LIHU‘E — A trio of experts on the workings of local government say while the existing “strong mayor” system has its faults, those problems can be addressed through elections, downplaying the need for a proposed switch to a council-county manager system.
Panelists David Callies, Jan TenBruggencate and John Whalen largely agreed throughout a public meeting sponsored by the county Charter Review Commission’s County Governance Committee, Wednesday, at the War Memorial Convention Hall.
“I don’t know that there’s anything in the constitution that guarantees” the mayoral form of government, said Callies, a University of Hawai‘i William S. Richardson School of Law professor, “but there are some pretty strong hints.”
Callies’ legal analysis echoed the opinion released to the public by the Office of the County Attorney a day earlier, which said that at least one county manager proposal — there are reportedly up to 100 different incarnations nationwide — would be illegal in Hawai‘i because removing the mayoral veto power would raise concerns about checks and balances between branches of government.
“The people here were partial to the status quo,” Kapa‘a resident Glenn Mickens, an outspoken proponent of the proposed switch to a county manager system, said following the meeting.
Callies said that while there is no “specific prohibition” in state law against a county manager, just because it doesn’t say you can’t does not mean you can. He said the “home rule” provisions that decentralize power in government are “abysmally weak” in Hawai‘i, meaning the “all-powerful nature of the state” government can overrule any county decisions virtually at any time.
“The authority of the Charter Review Commission extends only as far as the state allows it to extend,” he said, adding that it would be difficult to “virtually abolish the mayor” because a system of checks and balances is “what the state has in mind.”
TenBruggencate, a retired Honolulu Advertiser writer and current communications consultant who covered Kaua‘i politics from 1971 to 2006, said the Board of Supervisors, which was replaced by the current council-mayor system in 1968, concentrated “too much power in one place.”
“Everyone knew the system was corrupt,” he said.
While the three other counties in the state have stronger mayors than Kaua‘i — the ability to directly appoint department heads varies from island to island — it is not a ceremonial position like some places.
Responding to one of a handful of questions from the public that had been filtered through moderator Bill Dahle and facilitator Diane Zachary, TenBruggencate later said the mayor is the “supreme being” of the county and Kauaians would be diminished if there were no obvious leader to represent their wishes at the state level.
Responding to the common refrain that a professional county manager would improve the efficiency of the county government, Whalen said efficiency and effectiveness are two different things.
“Democracy is inherently inefficient to some degree,” he said.
Whalen, a former City and County of Honolulu Charter Commission member, added that sometimes openness and accountability lead to inefficiency. Such drawbacks can be “frustrating,” he said, but there are other ways to achieve the desired goals.
While the tendency can be to try to correct poor performance through charter amendments, he said one solution is to simply elect better candidates.
Asked by Dahle, in conclusion, if the county’s problems can be solved through elections rather than through changes to the Kaua‘i County Charter, the three panelists all answered in the affirmative, but kept their replies concise.
“Sure,” Callies smirked.
“Yeah,” TenBruggencate chimed in.
“Uh-huh,” Whalen laughed.
Barbara Bennett, the lone remaining member of the County Governance Committee and the orchestrator of the event, said afterwards that she was “very pleased” with the way the meeting had gone and that she “absolutely” has enough information to make her recommendation to the full commission at its regular meeting, scheduled for 4 p.m. today in Council Chambers.
According to an agenda posted on the county Web site sometime after the Sunshine Law six-calendar-day deadline passed Tuesday, “Deliberation and decision-making on the matter investigated, if any, occurs only at a duly noticed meeting of the board held subsequent to the meeting at which the findings and recommendations of the investigation were presented to the board.”
Charter Review Commission Chair Sherman Shiraishi said Wednesday that it was a “good informative meeting” and a “learning experience,” but that he has “no position one way or the other.”
To read the full legal opinion from the Office of the County Attorney, visit www.kauaiworld.com/sunshine.
For full coverage of Bennett’s recommendation to the commission, see a future edition of The Garden Island.
• Michael Levine, assistant news editor, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or mlevine@kauaipubco.com.
