who are wondering what’s happening with our complaint to the OIP regarding the illegal circulation of the “TVR on ag land non-enforcement agreement” draft bill by Furfaro, we still cannot even get a confirmation that the OIP has received the complaint... much less find out if they are pursuing it... much less find out whether they have even opened a case.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
NO ROOM AT THE DOGHOUSE
NO ROOM AT THE DOGHOUSE: The heroic efforts of Kaua`i activist Ann Punohu regarding the blatant discrimination against protected classes by landlords who reject tenants receiving “HUD” Sect 8 housing subsidies has amazingly enough found it’s way into the pages of the local newspaper... and not a moment too soon
But from the way the issue is described one would think the main reason for all those “No HUD” ads in the “for rent” classified ads is that landlords are worried about the “type” of tenants who receive the subsidies.
But while many landlords may feel this way PNN has found that there is an at least equal if not far greater reticence to rent to HUD Section 8 recipients based not on dealing with the tenant but on having to transact business with the county housing agency that administers the federal program.
First a little background, it seem that despite the fact that all people who receive the HUD “vouchers” are by definition members of one “protected class” or another- family status (having children), disability and age (being senior citizens)- it is somehow ok to discriminate against them all together... or at least it is “legally unsettled”.
After seeing those “No HUD” ads for many years we decided to ask the Kaua`i Legal Aid Society office, which serves many of the indigent who make up the HUD recipients, how this kind of blatant housing discrimination could take place. Surely it must be illegal. And surely it must be their job, if anyone’s to do something about it.
But the laws against discrimination have generally been interpreted by the American corporate-personhood-recognizing courts to say that there must be an individual member of a protected class being specifically discriminated against by a specific individual in a specific case of housing, employment or public accommodation.
And, according to the Legal Aid attorney we spoke to more than 10 years ago, even though the matter is not settled law in this specific case they are too strapped for funds to take on broad, potentially lengthy litigation and they would rather concentrate on helping their qualifying clients in limited personal cases such obtaining restraining orders, divorces, child custody and other minor, personal civil matters.
The reality is that worries over damages and non-payment by HUD tenants is a red herring because HUD guarantees that they will pay for the damages or the tenants’ share of the rent if the tenant does not pay – and then kick the recipient off the program. Of course this leads to an automatic acceptance of damage claims by HUD even if the tenant didn’t cause them.
One would think landlords would love to have HUD tenants – as they do in other places- because the rent, except for a small portion paid by the tenant, comes to them in the form of a monthly check from the county delivered, not on the first of the month but five days before.
The fact is that most landlords we’ve spoken to during the 15 years we’ve been looking into this story and who have rented to tenants with HUD have had it with dealing with County Housing Agency’s bureaucracy .
The Kaua`i County Housing Agency’s HUD Section 8 program has been as corruption- riddled as any in the county and for the last few years has been operating under real and threatened sanctions from the federal Housing and Urban Development Department in Washington D.C., according to testimony before the county council.
Much if it is because they aren’t serving the people who HUD is designed for- primarily those who make up to 80% of the median income and especially those at or below 50%.
While the maximum is 120% there are guidelines saying much higher percentages of clients must be at 80% and an even higher percentage at 50%- levels that the county housing agency seems incapable of achieving after five years of attempts.
In addition the feds found their verification system was severely broken and their paperwork was found to be inconstant, arbitrary and generally useless and incomplete.
Instead of making sure on an individual basis that the exceptionally needy find and keep housing the county agency- run out of the mayor’s office rather than as a chartered department- has become self-absorbed with constantly shifting around the paperwork and requirements in a futile attempt to placate the feds without doing anything concrete.
One bizarre antithetical move in recent years was to change the policy regarding the severely permanently disabled. In the past if someone receiving Social Security disability payments couldn’t find a house within the proscribed time allotment, when they reapplied, they went to the top of the list.
But, according to the agency’s testimony this includes many mentally disabled who they deemed to be “un-housable”. Whereas housing agencies on the mainland see their responsibility as including making sure these chronically homeless find a safe and secure place to live and assisting them in keeping it, here the policy has apparently been to throw them under the bus and let them live on the beach.
Landlords are constantly besieged by the incompetence of the county agency. Whether it’s the seemingly daily change of requirements and resulting paperwork or the landlord’s inability to get coherent answers to their queries, it has become a nightmare to deal with the agency according to many landlords on the island causing them to shun not necessarily the tenant but the agency.
One recent Catch-22 type insanity typifies what’s wrong with Kauai County Housing Agency and of course the county government in general.
When the “Ohana” charter amendment requiring a 2% cap on yearly property tax assessments passed at the polls- and before it was struck down by the Supreme Court of Hawai`i- the county council passed it’s own similar tax scheme for owner-occupants of homes on the island.
But because of the perennial, perpetual housing crisis they also passed Ordinance 833 giving a 6% cap to owners of “long term affordable rentals”.
“Affordable” was based on what was those making 120% of the Kauai Median Household Income- as set forth in the Kaua`i Housing Agency Affordable Rental guidelines- could afford to pay, using 30% of their income for housing as a base.
The council discussion at the time centered around how an “affordable” rental would be defined.. And for that they turned to the County Housing Agency which told them essentially, “oh, well we just happen to have that defined already in the HUD Section 8 affordable housing guidelines- it’s 30% of the income of a person who makes up to 120% of the median income".
So the council put that in the ordinance. But the discussion also centered making sure that it was a “long term” affordable rental.
Although we testified at the time that many if not most rentals on Kaua`i – especially the cheaper ones- were traditionally “month-to-month” and that very few people have one-year leases, the council ignored that testimony and defined a “Long Term Affordable Rental” as “a dwelling subject to a written lease agreement with a term of (1) year or more”.
At the time county housing processed Section 8 “contacts” along with their “voucher program” but has since gone to an all voucher system.
The way it works, according to recipients we spoke to is that there is a one year agreement signed when the tenant first moves in but after that year is over that changes to a month-to-month agreement, supposedly to attract landlords because then they can have the freedom to kick out the tenant without regard to a lease... which is essentially meaningless because even with a lease under Hawai`i law, a 45-day notice is all that’s required, lease or not.
So the Real Property division dutifully created the form for receiving the 6% cap, which reads as follows:
To qualify, you must submit an executed “CURRENT” copy of your (one year) rental agreement with this application.
And county housing rules apparently forbid their clients from signing any agreements with their landlords outside that which is Section 8 approved.
So, as you might have figured out by now, landlords who do rent to Section 8 clients- the very people who the law was designed to help and whose guidelines they used- cannot get the 6% cap on their affordable rental by simply showing that they participate in the program.
Only no one at county housing tells the landlord this until the year is up and they have to file their yearly exemption form.
The can of worms seemingly opened by Punohu have rather been slithering around the County’s Round Building for years. As landlords have found out, any reason for turning down HUD tenants because they might not be ideal, pale in comparison with the headache of having to deal with the county’s bureaucracy and myriad conflicting rules and regulation.
But from the way the issue is described one would think the main reason for all those “No HUD” ads in the “for rent” classified ads is that landlords are worried about the “type” of tenants who receive the subsidies.
But while many landlords may feel this way PNN has found that there is an at least equal if not far greater reticence to rent to HUD Section 8 recipients based not on dealing with the tenant but on having to transact business with the county housing agency that administers the federal program.
First a little background, it seem that despite the fact that all people who receive the HUD “vouchers” are by definition members of one “protected class” or another- family status (having children), disability and age (being senior citizens)- it is somehow ok to discriminate against them all together... or at least it is “legally unsettled”.
After seeing those “No HUD” ads for many years we decided to ask the Kaua`i Legal Aid Society office, which serves many of the indigent who make up the HUD recipients, how this kind of blatant housing discrimination could take place. Surely it must be illegal. And surely it must be their job, if anyone’s to do something about it.
But the laws against discrimination have generally been interpreted by the American corporate-personhood-recognizing courts to say that there must be an individual member of a protected class being specifically discriminated against by a specific individual in a specific case of housing, employment or public accommodation.
And, according to the Legal Aid attorney we spoke to more than 10 years ago, even though the matter is not settled law in this specific case they are too strapped for funds to take on broad, potentially lengthy litigation and they would rather concentrate on helping their qualifying clients in limited personal cases such obtaining restraining orders, divorces, child custody and other minor, personal civil matters.
The reality is that worries over damages and non-payment by HUD tenants is a red herring because HUD guarantees that they will pay for the damages or the tenants’ share of the rent if the tenant does not pay – and then kick the recipient off the program. Of course this leads to an automatic acceptance of damage claims by HUD even if the tenant didn’t cause them.
One would think landlords would love to have HUD tenants – as they do in other places- because the rent, except for a small portion paid by the tenant, comes to them in the form of a monthly check from the county delivered, not on the first of the month but five days before.
The fact is that most landlords we’ve spoken to during the 15 years we’ve been looking into this story and who have rented to tenants with HUD have had it with dealing with County Housing Agency’s bureaucracy .
The Kaua`i County Housing Agency’s HUD Section 8 program has been as corruption- riddled as any in the county and for the last few years has been operating under real and threatened sanctions from the federal Housing and Urban Development Department in Washington D.C., according to testimony before the county council.
Much if it is because they aren’t serving the people who HUD is designed for- primarily those who make up to 80% of the median income and especially those at or below 50%.
While the maximum is 120% there are guidelines saying much higher percentages of clients must be at 80% and an even higher percentage at 50%- levels that the county housing agency seems incapable of achieving after five years of attempts.
In addition the feds found their verification system was severely broken and their paperwork was found to be inconstant, arbitrary and generally useless and incomplete.
Instead of making sure on an individual basis that the exceptionally needy find and keep housing the county agency- run out of the mayor’s office rather than as a chartered department- has become self-absorbed with constantly shifting around the paperwork and requirements in a futile attempt to placate the feds without doing anything concrete.
One bizarre antithetical move in recent years was to change the policy regarding the severely permanently disabled. In the past if someone receiving Social Security disability payments couldn’t find a house within the proscribed time allotment, when they reapplied, they went to the top of the list.
But, according to the agency’s testimony this includes many mentally disabled who they deemed to be “un-housable”. Whereas housing agencies on the mainland see their responsibility as including making sure these chronically homeless find a safe and secure place to live and assisting them in keeping it, here the policy has apparently been to throw them under the bus and let them live on the beach.
Landlords are constantly besieged by the incompetence of the county agency. Whether it’s the seemingly daily change of requirements and resulting paperwork or the landlord’s inability to get coherent answers to their queries, it has become a nightmare to deal with the agency according to many landlords on the island causing them to shun not necessarily the tenant but the agency.
One recent Catch-22 type insanity typifies what’s wrong with Kauai County Housing Agency and of course the county government in general.
When the “Ohana” charter amendment requiring a 2% cap on yearly property tax assessments passed at the polls- and before it was struck down by the Supreme Court of Hawai`i- the county council passed it’s own similar tax scheme for owner-occupants of homes on the island.
But because of the perennial, perpetual housing crisis they also passed Ordinance 833 giving a 6% cap to owners of “long term affordable rentals”.
“Affordable” was based on what was those making 120% of the Kauai Median Household Income- as set forth in the Kaua`i Housing Agency Affordable Rental guidelines- could afford to pay, using 30% of their income for housing as a base.
The council discussion at the time centered around how an “affordable” rental would be defined.. And for that they turned to the County Housing Agency which told them essentially, “oh, well we just happen to have that defined already in the HUD Section 8 affordable housing guidelines- it’s 30% of the income of a person who makes up to 120% of the median income".
So the council put that in the ordinance. But the discussion also centered making sure that it was a “long term” affordable rental.
Although we testified at the time that many if not most rentals on Kaua`i – especially the cheaper ones- were traditionally “month-to-month” and that very few people have one-year leases, the council ignored that testimony and defined a “Long Term Affordable Rental” as “a dwelling subject to a written lease agreement with a term of (1) year or more”.
At the time county housing processed Section 8 “contacts” along with their “voucher program” but has since gone to an all voucher system.
The way it works, according to recipients we spoke to is that there is a one year agreement signed when the tenant first moves in but after that year is over that changes to a month-to-month agreement, supposedly to attract landlords because then they can have the freedom to kick out the tenant without regard to a lease... which is essentially meaningless because even with a lease under Hawai`i law, a 45-day notice is all that’s required, lease or not.
So the Real Property division dutifully created the form for receiving the 6% cap, which reads as follows:
To qualify, you must submit an executed “CURRENT” copy of your (one year) rental agreement with this application.
And county housing rules apparently forbid their clients from signing any agreements with their landlords outside that which is Section 8 approved.
So, as you might have figured out by now, landlords who do rent to Section 8 clients- the very people who the law was designed to help and whose guidelines they used- cannot get the 6% cap on their affordable rental by simply showing that they participate in the program.
Only no one at county housing tells the landlord this until the year is up and they have to file their yearly exemption form.
The can of worms seemingly opened by Punohu have rather been slithering around the County’s Round Building for years. As landlords have found out, any reason for turning down HUD tenants because they might not be ideal, pale in comparison with the headache of having to deal with the county’s bureaucracy and myriad conflicting rules and regulation.
Monday, January 5, 2009
HOUNDING THE NEWSHOUNDS
HOUNDING THE NEWSHOUNDS: A week and a half ago we highlighted an abuse of power incident at the Pahoa Post Office on the Big Island and this somewhat defensive fellow Damon Tucker who is one of the multitude of bloggers on Hawai`i Island.
We mentioned that “there are reporters who blog or bloggers who report”. But the discussion on blogs over there has morphed and twisted with the coverage of what we suppose is a reporter who blogs,
At the on-line Big Island Chronicle reporter-blogger Tiffany Edwards Hunt lists her past employment “as a reporter for the Laramie Daily Boomerang, the Casper Star Tribune, and the West Hawaii Today.... the late Hawaii Island Journal and the Big Island Weekly”
And so she too jumped all over Tucker’s report of the incident and follow-up describing an incident when the postmaster there apparently called the cops because Damon was taking pictures in the parking lot to show handicapped parking violations. Tucker said that the responding officer gave him grief and laughably claimed he couldn’t take picture in a public place and forced him to delete a picture he took of her upon arrival.
So Tiffany’s training took over and she dutifully got a long statement from the chief of police. But she made one “mistake” in her essay on blogging and reporting.
Despite the fact that Tuck the apparent Duck acts like a reporter, walks like a reporter and quacks like a reporter he somehow has convinced himself that he is not a reporter, even though he regularly refers to his posts as reports and indeed reports on everything in Puna including store break-ins, politics and other assorted “news”.
Hunt was confused as were the more than thirty people who commented on her report. But her confusion was addled further by her apparent quest for “responsible reporting” not just on her own blog but those of others like poor befuddled Damon.
The reality is that both of them typify the prejudices of their respective sides of the reporter-blogger blogger reporter debate coin.
Hunt’s post on the matter says Tucker claims to be not a reporter but that he
describes himself as a “communication specialist” with a weblog. His self-description... ha(s) made me realize he is truly not one of my contemporaries in the press. Still, yet, I ran into this blogger twice this week, both times acting like he was a reporter. I saw him on Monday at the Pohoiki Bypass blessing, where he walked around everybody snapping pictures like he was a reporter like the other folks with cameras. I saw him on Tuesday headed toward Luquin’s in Pahoa, carrying what appeared to be a reporter’s notebook. He was out and about to inquire about the burglaries that occurred in Pahoa Town during the holidays, he said.
In reporter fashion Hunt elaborates and quotes the blogging “experts” such as Jay Rosen, the New York University Journalism faculty chairman and Scott Rosenberg, a reporter at the on-line blogger-friendly Salon magazine, to sort it out.
But there lies Hunt’s self-deception in that, although she discusses the “new vs. old media” argument and the purported reliability/trust deficiencies of what many characterize as the “amateur journalists”, her final plea is for “responsibility” from people like Tucker.
But that very call comes from a member in good standing of the mainstream press who is experimenting with blogging, an endeavor in which most working journalists don’t survive long as the demise of KITV’s Darryl Huff’s “In a Huff” blog and others will attest.
Tucker typifies what we like to call the “reporter when it’s convenient” who gathers information and does actual reporting and then publishes his endeavors but who neither acknowledges his reporter status nor more importantly sees a need to develop the skills that lead to good reporting.
We can’t count how many people have started news and information sites- no matter whether they call them “blogs” or anything else- who seem to rebel at the notion that the act of reporting makes them a reporter resulting in the bestowal of the title..
Hunt intimates that the title is something to be earned with a defense of “responsibility” as a pre-requisite.
In the world of “professional” reporters like Hunt the notion of “reporting with neither fear nor favor” and “following the story wherever it goes” are tempered with some kind of need to protect entities outside the bounds of the reasonable expectations of privacy which is the only thing the law requires... even if the property rights crowd has a hard time with the concept.
This leads to the characteristic paternalism of the press and enables the suppression of news typified by papers like the Garden Island on Kaua`i and Hunt’s former employers West Hawai`i Today- a “Stevens Media” outlet that is infamous, especially on the Big Island for it’s advertiser-protection programs and censorship of news and views.
The term “blog” is problematic not just in it’s relationship to reporting – and whether in fact it has one in many cases- but its very definition.
The blogger who tells of the exploits of his family is a blogger just like those with journalistic skills who deliver news, analysis and opinion and, like this hydrophobic newshound, use a “blogging” piece of software are bloggers.
But surely, although we exercise the usual source scrutiny, verification and investigative skills many would call us irresponsible for our penchant for naming names, not seeking out irrelevant spin and our inclusion of well-defined-as-such speculation in the midst of that reporting.
In the final analysis for all three of us it comes down to a matter of readers’ trust of the reporting, something Hunt stresses. But apparently she see that trust of a news source as emanating from the timidity created by being “responsible” to many competing spinners.
In the mainstream media- a nicety to describe the corporate press- what comes out in print has been reshaped from the original facts. It yields a story format where that newsworthy information goes through some “he said, she said” generator of competing quotes from self-interested “experts”, and is then compressed into blocks of advertiser approved, inoffensive-to-anyone (including the offender being reported upon) material until the news is lost in a final result that is about as uninformative as the rich and powerful could want it.
It is the act of reporting that makes the reporter and the skill of the reporter leads to that “trust” or “reliability”, not some sense that because he or she has some kind of hoity toity title of journalist which is often a sign that the reporter has become lost in the world of self-censorship enough to “move up” the corporate ladder to editor or even publisher.
But neither Tucker- who won’t recognize that carrying a camera and a notebook and putting the content of both before the public makes him a reporter even if he has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the job- nor Hunt- whose trepidatious learning experience carries the baggage of corporate reporting- seems to get at the ultimate democracy of new blogging.
If news outlets report the news as factually as possible without that “fear or favor” the trust that they aren’t reporting made- up fantasies will be established in time. But if you are stuck with the self-censorship of being “responsible” you may as well go back to your corporate cubbyhole because readers can get that anywhere.
Everyone wants to know how the MSM can survive as the corporate takeover tightens it’s vice grip on the modern newsroom and squeezes out the very content people want in their news.
The demise started decades ago- well before the on-line age- with the switch from steak to pabulum Now the reactionary, short-sighted, commercially-oriented decimation of the reporting staffs and the resulting cessation of investigative reporting has driven print reporting into the pit of free-content without a business model to pay for it.
As news blogging expands people are coming to expect more from their news than they get from their daily fish wrapper.
Whether you call them bloggers, new journalists, citizen reporters, or loudmouth activists doesn’t matter.
When those who report on-line- whether like Tucker in denial of their function or like Hunt in denial of the title for Tucker- provide the core content people crave the blog-o-sphere can and will fill the news-o-sphere niche with truth and facts being the only advertised commodities.
Then the only question will be the same one the corporate press faces- how to pay for it. We’ll try to delve into that in the near future
We mentioned that “there are reporters who blog or bloggers who report”. But the discussion on blogs over there has morphed and twisted with the coverage of what we suppose is a reporter who blogs,
At the on-line Big Island Chronicle reporter-blogger Tiffany Edwards Hunt lists her past employment “as a reporter for the Laramie Daily Boomerang, the Casper Star Tribune, and the West Hawaii Today.... the late Hawaii Island Journal and the Big Island Weekly”
And so she too jumped all over Tucker’s report of the incident and follow-up describing an incident when the postmaster there apparently called the cops because Damon was taking pictures in the parking lot to show handicapped parking violations. Tucker said that the responding officer gave him grief and laughably claimed he couldn’t take picture in a public place and forced him to delete a picture he took of her upon arrival.
So Tiffany’s training took over and she dutifully got a long statement from the chief of police. But she made one “mistake” in her essay on blogging and reporting.
Despite the fact that Tuck the apparent Duck acts like a reporter, walks like a reporter and quacks like a reporter he somehow has convinced himself that he is not a reporter, even though he regularly refers to his posts as reports and indeed reports on everything in Puna including store break-ins, politics and other assorted “news”.
Hunt was confused as were the more than thirty people who commented on her report. But her confusion was addled further by her apparent quest for “responsible reporting” not just on her own blog but those of others like poor befuddled Damon.
The reality is that both of them typify the prejudices of their respective sides of the reporter-blogger blogger reporter debate coin.
Hunt’s post on the matter says Tucker claims to be not a reporter but that he
describes himself as a “communication specialist” with a weblog. His self-description... ha(s) made me realize he is truly not one of my contemporaries in the press. Still, yet, I ran into this blogger twice this week, both times acting like he was a reporter. I saw him on Monday at the Pohoiki Bypass blessing, where he walked around everybody snapping pictures like he was a reporter like the other folks with cameras. I saw him on Tuesday headed toward Luquin’s in Pahoa, carrying what appeared to be a reporter’s notebook. He was out and about to inquire about the burglaries that occurred in Pahoa Town during the holidays, he said.
In reporter fashion Hunt elaborates and quotes the blogging “experts” such as Jay Rosen, the New York University Journalism faculty chairman and Scott Rosenberg, a reporter at the on-line blogger-friendly Salon magazine, to sort it out.
But there lies Hunt’s self-deception in that, although she discusses the “new vs. old media” argument and the purported reliability/trust deficiencies of what many characterize as the “amateur journalists”, her final plea is for “responsibility” from people like Tucker.
But that very call comes from a member in good standing of the mainstream press who is experimenting with blogging, an endeavor in which most working journalists don’t survive long as the demise of KITV’s Darryl Huff’s “In a Huff” blog and others will attest.
Tucker typifies what we like to call the “reporter when it’s convenient” who gathers information and does actual reporting and then publishes his endeavors but who neither acknowledges his reporter status nor more importantly sees a need to develop the skills that lead to good reporting.
We can’t count how many people have started news and information sites- no matter whether they call them “blogs” or anything else- who seem to rebel at the notion that the act of reporting makes them a reporter resulting in the bestowal of the title..
Hunt intimates that the title is something to be earned with a defense of “responsibility” as a pre-requisite.
In the world of “professional” reporters like Hunt the notion of “reporting with neither fear nor favor” and “following the story wherever it goes” are tempered with some kind of need to protect entities outside the bounds of the reasonable expectations of privacy which is the only thing the law requires... even if the property rights crowd has a hard time with the concept.
This leads to the characteristic paternalism of the press and enables the suppression of news typified by papers like the Garden Island on Kaua`i and Hunt’s former employers West Hawai`i Today- a “Stevens Media” outlet that is infamous, especially on the Big Island for it’s advertiser-protection programs and censorship of news and views.
The term “blog” is problematic not just in it’s relationship to reporting – and whether in fact it has one in many cases- but its very definition.
The blogger who tells of the exploits of his family is a blogger just like those with journalistic skills who deliver news, analysis and opinion and, like this hydrophobic newshound, use a “blogging” piece of software are bloggers.
But surely, although we exercise the usual source scrutiny, verification and investigative skills many would call us irresponsible for our penchant for naming names, not seeking out irrelevant spin and our inclusion of well-defined-as-such speculation in the midst of that reporting.
In the final analysis for all three of us it comes down to a matter of readers’ trust of the reporting, something Hunt stresses. But apparently she see that trust of a news source as emanating from the timidity created by being “responsible” to many competing spinners.
In the mainstream media- a nicety to describe the corporate press- what comes out in print has been reshaped from the original facts. It yields a story format where that newsworthy information goes through some “he said, she said” generator of competing quotes from self-interested “experts”, and is then compressed into blocks of advertiser approved, inoffensive-to-anyone (including the offender being reported upon) material until the news is lost in a final result that is about as uninformative as the rich and powerful could want it.
It is the act of reporting that makes the reporter and the skill of the reporter leads to that “trust” or “reliability”, not some sense that because he or she has some kind of hoity toity title of journalist which is often a sign that the reporter has become lost in the world of self-censorship enough to “move up” the corporate ladder to editor or even publisher.
But neither Tucker- who won’t recognize that carrying a camera and a notebook and putting the content of both before the public makes him a reporter even if he has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the job- nor Hunt- whose trepidatious learning experience carries the baggage of corporate reporting- seems to get at the ultimate democracy of new blogging.
If news outlets report the news as factually as possible without that “fear or favor” the trust that they aren’t reporting made- up fantasies will be established in time. But if you are stuck with the self-censorship of being “responsible” you may as well go back to your corporate cubbyhole because readers can get that anywhere.
Everyone wants to know how the MSM can survive as the corporate takeover tightens it’s vice grip on the modern newsroom and squeezes out the very content people want in their news.
The demise started decades ago- well before the on-line age- with the switch from steak to pabulum Now the reactionary, short-sighted, commercially-oriented decimation of the reporting staffs and the resulting cessation of investigative reporting has driven print reporting into the pit of free-content without a business model to pay for it.
As news blogging expands people are coming to expect more from their news than they get from their daily fish wrapper.
Whether you call them bloggers, new journalists, citizen reporters, or loudmouth activists doesn’t matter.
When those who report on-line- whether like Tucker in denial of their function or like Hunt in denial of the title for Tucker- provide the core content people crave the blog-o-sphere can and will fill the news-o-sphere niche with truth and facts being the only advertised commodities.
Then the only question will be the same one the corporate press faces- how to pay for it. We’ll try to delve into that in the near future
Saturday, January 3, 2009
KPD Blue- Chapter 22 : Tail Guner Mel
KPD Blue
By Anthony Sommer
Chapter 22 : Tail Guner Mel
Even while the Ethics Board was stamping out evil on the Police Commission in late 2005, the Kauai County Council was ramping up for an all-out attack on Lum.
The leader, of course, was Councilman Mel Rapozo, the disgraced former KPD sergeant of Lap Dancing fame.
The first volley was a three-hour Council grilling of Lum in September 2005 over the fact his department expenses were running $300,000 over budget.
Even before the meeting, Council members all knew the problem was overtime pay because the KPD was perpetually below strength and officers frequently were called in on their days off to make up the shortfall.
The overtime shortfall wasn’t exactly a news flash. The situation had been going on for years before Lum became chief, due in great part to the refusal of two mayors to seek recruits from the mainland.
The Council members also knew that every other county department but one had run over budget the previous fiscal year.
It wasn’t much of a charge but it was the only thing they could even attempt to hang around Lum’s neck.
And it was a quick and easy way for the Council to kick off its witch hunt.
“I believe the overtime issue is out of control,” said Rapozo.
The fact is that a decade after the Lap Dancing Incident, Rapozo maintained very close ties with the middle management of KPD who had fought reform by Freitas and were fighting reform by Lum.
In Council meetings, Rapozo gave the impression (and many in the public believed it) that he wanted to modernize the KPD. In fact, he was working to keep it as provincial and backward as he could.
What happened next was a monumental leap by the County Council into the realm of McCarthyism.
In December 2005, the County Council voted unanimously to invoke its own investigative powers, which exist in the County Charter but never had been used in the history of Kauai County.
The Council gave itself subpoena power, the power to hire additional staff, and the power to conduct secret hearings.
Council members made it clear their targets were Chief Lum and the Police Commission.
Their action was a response to a complaint filed by the mysterious Lt. Scott Yagihara, the same officer who had filed the Ethics Board complaints against Ching and Furtado.
Yagihara has not testified under oath before any public body. He certainly hasn’t talked to the press.
On Jan. 31, 2006, Mayor Bryan Baptiste formally asked the Kauai Police Commission to fire Lum.
Baptiste’s reasons were lame:
“I have made numerous requests of Chief Lum to improve and increase communications with the Mayor’s Office but have seen no evidence of that happening,” Baptiste said in his letter to the Police Commission.
At least one of the requests from Baptiste (and Nakazawa) came at a meeting with Lum at which the mayor attempted to strong arm the police chief into filing a phony criminal charge to try to intimidate the author of this book.
Lum refused to file a bogus charge. So Baptiste asked the Police Commission to fire Lum.
Again, the impossibly vague wording of the County Charter doesn’t define “cause” for removing a police chief.
Baptiste’s call for firing Lum came less than a week after the police union had announced it had worked out its disagreements with Lum and was withdrawing its call for his removal.
“There was hope for the community to move this forward and right after that we get this letter from the mayor,” said Carole Furtado, who had become chairwoman of the Police Commission.
Furtado said that what the Police Commission needed to investigate were “the factions within the department,” a subject that repeatedly was swept under the rug.
Racism in the KPD remained a topic that no one on Kauai wanted to discuss, let alone investigate.
“We have had this issue, to my knowledge, for the last three or four chiefs, and it has not gotten any better,” Furtado said.
On Feb. 6, 2006, Lum filed his discrimination lawsuit in federal court.
Ten days later, responding to the request from Mayor Bryan Baptiste, the Kauai Police Commission voted to initiate a lengthy process to conduct its own investigation of Lum.
This was in addition to the investigative powers the County Council already had given itself.
In late March, Michael Ching resigned from the Police Commission.
Rapozo insisted, “There is no concerted effort by this Council to get rid of Ching or Lum.”
But his remarks rang hollow after he repeatedly had said Lum was not qualified and should not have been appointed chief.
Then, suddenly, both the Council and Police Commission inquisitions slammed to a halt at exactly the same time.
Perhaps it was just a coincidence but it certainly appeared the whole campaign to oust Lum was being orchestrated by the mayor.
There were growing indications Mayor Baptiste believed he could get rid of Lum before either the County Council or Police Commission investigations would start.
Baptiste had decided to use his pals on the Kauai County Ethics Board to remove his opponents on the Police Commission.
Baptiste would then appoint police commissioners who would do his bidding.
The year before, Carol Furtado’s appointment to a second term on the Police Commission was held up for months by the County Council.
When she finally received a (closed, of course) confirmation hearing, according to numerous sources, she was rubber-hosed by many of the Council members led by Mel Rapozo, who is Furtado’s cousin, and Council Member Sheylene Iseri-Carvalho, a former county prosecutor and close friend of Leon Gonsalves who had been an investigator for the County Prosecutor’s Office.
Furtado, who repeatedly has shown she has a backbone of steel, never flinched.
Finally, she was confirmed.
On May 3, 2006, the Ethics Board conducted its hearing on the ethics charge against Furtado, alleging she had made the selection process that resulted in Lum being named chief unfair.
Unlike Ching, however, Furtado had opposed Lum’s appointment as acting chief, which was the basis for the hearing officer’s finding against Ching.
Furtado later supported Lum for appointment as the permanent chief.
Furtado, who appeared without an attorney, waived her right to a closed hearing and accused the mayor, the County Council, Gonsalves and even the Board of Ethics of conspiring in a “smear campaign” against Lum.
Furtado conceded Lum was “not the popular choice” among the Hawaiian and Japanese middle managers on the KPD who, in turn, are well connected with several Council members.
But she was sharply critical of Baptiste using the Ethics Board to get rid of Lum by kicking Lum’s supporters off the Police Commission.
“They’re hunting Lum by trying to get rid of me. It’s not going to end here. It will continue. If I am cleared, they will find someone else,” she told the Ethics Board.
“They are looking for someone to crucify to get the end result, which is the removal of K.C. Lum,” she added.
Furtado remained on the Police Commission.
Meanwhile, the County Council in late May took up an Ethics Board finding that Deputy Chief Ron Venneman had violated ethics rules by helping circulate a petition to the Police Commission backing Lum as the best candidate for chief.
The petition was signed by 100 officers, about three-fourths of the department.
Venneman did not deny circulating the petition and said it was within his First Amendment rights to do so.
However, the Ethics Board’s hearing officer, again John McConnell, held Venneman had breached ethics rules by entering areas closed to the public to obtain signatures from police officers.
As he had ruled with Ching, McConnell did not find Venneman broke any laws.
Hawaii does not have a Little Hatch Act, which exists in many states. Like the federal Hatch Act, Little Hatch Acts prohibit public employees from engaging in politics.
In Hawaii, public employees engaging in politics is perfectly legal. What Venneman did was legal. But, once again, the mayor’s Ethics Board ruled he had violated the ethics rule prohibiting his use of a public position to benefit himself or others, a very broad interpretation.
The Council sent a recommendation to the Police Commission that Venneman be fined $1,000 and demoted. Venneman, as of this writing, is a lieutenant working in the Traffic Division.
Meanwhile, Baptiste—through his administrative assistant and chief hatchet man Gary Heu—had advised Lum that on June 8, 2006, Lum’s contract with the county would be terminated.
Not because of anything Lum had done.
But because the Ethics Board found that Mike Ching had violated the ethics rules—not the law—in supporting Lum’s appointment.
In the very convoluted reasoning of the Baptiste Administration, that allowed the mayor to terminate Lum’s contract.
Never mind that under the County Charter the police chief could only be hired and fired by the Police Commission.
Never mind that all of the other Police Commission members (except Gonsalves, of course) voted for Lum and their support had not been found to violate the Ethics Code.
The point was, as Lum later said, that Bryan Baptiste and the County Council have endless funds to hire lawyers to defend the most absurd legal theories.
Individual citizens, including police chiefs, have only limited resources to carry on court fights even if they are in the right and the government is in the wrong.
Lum retired as of June 7, 2006.
By Anthony Sommer
Chapter 22 : Tail Guner Mel
Even while the Ethics Board was stamping out evil on the Police Commission in late 2005, the Kauai County Council was ramping up for an all-out attack on Lum.
The leader, of course, was Councilman Mel Rapozo, the disgraced former KPD sergeant of Lap Dancing fame.
The first volley was a three-hour Council grilling of Lum in September 2005 over the fact his department expenses were running $300,000 over budget.
Even before the meeting, Council members all knew the problem was overtime pay because the KPD was perpetually below strength and officers frequently were called in on their days off to make up the shortfall.
The overtime shortfall wasn’t exactly a news flash. The situation had been going on for years before Lum became chief, due in great part to the refusal of two mayors to seek recruits from the mainland.
The Council members also knew that every other county department but one had run over budget the previous fiscal year.
It wasn’t much of a charge but it was the only thing they could even attempt to hang around Lum’s neck.
And it was a quick and easy way for the Council to kick off its witch hunt.
“I believe the overtime issue is out of control,” said Rapozo.
The fact is that a decade after the Lap Dancing Incident, Rapozo maintained very close ties with the middle management of KPD who had fought reform by Freitas and were fighting reform by Lum.
In Council meetings, Rapozo gave the impression (and many in the public believed it) that he wanted to modernize the KPD. In fact, he was working to keep it as provincial and backward as he could.
What happened next was a monumental leap by the County Council into the realm of McCarthyism.
In December 2005, the County Council voted unanimously to invoke its own investigative powers, which exist in the County Charter but never had been used in the history of Kauai County.
The Council gave itself subpoena power, the power to hire additional staff, and the power to conduct secret hearings.
Council members made it clear their targets were Chief Lum and the Police Commission.
Their action was a response to a complaint filed by the mysterious Lt. Scott Yagihara, the same officer who had filed the Ethics Board complaints against Ching and Furtado.
Yagihara has not testified under oath before any public body. He certainly hasn’t talked to the press.
On Jan. 31, 2006, Mayor Bryan Baptiste formally asked the Kauai Police Commission to fire Lum.
Baptiste’s reasons were lame:
“I have made numerous requests of Chief Lum to improve and increase communications with the Mayor’s Office but have seen no evidence of that happening,” Baptiste said in his letter to the Police Commission.
At least one of the requests from Baptiste (and Nakazawa) came at a meeting with Lum at which the mayor attempted to strong arm the police chief into filing a phony criminal charge to try to intimidate the author of this book.
Lum refused to file a bogus charge. So Baptiste asked the Police Commission to fire Lum.
Again, the impossibly vague wording of the County Charter doesn’t define “cause” for removing a police chief.
Baptiste’s call for firing Lum came less than a week after the police union had announced it had worked out its disagreements with Lum and was withdrawing its call for his removal.
“There was hope for the community to move this forward and right after that we get this letter from the mayor,” said Carole Furtado, who had become chairwoman of the Police Commission.
Furtado said that what the Police Commission needed to investigate were “the factions within the department,” a subject that repeatedly was swept under the rug.
Racism in the KPD remained a topic that no one on Kauai wanted to discuss, let alone investigate.
“We have had this issue, to my knowledge, for the last three or four chiefs, and it has not gotten any better,” Furtado said.
On Feb. 6, 2006, Lum filed his discrimination lawsuit in federal court.
Ten days later, responding to the request from Mayor Bryan Baptiste, the Kauai Police Commission voted to initiate a lengthy process to conduct its own investigation of Lum.
This was in addition to the investigative powers the County Council already had given itself.
In late March, Michael Ching resigned from the Police Commission.
Rapozo insisted, “There is no concerted effort by this Council to get rid of Ching or Lum.”
But his remarks rang hollow after he repeatedly had said Lum was not qualified and should not have been appointed chief.
Then, suddenly, both the Council and Police Commission inquisitions slammed to a halt at exactly the same time.
Perhaps it was just a coincidence but it certainly appeared the whole campaign to oust Lum was being orchestrated by the mayor.
There were growing indications Mayor Baptiste believed he could get rid of Lum before either the County Council or Police Commission investigations would start.
Baptiste had decided to use his pals on the Kauai County Ethics Board to remove his opponents on the Police Commission.
Baptiste would then appoint police commissioners who would do his bidding.
The year before, Carol Furtado’s appointment to a second term on the Police Commission was held up for months by the County Council.
When she finally received a (closed, of course) confirmation hearing, according to numerous sources, she was rubber-hosed by many of the Council members led by Mel Rapozo, who is Furtado’s cousin, and Council Member Sheylene Iseri-Carvalho, a former county prosecutor and close friend of Leon Gonsalves who had been an investigator for the County Prosecutor’s Office.
Furtado, who repeatedly has shown she has a backbone of steel, never flinched.
Finally, she was confirmed.
On May 3, 2006, the Ethics Board conducted its hearing on the ethics charge against Furtado, alleging she had made the selection process that resulted in Lum being named chief unfair.
Unlike Ching, however, Furtado had opposed Lum’s appointment as acting chief, which was the basis for the hearing officer’s finding against Ching.
Furtado later supported Lum for appointment as the permanent chief.
Furtado, who appeared without an attorney, waived her right to a closed hearing and accused the mayor, the County Council, Gonsalves and even the Board of Ethics of conspiring in a “smear campaign” against Lum.
Furtado conceded Lum was “not the popular choice” among the Hawaiian and Japanese middle managers on the KPD who, in turn, are well connected with several Council members.
But she was sharply critical of Baptiste using the Ethics Board to get rid of Lum by kicking Lum’s supporters off the Police Commission.
“They’re hunting Lum by trying to get rid of me. It’s not going to end here. It will continue. If I am cleared, they will find someone else,” she told the Ethics Board.
“They are looking for someone to crucify to get the end result, which is the removal of K.C. Lum,” she added.
Furtado remained on the Police Commission.
Meanwhile, the County Council in late May took up an Ethics Board finding that Deputy Chief Ron Venneman had violated ethics rules by helping circulate a petition to the Police Commission backing Lum as the best candidate for chief.
The petition was signed by 100 officers, about three-fourths of the department.
Venneman did not deny circulating the petition and said it was within his First Amendment rights to do so.
However, the Ethics Board’s hearing officer, again John McConnell, held Venneman had breached ethics rules by entering areas closed to the public to obtain signatures from police officers.
As he had ruled with Ching, McConnell did not find Venneman broke any laws.
Hawaii does not have a Little Hatch Act, which exists in many states. Like the federal Hatch Act, Little Hatch Acts prohibit public employees from engaging in politics.
In Hawaii, public employees engaging in politics is perfectly legal. What Venneman did was legal. But, once again, the mayor’s Ethics Board ruled he had violated the ethics rule prohibiting his use of a public position to benefit himself or others, a very broad interpretation.
The Council sent a recommendation to the Police Commission that Venneman be fined $1,000 and demoted. Venneman, as of this writing, is a lieutenant working in the Traffic Division.
Meanwhile, Baptiste—through his administrative assistant and chief hatchet man Gary Heu—had advised Lum that on June 8, 2006, Lum’s contract with the county would be terminated.
Not because of anything Lum had done.
But because the Ethics Board found that Mike Ching had violated the ethics rules—not the law—in supporting Lum’s appointment.
In the very convoluted reasoning of the Baptiste Administration, that allowed the mayor to terminate Lum’s contract.
Never mind that under the County Charter the police chief could only be hired and fired by the Police Commission.
Never mind that all of the other Police Commission members (except Gonsalves, of course) voted for Lum and their support had not been found to violate the Ethics Code.
The point was, as Lum later said, that Bryan Baptiste and the County Council have endless funds to hire lawyers to defend the most absurd legal theories.
Individual citizens, including police chiefs, have only limited resources to carry on court fights even if they are in the right and the government is in the wrong.
Lum retired as of June 7, 2006.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
A SLACKIN’ YEAR YEAR
A SLACKIN’ YEAR YEAR: We’re gonna goof off today and tomorrow but after yesterday’s posting we coincidentally heard about a brand interesting new web site called The New American Dream from a friend in Iowa..
We’ll be back Monday after this weekend’s installment of KPD Blue
We’ll be back Monday after this weekend’s installment of KPD Blue
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