Voters back more ethics oversight and compensation changes, oppose longer terms for boards 

The Maui County Board of Ethics will get full-time staffing to help investigate complaints and Moloka‘i and Lānaʻi officials will have an easier time getting interisland travel reimbursed under two proposals that passed in the general election last week. 

The two charter amendments both received nearly 60% of the vote from Maui County residents who cast their ballots on Nov. 5.

But a third charter amendment was narrowly defeated with 43.1% voting “no” and 40% voting “yes” on a proposal to allow members of boards and commissions to serve consecutive terms without a waiting period in between.

It’s a decision that some elected officials and political observers believe is due in part to distrust in government. 

“The general public, I think, is very reluctant to have people serving for long periods of time without the ability to review who they are and what they’re doing,” said Dick Mayer, a retired Maui Community College professor who served on a panel that vetted people for boards and commissions during the 2007-2011 term of former Mayor Alan Arakawa. 

The Maui County Charter is the document that outlines the structure and organization of the local government. Every election year, the Maui County Council sends proposed charter amendments to the ballot for voters to consider. During the 2022 election, there were more than a dozen amendments proposed by the council and the Charter Commission that meets every 10 years.

Voters’ reasons for blocking longer terms may have also factored in to their decision to back independent staffing for the Board of Ethics. The charter amendment that passed with 57.6% of the vote will give the board three full-time staff members: an executive director who is a lawyer, an executive secretary/assistant and an investigator.

The Board of Ethics handles complaints from the community and queries from public officials about whether their actions could pose a conflict of interest. For example, the board could issue an opinion on whether a council member is allowed to vote on a bill related to an organization they once led or a tax cut that could benefit their business.

However, because the board only meets once a month, it can’t offer timely ethics advice, then-Chair Geraldine Lewis explained in a letter to the council earlier this year. Full-time staff would be able to give county employees advice on a daily basis to help avoid ethics violations, Lewis said.

The staff also would be able to independently investigate and prosecute ethics violations, which the board currently lacks the budget and staffing to do, and it would help review the dozens of financial disclosures and lobbying filings that currently take 80% to 90% of the board’s meeting time. Having independent staff would also help avoid conflicts for county attorneys who have to represent both the Ethics Board and county employees or agencies who have issues pending with the board, Lewis said.

This comes in the wake of recent high-profile government corruption investigations that included former Department of Environmental Management officials being sentenced to federal prison for taking bribes.

The charter amendment was proposed by the Ethics Board and introduced on behalf of the administration by Council Chair Alice Lee, who won her reelection bid for the Wailuku-Waihe‘e-Waikapū seat last week. The council voted 7-0 in July, with two council members excused, to send the amendment to the ballot.

“The people handling the work before the board, they’re so underresourced, so shorthanded, so they have a hard time getting their opinions out on time, and so that’s the reason why the council members supported it,” Lee said. 

Council Member Keani Rawlins-Fernandez, who proposed the two other amendments on the ballot, believed that staffing the Ethics Board would be “a good move for our county government.”

“As a government we all need to continue doing a better job at inspiring faith and confidence in the electorate in the work we’re doing,” she said.

Rawlins-Fernandez, who won her reelection bid for the Moloka‘i residency seat on the council last week, also proposed a successful amendment that would put the Salary Commission in charge of determining salaries instead of compensation for elected officials and appointed directors and deputies. The goal was to make it consistent with the state constitution and remove fiscal barriers for officials living on Moloka‘i and Lāna‘i. 

The problem came up when Rogerene “Kali” Arce, a Moloka‘i resident who was sworn in as director of the new county Department of Agriculture in 2022, had to pay travel expenses to Maui out of pocket and couldn’t be reimbursed without having to first go through the Salary Commission. Rawlins-Fernandez said Maui officials do not have to worry about going through the same process. She also said travel barriers may be preventing qualified people from Moloka‘i and Lāna‘i from serving in government. 

With the change, compensation like travel reimbursement will now be managed by the council or the mayor. 

Rawlins-Fernandez also proposed the amendment to allow members of boards and commissions to serve for up two consecutive full terms or 10 consecutive years, whichever is greater. The goal was to help fill vacancies for seats representing places like Moloka‘i, Lāna‘i and Hana, where there is a smaller pool of people who are “available, interested and qualified” to serve as volunteers on boards that often meet for several hours during work days. Under current county rules, residents have to sit out for two years after serving their first term. 

Maui County has been trying to fill vacancies on boards and commissions, putting out multiple calls in recent years. Last month the county said it needed volunteers for more than 40 panels that oversee issues including planning, fire, police and liquor control. 

Even with the need to keep boards and commissions staffed, Mayer pointed out that voters may be wary of people serving for too long in government, especially at a time when there’s been growing concern over branches like the U.S. Supreme Court, which has lifetime appointments. 

In 2020, Maui County voters passed charter amendments that created stricter term limits for council members and the mayor. 

Rawlins-Fernandez recognized the concerns and said people may have been more supportive of the boards and commissions measure if it were geared only toward Moloka‘i and Lāna‘i residents as she’d intended it to be. 

“I think there’s such a distrust in government overall … so I think longer terms are not something that’s attractive to our electorate at the moment,” she said.