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Solid waste and Consultants

Here we go again! Another committee to study Kauai County’s solid waste problem!

Let’s go back a decade or so to recall what all has been happening with this perennial topic that seems to accompany the prelude to the re-election campaign of our esteemed officials. A good point to start is probably the time when this county ceased to have a qualified person to manage or solid waste operation. That would be near the end of the JoAnn Yukimura mayoralty and the beginning of the Kusaka reign when the Young Untouchable took over the SW operation, having been transferred from the job of an electrical engineer in the Public Works Department to fit the job of a civil engineer for which he was not (and still isn’t now) qualified, although her majesty did promise to send the young man to school (while on the job) to get qualified – which she never did. Before JoAnn left office she paid out $150,000 for what became the Kauai County Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan – 1994. You get the impression that nobody in this government can do anything substantive, but has to hire a consultant to do everything. I became interested in the subject around 1997, when I went to the Young Untouchable to borrow a look at the 1994 Plan. As far as I could gather, there were just two copies of the Plan extant at that time, one copy being the one I borrowed from the Y.U. and the other copy was in the hands of then County Council member Randall Valenciano. Of course, nothing was done by the county to implement the Plan. Mayor Kusaka had her appointed committee to study the SW problem. It seems that the politicians believe that they must proclaim their dedication to solving this island’s SW problem in order to win at the next election. So it is almost formulaic at this time of the election cycle to hear a lot about doing something about SW. Actually, Kusaka came closest to finding a solution by having the Y.U. send out a significant number of requests for proposals in 1999 to have some company come in with a viable plan to divert a large part of the 120 tons/day of waste away from going to the Kekaha Landfill. The procurement process actually went as far as having a well attended public meeting at the Convention Center where five qualified bidders presented their plans. Four of the five had established record of building and operating the kind of facility the county was looking for – two German, one Canadian and one American company. The fifth one was Gay and Robinson from Kauai which proposed using waste plant material from cane harvesting along with municipal waste to generate electricity while reducing the flow of waste to the landfill. The beauty of the four off-island bids was that it would not cost the county a penny to design and build the facility; the bidding company would do all that, with a commitment from the county to take all its solid waste to the completed facility which would charge the county a fee based on the tonnage. All four bidding facilities would produce some by-product that would be sold. If I remember correctly, two of them would produce energy as a by-product, one would produce fertilizer and the fourth building material. The emphasis was not on the by-product, but what percentage of the solid waste input would be left at the end of the processing and would have to be taken to the landfill. The by-products were never considered the primary income-producing part of the facility. This is where our county’s officials have always had it all wrong, by touting the by-product as the primary benefit – hence always the talk about waste-to-energy process. It never penetrated their thick skulls that burning all the solid waste on this island would produce about 5 megawatts of electric energy, adding at best 5% to the electric generation on this island. In the minds of our naïve officials there is always the Magic Bullet that would dis-appear all the trash and produce all kinds of energy; and that was what attracted the attention of an outfit that at that time called itself Plasma Arc, a company that never had an operating facility and no credible data to show that it would accomplish the Magic it promises. But that’s how smart operators can take dumb officials for a ride. In our case in 1999 Plasma Arc was not selected to present its proposal to the Kauai public, for the simple reason that it had nothing real to present. Instead of just going away Plasma Arc threaten to sue to the county for not including it as one of the qualified bidders. Our County Attorney, as ignorant in technical matters as it is today, got scared by the threat of lawsuit and cancelled the procurement. That was as close as this county ever got to solving its SW problem. The Administration then asked for another $165,000 to do another procurement exercise which, as could be expected, attracted no bids. How that $165,000 was spent was, of course, never revealed. There then followed a couple of rounds of “studies” (by consultants, of course, since this county never seems to have anyone who can do anything) to find a landfill to replace the about-to-be-topped-off Kekaha Landfill. Only two sites studied were considered viable; but they were both in private hands; and the county did not want to go through any condemnation. Instead, there began talks about putting a new landfill in Hanamaulu, which ran smack into the Environmental Justice doctrine that had been proclaimed by Pres, Clinton in 1994 to stem the massive migration of chemical plants from the East and Mid West to the South to escape the mounting legislative opposition to dirty industries in the North. Following is the statement regarding Environmental Justice issued by the EPA:

“EPA defines Environmental Justice (EJ) as the ‘fair treatment for people of all races, cultures, and incomes, regarding the development of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.’ Over the past decade, attention to the impact of environmental pollution on particular segments of our society has been steadily growing. Concern that minority populations and/or low-income populations bear a disproportionate amount of adverse health and environmental effects led President Clinton to issue Executive Order 12898 in 1994, focusing Federal agency attention on these issues. EPA responded by developing the Environmental Justice Strategy which focuses on the Agency’s efforts in addressing these concerns.”

I mentioned this to some of the leaders in the Filipino community in Hanamaulu. Some words got to the Council and the Administration; and the idea of putting a landfill behind Hanamaulu was promptly abandoned. Kusaka spent some more money to buy another round of studies; and formed a big committee headed by one John Love which did nothing, and did not even issue a report. Then came Mayor Baptiste who, of course, as he approaches the election for his second term had to form his Committee to solve the SW problem. As with the Kusaka SW Committee, there are very few members with any knowledge of SW issues. As a matter of fact, of Baptiste’s fifteen some members only two can be considered to be knowledgeable. One, Jeff Kaohi happens to be the manager of the contracted operation of the Kekaha Landfill; the other, Jean Camp, has a technical background on the Mainland before she and husband retired to Kauai where she became, for a while, a consultant to Mayor Kusaka. But, hey, two is better than zero with the Kusaka SW Committee. For this island anything more than zero is cause for celebration! Turning the operation of the Kekaha Landfill to a private contractor (in this case, the largest company in the nation – Waste Management Inc) is probably the smartest thing this county has ever done. A logical next step would be to outsource the entire solid waste operation, while sending the Y.U. back to electrical engineering. But what would our officials do with their friends the Consultants?

The Role of the “Consultants” Consultants occupy an important position in the operation of our state and county governments, probably more so than on the Mainland. Here is a good example.

Our Y.U. Chief of the Solid Waste Division of the Public Works Department of this county received a rather alarming communication (dated November 5, 2004) from one Steven Chang, Chief of the Solid and Hazardous Waste Division of the State Department of Health. Subject of the communication: Incomplete Permit Application Kekaha Landfill Phase II Vertical Expansion to 85 feet

A little background material is needed here: By the fall of 2004 the earlier permit from the state to fill the Kekaha Landfill to a height of 60 feet was expiring; and the county had applied for a permit to add another 25 ft. It should be noted here that the DOH had been extending the height of the Honolulu landfill time after time until the city was recently fined $2.8 million for illegal dumping. Prior to this, two officials from the DOH had been charged with corruption about two years ago by the Environmental Crimes Unit of the State Attorney General’s Office. One had gone to trial, and had been given a light fine and probation, which elicited a protest from an environmental organization, which had initiated the investigation, that the sentence was too light.

The letter from Chang was rather alarming to two of the newer members of the Kauai County Council – Mel Rapozo and Jay Furfaro, who brought the matter up at a meeting of the Council, as it appeared to these two members the state might shut down the Kekaha Landfill if the county did not re-submit the permit application to remedy all the defects. At the November 18, 2004 Council meeting a group of five persons were invited to give testimony on this perceived crisis. The five were: Kaohi, the manager of the Landfill, the Y.U. chief of the Solid Waste Div, two members of the staff of Mr. Chang of the DOH and a representative of Earth Tech, the consultant to the SW Division. Records, including the Hoike video record of that meeting, would show that Councilman Tokioka did almost all the questioning of the witnesses. Those present at the meeting soon noticed, as the deliberations proceeded, that the questions from the Council were loaded and that, upon hearing a question, the five witnesses would exchange quick glances at one another, and one of them would give the answer. Tokioka explained to the witnesses that the Council was very concerned with the problem, so much so that it had authorized an appropriation of $93,000 to help remedy the deficiencies in the county’s application for the permit to add another 25 feet to the Kekaha Landfill. (Note: There was no record of Council action, prior to this meeting or after this meeting, to authorize the spending of the $93,000.) As the exchange between Tokioka and the five proceeded there was a definite lessoning of the tension or alarm among the Council members. Soon everything seemed to be just fine; everyone was relaxed; the Council thanked the five and went on to other matters on the Agenda.

On January 13, 2005, the DOH published a legal ad in the Garden Island noticing the DOH’s intent to issue a permit to Kauai for the 25-ft expansion of the Kekaha Landfill and asking for public comments. It turned out I was the only person to submit a two-page letter of comments which the Kauai County Deputy County Engineer Ladye Martin (who, by the way, is not an engineer but was a lawyer on loan to the Public Works Dept from the Office of the County Attorney) summarily dismissed as being irrelevant. Similar rejection of my comments was issued, in a letter dated March 23, 2005, by Thomas Arizumi, P.E., Chief of the Environmental Management Div of the State Dept of Health. Mr. Arizumi further notified me that the DOH was proceeding to issue the permit. It is interesting to note at this point in the chronology of the expansion of the Kekaha Landfill that the County of Kauai issued an amendment to the contract with Earth Tech, the consultant to the Solid Waste Division, on February 2, 2005, to add $287,000 to Earth Tech’s contract. The purpose of the amendment was stated as the “Close-out” of the Kekaha Landfill. (Not the expansion of the landfill.) As far as I am able to search the records, the appropriation of this sum was not acted upon at any County Council meeting, nor does this item appear in the published Budget for the Fiscal Year July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005, or the Fiscal Year July 1, 2003 to June 30, 2004.

It is also interesting to note that the proposal, by Mel Rapozo, for action by the County Council to perform an audit of the Solid Waste operation was rejected by the Council last week.

I suppose it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what is going on here. What’s more, there is talk now to go further with added still more trash to the Kekaha Landfill by filling the space between the old Phase I Landfill and the current Phase II Landfill. A stand-alone landfill looks like a truncated pyramid. When you put two of these side by side you’ve got an inverted pyramid in the space between them! That should be interesting! With something as novel as this one can bet the DOH would certainly give another permit! Especially with the help of a consultant.

On the other hand, with the doubling of the investigative staff in the Attorney General’s Environmental Crimes Unit, things could develop differently. Until recently the ECU had only one Special Agent; now there are two Special Agents.

UNMENTIONABLES and UNTOUCHABLES

By now the Asing Council has passed the 160 mark in the number of Executive Sessions it has held since December, 2003; whereas, in the two years prior to that the Kouchi Council, there were 41 ES’s. One would presume that some of the matters that this County Government would not want the public to know about would be special deals between the county and outside contractors, deals that are not stipulated in contracts. One such instance would be what is not covered by the Garden Island in its front page story “County evicts recycler” on Wednesday, January 4, 2006. For those who are somewhat familiar with how this county handles waste materials, including all the instances of illegal waste handling, it must be puzzling how minor the infractions Island Recycling is alleged, by the county, to have committed to warrant the summary cancellation of its contract; and further, why Island Recycling did not challenge the county’s action. When it comes to illegal handling of solid waste nobody can beat the record of this county for its seven years of stockpiling of mixed and hazardous waste on unprepared ground surface at the Lihue Transfer Station which culminated in a huge fire of suspicious origin in July, 2004, followed by an un-reported fire at the Puhi Metals Center the same night which destroyed what was left of the evidence of the mixed and hazardous waste that had been removed to Puhi from the Lihue Transfer Station during the fire.

All this, while indicative of the deplorable operation of this county’s solid waste management (which has had no qualified professional person in charge since 1995), is not directly related to the mysteries surrounding the Garden Island’s front page story of Jan 4; but does provide the background of incompetence and corruption to explain the Garden Island’s reporting of the dismissal of its contractor, Island Recycling, by the County of Kauai.

The story spans the tenures of three mayors of this island, beginning with Mayor JoAnn Yukimura (currently a member of the County Council), continuing through the administrations of Mayors Kusaka and Baptiste. It began with Hurricane Iniki, the historical wind that left the island with untold tons of debris of all descriptions the disposal of which posed a real challenge to then Mayor Yukimura. Two of her emergency measures dealing with hurricane debris – burning it in large deep trenches above Kalihiwai and burying mattresses in large pits in Anahola – were not met with accolades. The idea of placing some of the debris through some process to render it useful again was considered. An appeal to the Economic Development Administration of the Agriculture Department brought home over two million dollars in grant to build a facility in which hurricane-generated debris would be sorted and modified so as to leave the facility as products with commercial value. Thus the term “Resource Center” was applied to this new facility which was completed, though not yet put to use, by the time Mayor Kusaka came to office. Mayor Yukimura had more pressing issues to deal with in the immediate post-Iniki years, especially in securing financial resources to repair damages to county-owned properties, even though the county had $65 million in insurance coverage, because the insurance company would cover only a small percentage of the losses. Hundreds of DSR’s (damage survey reports) were bounced back from the insurance company and bounced forward to the FEMA office in Honolulu. A significant part of the county’s claims forwarded to FEMA also covered the completion of the modification of the commercial shopping center in Lihue into the present Kauai County Civic Center. FEMA wasn’t exactly pleased with the claims; and contested these with so-called “de-obligation” – meaning FEMA wanted some of the money back, especially the part covering not the repair of the renovation of the shopping center but the forward going completion of the Civic Center. Negotiations with FEMA over the de-obligation actions consumed much of the time of the mayor’s office during those years following Iniki.

Thus Mayor Kusaka’s office was not well prepared to deal with implementing the utilization of the spanking new Resource Center – which by then had earned the moniker “White Elephant”. For two years the county tried to secure a contractor to operate the Resource Center to process the debris left over from Iniki, through the publication of three “Request for Proposal” documents, none of which received any bids. Worried that the EDA might cancel the grant and ask for the return of the money, the county asked for help from the state’s Department of Business and Economic Development, which brought to Kauai, on loan, a specialist to help with the next round of RFP’s. Finally, a deal was made between Kauai County and Island Recycling of Honolulu, to operate the Resource Center in accordance with the terms of the grant from the EDA.

The county’s problems did not end with this contract to Island Recycling, for a very simple reason. There were already contracts in place, before Island Recycling came along, to handle the solid waste, the major one being, originally, Waste Management Inc., the largest waste management company in the country. WMI quit Kauai when it could not negotiate a continuation of the contract it had held with the county and was not paid for six months, leaving the county in a lurch. A group of local business people formed Garden Island Disposal to take over the business from WMI. Later, when Island Recycling came into the picture, the problem arose as how to play a zero sum game, giving work to Island Recycling without taking some of it away from GID and others such as JC Glass. The seed for conflict and discontent was thus sown.

GID was the most affected, and decided to look into the operation of Island Recycling at the Resource Center. It transpired that, after spending more than two years without success in securing a contractor, the county enticed IR to accept a contract by relieving it of the responsibility (written into its contract) of taking the unused waste stream, after it had taken what it needed to process for re-use and recycling, with its own crew and equipment, to the Kekaha Landfill – a not insubstantial cost reduction for IR. This little shenanigan was uncovered by GID whose investigator was able to get testimony from county workers at the Lihue Transfer Station (which is right next to the Resource Center) that county personnel and equipment were used to move the un-used waste to the Lihue Transfer Station and thence, by county truck and driver, to the landfill at Kekaha.

I have no direct knowledge of what transpired between GID and the County during a good part of 2004 and 2005, except to take note of the frequent appearance of Executive Session 165 (regarding the contract with Island Recycling) on the agenda of the County Council meetings. It doesn’t require much speculation to surmise that the County was trying to get out from under the mess it had created with the under-the-table deal offered to Island Recycling who, on the other hand, did not help matters by further adding fuel to the fire by encroaching even more into the waste business of existing contractors on the island.

It may well help to clear up much of the un-answered questions raised by the Garden Island report of January 4 on the eviction of Island Recycling if the journalistic sleuths of TGI would request the County Council to release the minutes of ES-165. Direct contacts with GID as well as Island Recycling should shed further light on the numerous UNMENTIONABLES buried under the White Elephant.

In hind sight, it would have been better and cheaper for the county to give back the two million dollars to the EDA to get out from under the commitment when you consider the legal expenses the county must have incurred since its clever little deal with Island Recycling was unmasked. The current County Council would thereby also learn the benefits of maintaining TRANSPARENCY in discharging its official duties under the current Council Chair.

THE UNTOUCHABLES

Over the years many of the Nitpickers have noticed that certain officials in the County Government, generally in the first or second level of supervision, seem to be immune from criticism for their malfeasance and their assurance of retiring after completing their High Three -highest salary in the last three years of service which in the examples of the three or four recent retirees meant salaries in the low nineties, significantly higher than that of the mayor. Notable among recent retirees are John Apana and Russell Sugano. The former “cleaned up” the mess left by a contractor for handling junk cars who simply walked away from his yard near the Lihue Airport a few years ago, by simply digging a hole one fine night and burying the mess, instead of moving the hazardous waste with proper care to the Kekaha Landfill, the act reportedly witnessed by a member of the County Council. Upon discovering this transgression the State Department of Health levied a fine of $50,000 against the County of Kauai. The Mayor’s Office haggled with the DOH for months to get the fine reduced ultimately to $15,000, all the while explaining that what happened was not an act of malfeasance but the over-zealousness of an employee in doing his job well.

Then there was the head of the Roads Division who hardly ever stepped outside his office while the public clamored for the filling of pot-holes and broken pavements all over the island – except for Haleilio Road which, always in top shape, happens to lead to the residences of some top County officials. Three of these Untouchables have retired in recent years, opening the opportunity for some new and, hopefully, diligent talents to fill the important positions, including, not the least, that of the County Engineer.

But, what about the Untouchables who are still too young to retire? Such as the person who has had various titles but the same job of “managing” the county’s Solid Waste Program, the job which he is famously known not to be qualified for; and, when challenged by some among the Nitpickers, Mayor Kusaka promised to send him to school to become qualified. Regrettably, Her Honor never fulfilled her promise. In the mean time, the cost of running the Solid Waste Program keeps rising from year to year, standing now at near nine million dollars, compared to $6.6 million in FY2002. When faced with similar untouchable problems, former Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris promoted the untouchables to positions where they essentially did nothing; and filled their positions with younger people willing and able to do their jobs. In two years Harris reportedly saved $45 million; and the jobs got done. The obvious solution to our SW Untouchable is to put him in an empty office to while away time; and filling his vacated position with someone who is qualified. Since the Untouchable hardly ever does anything of any substance without paying a “consultant” to do it, the savings in eliminating the consultant with the arrival of the qualified solid waste manager would more than make up for the cost of keeping the Untouchable on the county payroll. This brilliant advice I am giving the Mayor and the Council for free, again, just as I did for helping them out of the landfill dilemma recently.

Solid Waste Insanity

The Garden Island had a big spread today about the great new plans of the Department of Public Works to deal with our solid waste management problems, as I alluded to in my last commentary. When is this government going to stop this insanity of endlessly looking for the magic bullet to solve all our solid waste problems? Before answering this rhetorical question it is absolutely essential that we recognize a few fundamental facts.

1.There are existing methods for processing solid waste to fit all sizes of communities and all types of waste.

2.There are no magic bullets.

3.The solid waste issues on Kauai are not unique or fundamentally different from those of similar size communities in all the civilized countries.

4. It does not require any consultants to tell us what to do if we have any intelligent and competent managers at all. We basically just open some catalogs to pick out the system to adopt.

5. The public should recognize that our state’s home-grown consultants have a reputation of being an important cog in the corruption machine that dominates significant parts of our county and state governments.

We don’t need to spend another quarter million dollars on another consultant report, because this county came very close to launch a real program to deal with its solid waste management problems back in 1999. This is the history:

By some strange twist of fate and without the help of a consultant this county did stumble almost into a solution to its solid waste problems in 1999, with the issuance of a request for proposal to the waste industry to come up with a facility to divert a significant part of our total waste stream so as to extend the life of the Kekaha Landfill. A small number of qualified bidders were invited to present their proposals to the public at the Convention Center. If I remember correctly, there were two German outfits, one Canadian, one American and one home-grown (Gay and Robinson). With the exception of Gay and Robinson, all had existing solid waste processing facilities of various sizes in operation. G & R, which had an existing facility for burning bagasse (the waste cane after the extraction of sugar) to get rid of it and, as a by-product, generate some electricity for its own consumption, offered to modify the facility to handle municipal solid waste.

All these proposals had an essential feature the importance of which our financial and legal people did not seem to understand. Each of these proposed facilities would be built by and at the expense of the proposer on county land, and would recover its investment through charging the county or a commercial hauler a tipping fee ($ per ton of incoming waste) and selling on the open market some of the useful end products of the facility’s operation. Besides certain amounts of waste heat and waste gases the useful products, aside from inert ash or solids, would be heat, solid or liquid fuel, electricity, fertilizer. It is important to recognize that these useful by-products do not constitute any significant dollar value compared to the over-all cost of the solid waste operation. It is a simple mistake, borne of technical illiteracy, to place a high value to these by-products, such as the frequent reference to the process of waste-to-energy conversion as if that were of some importance. The goal is to reduce the volume and weight of the waste stream as much as possible so as to extend the life of the landfill. The typical municipal solid waste can hardly be considered an efficient fuel. For example, burning all 220 tons per day of our solid waste (the figure quoted from the Garden Island report, which I think is a bit too high) would only produce at most about 10mw of electricity, not much compared to the over 100mw KIUC generates.

Did the county enter into a contract with any of the finalists? No, it did not; because one bidder who was deemed unqualified, threatened to sue the county. This was the infamous Plasma Arc outfit that was nothing short of a scam; yet the county let this opportunity go by; and asked the Council for another $165,000 to re-bid the project, which the Administration never did, though the $165,000 disappeared. Since then nothing has happened. No new landfill sited, no effort at achieving meaningful recycling; the feeble attempt at utilizing the Resource Center (popularly known as the White Elephant) in order to satisfy the condition by which the federal government gave the county $2.5 million to build the Center turned into a legal nightmare which is not yet resolved. After paying a consultant $100,000 to develop a set of criteria for siting a new landfill that turned out to be useless, the county proposed to build a new landfill in Hanalmaulu, only to be shot down by the community under the federal doctrine of Environmental Justice. (EJ was a doctrine promulgated by President Clinton to stop the practice of highly polluting chemical plants moving from the Mid West into economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in the South.)

The only other event of some note was the illegal stockpiling of mixed waste at the Lihue Transfer Station over a period of some seven years until there was no more space when a fire of suspicious origin miraculously eliminated the evidence one fine day in July 2004. A complaint filed by the Limu Coalition to the Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste of the State Department of Health in August was never answered. The case is now believed to be at the Environmental Crimes Unit of the State Attorney General’s office.

With elections coming up in less than a year the politicians have pulled out their perennial slogan of solving the county’s solid waste problem, this time with the idea of filling up the space between the old Kekaha Landfill and the current Phase 2 Kekaha Landfill, sort of filling the space between two adjacent pyramids with an inverted pyramid. Again, as with the latest vertical 25-foot expansion, the community of Kekaha was not consulted. It is quite likely that this not very smart idea will be killed by the Kekaha community invoking the Environmental Justice Doctrine.

Since the county has a deep pocket lined with the ever-rising property tax exacted from the home owners on this island, another several hundred thousand dollars will be given to some consultant to develop yet another Plan, thus putting off again the onus of taking meaningful action, confident that the county’s consultant will again be able to negotiate another series of permits from the Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste in Honolulu, unless the move is thwarted by the feds waving the EJ banner.

The people on this island are highly unlikely to get a new landfill or some magical waste converter; but the politicians will have plenty to brag about between now and next November.

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.

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.

And update on the Adventures of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

First of all, let’s sort out the various requests, responses and lawsuits surrounding the fundamental issue of Open Government. Hawaii Revised Statutes Chapter 92 (the Sunshine

Capter 92-1 Declaration of policy and intent . In a democracy, the people are vested with the ultimate decision-making power. Governmental agencies exist to aid the people in the formation and conduct of public policy. Opening up the governmental processes to public scrutiny and participation is the only viable and reasonable method of protecting the public’s interest. Therefore, the legislature declares that it is the policy of this State that the formation and conduct of public policy – the discussions, deliberations, decisions, and action of governmental agencies – shall be conducted as openly as possible. To implement this policy the legislature declares that:

(1)It is the intent of this part to protect the people’s right to know; (2) The provisions requiring open meetings shall be liberally constructed; and (3) The provisions providing for exceptions to the open meeting requirements shall be strictly construed against closed meetings.

The current Kauai County Council, under the chairmanship of Katipo Asing and aided and abetted by County Attorney Lani Nakazawa, has failed to comply with these simple and basic requirements of the law. Under the chairmanship of Ron Kouchi, the Council went into Executive Sessions 41 times during the two years 2001 to 2003. Since the Asing Council took charge the frequency at which the Council went into executive session has accelerated significantly. The Asing Council adopted the same numbering system to designate these sessions closed to the public, beginning with Executive Session 42. In the agenda for the Council meeting on July 14, 2005 there are four executive sessions, ending with ES-187.

In other words, since Kaipo Asing assumed the chairmanship of the Kauai County Council the body will have gone into secret sessions one hundred and forty-six times by the end of this week! What more need we say?

The current spate of activities began with members of the public requesting the release of the minutes of the ES-177 (January 20, 2005) in April, 2005. To date the Council has not responded to the request, despite numerous communications from the Office of Information Practices (OIP), the state agency charged with the responsibility of monitoring compliance with the Sunshine Law. Instead of complying with the Sunshine Law and releasing the information to the public the Kauai Council has filed a lawsuit against the OIP! The OIP has responded by asking the Fifth Circuit Court in Kauai to dismiss the County’s suit, on the basis of citations from various statutes which say, basically:

“…While a person has a right to bring a civil action in circuit court to appeal a denial of access to a government record, a government agency dissatisfied with an administrative ruling by the OIP does not have the right to bring an action in circuit court to contest the OIP ruling. The legislative intent for expediency and uniformity in providing access to government records would be frustrated by agencies suing each other.”

The OIP further cites HRS 632-1 (1993) which expressly provides that where a statute provides a special form of remedy, that remedy shall be followed – the “remedy” here being the release of government records to the public pursuant to the Sunshine Law.

The hearing by the Fifth Circuit on the OIP’s motion to dismiss the County suit is scheduled for August, 2005, at 1:00 p.m.

* * * * In the mean time, Walter Lewis (of Ohanal Kauai) and I have filed a request to the County Council for records on all executive sessions held since Kaipo Asing became the chairman. The Council, as expected, did not respond positively to our request within the ten-working-day statutory requirement, thus setting the stage for what would likely be a protracted court action, for which we are fully prepared to pursue. The County, in the person of the County Clerk, did communicate with us with a note that there would have to be some delay in releasing the records, because, I quote here from County Clerk’s letter to us:

“In order to assist in identifying and searching for the specific types of records described in your inquiry above, I am requesting a further description or clarification of requested records in instances where you may have any knowledge whatsoever (underscoring ours):

1. Where the authorization of the executive meeting pursuant to the recorded vote of two-thirds of the Kauai County Council members did not occur; or 2. Where the discussions and deliberations of the Council at the executive meeting did not strictly conform to a lawful purpose or subject described in the notice of such meeting.”

After scratching my head in wonderment I asked the rhetorical question “But that’s exactly parts of what we want to find out by reviewing the requested records!!” Our reply to the puzzling request from the County Clerk concluded with the following:

“…Please advise how you expected that we might have information as to the discussions and deliberations of the Council at the executive meetings and whether they strictly conformed to the purposes or subject described in the notice of the meeting when your office has withheld such information from public view. …”

This is getting weird! Some Prince Charming better come quick to the rescue of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs!The amount of documents relevant to this open-government issue is increasing at some horrendous rate. Fortunately, Ed Coll has compiled the information on a website that will be continuously updated: http://kauai.net/stauber/index.html which should help you keep up with the continuing misadventures of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Ray

Further adventures of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

There is a very good article in today’s (Sunday, June 26) Advertiser entitled “The worst-laid plans” It’s all about the ineptness and corruption of the Hawaii State government. Everything said in the article applies to Kauai, only Kauai is worse.

In the mean time, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs are continuing their wild dash to immortality. While singing “Hi Ho! Hi Ho! It’s Off to Court We Go!”, causing the following to appear in the calendar of the Fifth Circuit Court: “County of Kauai, et al. v. Office of Information Practices: Civ. No. 05-1-0088”, the Seven Dwarfs forgot to vote to file the lawsuit in an open session of the Council! For that matter, neither was there an executive session to discuss filing such a lawsuit. Even then, of course, the decision to file would have to be voted on in an open session of the Council. A pertinent question at this juncture would be “Has Snow White taken over command altogether?” It would be interesting to find out how she got all the Seven Dwarfs to sign on to the lawsuit against the OIP

Having skipped the decision process, however, Snow White did put in this week’s Council meeting agenda a Request for authorization to expend up to $100,000 from the “special counsel fund” to represent the County and County personnel and entities. Now that opens up another question, that of fiscal accountability. In the current fiscal year (which ends on June 30, 2005, the day of the Council meeting) the budget of the Office of the County Attorney list $300,000 for the hiring of “special counsel”. If you add up all the times the County Attorney has asked for such appropriations the total would long ago have exceeded the $300,000. To be procedurally correct, the Council should state that the money would come out of the “Un-encumbered Surplus” which was over $7 million in the Fiscal Year 2004-2005; and is believed to be over $8 million in the coming FY, this Slush Fund having grown from around $2 million five or so years ago to the current $8 million, apparently more than sufficient to cover such items as impromptu contracts to hire their favorite Honolulu lawyers, or one of their favorite consultants to pave the way for an easy permit from the State Dept of Health to allow the County to pile another 25 feet on top of the 65-foot high Kekaha Landfill, etc., etc,…

It is becoming pretty obvious that Kauai County has indeed a Deep Pocket when it comes to defending itself from, for instance, lawsuits from members of the public in this county, which leads to the Ultimate Irony that Kauai County’s Deep Pocket is financed by the taxpayers of this county! It would be very interesting to see how Kauai County vs OIPdevelops in the coming weeks. The hearing for this case is currently scheduled for July 14.

********* ***********

In the mean time Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs have been very quiet about another Request (by Walter Lewis and me) that has come their way, asking for the minutes of all the executive sessions the Kauai County Council has conducted since the Kaipo Asing Council took over in December, 2002. The request was received by the Council Clerk on June 13, 2005; and the law requires that the Council respond within ten business days, which means the Council would have responded by June 25, which it has not. We have, therefore, notified OIP of this failure to respond. It is anticipated that OIP would presently ask the Kauai Council for the records of all these executive sessions (of which we believe there are over one hundred and forty by now) in order to review and render opinions thereon. Some of these we know for certain were held illegally, such as the interviews of nominees for various commissions and boards; and other secret meetings dealing with the spending of public funds. If Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs persist in denying the public what the law says the public is entitled to there will invariably be another lawsuit. We believe this is the only way the public on this island would ever learn how deliberately and illegally this council has not complied with the Sunshine Law; and that only through litigation can we hope to open up this utterly corrupt and arrogant government of ours. Success in such litigations would also, I hope, lead to financial and performance audit, which this county has never had, that would further expose the depth of deception and corruption in which this county government has been operating for far too many years.

********* ************

An ominous new development mysteriously promulgated by the Mayor surfaced this past week when Baptiste announced at a meeting of the Police Commission that the County Attorney’s Office is withdrawing all legal counsel and support for commissions and boards in the County of Kauai. No reasons were offered by the Mayor, nor did he reveal under what authority or custom he was making this decision. It is curious that this momentous announcement was delivered only at the Police Commission. Whether similar announcements will be made at other commissions, such as the Planning Commission and the Charter-mandated decadal Charter Review Commission, both of which obviously, by the nature of their work, need legal counsel at all times. The Mayor ‘s suggested (only suggested, mind you) substitute for the legal counsel present at the commission meetings is the installation of close-circuit TV between the commission meetings and the County Attorney’s Office, but without assigning any attorney to monitor the television coverage. According to the Mayor, the attorneys would attend to their assigned duties at the County Attorney’s Office, but would occasionally and casually glance at the TV monitor. This is almost laughable! What if some tricky legal question comes up at a commission meeting, but nobody is paying any attention to the TV while attending to their assigned duties? So a legal issue is created. Whose fault is it then?

A darker motive seems to emerge, in my conspiracy-dominated thinking, of course. Legal mistakes and problems arising out of commission meetings would give the Mayor and the Council the excuse to force through changes in the organization and membership in ways that would ultimately shift the real responsibility from these commissions to the Administration and the Council, in one giant step toward what I believe is the ultimate goal of the Snow White and Seven Dwarfs cabal to gain complete and absolute control of this county government. I believe the stage was set when the Mayor and the Council would not assign a lawyer to support the Charter Review Commission; delayed for months and possibly for good, any Hoike coverage of the Commission meetings; assigned, for many months, different meeting rooms for the Commission meetings so the public would lose track of when and where to go observe the Commission at work. In other words, keep the Charter Review Commission working in isolation from the public, to disable the effectiveness of the Commission so that any meaningful recommendations for changes in the Kauai County Charter – such as Term Limits and Councilmanic Districting - which we can be sure would be inimical to the interests of this mayor and this council, would never get on the ballots in November 2006. With the current Planning Commission and the current Planning Department, I suppose having or not having legal counsel would make no difference anyway, as the Commission, without any support in the way of the laws and rules nor the backgrounds of major issues from the Department, would just go on approving anything that comes along anyway. Sounds cynical but, unfortunately, too true!

With that, I come back to the theme I have been advocating for some time. The only effective way to correct the ways and the culture in which this government operates – most of the time against the interest of the public – is to take this government to court, directly or indirectly, even if it means having to suffer the ultimate insult of our providing the deep pocket for the government to fight the lawsuits.

On that note of irony I conclude this week’s report.

Ray

OIP vs County

Sunday, June 19, 2005 An update on the continuing efforts on the part of the County Attorney and the Kauai County Council to thwart the public’s right to information. The simplest description of the situation is: It’s going from ridiculous to pathetic.

Our account of this sad saga on May 29 told of the OIP’s order to the County to open its records to the public by June 3, 2005, as well as to remind the County that OIP’s opinion regarding this matter had not changed from that expressed in its first letter on this matter on April 14, 2005. One thing seems to emerge, that the County Attorney’s diligence in attending to her perceived duty to serve the County of Kauai and its County Council is exemplary, and should be made known to all other County employees. Wasting no time after receiving another deadline set by the OIP for June 3, 2005, our County Attorney fired off another excuse to the OIP on that date.

In an earlier attempt at delays the CA had asked the OIP to designate what parts of the minutes of the January 20 ES-177 Executive Session should be off limits to the public, with the OIP responding that it should be clear to the CA, as the attorney for the Council, what parts should be considered not for public disclosure, that it was not the OIP’s job to do the Kauai CA’s chores. Well, as another attempt at delaying the inevitable, the CA in her June 3 letter again argued with the OIP over various irrelevant issues, and again asked the OIP to tell her what should be withheld from the public. This time the OIP, obviously getting pretty sick and tired, said, in effect, in its response on June8: “Okay, we’ll do it for you, just to avoid any further delay; but we question your motivation in asking us to do this.”

The OIP concluded its June 8 letter with:

“We do not believe that any further delay in allowing Mr. Ching and Mr. Stauber access to the minutes is justified. Given the limited amount of material that we believe may be segregated and the unjustified delay in the County’s response to Mr. Ching and Mr. Stauber, we believe that the County should make the minutes, minus the portion that we have identified, available to Mr. Ching and Mr. Stauber by the close of business on Thursday, June 9. Any further delay by the County in disclosing the minutes in accordance with our opinion cannot be considered to be in good faith. See Haw. Rev. Stat. § 92F-16 (1993).”

Ah, but the OIP still had not caught on to the infinite resource of our County Attorney!

Our CA fired off another letter to the OIP at 5:59 p.m., June 8. Hard-working people in our County Attorney Office, No?

This time the CA told the OIP the Council wanted some more time to provide the OIP with the Council’s position regarding the appropriateness of ES-177 – (which the County had been doing since mid-April, of course) The OIP reluctantly gave the County another deadline for June 14.

By now there is one thing you are pretty sure of; and that is the infinite resourcefulness of our CA. So this next missive from the CA to the OIP should come as no surprise to you. Nevertheless, this latest one is a real gem! The CA tells the OIP the County wants to explain its position as to the legality of its refusal to abide by the Sunshine Law. BUT, the CA wants what the County says in the letter and any attachments to be considered confidential and that the OIP must commit itself to maintaining such confidentiality. Here’s some of the OIP’s response in its letter to our CA dated June 17, 2005:

“Because of that condition, we have not reviewed the attachments to your letter. We simply cannot agree to the County’s condition that the letter and attachments are confidential. Absent a statute or other such authority, a state or county agency cannot deem a record to be confidential by agreement, contract or otherwise. All government records, including the County’s letter and attachments, are subject to disclosure under Chapter 92F, HRS. Accordingly, at your direction, we have not considered the County’s submission and are returning your letter and attachments to you. We have not retained any copies of either the letter or attachments.

Also, we note that your letter states that the County’s purpose in providing us with its position is “to attempt to compromise [its] dispute with the OIP[.]” Please be advised that we have no statutory authority to “compromise” or otherwise negotiate a “settlement” of this matter. Moreover, given the express policy of the Sunshine Law and the Uniform Information Practices Act (modified), we do not believe that either we or the County can “compromise” the public’s right to know. ……….”

Wow!! So, that’s how matters stood as of close of business on June 17, 2005.

As you wait, with bated breath, for the next episode in the Saga of the Kauai County Council and its County Attorney, let’s switch to a different topic.

With or Without Sovereignty Some Smart Hawaiians Do Very Well!

About three years ago there was a lot of excavation activities in Anahola, with crews digging long tunnels to bury what turned out to be fiber-optic cables. The cable, starting at Anahola, was to go all the way around the island to Kekaha. Part way around, the cable branched out to go under the sea to reach the other islands. Upon some inquiry I learned that this was a half-billion dollar project to bring the Internet to the Hawaiians living on Hawaiian Homelands on all the islands in this state. First established in the early 1920’s, these lands were supposed to be leased to Native Hawaiians to build homes on, with a target of 25,000 homes. Exact numbers are difficult to come by, but by 2000 there were somewhere around a thousand homes built under this plan, with a few dozen in Anahola. Upon inquiry with some Hawaiian friends I learned that even though this expensive system started in Anahola, the hook-up with the Internet was never effected, because every Hawaii home that wanted a telephone already had one installed by the regular telephone company, including connection to the Internet for those that wanted it.

All this came out of a move way back to bring electricity to rural areas in America which, among other big projects, led to the Tennessee Valley Authority. Further, as all the farm areas got electrified the feds decided they needed telephone service. So every phone user in the country pays a special fee every month to support this service to so-called “under-served populations”. Currently, every telephone user in this country pays about $2 a month into a Universal Service Fund. This naturally provides some fantastic business opportunities for some smart operators. In Hawaii the enterprise took the form of Sandwich Isles Communications which counts among its principal officers some of the more influential smart Hawaiians. One is also a trustee of Kamehameha Schools, one of the largest charities in the nation. Another is from the well-established Hee family, one of whose brothers is now a state legislator and, before that, a trustee in the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, while the other brother serves as one of the officers of Sandwich. Isles Communications.

A friend of mine with the Wall Street Journal heard about this great opportunity to build a financial behemoth out of the public dole, and tried to get a story on it in the WSJ, only to discover that U.S. News had already started on a story which, surprisingly, did not create much interest two years ago. Now, however, the Honolulu Advertiser has come out with a fairly complete story about this enterprise built upon the good hearts of the American consumers in its Sunday, June 19 edition.

The Advertiser’s research found that the nation-wide average subsidy for under-served telephone users is $130 per customer. For a farm state like Kansas the subsidy is $559 per line. For Hawaii – hold your breath – it is $13,641 per line! A hundred times the national average! And you really can’t work out the subsidy per line for Kauai since there isn’t any service even though the fiber-optic cable is there and there is even an office in Lihue, with a full time manager who is kanaka and a recently retired high official in the County government.

It looks like the hard-working kanaka like our friend Kane Pa and his colleagues, who set up banners and wave flags along Kuhio Highway day in and day out advocating for Sovereignty, ought to wise up and get in the communications business, and achieve sovereignty sitting in plush offices with no “under-served” customers.

Just out of curiosity I checked my phone bills and discovered the following:

Verizon land line – Universal Service Fee = $0.73
Verizon DSL – Federal Universal Service Fund Recovery Fee = $2.88
Sprint Long Distance – Carrier Universal Service Charge = $1.41
Cingular Wireless – Public Service Tax = $1.78

Total, each month = $6.80

Yikes!! I didn’t know I was such a great philanthropist?!

Enough for now!

Ray

Police

While still collecting property assessment and tax data, just for a change of scenery I've looked a bit into the mysterious things going on with the Council, the Police Commission, the Police Department and the Police Chief.While still collecting property assessment and tax data, just for a change of scenery I've looked a bit into the mysterious things going on with the Council, the Police Commission, the Police Department and the Police Chief.

In the matter of the Chief there seems to be no question that certain forces within the Police, the Police Commission and the Council want to oust the Chief. The Chief was slandered by Police Commissioner Leon Gonsalves some time around October 14, 2004, with a racial slur and other unkind words. Pertinent parts of the e-mail sent by the Commissioner are: ".Aloha and a good evening. Tomorrow is the swearing in for Hop-Sing and Little Joe, I wouldn't be there, thank Good (sic) I think I might throw up. Well you guys enjoy. "

Well, our officials seem to have a knack for getting national attention, such as the front page story about the Garbage Island when Mayor Kusaka allowed junk cars to litter our major highways; and more recently with national reports about racial slurs directed at the newly appointed Chief of Police. Just as Mayor Kusaka promptly towed away the junk cars, Mayor Baptiste decided, on November 17, 2004, a month after the celebrated Hop Sing and Little Joe publicity, to remove Police Commissioner Gonsalves with a letter to the Council asking for Council approval to remove Gonsalves, as required by the County Charter.

The communication to the Council contained the usual officialese: "

My decision to request Mr. Gonsalves' removal from the Commission has little to do with whether his remarks in the controversial email message (attached) were racially prejudiced or not, I believe that Leon Gonsalves is a good man who has remained a steadfast public servant, evident over the years through his numerous volunteer roles in our community.My decision to request Mr. Gonsalves' removal from the Commission has little to do with whether his remarks in the controversial email message (attached) were racially prejudiced or not, I believe that Leon Gonsalves is a good man who has remained a steadfast public servant, evident over the years through his numerous volunteer roles in our community.

I came to this decision after discussion with Mr.

Gonsalves, the Commissioners, the Chief and Deputy Chief, members of KPD, and numerous members of our community. I am motivated primarily by my strong belief that, as a result of these comments, Leon can no longer function effectively as a Police

Commissioner."

"..Therefore, I am requesting your concurrence with my decision so a successor may be nominated and we can move forward in the matters relating to the department. "

Five months later, nothing has happened. A majority of the Council reportedly would not go along with the Mayor's recommendation. At the same time, the move to remove Chief Lum seemed to intensify. There were all kinds of innuendos about some investigation of the Commission and the Department; and there have been moves further to disable the Commission by putting off indefinitely the approval of the Mayor's nomination of Commissioner Carol Furtado for a second term on the Commission. She was first grilled (polite term would be interviewed) in a secret session of the Council that was declared illegal under the Sunshine Law by the OIP. The Council seemed to have been more than happy to carry on the inquisition in a subsequent open session. I was sitting in the front row at that session, just a few feet from Council Member, and Ex Deputy Prosecutor, Shaylene Isera-Carvalho; and was amazed at her display of her prosecutorial best in the manner she "interviewed" Carol Furtado. What surprised me the most was the pure venom in her eyes as she proceeded, with help from Council Member Rapozo (an ex police officer with the KPD), in her inquisition. At the end of that the Council would not vote, but deferred the matter for weeks more. In the interim the Commission sometimes could only muster three members at its meetings.

The next act may be surfacing! Buried in Page 3 of the 7-page Council Meeting Agenda for Thursday, April 28, among thirteen communications, is this: C2005-174 Communication (11/17/2004) from the Mayor, requesting Council approval to remove Leon Gonsalves, Sr. as a member of the Kauai Police Commission. (See Resolution No. 2005-35)

Sure enough! On Page 5 of the Agenda there is: Resolution 2005-35, Resolution Repealing Resolution No. 2004-03 Relating to Mayoral Appointment to the Police Commission (Leon Gonsalves, Sr., First Term) Interestingly enough, there is also this:

Resolution No. 2005-06, Resolution Confirming Mayoral Re-appointment to the Police Commission (Carol Furtado, Second Term) (Deferred 3/31/05) But, don&rsquot heave your sigh of relief yet! The Council can vote NO on both of these!

&ldquoNO&rdquo votes on these two resolutions would mean a decided escalation of the Council&rsquos assault on the Police Commission, Police Department and Police Chief K. C. Lum.

Could there be two &ldquoYES&rdquo votes? Yes, and my speculation is that this would only happen because the Council decided it is wiser, at least for now, to make a deal with the Chief whereby he would drop his Civil Rights lawsuit against the County in exchange for a brief interlude of relative tranquility, to allow the Government of the County of Kauai to return to its Public Relations style of pretending to be conducting its business. At this moment it is probably more important for our elected officials to spend their energy at assuring they can extract an additional 15 million dollars&rsquo worth of property tax from us, before their traditional pronouncement at the end of June that they have again not raised the TAX RATE (the word &lsquorate&rsquo is silent, of course) in balancing the County Budget.

That's enough for one evening's writing. I better get this off into the e-mail circuit.

Ray

Day of Infamy

Day of Infamy March 16, 2005 will go down in Kauai history as Black Wednesday, or Day of Infamy. I began receiving first-time calls from people in panic that very day; and the calls haven&rsquot stopped. In fact, I am having trouble writing this message.

Let me skip to the end of this message first by announcing that, with a small number of friends, I have decided the only relief the taxpayers can hope for is a CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST THE COUNTY OF KAUAI. I have no doubt the ranks of victims who have been injured by the willful violations of their own tax laws by the elected officials of the County of Kauai will swell exponentially once the word gets out.

But I have to warn you of the ultimate irony and insult that will accompany this lawsuit. Our money extracted from us by these crooked officials will pay for high-priced lawyers from Honolulu to defend the County!

There is perhaps no better way to start this message of awakening by quoting from a letter in today&rsquos Garden Island by someone unknown to me but about whom I have received a couple of calls extolling this person&rsquos credentials. Here is Steve Faunce's column:

With that letter as an introduction I immediately fired off a response to the Garden Island:

Ray Chuan letter to TGI (Don't know if it will be published)

It's interesting how reader Steve Faunce described as a sensible and logical way to raise property tax revenues to support the services provided by the County of Kauai is precisely what is mandated in Chapter 5A, Kauai County Tax Code: Figure out how much you need, then figure out a tax rate to apply to the assessed value of real property (whatever that may be, depending on the real estate market)to yield the necessary revenue. Clearly, the County government has been doing it backwards!

Figure out the assessed value first. Then, without changing the rate, come out with the revenue. In a rising real estate market that calculated value will, of course, keep rising. The incredibly candid words of Mayor Baptiste, as reported in the Garden Island on March 16, descbribed precisely how the County has been violating its own Tax Code all these years!!

Our county government is the only one in the nation that DOES NOT explain on the property tax statement it sends out to the property owner how that number is arrived at. The latter just says "This is how much you owe." What is hidden, of course, is the TAX RATE, which magically does not change by more than a few insignificant percentage points, when the assessment could increase by as much as three hundred percent, as has been happening around the island.

To add insult to injury, both the Council Chair and the Mayor boastfully announce every year near the beginning of the new Fiscal Year: "We have again not raised the TAX!" Carefully left out, and apparently with the desired result of keeping the taxpayers in the dark, is the little word RATE! This deception has been used so many times that our officials are obviously starting to believe in it themselves, as was apparently revealed by His Honor the Mayor himself on the front page of the Garden Island.

A good example of this deception on the part of the Council was revealed during the well attended meeting at the Convention Center when Chair Kaipo Asing, with his slide show, told the audience how he had actually reduced the TAX by showing a bunch of new TAX RATES that differed from their previous values by maybe three or four percent. What he did not point out on the same slides was that the assessment had gone up 61%!!

Since the County government has, in effect, boasted how it has been violating its own tax code all these years, the logical solution would be for all the elected officials - the seven members of the Council and the Mayor- to resign immediately. The only effective alternative to this would have to be a taxpayers revolt through a class action lawsuit against the County of Kauai.

The final irony in this drama is that the County government will be using, guess what, our money to hire high-priced lawyers to defend itself. If these officials have any conscience at all at this point, they should resign and not squander any more of our money!

The reason for the shock delivered to the taxpayers this year may well be that the Assessor&rsquos Office no longer has over it an experienced and dedicated Deputy Finance Director. In essence, the Assessors now think they can go all the way to maximize the real property tax revenue for the coming year. And the Mayor was proud to announce that to the public in his Wednesday, March 16 pronouncement in the Garden Island.

I have a feeling this county government has opened the gate, inadvertently of course, to a torrent of outrage on the part of the taxpayers. Please pass this message to everyone you know. We will do whatever we can to get the message out to the general public as soon as possible.

In the mean time I will prepare another message that will try to explain why we think the County has been violating its own Tax Code all these years, by quoting for you appropriate passages in this 75-page document.

What we will need the most in preparing this lawsuit are examples of serious injuries being done to property owners, especially modest income locals and Native Hawaiians who, by their cultural background, are not prone to complain to the government, but more often than not, suffer in silence, as they give up their homes and move in with relatives or move to Las Vegas.

Just to keep you awake let me close by citing a case to show how crazy this tax scheme can be. The assessment of land along the shore of Hanalei Bay is somewhere around $12 million an acre. At a tax rate of, say, $4.50 per thousand, the tax on the land alone for this parcel of around half an acre would be $27,000! What is the tax bill on this property? $25.00. Twenty-five dollars, that is. You figure it out!