Cigar label found on the floor of
a smokey political backroom. See http://www.instoneinc.com/
by Ray Chuan on 20 April 2005
A few years ago Council Chair Ron Kouchi summoned the County
Attorney to admonish him that the Attorney's responsibility
was to serve the Public. It looks like the current County
Attorney, as well as her staff attorneys, never heard that
admonition. All indications are that the County Attorney's
Office has joined the Council in whatever witch hunt they
have in mind. As a matter of fact, Carol Furtado, whose appointment
for a second term on the Police Commission is being held up
by the Council, has already gone public in the Garden Island,
wondering what kind of Witch Hunt the Council is on.
This latest flap between the Council/County Attorney and the
Office of Information Practices (OIP) is ratcheting the scandal
up another notch or two. It seems that County Attorney Lani
Nakazawa outright lied to the OIP in her justification for
advising the Council it could go into Executive Session (ES)
' that the Council was going to discuss hush hush matters
involving the FBI and the State Attorney General and under
cover agents etc. When the OIP obtained the minutes of the
closed session in question ' Executive Session 177, (Jan 20,
2005), it found no such activities at the allegedly properly
convened closed session. One wonders how the County Attorney
would explain this latest black-eye dealt her office.
The real pertinent question is still: Why all this Witch Hunt?On
the surface it seems to be an attempt on the part of the Council
and the Old Guard in the Police Department to get rid of the
new Chief whose well advertised efforts at cracking down on
the Ice plague is obviously not welcome by some people on
this island. The problem apparently started from the very
moment Chief Lum's appointment was discussed. There was then
the Hop Sing racial slur directed almost publicly (through
e-mail) at Lum. I was informed that at his swearing ceremony
only the younger officers showed up, none of the Old Guard.
The deep-seated culture of the plantation mentality is very
much alive, under which no one from an outside culture, be
the person a haole or black or brown ' as long as he or she
is not born and raised on this island ' is allowed to have
a meaningful role in the governance of this island.
Unfortunately, this Kauai Island Culture directly affects
everyone's pocket book, be he a home owner or a renter. It
wouldn't be quite so bad is what money we give to these Bandits
buys some service; but that is not to be; and the return on
our investment (if one could call it that) is sliding downhill
faster, as more of the County workers and, especially, their
supervisors, approach retirement. Do you realize that some
of our highest-paid county workers ' earning $90k ' are retiring,
and their successors so far don't show much promise, for they,
too, are in for permanent employment without accountability
or responsibility their only meaningful responsibility being
to cast their votes for the same people every time, to assure
the well tuned patronage system works smoothly, and everybody
protects everybody else and nobody rocks the boat.
The per capita property tax revenue on this island continues
to be the highest in this state.
Kauai: $1020/p
Mauai: $740/p
Honolulu: $580/p
And it increases every year ' for the simple reason that as
our county workers age they do even less work and more work
has to be contracted out.
Here are some examples...
Green
waste
County workers are not trained on how to operate the grinding
machines ' like not allowing engine blocks to go in along
with the tree cuttings.
The broken machines sit idle at the county's shop; nobody
wants to repair broken machines; better to buy new ones. That
provides the excuse the supervisors are looking for. Contract
the work out! It's cheaper! So a no-bid contract is given
to Kauai Nursery and Landscaping, at $300,000 a year as of
last year, probably more in the new budget. Guess who used
to work for KNL' Our current mayor. Did the appropriation
for that money go through the regular approval procedure?
Of course
not, after all, these Bandits have a Slush Fund that had reached
over $7 million this past fiscal year; and will probably go
higher the next year as the Bandits pump more into it. How
does that work' Budget money that won't be spent and let it
disappear into the un-tagged Un-appropriated Surplus. That
can be done with phantom positions that are never filled.
Or unspecified equipment (such as the $700,000 in last year's
budget for 'heavy equipment') money that doesn't get spent.
Legal Service
he County Attorney Office has a budget of around 3⁄4
million that includes $300,000 for outside counsel. When you
add up all the outside lawyers they hire at the drop of a
hat, the total for the year far exceeds the $300k. So what
are our own lawyers supposed to do? Do the bidding of the
Mayor and the Council to justify that they want to do, as
Lani Nakazawa did with ES-177 mentioned above. Or file a groundless
complaint, which was turned down by both the Police and the
Prosecutor, against a newspaper reporter who had the audacity
to file suit against the Council for not obeying the Sunshine
Law, and succeed in getting the guy fired by his paper.
(The same Deputy County Attorney who did the hatchet job on
the Star Bulletin reporter reportedly continues her private
practice while serving as a Deputy County Attorney.) Or sue
itself, with outside counsel, of course, to thwart the people's
will in the Charter amendment to freeze property tax.
Solid Waste
Spent $150,000 eleven years ago (during the reign of JoAnn
Yukimura) with some consultant to produce an Integrated Solid
Waste Management Plan that has never been implemented. At
that time the county had a real Solid Waste Manager with professional
experience; his replacement, since Kusaka came to power, had
been a one time electrical engineer with absolutely no experience
in either civil engineering, much less solid waste management;
his only qualification appearing to be his being married to
the right local family. When challenged on this appointment
Kusaka offered to send him to school, at public expense, of
course.
Fortunately, the operation of the Kekaha Landfill, the most
critical element in any solid waste program, had been contracted
out to Waste Management Inc, the nation's largest solid waste
company, so the electrical engineer could muddle along for
almost 17 years sending trash to Kekaha while doing nothing
about the day when the landfill would be filled.
In the mean time, with the compliant attitude of the State
Deptartment of Health Solid Waste Division with respect to
oversight, nothing in the $150,000 plan has been implemented.
Of course, the standard move at this point would be, of course,
to buy another Plan. Sure enough, now Council member JoAnn
Yukimura proposed to spend double that amount (after all,
one has to accommodate inflation) to buy a new plan that will
no doubt sit idle for another decade, by which time our electrical
engineer cum Solid Waste Manager will have advanced to the
$90k Club following his predecessors, and ready to retire.
In the mean time, regrettably, the trash is building higher
and higher at Kekaha.
Ah, not to worry, because here comes Mr. Steve Chang, head
of the State Solid and Hazardous Waste Division, offering
a Permit to add another 25 feet to the already 60-foot high
pile of trash so prominent a landscape feature that it is
used as a navigation reference point. The offer from the generous
Mr. Chang is not exactly a Permit but an offer to accept an
application for the Permit. Since there is no one literate
enough in our Number One County Division (Public Works), budget-wise,
at $32 million this past year, to write a permit application,
another $191,000 contract is handed out (without proper appropriation)
to our friendly Consultant to write something that he merely
has to click a few keys on his computer to produce out of
his file, for at least $3000 per page in the finished product.
How the Council managed to approve and support the County's
Permit pplication, despite objections by Councilmen Rapozo
and Frufaro, is another story that I will save for a future
discourse.
And so it goes, on and on, year after year, going back to
Yukimura's time, to Kusaka's time and to Baptiste's time and,
"cooperating" with the same supervisors that have
been sitting there for decades. As some of the Untouchables
retire with a fat pension there are always equally accommodating
and incompetent successors to move into the empty offices.
End of my "endless" digressions!
Back to the subject of the duty and responsibility of the
Office of the County Attorney. The policy of both the Council
and the County Attorney with respect to the long list of negative
opinions emanating from the OIP appears to be Silence. The
advice from the OIP to the Nitpickers seems to be that 'without
showing a deliberate intent to violate the Sunshine Law, the
public is not likely to prevail in any legal action against
the County Council. The strategy of the Nitpickers will probably
be to device some way of coaxing the Council into some act
of 'deliberate intent to violate the Sunshine Law. The palpable
lies offered by the County Attorney to the OIP to justify
her approval of the Council's going into Executive Session
177 may constitute deliberate intent, but that's for the Police
Commission to deal with. We Nitpickers will have to create
our own brand of deliberate intent to build a case upon which
to sue the Council.
Any suggestions
from readers of this communication are welcome. There is no
need to worry about keeping such suggestions from the Council
and the County Attorney. First of all, these occasional messages
from me (one of which has recently been characterized by someone
in the Planning Department as "slanderous") are
assumed to enjoy a certain degree of circulation within the
County Government circles, as attested to by the occasional
anonymous letters I receive from my unknown whistle-blowers.
Then, these people are just arrogant enough in the enjoyment
of their perceived power and immunity that they are not likely
to pay any attention to what they do or say.
Now, for a very brief report on the compilation of property
assessment data from round the island. I still am not receiving
much input from locals and the kanaka, not surprisingly. But
I keep trying.
Here are
a couple of outstanding examples of how berserk the Tax Assessors
have become this year. In Kekaha: A property of a fifth of
an acre, not near the beach, with a modest home on it that
pays no property tax after an appropriate exemption has been
applied, had the land assessed at $62,530 in 2001. By 2004
the land assessment had gone up 46% to $63,800, which is probably
ho-hum by Kauai standards. But the 2005 land assessment went
ballistic by 249% to $222,800!! To add mystery to surprise,
the 2002 land assessment went down (from 2001) by 36% to $39,750.
Compared to this low point the 2005 assessment is up by 460%!!
This property has been owned and lived in for years by a local
family.
In Hanalei: A property that has been in a Hawaiian family
for many generations, not on the shores of Hanalei Bay, was
assessed for land (again, the building is so modest that it
pays no property tax) in 2001 at $139,000. By 2005 that has
gone up 722% to $1,142,100!! Actually, the property took half
of that beating in 2002 already, assessed at $660,000, for
1-year rise of 375%!
For comparison, a property, also in Hanalei but not on the
beach, owned by a haole family, also with a modest building,
saw only a rise of 144% from 2001 to 2005 in its assessment.
Similarly, a beach front property with an expensive house
owned by a haole family, saw a total rise of 235% (for land
and building) from 2001 to 2005.
I leave you to ponder the equity and justice in the extraction
of property tax by our Bandits.
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