There's no way to know how the Council meeting will go tomorrow.
If Alice Lee follows through with her incredibly dark-government power grab by bringing forward her Council Rules Reso 23-5, which was on the agenda on Jan 2nd, the citizens of Maui County are quite simply screwed.
Alice herself was not seated on Jan 2nd and so wasn't able to promote her absurdly harmful proposal. In that vacuum, Keani Rawlins Fernandez was able to get the Council to adopt the same rules the Council had been following since at least 2021.
Tomorrow the rules come up again and Alice Lee could make her powerplay. Hopefully not.
There are several resolutions regarding the rules.
We suggest you support Tasha Kama's Reso 23-27 which simply extends the expiration of the current rules cloned from 2021 that KRF put in place on Jan 2nd. These rules served pretty well for the past two years.
We also suggest you call for an amendment to the rules that mandates public testimony be allowed BOTH all upfront at the start of each meeting AND as each item is called up.
There have been characterizations made in local media that doing this was somehow a problem, but other than Council Services figuring out how to do it, it's not really a problem at all.
The Council gets paid. What citizen can sit around all day waiting to stand for just two minutes, not knowing what time the council will get around to calling an item if they even get to it at all?
Allowing both is what is best for our community and we must demand both!
OTHER RULES PROPOSALS:
Tamara Paltin has offered her own version of Council Rules in her Reso 23-30 which seems to be a stripped-down version of what's been working for the past two years. Honestly, we are simply unsure why MC Paltin wants to fix something that does not seem broken, but she will have a chance to speak to the matter and we look forward to hearing her.
Reso 23-31 seems very bad for this community and a direct assault by CM U'U Hodgens to exclude anyone who has cultural knowledge from being added as a resource person.
It reflects very poorly on U'U Hodgens to want to restrict who can be a resource person to only those with "scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge" which "must be based on sufficient facts or data and the product of reliable principles and methods, and the resource person must reliably apply the principles and methods to the subject matter being considered.”
Who's to say what is sufficient and reliable? A very poorly conceived and limiting amendment that should be denied.
COUNTY CLERK
Sadly, it is clear that the Council Chair intentionally limited the job search for County Clerks, posting at first only on the County’s website, skipping Indeed.com where the County lists 87 other jobs.
MAUI CAUSES spent a couple of hundred bucks posting the jobs nationally at the old clerk’s starting salary of $110k and got over 42 applications.
Once embarrassed by our actions, the Council Chair did post the jobs nationally but misrepresented the salary at only $52K.
Why? It would seem it was intentionally done to limit applicants. Because they came through our efforts, Maui Causes had access to the resumes of four of the people that Alice Lee chose to put on her short list and I can tell you that none of those four are qualified for the job. Alice Lee is gaslighting us.
Resolutions 23-25 and Reso 23-26 are a truly absurd and blatant abuse of authority by Alice Lee.
Alice Lee wants to pay Moana Lutey $156,982 (that’s way more the even the Mayor gets) for a job that does not require a lawyer. Lutey was rejected by Mayor Bissen who removed Lutey and Richelle Thomson as the County’s top lawyers because they are both so extraordinarily manipulative, divisive, and abusive to the community.
Remember, we all just voted on a Charter Amendment that goes into effect in July to strip the hiring authority of the County Clerk position away from the Council Chair, specifically to block that power from being abused for political patronage and advantage – exactly as Alice is doing by hiring Moana Lutey. The half-assed job search they did was just a charade.
Please testify to restore both Clerk's salaries to what they were previously and we specifically support naming Anna Mabbutt as Maui County Clerk. Anna is an active California Attorney, a University of Michigan Law School graduate, a dedicated State of Hawaii public servant, and an open government advocate with extensive knowledge of local and state legislative, open meeting, and public records laws, and procedures, who worked two full election cycles as the Ballot and Election Projects Manager and a Voter Support Operator for the City and County of San Francisco Elections Department, and successful small business owner.
If you are wondering about our worst-case scenario with the authoritarian, anti-open government rules that Alice Lee could try to bring back, they will eliminate early public input on any resolution she chooses, fast-tracking around committee hearings and your public testimony.
Fast-tracking currently requires a Super-Majority, 6 to 3 Council vote taken AFTER a 1st round of public input.
If the past two sessions are any indication, where the New Council Majority consistently voted against overwhelming public testimony, they could very well shamefully award Alice Lee the power she wants to skip committee and public input at will.
Alice’s authoritarian power grab eliminates at least three rounds of public input and four weeks of advanced public notice, informing us only six days before the Council’s first read, regardless of how controversial the legislation is.
This minimizes community awareness and drastically limits any community group from organizing public testimony, something that the Council’s rules have historically and appropriately specifically protected.
These are some of the most important issues ever to face this community, and they will impact us all deeply for the next two years and longer.
Please log on and testify while we still can: 9AM, Fri 2/3/2023
https://maui.bluejeans.com/295235670
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