August 2005

Pig in a poke

Bizarre. Infuriating. Pathetic. Entertaining? Revealing?

Yes, what Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs have been up to during the past week begs adequate description. After reading the following attempt on my part of sorting through the communications between the County, the OIP and citizens Lewis and Chuan, please add your own descriptions.

On June 10, 2005 Walter Lewis and I sent a simple one-page letter to the County Clerk, requesting minutes of executive meetings of the Kauai Council, with copy to the Office of Information Practices. I reported to you in my July 12, 2005 missive that the County, instead of responding to our request by releasing the documents, as required by the Sunshine Law, asked us, in a letter dated June 30, 2005, to tell them where the Council did not follow the right process in convening executive sessions, and where the Council deliberated on matters in executive sessions that did not conform to what was advertised in the Council meeting agenda as the purpose of its going into executive sessions. Our answer to this first of a series of bizarre and perhaps entertaining missives from the County was that if we could answer those questions we wouldn’t have had to ask to seek the minutes of those executive sessions!

Some day, when this comedic exercise in civics is over, we should compile a volume of all the correspondence among Lewis/Chuan, the Council and the OIP, for the edification of future generations of voters and votees. But that may be some time off in the future; so let’s return to the present.

In the mean time, as is the practice of the OIP, it asked the County, in a series of letters, to provide the OIP with all the documents so that it can, as it is statutorily mandated to do, review these to issue opinions as to what parts of these records could be withheld from the public. The County, as one would expect by now, put up all kinds of irrelevant excuses to deny the OIP’s request for the records. In a letter to the County Clerk, the OIP, on August 12, gave what amounted to a final advice that the County must respond to the requesters with the minutes of the executive sessions the County Council held from January 2002 to the present. The OIP further reminded the County that it has the “legal obligations and explicitly described the type of information that you should provide us if you denied the requesters access to the records…”, and further: “you simply have not established that one or more of the statutory exceptions support your withholding any of the requested records from disclosure. Accordingly, it is our opinion that all of the requested records, in their entirety, are public and must be disclosed to the requesters.” The OIP concluded its August 12, 2005 letter with “Lastly, given that you received the request for access to the minutes over two months ago and that your response, after a number of delays, was patently insufficient, we do not believe that any extension of time for you to provide the requested information to us is appropriate. If we do not receive the above described material by August 18, we assume that you will make the requested records available to the requesters without delay as required by the statute…”

What followed in two letters sent out, dated August 17, by the County to the OIP and to Chuan/Lewis (both over the signature of the County Attorney), illustrated, in stark arrogance, the County’s continuing efforts to obfuscate the whole issue of Open Government. The letter to L/C says: “The office of the County Clerk has searched its files, and is ready to release copies of documents requested in Item 1. and not otherwise protected by applicable State and federal law. As authorized by Hawaii Administrative Rules ……, the following are the charges associated with your request: Charges for searching, review, and segregation

$2,740.00 Copying charges (577 pages)

146.75

$2,886.75 “

I have underlined the kicker in this paragraph. What it really means is that the Clerk is doing his own selection of what to reveal to the public. The whole point for having the OIP is that the OIP is the final arbiter of what could be kept from public scrutiny, and not the County. The deliberately obscure reference to our “request” only becomes clear when one reads what the County Attorney tells the OIP:

County Clerk to OIP: “The attachments to this letter consist of logs of executive sessions from 1/1/02 to 6/10/05 and copies of redacted executive sessions minutes/transcripts with explanations of the redaction. ……”

The kicker again is underlined by me. Again, the County is deciding on its own what can be kept from the public eye, not the OIP as the law requires. What this apparently confirms is that the County is only disclosing to Lewis/Chuan the un-redacted records of executive sessions; but without explicitly informing us of it, while intending to charge us for “unspecified merchandise”! This is what Walter Lewis referred to as “the pig in the poke” in his yet unpublished letter to the Garden Island; and what I have been characterizing as the County’s “shell game.”

As for having the OIP review the redacted records, the County is asking OIP officials to come to Kauai to review these, blaming the “voluminous size of the records” for wanting the OIP to do so. Yet, when you look at how many hours of regular and overtime labor by no less than fourteen members of the staff of the County Clerk’s office, for which they intend to charge Walter and me, they are either padding the numbers or their records are in such disarray as to require 156.25 hours of these fourteen staff over three days-August 12, 15 and 16- to “search”, “review” and “segregate”. Fourteen workers for three days come to 336 hours; and they claim to have spent half of those working hours doing “searching, reviewing and segregating” to meet our request?! It had to be some or all of these situations in the County Clerk’s office to accomplish this miracle:

The fourteen workers have nothing better to do in attending to their normal duties. There’s some serious feather-bedding in the Clerk’s office to have fourteen workers costing us taxpayers around $700,000 a year (including benefits). There is no such thing as proper record-keeping, as certainly required by law, in the County Clerk’s office.

I used to think the Public Works Department of our county government badly needs to have some serious financial/performance audit. If the release of a bunch of “un-redacted” records is going to cost a bargain price of $2,886.75 there had better be an audit of the County Clerk’s office as well, which would be very unfortunate, since those of us who have been long-time observers of our county government operations have had nothing but the highest regard for the skill and dedication of the staff of the Office of the County Clerk. The County will probably raise a stink about our knowing what the County Attorney told the OIP about meeting our request for records without telling us. Anything to drag this on for months and months with all the skills of our County Attorney. From our standpoint one good thing that will come out of this is the continuing coverage of this show by the news media, a situation any responsible elected officials would certainly not wish to bring upon themselves. But our elected officials apparently are so enamored of their perceived power that they would risk anything to keep the electorate from “wresting” any of that power from them, especially when it doesn’t cost them a dime to hire expensive outside lawyers out of their “deep pocket” financed by our tax money. So far the elected seven have not taken away the ability of the electing public to have access to the procurement records of this county, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they were to wrest that ability from us. I will, therefore, begin soon to report to you how much the elected are plucking from the Money Tree (AKA our tax money) to finance their campaign to keep the electing public from trying to “wrest” any power from them. Keep tuned in! It’s going to be interesting as this show continues towards November, 2006.

UPDATE: OIP opines County Attorney acting contrary and "Purposefully delay and frustrate the public's right to a record"

Click on the link below to read the entire document from OIP to the County Attorney

http://www.kauai.net/stauber/20050818%20OIP%20to%20CA.pdf

or, click on the link below to access the entire archive.

http://www.kauai.net/stauber/

The Pandering Season is upon us

A reader wrote to the forum (Amazed, GI, A4, 8-18-05) that they were "dumbstruck" at the county council's recent keen interest in run-a-way development.

Don't be dumbstruck. There is a simple explanation. It's the beginning of the pandering season. It is the soft opening of the political season signaled by an increased number of endless discussions at taxpayer expense leading to the passing of non-binding resolutions.

Non-binding resolutions are typically apple pie issues about which the council will not, or cannot do anything about except express their "concerns." They are in effect meaningless exercises with no action required. Some call it chin music, but I don't like the genre.

Public pandering expressing concern from a grab bag of self-selected issues gains positive media attention for politicians facing an upcoming election, while avoiding taking action. Given that August is "National Chicken Month" I am surprised a non-binding resolution honoring the Hawaiian moa has not been forthcoming from this council.

The purpose of non-binding resolutions are to draw attention away from the county council's hostile actions against the will of the people. Examples include suing themselves (with our money) to avoid implementing the voter approved charter amendment, and suing the State (with our money) to prevent disclosure of public records.

The writer, the Garden Island, and the County Council itself are under the delusion that council members are our "leaders", by the constant and perhaps unconscious usage of that term to describe our "elected representatives". Hopefully voters will not be dumbstruck, but keep their eyes on the prize during the upcoming election. Perhaps elected representatives serving the people can replace those mis-leaders now wasting taxpayer money on non-binding resolutions to propagandize the electorate.

ALLEGED HOSTILE TAKEOVER OF AKAKU

Aloha Folks - Notable new site developed by independent producers and media activists for Maui County, State of Hawai'i -

Citizens to Save Akaku http://www.saveakaku.org

County of Kauai denies State Office of Information Practices access to executive session minutes

The County of Kauai has (to date) refused to provide the executive session minutes requested by Ray Chuan and Walter Lewis to them. The County of Kauai (to date) has also refused to provide these documents to OIP. OIP has given the County until Aug 18, Thursday by 4:30 pm to provide all the executive session minutes to the requesters or provide them to OIP for an in camera review.

Read the entire facsimile to County Clerk Peter Nakamura, and County Attorney Lani Nakamura

A bit of levity

Things are pretty quiet around town these days. The politicians are mainly using the Garden Island and Hoike to being their campaign for re-election in 06

The Mayor: Promising hundreds of affordable housing units on free land, of undetermined zoning, from the Governor. Promoting legislation to bar Gated Communities. Directing a huge Commission for Promoting Public Access – both along and from public highway - to the Beach. Trouble is: After delaying the creation of county legislation to implement the access provisions of state legislation of 1972 for more than thirty years, there ain’t no access around as all the lands along the shore are privately owned and/or developed already. Lateral Access sounds great – like from Nawiliwili to Anahola – but, with only about three shore-ward access ways between these two terminals, it’s going to be some pretty long walks along the Lateral Access between those precious few access ways to get back to a public road.

The Concil: Great accomplishments in the improvement of the infrastructure by installing speed bumps in neighborhoods. With his usual endless run of slides showing table after table of un-readable numbers on TV, Kaipo promises to impose a lasting moratorium on new zoning for resorts between now and December, 2006. Some moratorium! Wresting back from the voting public the power to control the government’s power to control taxation, dipping into the county’s deep pocket to hire high-priced lawyers. Guess who supplies the deep pockets! Desperately trying to put off the release of public documents to the public with all kinds of pitiful excuses – like asking “What is it in these secret documents you guys want to know?” before “We can release these documents to you.”

All f which prompts me to quote below an announcement of a brilliant new discovery of a new element

* Recent discovery of the heaviest element yet known! *

A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named -Governmentium. Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 11 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

these 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton like particles called peons

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every action with which it comes into contact

A minute amount of Governmentium causes a reaction to take four days to complete, when it would normally take less than a second

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 4 years. It does not decay, but instead under-goes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as "Critical Morass."When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium - an element which radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons

* * *

There is, however, a slight improvement in the Kauai version of Governmentium: It has a higher mass of 315, the three extra and newly discovered elementary particles being Hangerons. Further research at the Los Alamos Laboratory promises to find even more of these Hangerons.

I beg your pardon for indulging in such levities; but, I hope you’ll agree with me that, having engaged in probing the deep sanctums of our government for so long, we need some relief now and then.

Till later, then, when we get back to serious business.

Hawaiian-only admission for Kamehameha School

8/7/05 TO THE FORUM

The Hawaiians have been harmed by the U.S. power and majority rule which began by what Congress has identified and decided was the United States’ wrongful participation in the demise of the Hawaiian Monarchy. At the time of the overthrow, only 40,000 native Hawaiians remained (from their original number of 300,000 or more). They were outnumbered by foreigners (50,000) then, and at other key points of decision making, the large number of foreigners dominated the political choices made in Hawaii.

John Stuart Mills' essay on Liberty states, “As like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities.

Regarding the recent Kamehameha Schools federal court decision, this is not a case where a minority child is trying to go to public school as in the rural south decades ago. The civil liberties of the non-Hawaiian child are not in jeopardy for this child is not being denied a public education

It should be remembered that the Kamehameha Schools was established by Princess Pauahi before Hawaii became a part of the United States, and that the admissions policy provides preference for Native Hawaiians, the indigenous people of Hawaii. The school does not receive federal funding, so why should a federal court strike down its Hawaiian-only admissions policy

Most Hawaiians living today are descended from thousands of orphans who survived after their parents and kupuna had succumbed to terrible diseases brought by Westerners. The Bishop Trust sought to partially rectify that loss of heritage by creating a school for Hawaiian children.

Oce this goal is met, and the Kanaka Maoli are again the majority in this land, then the mission of the founders of the Bishop Trust will be met. Until then, allow Kamehameha School to have their Hawaiian-only admission policy.

Carol Bain

Lihue, Kaua

PS- I agree with Judge Alan Kay's Nov. 17, 2003 clear and eloquent decision Doe vs. Kamehameha Schools (which I borrowed from for this letter)

Admission policy upheld

Only OHA in entitlements suit

Doe vs. Kamehameha Schools etal. Civ. No. 03-00316

UPDATE: County of Kauai Refuses to release Public Records

County of Kauai Refuses to release Public Records

This is a frequently updated collection of Public Records by Richard Stauber related to his (to date unsuccessful) attempt to obtain a transcript an Executive Session (ES-177) which the state Office of Information Practices (OIP) has opined is a PUBLIC RECORD. The County of Kauai disagrees with OIP and now the matter is in court.

See the record archive