by
Ray Chuan on 17 October 2005
This County government is turning tighter and tighter the
screw to control what the public can do, can know, and all
the while charging the public, through ever-increasing property
taxation, for the excesses of the elected officials in raiding
the public purse to accomplish the tightening of the noose.
Not content with the strangling hold it has put on the Charter
Review Commission for its trying to accomplish its mission
of improving our charter, the Council is taking further
steps to assure that the public’s right to effect
changes through Recall, Initiative,
Referendum and Charter Amendment, will be curtailed, by
severely limiting the way the public can mount any initiative
with three bills just introduced by Chairman Asing that
will be on the Council Agenda for this week.
The most egregious steps the Council and the Mayor have
been taking to deny the public its right to change things
are the deliberate measures they have been taking to torpedo
what the Charter Review Commission has been trying to accomplish
its charge of improving the Charter of this county.
First the Mayor made the public and the Commission play
hide and seek by moving the meeting location of the Commission
all around the Civic Center. Some of the locations have
connection to the Hoike system while others don’t;
but that turned out to be immaterial anyway, because Charter
Review Commission simply isn’t getting any Hoike coverage
at all, not matter where and when it meets; while the Council
continues to have its marathon, though largely unproductive,
meetings faithfully covered on Hoike; and the Mayor gets
al the time he needs for his PR
work.
For a while the Commission had a deputy County Attorney
assigned to it to give advice on often difficult legal questions
that invariably arise due to the very nature of the mission
of this Commission.
Now the Mayor has yanked the County lawyer and offered,
instead, some measly sum for hiring outside counsel; all
the while both the Mayor and the Council are hiring outside
counsel for hundreds of thousands of dollars all the time
– with our tax money, of course.
So now the Charter Review Commission has no Hoike coverage,
no lawyer; and the County’s website does not help
either, because you simply can’t access anything useful
that would help you follow what the Commission is up to.
The final insult to the intrepid few members of the public
who try to attend the meetings in person is to lock the
only public restrooms at 4:30 pm when the Commission meeting
convenes.
NOT SATISFIED WITH PUTTING ALL THESE OBSTACLES IN FRONT
OF THE CHARFTER REVIEW COMMISSION, which is convened every
ten years, our tricky Council is looking beyond the decadal
Charter Review process, to make sure that the other means
by which the public could effect changes in our governance,
at any time – by various Petition processes such as
Recall, Charter
Amendment and Initiative/Referendum – also would not
succeed, by three ordinances being introduced at this week’s
Council meeting that would cripple these petition processes.
VERY CLEVER, CHAIR ASING!! who is introducing all three
measures.
All three bills would prohibit the collection of petition
signatures by what the Council would, without any definition,
call commercial petition collectors.
So how would the Council decide who it would allow to collect
petition signatures? If a voter is handed a petition form
in which the goal of the petition is stated clearly and
he understands it and is willing to sign, would he first
have to ascertain if the person who hands him the petition
form is not what the County Clerk would classify as a Commercial
Petition Collector? After all, it is the content of the
petition, with a clear description of what it would achieve,
not who (or what, if a machine hands out a petition form)
hands him the petition that would help him make up his mind.
Not satisfied with just using the term Commercial to disqualify
a signature, the Council goes further, with Bills 2155 and
2156, by limiting the description of the content of the
petition to no more than 150 words!
AGAIN, VERY CLEVER, CHAIR ASING!!
Usually, when a petition is presented to the voter, there
are notes in support of the petition prepared by the group
backing the petition and, to be fair, notes opposing the
petition prepared by the group opposing the petition. Ah,
but with the infinite wisdom of our Council and its hireling
the County Attorney, the opposing argument is mandated –
in Bills 2155 and 2156 – to be prepared by the County
Attorney! VERY INTERESTING, CHAIR ASING! No matter what
a petition
is about, the County Attorney is mandated by law - Asing’s
Law, that is – to oppose it!
We
hear a lot about the Avian Flu these days. In Eastern Europe
the folks have had to kill thousands of chickens that have
caught the Flu. I wonder if those chickens that hang around
the front of the Old County Building might be possessed
of some new form of flu bugs that can be carried by some
human inhabitants of that old building that might lead to
a new pandemic tentatively identified as a new form of Petitionitis?
If you could managed it at all, do try to go to the Council
meeting on Thursday, Oct 20, to participate in Act I of
this possibly fascinating drama. The meeting starts at 1
p.m. Even though the three bills in question lead the agenda,
Chair Asing may, once again in defiance of the Sunshine
Law, not allow testimony, with the excuse that these bills
will go for First Reading later in the day, and, better
yet, you could come back in two weeks to the Public Hearing
on these bills.
Anything to confuse you and deter you from speaking to the
Hoike microphone, that is.
But, it might be an interesting show! If you miss it I’ll
try to do justice to Chair Asing’s skill and report
back to you next week.
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