Secretive County Council

SUBHEAD: Kaipo Asing and others on the Kauai County Council are preventing us from knowing. Image above: Kaipo Asing keeps secrets and shushes dissent. Mash-up by Juan Wilson. Photo by Dennis Fufimoto for TGI. By Linda Harmon on 1 November 2010 in The Garden Island - (http://thegardenisland.com/news/opinion/mailbag/article_09f3b732-e57a-11df-8965-001cc4c002e0.html) A resolution that would create easy access to county council agenda and supporting documentation on the county web site was introduced by Tim Bynum and was voted on being deferred until December by all the present council except Tim Bynum and Lani Kawahara. This resolution would have enacted procedures common place in municipalities across the country so citizens could access agenda and supporting documentation in a timely manner. Using the petition process provided by council rule # 9 we wrote asking the matter be brought up rsvp, discussed and voted on. The petition was signed by 20 and submitted August 24 . Over a month passed with no reply. When I inquired no reply for another week. I was told by Kaipo Asing at a meet and great the candidates event confidentially that he had received it and it would be taken up in Dec.. He said he would be sending me a full explanation by email. I have yet to receive the email he promised. So petition or no petition the chair has determined we must wait. I'd like to know why bother to have a petition policy if it could so easily be disregarded by the chair. The council and the mayor have a hard copy of the agenda and documentation by the Thurs. before the council meeting of the following Wed. It functions for them. What would need to happen to furnish the public with the same information would be to include the documentation with each agenda item when creating the agenda in the first place. In so doing when one got the agenda one would see the related documentation as well. So availing it to the public wouldn't take much but a procedural change. The chair, Kaipo and the present council members with the exception of Lani and Tim are being obstructionists, dismissing the right of the public to be as informed as possible. He as well as the others on the council who voted to defer it back in June are hampering the public's right to participation in the political process. This is when most other governing bodies across the nation have long ago implemented this procedure. .