• My kuleana as Ethics Board member
•Ag land reality check
• Health care inequity
My kuleana as Ethics Board member
In response to The Garden Island editorial “Kuleana: knowing our roles” (Forum, July 19), I would like to clarify my kuleana by saying that my two priorities as a member of the Board of Ethics are to uphold the law and to promote transparency.
I filed three ethics complaints based on Charter 20.02D with the board in May prompting a recusal of myself from the executive session in June at which the board dismissed the complaints.
The board’s decision leaves several following questions unanswered which I intend to raise at the Aug. 13 meeting:
In the June executive session, did the board adopt a resolution defining the nature and scope of its investigation as required by rule 6.2(a)? If not, does the failure to adopt a resolution invalidate the decisions made by the board regarding the three complaints and does it require a reconsideration of the complaints beginning with a resolution per 6.2(a)?
Did the board provide a straightforward answer to the question raised by the complaints: does 20.02D’s “shall not appear in behalf of private interests before any county board, commission or agency” prohibit the activities documented in the complaints?
Did the board consider the advisability of asking a qualified neutral party to provide “findings of fact and conclusions of law” in connection with the complaints?
This last question is based on the fact that some board members and the county attorney have demonstrated an inherent bias favoring the legal opinion provided to the board and the decision made by the board in connection with the advisory opinion given to Jonathan Chun in March 2008 and the fact that one member of the board has publicly stated that Chun and another attorney who is the subject of a complaint are not exempt from complying with 20.02D and that he made a mistake in voting to give a “pass” to the second attorney.
If the board is relying on an opinion from the county attorney to validate the decisions to dismiss the three complaints, and the board has not received the opinion (having rejected an opinion delivered in July), what is the status and rationale of the decisions made in June to dismiss the complaints?
Rolf Bieber, Kapa‘a
Ag land reality check
I was pleased to see The Garden Island take a strong editorial stance on “Farming’s Future” (Forum, July 26).
I say this even though I may disagree with some of its perceived problems and prescribed remedies for what ails farming on Kaua‘i.
I believe that one of the first things we need to do is to run a reality check on the definition of ag land as it was used in this line from the opinion piece: “We would naturally expect that someone living on ag land to be operating a farm.” I am guessing that the ag land to which the editorial refers in this sentence is any land on the island of Kaua‘i which is designated as “agriculture” on the zoning maps of the county and/or the land use maps of the state.
The reality is that the land labeled as “agriculture” on these maps is basically everything that was left over after the designations for “Urban” and “Conservation” were determined back in the late 1960s.
In fact, a great deal of the land currently designated as “agriculture” on our zoning maps is unsuited for contemporary commercial farming due to any number of factors, which can include poor soil, rough terrain, limited markets and lack of sufficient irrigation water. Many of the lands currently zoned agriculture were not even suitable for sugarcane or pineapple production.
The county is currently making an effort to designate “Important Agricultural Lands” throughout the island. This process may finally result in a differentiation between lands truly suited for commercial agriculture and those lands that have been, for a long time, “agricultural” in name only. Many of the issues addressed in The Garden Island’s opinion piece on farming’s future might be more easily addressed after we figure out which is which.
Michael Dyer, Kilauea
Health care inequity
President Obama wants all Americans to have health care insurance. He should start on this quest by providing health care insurance for all federal government employees.
Right now the federal government has many U.S. citizen employees working full time (40 hours per week) who do not receive health care insurance from the government.
In fact, many of these federal employees have no health care insurance at all. These employees are called “temporary” but many of them work 40 hours a week and many have been working steadily for the federal government for several years.
In many cases the “temporary” government employee is working side by side with “permanent” employees doing the same type of work. The “permanent” employee has full health care insurance provided by the federal government.
Temporary status means that employment is reviewed and renewed (or not renewed) every six months. Permanent status is just what the name implies.
Many private sector companies have been criticized for circumventing government requirements to provide health care insurance to their employees by having some employees work less than 40 hours per week. However, it seems that the federal government has a similar loop hole when it has some of its 40 hour per week employees classified as “temporary.”
President Obama could and should fix this inequity within his own government with the mere stroke of the pen.
Peter Nilsen, Princeville
