INDEX - KAUAI
POLITICS
www.islandbreath.org ID# 0507-05
SOURCE: RAY CHUAN chuan24658@yahoo.com
POSTED: 1 September 2005 - 1:00pm HST
Government Secrecy always a problem
Interesting Comparison: Communist China & our Council by
Ray Chuan on 30 August 2005 |
SOURCE: RAY CHUAN chuan24658@yahoo.com
Pigs in a Poke
25 August 2005 - 7:15pm HST
Bizarre.
Infuriating. Pathetic. Entertaining? Revealing? |
SOURCE: RAY CHUAN chuan24658@yahoo.com
More on Kauai's Seven Dwarves
13
July 2005 - 3:45pm HST
And update on the Adventures of by
Ray Chuan on 12 July 2005 “But
that’s exactly parts of what we want to find out by
reviewing the requested Our
reply to the puzzling request from the County Clerk concluded
with the following: |
SOURCE: RAY CHUAN chuan24658@yahoo.com
Kauai's Snow White & The Seven Dwarves
21
June 2005 - 9:45pm HST
Painting
of Snow White & the Seven Dwarves by Scott
Gustafson
by
Ray Chuan on 16 June 2005 To be
procedurally correct, the Council should state that the
money would come out of the “Un-encumbered Surplus”
which was over $7 million in the Fiscal Year 2004-2005;
and is believed to be over $8 million in the coming FY,
this Slush Fund having grown from around $2 million five
or so years ago to the current $8 million, apparently more
than sufficient to cover such items as impromptu contracts
to hire their favorite Honolulu lawyers, or one of their
favorite consultants to pave the way for an easy permit
from the State Dept of Health to allow the County to pile
another 25 feet on top of the 65-foot high Kekaha Landfill,
etc., etc,… In the mean time Snow White and the Seven Dwarves have been very quiet about another Request (by Walter Lewis and me) that has come their way, asking for the minutes of all the executive sessions the Kauai County Council has conducted since the Kaipo Asing Council took over in December, 2002. The request was received by the Council Clerk on June 13, 2005; and the law requires that the Council respond within ten business days, which means the Council would have responded by June 25, which it has not. We have, therefore, notified OIP of this failure to respond. It is anticipated that OIP would presently ask the Kauai Council for the records of all these executive sessions (of which we believe there are over one hundred and forty by now) in order to review and render opinions thereon. Some of these we know for certain were held illegally, such as the interviews of nominees for various commissions and boards; and other secret meetings dealing with the spending of public funds. If Snow White and the Seven Dwarves persist in denying the public what the law says the public is entitled to there will invariably be another lawsuit. We believe this is the only way the public on this island would ever learn how deliberately and illegally this council has not complied with the Sunshine Law; and that only through litigation can we hope to open up this utterly corrupt and arrogant government of ours. Success in such litigations would also, I hope, lead to financial and performance audit, which this county has never had, that would further expose the depth of deception and corruption in which this county government has been operating for far too many years. An ominous new development mysteriously promulgated by the Mayor surfaced this past week when Baptiste announced at a meeting of the Police Commission that the County Attorney’s Office is withdrawing all legal counsel and support for commissions and boards in the County of Kauai. No reasons were offered by the Mayor, nor did he reveal under what authority or custom he was making this decision. It is curious that this momentous announcement was delivered only at the Police Commission. Whether similar announcements will be made at other commissions, such as the Planning Commission and the Charter-mandated decadal Charter Review Commission, both of which obviously, by the nature of their work, need legal counsel at all times. The Mayor ‘s suggested (only suggested, mind you) substitute for the legal counsel present at the commission meetings is the installation of close-circuit TV between the commission meetings and the County Attorney’s Office, but without assigning any attorney to monitor the television coverage. According to the Mayor, the attorneys would attend to their assigned duties at the County Attorney’s Office, but would occasionally and casually glance at the TV monitor. This is almost laughable! What if some tricky legal question comes up at a commission meeting, but nobody is paying any attention to the TV while attending to their assigned duties? So a legal issue is created. Whose fault is it then? A darker motive seems to emerge, in my conspiracy-dominated thinking, of course. Legal mistakes and problems arising out of commission meetings would give the Mayor and the Council the excuse to force through changes in the organization and membership in ways that would ultimately shift the real responsibility from these commissions to the Administration and the Council, in one giant step toward what I believe is the ultimate goal of the Snow White and Seven Dwarves cabal to gain complete and absolute control of this county government. I believe the stage was set when the Mayor and the Council would not assign a lawyer to support the Charter Review Commission; delayed for months and possibly for good, any Hoike coverage of the Commission meetings; assigned, for many months, different meeting rooms for the Commission meetings so the public would lose track of when and where to go observe the Commission at work. In other words, keep the Charter Review Commission working in isolation from the public, to disable the effectiveness of the Commission so that any meaningful recommendations for changes in the Kauai County Charter – such as Term Limits and Councilmanic Districting - which we can be sure would be inimical to the interests of this mayor and this council, would never get on the ballots in November 2006. With the current Planning Commission and the current Planning Department, I suppose having or not having legal counsel would make no difference anyway, as the Commission, without any support in the way of the laws and rules nor the backgrounds of major issues from the Department, would just go on approving anything that comes along anyway. Sounds cynical but, unfortunately, too true! With that, I come back to the theme I have been advocating for some time. The only effective way to correct the ways and the culture in which this government operates – most of the time against the interest of the public – is to take this government to court, directly or indirectly, even if it means having to suffer the ultimate insult of our providing the deep pocket for the government to fight the lawsuits. On that note of irony I conclude this week’s report. |
SOURCE: RAY CHUAN chuan24658@yahoo.com
More on Kauai vs State OIP
21 June
2005 - 9:00am HST
by Ray Chuan on 19 June 2005 An update
on the continuing efforts on the part of the County Attorney
and the Kauai County Council to thwart the public’s
right to information. A friend
of mine with the Wall Street Journal heard about this great
opportunity to build a financial behemoth out of the public
dole, and tried to get a story on it in the WSJ, only to discover
that U.S. News had already started on a story which, surprisingly,
did not create much interest two years ago. Now, however,
the Honolulu Advertiser has come out with a fairly complete
story about this enterprise built upon the good hearts of
the American consumers in its Sunday, June 19 edition. Total,
each month = $6.80 Enough for now! |
SOURCE: RAY CHUAN chuan24658@yahoo.com
More county spending & secrecy
31 May
2005 - 8:45am HST
Rotunda of the County Building in Lihue
by
Ray Chuan on 29 May 2005 Property
Taxes & County Spending
Office
of Information Practices & the County Attorney In other
words, the OIP questions whether the Council should have gone
into an executive session at all. The
OIP concluded this letter with:
|
SOURCE: RAY CHUAN chuan24658@yahoo.com
County Government Update
15 May 2005 - 7:30pm HST
The Mayor’s request for Council action on Commissioner Gonsalves was tendered in mid November, about a month after the disclosure of Gonslaves’ much publicized e-mail message. As the Garden Island reported, there were numerous friends of Leon testifying on what a good guy he is, how well he served in the Police Dept and other parts of the county government, and that the “Hop Sing” remarks were a private joke allegedly common among the ethnically diverse population on this island. That part is probably true. But I testified that the remark went way beyond the realm of a private joke when it came out of a Police Commissioner who went beyond the private joke and the matter became one of public concern. I read from a copy of the infamous e-mail in my testimony: “…..Tomorrow is the swearing in for Hop-Sing and Little Joe, I wouldn’t be there, Thank good (sic) I think I might throw-up. ………….” This message was sent on October 14 by Gonsalves to a friend in the Department who forwarded it on the next day; and the rest is history. If Gonsalves had stopped at “..…Little Joe. …” it could have been argued that this was just a private joke. But the next two sentences gave intent to the arguably innocent racial slur, thereby making it a public matter, so I testified. The Mayor had said in his request to the Council in November that elected officials are held to a higher standard. But the response from the majority of the Council and Gonsalves’ supporters sounded eerily like the kind of remarks one might still hear these days coming out of Mississippi and Louisiana – namely, “It is us against them outsiders.” It should be noted that both Police Chief K. C. Lum and his Deputy Chief are not from this island, just as the last chief, George Freitas, while from this island by birth, but had all his professional experience in California. One is obviously held to very high standards to be considered truly Local on Kauai. Lum is ethnically Chinese by birth, but was not born on Kauai and had grown up in a relatively cosmopolitan environment (away from Kauai, that is) before coming to this island. George Freitas, though of Portuguese descent and born on this island, did not meet the higher standards because his professional life was spent in California. One can readily understand why Lum’s swearing in was attended primarily by the younger officers (many no doubt not meeting the higher standards demanded by the majority of our Council) and none of the older officers showed up. Thus, April 28, 2005 was a sad day for Kauai that will, unfortunately, return to haunt us when the Civil Rights Commission begins its processing of Chief Lum’s complaint. As I have mentioned before on a number of occasions, a further irony arising out of this is that more of our tax money, probably in the hundreds of thousands, will be spent by our County Government to defend itself. The agenda item that took the longest time was the final approval of the appropriation of $500k for the Olohena Bridge. There had been heavy opposition from residents who must use that bridge in their daily activities; many of them came to testify at three earlier meetings and more on April 28. Council Chair Asing moved that item to a later time after some testimony had taken place, leaving the re-convening of the council for the continuation of the deliberations to take place late in the afternoon, leading ultimately to the closing of the session at 530 the next morning. This is a common trick used by Kaipo to discourage opponents to measures before the Council from testifying. He also frequently moves the agenda items to accommodate speakers or testifiers with whom he has no disagreement. The bill to appropriate half a million dollars had been deferred, on April 21, to the next Committee meeting, which would have been on May 5, for committee approval before sending it to the full Council for final approval, presumably on May 12. For some strange reason the Council appeared to be very eager to have the final approval done on April 28, which meant the Committee would have had to meet some time before1 pm, April 28, instead of its regularly scheduled meeting on May 5. Ah, Kaipo’s ingenuity knows no bounds! He scheduled a special meeting of the Public Works Committee for the morning of April 28 to approve the half million dollar and forward it on to the full Council meeting that afternoon, assuming, of course, that the Committee would approve the measure in the morning of the 28th. Such is the confidence Kaipo possesses that he obviously had no doubt the Committee would approval it. He also figured that by scheduling a special meeting of the Committee the public would be unlikely to know about it and would not show up. He was right. There were only one or two people there. However, having caught on to the trickery by Kaipo the residents were able to organize a sizable appearance for the April 28 afternoon meeting of the full Council. But they didn’t fully appreciate the deftness with which Kaipo runs his Council meetings. By breaking the deliberations on this final meeting on this appropriation into two parts, with Part 2 not taking place till the evening, he successfully reduced the number of people who came to testify, although even then the meeting did not end till 5:30am. One had to assume that there was some urgency for the County to finalize a very expensive $4.8 contract with the presumably successful bidder by the end of the week of April 28. The passage of the appropriation of $500,000 to make up the total of $875,000 as the County’s 20% match to the Fed’s 80% share assured the contracts people to proceed with finalizing the contract. The reason the Council, and specifically Council member Kaneshiro, gave for the astounding rise of the price for the dinky little Olohena Bridge, was the shortening of the time for completing the job from seven months to five months! I therefore went to the Purchasing Dept to ask to see all the documents pertinent to the Bridge job – the specifications for the several different stages of the procurement process over a period of several years, the bids and the final contract for the successful bidder. The head of Purchasing was most cordial and cooperative. After explaining the need for rushing through the preparation of the final contract he promised to meet with me as soon as possible to go over all the documents. For me this will be the first time since 1999 when I spent considerable time, with the cooperation of the Purchasing people, going over what turned out ultimately to be a failed procurement exercise to acquire the service of a waste processing facility that would take over most of the solid waste stream from going to the Kekaha Landfill, thereby extending its useful life. To explain the reason for the failed procurement would take much too much space here and would so discourage you from ever hoping to see some semblance of progress on this island that I would defer such a treatise to another time. Back to the Olohena Bridge. If one were to go there the first time without any pre-conceived notion he would probably miss it altogether, for it appears to be nothing but some planks thrown over a gulch of some kind with heavily grown brush at both ends. If one were to stop to investigate he would find a dry gulch of uncertain width because of the vegetation, and there would be no flowing water in it. Yes, after a heavy rain you might see some running water. Compare that with the #2 Wainiha Bridge on the North Shore. W-2, which crosses a real perennial stream, is probably three times as long as the Olohena. It was a wooden bridge that began to fail last year, whereupon the State Dept of Transportation ordered from the catalog of a company in NJ by the name of ACROW a replacement steel bridge, which was shipped express in pieces to Wainiha, because the narrow road would not allow the transport of the whole bridge. From its arrival, which I believe was less that a month from the date when the partial failure of the old bridge was first reported, to completion of the installation took less than two weeks; and traffic was stopped only for two nights. The cost of that bridge was somewhere over two million dollars including the expedited shipping and installation. Compare that with the $4.8 million price tag and closing of traffic for five months with the Olohena!! I had the good fortunate of meeting Eugene Sobecki, the National Sales Manager of ACROW last week when he came over to have a look at the Wainiha #3 bridge over the main branch of the Wainiha River. The Legislature and Governor had approved the money to replace the bridge, which has been there – as a temporary bridge – since the 1960’s. He had also planned to have a look at the Olohena Bridge, at the invitation of the residents of the neighborhood. His company also had the job of putting a bridge on the just started building of the new by-pass road not too far from Olohena. His assessment of the possible cost of putting a replacement Olohena Bridge in place in a matter of a few weeks, with possibly a couple of days of blocked traffic, was that his top estimate of the job would be just under one million. Hearing that from someone who should know, one must pause and puzzle even more over the $4.8 million five month job this Council is pushing frantically to give to a local contractor. Hence the efforts of a few friends to examine closely all the documentation pertaining to the Olohena Bridge. You will no doubt hear from us in coming weeks. In the mean time, our elected officials continue to furnish us with proof that they have been violating the County’ Tax Code in collecting property tax. I guess they have been cheating us for so long, while keeping us from knowing how the tax system is supposed to work, that they are beginning to believe that theirs is the legal way, and thus do not hesitate to expose their illegal practice. I’ll have more to report on this possibly next week. An item of interest in the newspapers today; and on the evening news on TV last night, was the sentencing by Judge Masuoka of the Fifth Circuit Court in Lihue on Thursday in the matter of James Pflueger admitting to ten criminal violations of the environmental laws of this state. The sentence was a fine of $50,000 for each violation and 6 months probation in lieu of 30 months in prison. Some background on this. There are actually five actions against Pflueger for what happened at his planned subdivision at Pila`a in November, 2001, when intensive alterations of the land over the preceding years resulted in the massive collapse of a bluff fronting the ocean and heavy run-offs of mud and rocks down a stream bed into the ocean. The mud flow inundated the home of Rick and Amy Marvin on the beach. There are actually five actions against Pflueger. First there is the civil suit by the Marvins for damage to their home and the accompanying suffering and personal losses, which has yet gone to trial. There is a relatively minor Kauai County civil suit for certain violations of grading rules that Pflueger settled for a $3000 fine. The State of Hawaii, through the Attorney General on behalf of the Department of Health, filed an action for criminal violations of state environmental laws. This is the one that was finalized yesterday. There is also an on-going administrative action by the DLNR against Pflueger for damaging the coral reef at Pila1a. This has been going through a contested case hearing which reportedly will come before the BLNR for a decision on the fine, which may reach several thousand million dollars. Then there is the major civil case in federal court under the federal Clean Water Act, under which the fines can reach $27,500 for every day of a violation. With the possibility of several sites in violation for many days, this could rise up to a seven or eight figure number in the fines. This case is in mediation at the moment. The federal case, as a matter of history, actually came out of the Marvins’ civil damage suit. Some of the lawyers observing the developing legal situation saw the possibility of mounting a federal Clean Water Act lawsuit, with legal support by Earthjustice, a public service law firm specializing in environmental suits, which was called the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund (SCLDF) though it was not directly a part of the Sierra Club organization; hence the eventual change of its name to Earthjustice, an independent public law firm. I had worked closely with the SCLDF in the early nineties in fighting the military-industrial-university complex over the Boom Box project north of Hanalei Bay that we contended would injure or kill the whales and other sea creatures. By the time of the Pila`a disaster the group had evolved into the Limu Coalition, primarily over the issue of the twenty-year growth and proliferation of un-permitted tour boat operations out of Hanalei Bay. The Coalition and the Kilauea Neighborhood Association approached EarthJustice to explore the possibility of it representing the two non-government organizations (NGO) in a Clean Water Act suit against Mr. Pflueger. Fortunately for us, the Limu Coalition had had over the years generous financial support from a small number of individuals, which enabled us to commit to a retainer with Earthjustice to get the project launched. (It should probably be explained here that non-profit public service law firms, while not charging its clients for its legal services, generally do require a retainer that would cover the co-called “out-of-the-pocket expenses” in connection with a lawsuit. The NGO must have more than reasonable assurance that it would win the suit and thus recover its cost, as will the law firm. On the other hand, a protracted lawsuit could well exhaust the limited financial resources of an NGO. With the help of our benefactors, we took the plunge.) We filed the required 90-day notice that we intended to sue in the summer of 2002. In quick succession, the EPA, the State of Hawaii and the County lf Kauai quickly joined the suit. The EPA, with the most clout, became the lead plaintiff. As in all such cases, the court ordered mediation before going to trial. And that’s where we have been – in mediation, now into the third year. It looks like it may be over in a few months, as all the issues, major and minor, are pretty well resolved. Pflueger will be required basically to return the land to its original condition – a major task of remediation that will last years and cost millions. The court will release the Consent Decree for a 30-day public comment, at which time I will try to convey to you as much of the details as is practical. So it is only two down and three to go. The next to close we hope will be the NGO-Government suit. It’s been quite an education in several respects for me and my colleagues. Which is probably as good a point as any to bring this weekly message to a close. |
Editors Note:Here are some links to more Ray Chaun: |
Pau