Kagawa: End council term limits

LIHUE — A resolution that would end term limits for County Council members could be on the ballot in August.

The amendment was proposed Wednesday by Councilmember Ross Kagawa.

Kagawa said he penned the amendment because on Kauai, it’s difficult to get voted onto the council, to get re-elected and to find enough residents who are willing to battle it out at the polls.

When he ran for his first term, Kagawa said there were only nine candidates for seven seats.

“That’s really sad,” he said, “when you consider there are 70,000 people who live on Kauai.”

The reason many residents might not run for office, he said, is because they may see the two-year limit as not worth it.

As it stands, councilmembers are limited to four two-year terms.

The proposal was deferred Wednesday to the March 14 meeting. Moving forward, the bill will go through a public hearing process, then to committee and then back to the council before it could be placed on the ballot.

“You’re learning about your job as you’re doing your job, and a year and a half later, you’re looking at possibly losing your job again,” Kagawa said.

He said it took him about that amount of time, two years, to learn his job as a councilmember well.

Many residents on Kauai, he said, might not consider being on the council a desirable position. For instance, councilmembers receive hate mail on a daily basis, he said.

“When you have numerous issues to vote on, you can’t please everyone,” Kagawa said.

Ending term limits, he said, might make it more attractive.

During a public comment session on the matter Wednesday, Kauai resident Ken Taylor said he was opposed to putting the issue back on the ballot because the whole point of having term limits is to open seats up for new people with new ideas.

“They may be smarter and better for the community than you are,” Taylor said. “The county can do without you. They did without you before you were on the council.”

The issue of term limits comes up every now and then, said Councilmember Derek Kawakami.

“I think there’s some confusion about what the actual issue is,” he said.

Kawakami pointed out that councilmembers won’t be deciding their own term limits. The proposal is simply to decide whether the issue should be on the next ballot.

“Let the people decide,” Kawakami said. “That’s what a democracy is.”

Kauai resident Felicia Cowden, who ran for County Council in 2014, said she had a proposal before the Charter Review Commission to change the terms of councilmembers altogether.

“My proposal was for four council positions to be four-year terms and three council positions would be two-year terms, like they are now,” Cowden said.

The four-year terms, she said, would be full-time, so councilmembers would be able to more closely direct their attention to the needs of the county.

The terms would be staggered, Cowden said, in order to prevent a super majority. The value in the proposal is that there would never be a completely new council; there would always be two members from the previous council remaining, she said.

As far as term limits being added to the ballot, Cowden said she feels good about it.

At the end of the current term, Council Chair Mel Rapozo and Councilmember JoAnn Yukimura will have served four consecutive two-year terms and will be termed out per the county charter.

A public hearing on the matter will be held Feb. 21 at 1:30 p.m. in council chambers at the Historic County Council Building. From there, it will go to full council at the March 14 meeting.

Kagawa said he’s not certain if he’ll run for another term, but he’s keeping the possibility open.

“If I can get the support of my family, we will see,” he said.