ACTION ALERT: Testify Friday 8/4 9 am, to stop Corp Counsel from Fast-Tracking their request to hire law firm KSG to litigate against Chris Salem for exposing Greg Brown's and other County Fraud.

Testify against Resolution 23-187
"AUTHORIZING THE EMPLOYMENT OF SPECIAL COUNSEL KOBAYASHI SUGITA & GODA, LLP, IN CHRISTOPHER SALEM V. COUNTY OF MAUI, ET AL., CIVIL NO. 2CCV-21-0000048"

ONLINE: https://maui.bluejeans.com/295235670
Email to: county.clerk@mauicounty.us

This abuse of the County's Procurement Process is why we spoke out in January against Chair Lee's proposed "New Rules" that would have given her sole authority to Fast Track legislation.

If Chair Lee had her Fascist way, there would be no public discussion about the many conflicts of interest at play here in Corp Counsel's latest attempt to silence whistleblower Chris Salem.

See the picture of the retaining walls at Greg Brown’s Monster Hotel being torn down because they were illegally built. Hopefully, In time, through Chris Salem's diligence, the rest of this Monstrosity will get torn down too.

Brown’s walls are a wonderful metaphor for tearing down the walls that have allowed Corporation Counsel to run this County behind the scene for decades. Everyone acknowledges and laments Corp Counsel’s undue manipulations, but no one has been more effective in doing anything about it than Chris Salem.

I’m so thankful I had the opportunity to help convince Mike Victorino to hire Chris in 2019. 

Mike, I think, was simply following his instincts to do good and had no real idea of the firestorm he was setting up by empowering Chris Salem with access to County records from within.

As the Mayor’s Legislative Liaison, it became Chris Salem’s job to document and repair previously unknown fraud committed by department directors and covered up by Corp Counsel, including their self-protecting obstruction of what was supposed to be an independent Audit of the 3-lot-or-less deferral agreements.  

It became Chris Salem’s job to document and repair Corp Counsel’s manipulations, through a legislative “mistake” made in the 2015 UpCountry Water Bill, that allowed County officials to serve private developers’ financial interests at the public’s expense. 

It’s worth noting that Chair Lee delayed fixing that “mistake” until after her friend got an infrastructure exemption on his property up in Iao Valley.  Who knew Iao Valley was actually Upcounty?

In some ways, I’m thankful too to Greg Brown, Michelle McLean, and Moana Lutey for so vastly abusing every aspect of our existing system because the paper trail they left makes exposing their fraud and manipulation unavoidable.

Salem was wrongfully terminated because the reports he was filing as a County employee exposed them all. And now the walls are coming down.

Is it guilt by association that Alice Lee placed Moana Luety as County Clerk and hired Michelle Mclean as her executive assistant?  Chair Lee’s executive assistant is a named party in this case so it’s a conflict of interest for Chrair Lee to be presiding here today, let alone vote. 

It’s a conflict of interest for Corp Counsel to be the entity that chooses KSG for this job with no public procurement report. Council Members should check to see if your vote today to accept that procurement violation makes you vulnerable to removal from office.

KSG is itself conflicted in this case because while employed by the Mayor, Salem discovered falsified Government records manufactured by past department Directors that KSG relied on in previous court filings intending to harm and silence him.

Corp Counsel has been lying to this Council and the court for over two years claiming that the deferral agreements play no role in Chris Salem’s wrongful termination case.

After being confronted by Chris Salem, Judge Hammon recused herself because she was the lawyer for Council Services advising Mike Victorino’s committee in 2007 when they shut the deferral agreement program down negligently without providing for an accounting or collection of the tens if not hundreds of millions that developers owe to the County.

Judge Cahill has now removed Corp Counsel from litigating against Chris Salem also because they wrote the thousand of agreements that have yet to be collected on.

So, how can a conflicted Corp Counsel officiate and control their own replacement here today? And ask for a fast track to do so without public comment?

Just as this Council hired an independent attorney to investigate Don Guzman’s actions, this reso today should be denied in favor of the Council performing its own investigation of Corp Counsel without Corp Counsel controlling it.

This Council works for the people, not the County’s Lawyers, and should be joining Chris Salem in his ongoing efforts to tear down Corp Counsel’s manipulations and accept his proposal for massive financial recovery to the County that Corporation Counsel is doing everything they can to block.