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Thanks to Council Members Kama, Sugimura, and Hokama for standing up for democracy when they forced the council to hold a public hearing on a proposal to change our form of county government.
Our "transparent" council majority are in a rush to get their proposal to change Maui County government on the ballot. Why is that?
We all have a lot on our minds right now, but I am willing to bet that not many Maui voters have a change to county manager government on their list of things that keep them up at night. Other things, like the potential collapse of our local economy for the forseeable future, comes to mind instead.
No one I know cares about or understands this topic, so why push it now? Good time to present a complicated issue to the voters?
Or is it? True the voting public is distracted. But that does not guarantee a positive vote. At least four times previously, Maui County voters rejected proposals to increase the council's term of office from two to four years. Repeated proposals were defeated because the Maui electorate understood that the proposals meant they would lose some of their hold on the council.
The longer term would have been more efficient, but less democratic. The voters rejected that trade-off. The county manager proposal amounts to the same thing: more efficient, at the expensive of the public's ability to affect local government.
Dave DeLeon
Haiku