Reports of illegal dumping sites on Oahu have led the City Council to put on hold for three weeks the confirmation of Frank Doyle as director of the city Department of Environmental Services, which oversees city landfill and sewer operations. Dump sites prompt
Council to delay
confirmationBy Crystal Kua
ckua@starbulletin.com
"There is a cloud over his nomination, and I don't think it's fair to him for us to confirm him during this time," Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi said, noting she was not questioning his integrity or competency.
Kobayashi was among the majority voting to postpone action on Doyle's nomination until May 7. The vote was 6-3.
Councilman Nestor Garcia, who voted against the deferral, said he supports Doyle and called for the Council to take a vote on Doyle's confirmation.
"The deferral only serves to make even cloudier this man's reputation in his ability to do his job," said Garcia, whose district includes the site of the former Waipahu incinerator, where the illegal dumping was discovered.
Doyle, an engineer who is currently acting director of the department, said he would have preferred the Council take action instead of postponing the vote.
"I feel that my responsibility is to get this taken care of properly, as expeditiously as possible ... and to assure that there are no health effects or detrimental conditions," Doyle said.
After the vote, Doyle said that he's not upset that the Council postponed his confirmation.
"They felt they wanted to get these issues associated with Waipahu as much in perspective as they could," Doyle said.
The deferral came after Carroll Cox, president of EnviroWatch Inc., spoke against Doyle's nomination and lodged new accusations against him. Cox is the one who brought the illegal dumping to public attention.
Cox has found illegally buried smokestack debris and tons of large appliances buried near the incinerator at Waipahu Depot Road, which the city cleaned up last month.
Earlier this month, Cox found another illegal dump a few hundred yards from the Waipio Peninsula Soccer Park.
In a new allegation, Cox said Doyle's city telephone number and e-mail address were listed on Web sites for a private soccer organization.
Doyle is listed as president of Soccer Hawaii on the organization's Web site and head coach of the Hawaii Pacific University soccer team, and he promotes soccer in Hawaii through different organizations.
Doyle said he uses his home phone number and personal cellular phone as contact for his Web site, but he acknowledged that he gets three to four soccer-related phone calls a day at work. He says other organizations have put his old city work number and e-mail as a contact number on their Web sites and he's asked them to remove the information. Councilman Mike Gabbard, chairman of the Public Works Committee, which referred the nomination to the Council, argued against the deferral. He said Doyle answered in writing the questions that the committee posed to him.
"There's always going to be questions. That's just the nature of the game," he said.
Other supporters called Doyle intelligent, a straight shooter with impeccable integrity.
Retired city employee Cynthia Bond pointed to Council confirmation yesterday of Tim Steinberger as director of design and construction.
"Frank deserves no less and no less fair treatment by the Council," Bond said. "If action is not taken today to approve his confirmation, I think we send a negative message to an incredibly positive force in the city administration."
Star-Bulletin reporter Diana Leone contributed to this report.
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