Council orders CITY COUNCILWOMAN Rene Mansho will need to pay $40,000 as a partial settlement for using her staff to work on campaign matters on city time, her colleagues have decided.
Mansho to pay
$40,000
More punishment likely
By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Star-BulletinThey also agreed to a city Ethics Commission recommendation to issue further sanctions against her.
They chose to wait until tomorrow, however, to decide what other punishment to hand her.
Mansho declined to talk to reporters about her situation.
Indications are that Council members are ready to strip her of further titles and assignments, issue some kind of public rebuke of her actions, or both.
By voting 8-0 to accept the recommendations made by the Ethics Commission, the Council's Policy Committee agreed to require Mansho and her staff to cease from "all unethical conduct and practices" and receive training on the application of the city's standards of conduct.
Council Chairman Jon Yoshimura said he and his Council colleagues wanted some time to weigh what additional sanctions should be imposed.
INITIAL INDICATIONS were that at least some Council members believed they had punished Mansho enough last week, when she was removed as chairwoman of the Budget Committee and from the largely ceremonial position of Council vice-chairwoman.
But meting out additional sanctions appeared to be the direction Council members were moving after yesterday's Policy Committee meeting.
"I think there was more consensus than I expected," said Councilman Steve Holmes, who is among those who have indicated more needs to be done.
Yoshimura said the Council members are "very concerned" and "want to send the message to the public that what happened was wrong and know that we're dealing with it."
"There are some additional measures that a majority of Council members would like to see happen," Yoshimura said.
Among the choices of punishment most mentioned yesterday was removing Mansho from any association with the Hawaii State Association of Counties, an organization consisting of the councils of Hawaii's four county governments.
Mansho is current chairwoman of the organization.
Last week, Yoshimura barred her from receiving any Council funds for HSAC-related travel.
Mansho is also chairwoman of the Council's Public Works Committee and a member of other Council committees. She also is a member of the Oahu Metropolitan Planning Organization, a state-city group involved in traffic-solving strategies.
Council members could also take the unusual step of initiating impeachment procedures, a process which typically would involve obtaining the signatures of 1,000 constituents in Mansho's district and sending the matter to the Hawaii Supreme Court for action.
"We didn't discuss that," Yoshimura said.
"That issue is best left to her constituents."
Some Council members noted that some of the activities called into question by the Ethics Commission and the state Campaign Spending Commission -- which last week separately fined Mansho $40,000 fine for inappropriate use of campaign funds -- were formerly gray areas and not unlike some of the things that they may have done.
The recent rulings against Mansho have also served as a wake-up call, they said.
"We now understand that there are some hard and fast rules that have evolved from (these investigations) that we need to follow," Yoshimura said.
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