Recently, the County Council’s Special Committee on Governance voted 6 to 5 to recommend a radical change in Maui County government, basically replacing its current “strong” mayor with a professional, appointed manager. For about a year now, a group of

Maui citizens have been promoting such a change and their arguments have dominated the discussion to date. This statement is meant to give seven basic reasons why that idea is bad for Maui County.

1. A fundamental feature of American government is checks and balance to power. The council-manager proposal would give ultimate authority to the County Council, which will hire a professional manager to run the government’s operations as its chief executive officer. The council will hold all the cards and there will be no real means to check the council’s power. This is very problematic because the current way we elect our council gives a major advantage to incumbents over challengers. Without changing the way we elect our council and without a strong mayor to balance their power, the council could act with impunity.

2. The argument being made is that a streamlined council-manager system produces a more efficient, more effective, less expensive form of government than a strong mayor government. That argument is not borne out in the existing objective academic studies on the question. The literature shows that both forms can perform well or poorly. A number of cities that were governed by council-manager systems have gone back to a strong mayor format like we have now.

3. The Maui County Cost of Government conducted its own study, independent of the Council’s Special Governance Committee, of the proposal’s efficiency and cost-saving claims and found that there was no objective evidence to support those claims. Without that evidence, there is no good reason to undergo a costly change. The commission’s final report is expected soon.

4. The academic research shows that council-manager systems are quite successful in insulating government from politics, often resulting in low voter turnout and other indications of a disconnect between the governments and the populous they are supposed to serve. Some famous cases in which council-manager systems failed miserably include Bell, Calif., and Ferguson, Mo. As the U.S. Justice Department review that followed the 2014 riots showed, the city of Ferguson had become a predatory institution that fed on its own population. In its April 2014 city elections, Ferguson had a 12 percent voter turnout. Ferguson is 65 percent black and 35 percent white. Yet its council was all white in 2014, as was its police force. The rest is a sad history we would not want our community to follow.

5. When this debate began last year one of the arguments being repeatedly offered to justify going to a council-manager form of government was that the 1967 Charter Commission had considered it. And, indeed, the commission had. And commission decided to reject the concept because was poor fit for Maui County, because it would not provide the type of leadership the county needs, because it would be a poor fit for an ethnically complex community like Maui County, and because it lacked a means for check and balance, the commission’s vice chairman, attorney William Crockett, told the governance committee.

6. The proponents for changing Maui County governance argue that we have a poorly performing, mediocre government. But by two objective standards Maui County has to be doing something right. It has the highest municipal (AA+) bond rating in Hawaii and the lowest property tax rates in the state. Once again, what exactly is the problem?

7. This proposal is being rushed without adequate review by the boarder community. In its draft report, the Cost of Government Commission argues that if the council chooses to proceed with this effort, then it should empanel a special charter commission to do the research and analysis that such a major revision to the charter will require. Otherwise, the potential for “unforeseen consequences” looms.

There is more to this discussion than this space allows. The above seven points are meant to give Maui County voters a snapshot of why this proposed council-manager revision is really a bad idea for our community.

* Dave DeLeon is a Haiku resident and a member of the County Council’s Special Committee on County Governance.