Kauai Council holds
interviews in private

Minutes after being told by the state Office of Information Practices that if they held closed-door confirmation hearings on mayoral appointments to county boards and commissions, they would be breaking the law, the Kauai County Council shut out the public yesterday and went ahead with the interviews.

The practice of conducting closed confirmation hearings has long been a sore point between Council critics and the county. Several Council members also have objected, and last month, one of them, Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura, a former Kauai mayor, asked the Office of Information Practices for an opinion.

OIP Director Les Kondo said last week he was informing Yukimura that the closed-door interviews are illegal.

But yesterday morning, the Council chamber door was closed, and 18 of Mayor Bryan Baptiste's appointees to boards and commissions were lined up in the hallway waiting to be interviewed in private.

A member of the Council staff said OIP had been called yesterday morning, and the county was told the opinion had not been mailed yet.

But OIP attorney Lorna Aratani said there was more to the conversation.

"I told them the hearings should not be done in executive session," she said. "I told them a written opinion was being drafted, and the OIP's conclusion would be the same as the verbal opinion I was giving them.

"If they insisted on something in writing, I could have written 'no executive session' on a piece of paper and faxed it to them," she added.

Aratani said the Kauai County Charter said the interviews should be conducted privately, but state law makes it clear they should be open to the public. "State law trumps county charters," she said.

Even more peculiar, the appointments of many of those interviewed yesterday had not yet been officially received by the Council.

None of the Council members called for comment yesterday returned the calls.

"They went ahead after being told it was illegal. That's grounds for impeachment," said longtime Council watchdog Andy Parks. He said it appears the Council is attempting to shove the whole confirmation process through in a few days.

Parks said it is important to make the confirmation hearings public. "Sometimes the questions asked by the Council members are as important as the answers," he noted.

Ray Chuan, another frequent Council critic, agreed.

"This is what they refer to as a willful violation," Chuan said.