Island Breath: Kauai County Politics

INDEX - KAUAI POLITICS

SUBJECT: KAUAI COUNTY GOVERNMENT

SOURCE: RAY CHUAN chuan24658@yahoo.com
POSTED: 7 March 2005 - 8:30am

The Star Chamber

The pediment over entrance to Historic County Building

The OIP vs The Council
OIP (Hawaii Office of Information Practices oversees the Sunshine Law)
by Ray Chuan 5 March 2005

Well, Folks, things are moving pretty fast at the County Council! Some of the stuff is pretty ominous; but the latest development coming out of the OIP indicate quite a bit of the venom may be taken out of the Council's Kangaroo Court (or Star Chamber, take your choice) yet.

Those poor lawyers at the OIP must have had a rough time responding to all the requests from the public to scrutinize more and more stuff coming out of the Kauai County Council, Thanks to our Defender of the Public's Right to Know (DPRK Numero Uno, Richard Stauber) and his relentless inquiries to the OIP.

Going back a bit, I mentioned in my last communication that apparently cooler (or smarter) heads prevailed when the original version of the Star Chamber Resolution was presented to the Council by Chair Asing, without the members' advance knowledge of its existence, apparently, there was a hurriedly call recess during which presumably Shaylene Isero-Carvalho had some words with Kaipo. When the meeting was re-convened the matter was deferred. Two weeks later then the sanitized Carvalho version was passed, with some of the more onerous passages left out, but still without explaining why all of a sudden the Council was so eager to go after some presumed bad characters on this island. We?ll go into that later in this communication.

In the mean time, let's see what the OIP has to say about the Star Chamber Resolution. For those interested in the exact language used by the OIP in responding to Richard's inquiry and its letter to Kaipo about its analysis of the Star Chamber Resolution, please see the two attachments to this letter.

The OIP says:
1) The Star Chamber's requirement that testimony be submitted under oath is inconsistent with the Sunshine Law, which requires that the Council accept
testimony from "all persons", either orally or submitted in writing, at any of its meetings. (Implicit in this statement of the OIP is that this Investigating Committee made up exclusively of members of the Council falls under the general definition of a
?Board?, no different from the Council itself or the Planning Commission or the Public Access Commission recently formed by the Mayor and the Council. In
other words, this anomalous creature created by Kaipo is not a judicial body like a court.)

2) The OIP goes on to elaborate on this issue of unrestricted testimony. OIP has consistently ruled that placing conditions or restrictions on a person's ability to resent testimony at a hearing is prohibited by the Sunshine Law. In the past, the requirement that all persons be given the opportunity to testify has been interpreted
liberally to prohibit a board from requiring a person to identify themselves as a condition to presenting testimony to the board. Consistent with past decisions of OIP and with the legislative policies consistently recognized in support of government openness and transparency, it is OIP's opinion that conditioning the opportunity to testify at a hearing upon the administration of an oath is inconsistent
with and in violation of the Sunshine Law.

3) OIP concludes its letter to Kaipo Asing: "While this letter addresses the request for an opinion received by this office as to the Resolution in general, we reserve the option to render further opinions as to specific provisions of the Resolution or actions that may be taken pursuant to them until such time as it may be appropriate."

This opinion from the OIP that Kaipo's Star Chamber is nothing more than any Board created by assignment of individuals to a body by a government entity just about pulls the rug out from under not just Kaipo, but the entire membership of the Kauai County Council that voted to give themselves the unprecedented (and now
generally regarded as in violation of the State's Sunshine Law) power under this crazy Resolution, even in its version sanitized by Council member Shaylene
Isero-Carvalho. It is perhaps excusable that, coming fresh from the Prosecutor's Office, Shaylene's mindset is still that of a "prosecutor", rather than an elected member of a legislative body. She may be chastised by the OIP letter to Kaipo, unless, as was inadvertently revealed during the Council meeting of March 4, Kaipo had not circulated the letter he had received from the OIP that said the Council not only had to appropriate money for the hiring of outside counsel in open session, but had to disclose who are to be hired and for how much, when the published agenda for the March 4 meeting did not disclose the who and how much. When Richard Stauber, in testifying on this appropriation of money for outside counsel, showed the Council a copy of the OIP letter, the members of the Council were taken by surprise. When JoAnn asked the Clerk for a copy and learned there were none, there was a moment of silent embarrassment while the Clerk hurriedly went back to the office to make copies. During the rest of that session on March 4 the Council was visibly subdued in its demeanor.

Neither Richard or I was challenged in our testimonies by the Council members.
In going over the history of this debacle since seeing the latest missives from the OIP I have discovered that the damage these inquiries by the public and
opinions by the OIP is possibly fatal to this Star Chamber balloon. When the OIP opined that the Council cannot require testimony under oath, which takes most of the air out of the balloon, it apparently did not take note of the fact that Kaipo had claimed his mandate to create the Star Chamber derived from Section 3.17 of the Kauai County Charter:

Section 3.17 Investigation The council or any authorized committee thereof shall have the power to conduct investigation of the operation of any agency or function of the county and any subject upon which the council may legislate. In investigations,
the presiding officer shall have the right to administer oaths and in the name of the council to subpoena witnesses and compel the production of books and papers pertinent thereto. If any person subpoenaed as a witness, or to produce any books or papers called for by the process of the council or committee shall fail or refuse to respond thereof, the circuit court upon request of the council shall have the power to compel obedience to any process of the council and require such witness to answer questions put to him as aforesaid, and to punish as a contempt of the court, any refusal to comply therewith without good cause shown therefore.

False swearing by any witness shall constitute perjury and be punished as such, and whenever the council is satisfied that a witness has sworn falsely in any hearing or investigation, it shall report same to the county attorney for prosecution. In any investigation which concerns the gross misconduct or alleged criminal action on the
part of any individual, such individual shall have the right to be represented by counsel, the right of reasonable cross-examination of witnesses and the right to process of the council to compel the attendance of witnesses in his behalf.

It would seem that the opinion of the OIP regarding testimony under oath being in violation of the Sunshine Law pretty much demolishes poor Kaipo's Star Chamber idea. Somehow I don?t see Kaipo coming to this conclusion, for if he could he never would have had the audacity to compose Resolution 2005-25 in the first place.

Since Richard has done almost all the work so far in bringing violations by the council of the Sunshine Law to the attention of the OIP, I guess I would relieve
him in writing the next letter to the OIP asking it to look at Kauai County Charter Section 3.17, in the hope that we can bring this whole madness to an inglorious
end. Before Kaipo pulls a Carmen Wong Complaint (CWC) on the Nitpickers as he did with Tony Sommer, formerly of the Honolulu Star Bulletin. Come to think of it,
none of the Nitpickers I know is gainfully employed in jobs from which they could be summarily fired by a CWC. Interesting!

In case you have not heard about the CWC prior to its usage here let me explain. Deputy County Attorney Carmen Wong filed a charge against Star Bulletin Kauai
Bureau Chief Tony Sommer for harassing her at a Council meeting. Both the Police Dept and the County Prosecutor refused to act on the complaint on the ground that there was no proof or witness to the claim. Deputy County Attorney Carmen Wong, either on her own or through her office or the Council, sent the complaint to the Editor of the Star Bulletin who promptly fired Tony, presumably without investigating
the complaint. Tony has filed a grievance with his union. The union is optimistic about winning the case against the Star Bulletin, though the whole process may take many months, and may involve the County of Kauai in which case, guess what, we the taxpayers will be paying a bundle for the Council to hire Outside Counsel.

Which is the Ultimate Irony, whereby every time we have a legitimate case against the misdeed of our elected officials we end up paying the bill!! Bursting the Star Chamber Balloon does not answer the question of why this whole thing got started in the first place. There is much speculation. I will go into that part next week before our Council finds some clever substitute for the CWC to punish me and my fellow Nitpickers. The best guess at the moment seems to be that the Council is on a crusade of some sort to gain complete control over not only the pockets of the property owners of this county, but to dismember the Police Commission (which at the moment is staggering along with a bare quorum of three and a legal counsel assigned by the County Attorney's Office who is apparently more of an antagonist than an advisor when you watch him on Hoike and then the Police Dept. All the while the Mayor remains mum.

SUBJECT: KAUAI COUNTY GOVERNMENT

The Star Chamber

SOURCE: RAY CHUAN

chuan24658@yahoo.com 7 February 2005 - 7:30am

detail from poster promoting the film "The Star Chamber"

The Star Chamber
by Ray Chuan 2 February 2005

The multi-front war the Kauai Council is engaged in seems to be getting more complicated and more confusing every day. Big Boss Kaipo is fighting his critics among the public, including the reporter from the Star Bulletin, the various Nitpickers, the Police Dept, the Police Commission, as well as the Office of Information Practices (OIP). His proposed resolution - Communication 2005-25 - was not acted upon during the Council meeting of January 26, but was deferred to the next Council meeting, presumably on Feb 10.

But even in deferring the matter, for whatever reason he managed to violate the Sunshine Law. Bad habits are hard to shed, apparently. New Council member Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho wanted to take out some of the sections from the Resolution. Instead of discussing the matter at the Council ,in front of the public, Boss Kaipo recessed the meeting, for no announced reason, but pretty obviously to discuss Shaylene's question in private. Coming back from the recess Kaipo deferred the matter to the next council meeting.

The speculation among the Nitpickers that at least one of the reasons for the Kaipo Star Chamber Resolution (see my unpublished letter to the Garden Island below) would be to deal with his critics. The speculation turned out to be more than prescient when the news came that Tony Sommer, the Star Bulletin reporter on Kauai, who has been a frequent critic of the Kauai Council for its violations of the Sunshine Law and who has filed a lawsuit against the Council on that issue, was fired by his editor on January 28.

None of this was reported or announced publicly, of course, by anybody. It was learned over the weekend that the cause for Tony's dismissal was a harassment charge brought by Kauai Deputy County Attorney Carmen Wong against something Tony said at a recent Council meeting. How this charge went to the Star Bulletin editor, intead of some Kauai authority such as the Police or the Prosecutor, is not clear, since no one has publicly announced anything. No matter, the message from the Council to its critics is now pretty clear.

In the mean time, the Council, through member Yukimura and the County Attorney's Office, continue to argue with the OIP that what it does in closed sessions is not in violation of the Sunshine Law. These people do not just argue with the OIP, they go ahead and do what they want to do anyway, as they did in interviewing and approving all but one nominee to various commissions and boards in closed session on Jan 20, even after the OIP had told them verbally, in no uncertain terms on the phone that they could not do that. When challenged by the public Chair Asing's justification was that the OIP had not, by the time of the closed sessions in question on January 20, sent Yukimura a written opinion. The OIP said they would gladly have faxed the Council its opinion if anyone had asked them to. As a matter of fact, there is on the OIP's website the very written document in question, dated January 21. It is a very interesting piece of document. You can find it at www.state.hi.us/oip/opinions.html .

It is nine pages long, as would be expected from a lawyer; but the message is very clear: Ain't no way you can interview and approve a nominee in secret, even if your county Charter says you can, because state laws says you can't. What the OIP should have said that if Condoleesa Rice has to face the Congress and the American public your county's nominees can darn well do it too.

I sent a piece of writing to the Garden Island relating to the Asing Star Chamber which the paper apparently chose not to publish as a letter or a column. So I attach it below. (I am indebted to David Seielstad for the historical reference on the Star Chamber.)

Is English history repeating itself on our little island of Kauai three hundred and sixty-four years after the abolishment of the notorious Star Chamber Court that was used by the kings to suppress opposition to the crown from 1487 to 1641?

If you were to read Kauai County Council Resolution 2005-25, introduced by Council Chair Kaipo Asing on January 26, 2005, you just might be reminded of the Star Chamber of Old England or, in more recent years, the Senate Investigation Committee headed by Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950's.

Resolution 2005-25 is a 5-page document with no less than 16 Parts. You might wish to start from the end:

Part 16 LIMITATION:
'Nothing contained in this article shall be construed to limit or prohibit the acquisition of evidence or information by an investigating committee by any lawful means not provided for herein.' Wow! What or who is this Investigating Committee?

Part 1 DEFINITIONS
Investigating committee" means a committee of the whole of the council which is authorized to compel the attendance and testimony of witnesses or the production of books, records, papers and documents for the purpose of securing information on a specific subject for the use of the council.'

So the elected council members are members of the Star Chamber, then. Very interesting! What if a person (presumably any person) doesn't satisfy the Committee?

Part 13 PENALTIES
gives the answer to that question: "13(a) A person guilty of contempt under these rules shall be fined up to $1000.00 or imprisoned up to one (1) year, or both".
You might ask:"Is there any judicial mechanism here?"

Well, the answer to this somewhat naïve question is also to be found in Part 13. "13(c) "...Nothing in this subsection shall limit any power which the council may have to discipline a member or employee or to impose a penalty in the absence of action by a prosecuting officer or court".

So there's your answer. The Kaipo Asing Committee doesn't need the court!
What is happening here on this Garden of Eden? I, for one, wouldn't dare say anything further than quoting a few paragraphs from Chair Asing's Resolution 2005-25.

What if my fellow Nitpickers and I were hauled before the Committee? We may never see the light of day again, if the Committee decides to hold its hearing in
secret, as is provided for in

Part 1 DEFINITIONS:
" ...A hearing, or portions thereof, may be open to the public or closed to the public". As far as investigation of county departments and operations are concerned, critics of this County Government for years have been asking for an investigation and financial audit of the worst department in the county - Public Works; but the Council has consistently turned a deaf ear. Why, then, this sudden and draconian change of heart? Could it be that the critics have been turning up the pressure, especially with respect to the matter of the Sunshine Law (or Open Government), obtaining opinion after opinion from the Office of Information Practices (OIP) in the past two months, telling the Council it has been violating the Sunshine Law? So, taking a page from the English kings of the fifteenth century, Council Chair (or should one by now use the title Council King?) is out to silence the opposition and, while making big snarling noises, the king is also putting a smoke screen over the Hop Sing affair by threatening to investigate the Police Department. In so doing, the Chair is invoking Section 3.17 of the Kauai County Charter to justify his move; but he is overlooking, evidently on purpose, Section 3.18 ?

Restrictions on County Council and Council Members:
"The council and its members shall not interfere with
the administrative processes delegated to the mayor."
Where's the mayor in all these alarming activities?

Raymond L. Chuan
P.O. Box 1183, Hanalei, HI 96714
808-826-6814; <chuan24658@yahoo.com>
* * * * *
By the way, if you go look for Resolution 2005-25 on the Kauai County website, which is supposed to list the Council agenda along with all the documents, you
will find this:

"Resolutions (none at this time)"

Which is obviously a lie, because there are resolutions all the time. What does "(none at this time)" mean?

We now await the re-appearance of Resolution 2005-25 at the next Council meeting on Feb10. We might even find out what Kaipo and Shaylene talked about in private during the recess on January 26!

SUBJECT: KAUAI COUNTY GOVERNMENT

Monkey Business at the County Council

SOURCE: RAY CHUAN

chuan24658@yahoo.com 28 January 2005 - 11:30am

Police Commissioners mistreated
by Ray Chuan 27 January 2005

The chairman of the Police Commission, Mike Ching and Commissioner Carol Furtado, appearing as members of the Police Commission, testified before the Council went into executive session to discuss the matter of a criminal investigation of the Police Deptartment. This took place after midnight Wednesday. Kaipo has developed this neat way of keeping the Nitpickers and anyone who may cause ripples in the otherwise tranquil waters of the County Council waiting in the wings by moving relevant agenda items, including executive sessions, to the very end of the meeting, regardless of what order the items were originally listed in the agenda. Mike and Carol were mercilessly treated by some members of the Council in their meanest prosecutorial manner. I doubt this could have happened in any civilized societies where fellow officials, even in the fiercest disagreement, treated one another with decorum and collegiality.

The Police Commissioners objected to the Council usurping the Commission's proper role in the governance of the Police Department. This matter will be discussed at the meeting of the Police Commission on Monday, Jan 31, at 10:15am, in the Council Chambers. Not many members of the public attend meetings of the Police Commission; but this particular session should be very interesting, especially since one of the commissioners who has been engulfed in the puzzling chaos surrounding his dismissal from the commission (as requested by the Mayor but apparently indefinitely postponed by the Council which must approve the Mayor's request.) Maybe Kaipo is ultimately the smart one who can manipulate events in ways that can keep everybody else off balance while he ascends to the pinnacle of his tenure in the Kauai Government. We shall see.

SUBJECT: KAUAI COUNTY GOVERNMENT

County Council Resolution No. 2005-25

SOURCE: RAY CHUAN

chuan24658@yahoo.com 25 January 2005 - 7:30am

Supreme Kangaroo Court, 1966 - "Never been overruled!" from the Univ British Columbia Law School

Council really going crazy!
by Ray Chuan 25 January 2005

Not in my worst moments of dejection and speculation over the behavior of Council chair Kaipo Asing would I have thought it possible to see presented before the Council for its approval of the constitution of the Kangaroo Court by Kaipo at Wednesday's Council meeting. This is unbelievable, but true! Kaipo wants to give himself and his fellow Council members the power to haul anyone - officers and employees of this county and any other person he can subpoena before an investigating committee made up of Council members using their self-created rules.

This Committee can punish anyone unwilling to testify or to produce documents with up to $1,000 in fine or one year in jail or both!

These rules apply not just to Kauai County but to the State of Hawaii and any county in the state.

Furthermore, the power of this committee or Council, since they are one and the same, is superior to that of any prosecuting officer or court. (I didn't make
this up! Read it for yourself when we can get the resolution in electronic form to send to all interested.)

This Committee can conduct its activities in secret if it wishes and keep secret what transpires in these meetings.

Adolf Hitler and Joe McCarthy would be proud of this instrument that may well be adopted at Wednesday's Council meeting starting at 1:00pm. This instrument is to be presented to the Council as Resolution No. 2005-25.

If you wish to sample how this Committee would behave just watch the Hoike coverage of the treatment given by members of the Council, at its January 20 meeting, to Police Commission Chair Mike Ching and Commissioner
Carol Furtado.

Why is Kaipo doing this? Who knows! Are the Nitpickers and the press putting too much pressure on him recently over the issue of Open Government? Obviously this ominous and sinister scheme is not directed at County employees who, after all, form the main voting block to keep these characters in office year after year. One explanation is that at least
part of this is directed at Whistle Blowers and critics in and out of the County government.

In the background of this bizarre new development may be the apparent conflict between the Council and the newly appointed Police Chief. The Council wants to investigate the Police. The Chief says go ahead, and fires off a salvo in Monday's Garden Island telling how many drug busts there have been in just the first two weeks of January, 2005 and how the amount of drugs seized in two weeks is half of what was taken by the Kauai Police in the whole of year 2003. Some people on this island are likely to be unhappy with such audacity in actually doing things instead of planning, forming task forces and commissions, paying big bucks to consultants, as was aptly reported in the same issue of the Garden Island, on the same first page, through the words of Mayor Baptiste.

The lead headline says: ?Ice Task Force jumps in first month?, quoting Chief Lum; followed below by: ?Baptiste details housing plan?

I'm still in shock, as are the other Nitpickers. As soon as we can get the text of Resolution No. 2005-25 in electronic form we will send you the full story.

SUBJECT: KAUAI COUNTY GOVERNMENT

Greetings After a Long Silence

SOURCE: RAY CHUAN

chuan24658@yahoo.com 12 January 2005 - 11:00pm

Ray Chuan in front of the old Kauai County Building in Lihue

And a much belated Season's Greeting to everyone!

Many of you may not know that I have been off the Internet for almost two months because of some serious virus problems that completely shut me down. After three failed attempts at repairing the problems on island I finally took the computer with me to California and finally had it repaired. O, the joys of the Internet life!!

(Towards the end of this report there is an appeal for supporting the legal efforts of Ohana Kauai in its David-against-Goliath fight with the Kauai County Council over the Charter Amendment. You might wish to skip over to that first before returning to wade through my usual tirade below.)

During the enforced period of silence I had a lot of time not only to do chores around the house that had been sadly neglected, but also had time to reflect on the affairs of our county. The latter turned out to be very depressing. There was a time when I thought the problems with this county government were due to the incompetence and sheer laziness of the workers and the elected officials. I am now inclined to believe that most of the elected officials are just plain bad officials whose only interest lies in holding on to their positions of self-importance.

Without Term Limit and a solid corps of built-in voters among the ohana of the county workers there is no incentive to do any good for the general public aside from doing the smoke and mirror acts, which finally explained to me why the Mayor and the Council are always on the same side when it comes to fiscal integrity. Kaipo does a very good job of acting like he is really hard on the Administration, except the record shows that under his control the Council invariably gives the Mayor what he wants. The result is that the annual spending of this county has gone up close to 50% in the last five years, with no sign of leveling off.

As long as They can manipulate the property assessment process- whereby they value real estate at less than market value (as their own Tax Code requires them to do, and use the tax rate to bring in revenue that would match the necessary spending. By having an inflationary real estate market and assessing at significantly below market the assessors have a large margin to play with in arriving at the total assessed valuation for the island, such that they can maintain
the same TAX RATES from year to year, and brag about it by telling the public every year that '

They Have Again Not Raised the TAX (carefully leaving out the word Rate!' Which is why ours is the only jurisdiction in the nation that sends out its property tax bill without showing how the TAX is calculated.

You get a postcard in March telling you what your new assessment is, carefully not listing what it was the year before. Then in August you get a Tax Bill with
just a dollar amount on it, without any explanation of how it is arrived at. Unfortunately these people have managed to keep the people in the dark pretty
successfully over the years.

When the Task Force came up with a reform plan that would set a base value for the assessment and allow it to rise at no more than the inflationary rate the Council finally realized they would have to raise the tax rates in order to keep up with the County's spending appetite. The Task Force also recommended that this County should do as all others in informing the tax payer how the tax is arrived at. This very simple approach to being honest with the tax payer is contained in the word transparency' in the plan as reported to the Council. The then Deputy inance Director (who is probably the most over-qualified official in this county government) even prepared a model Property Tax Statement which is transparent.

In case you have occasion to visit the Office of the Deputy Finance Director you will find that Eric Knutzen is no longer there, having been quietly replaced by one of these perennial Goafer type pseudo officials who float from one position to another to front for what the higher-ups really want to have done. In the mean time the Council has quietly buried the Task Force Plan, thus avoiding the plague of transparency and fiscal accountability. And the workers and their supervisors can continue to do no real work because there will always be money to pay for outside contractors, including outside lawyers and the inevitable Consultant. Which basically means we are paying double, or more, for the alleged service we receive for our tax money.

I will in the next few weeks give you actual examples to show how this is done.
In the mean time what can the property tax payers expect' A few token so-called tax relief measures that benefit very few people, because the application
for these relief measures is worded such that most tax payers either can't understand it or end up not qualifying. The resultant tax revenue deficit is so
insignificant that a little tweaking of the assessments will easily take care of it, while the total spending would continue their merry annual increase.

Then come the pesky Ohana Kauai Charter Amendment the passage of which would not only assure a known quantity of revenue deficit for the well-defined class of property owners who qualify, but would lock in this shortfall for a long long time. Of course, without the Task Force reform plan getting in the way with its transparency requirement, the main head ache is out of the way. But the very idea of the people taking matters in their own hands is absolutely the ultimate anathema to comfortable government. The rest of the bizarre machinations of the Council are now slowly going through the legal labyrinth that will cost the tax payers at least hundreds of thousands in hiring outside lawyers from Honolulu.

The Ohana Kauai Charter Amendment
As I indicated in my recent column in the Garden Island, without the Task Force plan being implemented by the Council the only thing left that could help the property owners who live in their own homes is the Ohana Kauai Charter amendment. The Ohana Kauai group sponsored real property tax charter amendment was adopted at the November General Election by a substantial majority of the voters. After opposing the measure during the campaign before the election, the County commenced a law suit claiming that the charter amendment is invalid and is spending considerable taxpayer funds on its claim. In order to protect the intent and interest of the home owners the originators of the Ohana Kauai charter amendment found it necessary to petition the court for intervenor status. (Ohana Kauai is not a 'party' to the lawsuit since both the plaintiff and defendant in this case are the County of Kauai.)

This intervention, to protect the over 11,000 property owners and their families, does not come without the cost of obtaining legal counsel. To date the Ohana group of a few organizers has footed the legal bill which is a small percentage of what the Council is spending with not only the full force of the six attorneys in the Office of the County Attorney but also, as this government always seems to do, expensive outside lawyers from Honolulu. The group needs $5000 more to cover expected fees and expenses. It is fair that these amounts should be borne by all taxpayers who benefit and not just the small number who are part of the Ohana group.

Your contribution will be most welcome and should be sent to either

Glenn Mickens
5920 Kini Place
Kapaa HI 96746

Walter Lewis
PO Box 223115
Princeville, HI 96766

In considering the amount to send it is suggested that you review your property tax bill for 1998 (or when you acquired your property if later) and compare it with your current tax bill. The difference is the amount you will save in your taxes later this year when the Ohana Amendment goes into effect; and this saving will be repeated in future years. In defeating the County's unjustified efforts to derail the Ohana measure you will be also helping cut your future property tax costs.

The case of 'Kauai County versus Kauai County' will have a hearing before the court on January 27 to consider the County's motion for injunction to prevent the County from taking any action to implement the Ohana amendment; while Ohana will move to dismiss the complaint.

It will be very instructive to find out, when this whole crazy drama is over, how much the tax payers have to pay'! More on this in later commentary regarding how the current Council has consistently violated the Sunshine Law to keep the public in the dark on what is really going on and what it is costing the tax payers.

As usual, I thank you for your indulgence; and yet still manage to keep up my Quixotic efforts against the Windmill as my e-mail list continues to grow as
more people ask to be placed on it.

Let's hope and work for a brighter 2005!

Editors Note:Here are some links to more Ray Chaun:
Chuan Politics 3
Chuan Politics 2
Chuan Politics 1