Share as you can… And testify this Fri. 9am
COUNCIL’S NEW RULES Reso 23-5
On Friday, Alice Lee will most certainly resurrect her proposed new, authoritarian, anti-open government rules to eliminate early public input on any resolution she chooses, fast-tracking around committee hearings and your public testimony.
Fast-tracking currently requires a Super-Majority, 6 to 3 Council vote taken AFTER a 1st round of public input.
If the past two sessions are any indication, where the New Council Majority consistently voted against overwhelming public testimony, they will shamefully award Alice Lee the power she wants to skip committee and public input at will.
Alice’s authoritarian power grab eliminates at least three rounds of public input and four weeks of advanced public notice, informing us only six days before the Council’s first read, regardless of how controversial the legislation is.
This minimizes community awareness and drastically limits any community group from organizing public testimony, something that the Council’s rules have historically and appropriately specifically protected.
Forcing testifiers to wait all day to speak for just 2 minutes:
Maui’s community is also outraged at the dark-government choice to restrict public testimony to only two minutes and then only when each agenda item is specifically called, rather than allowing us to testify for three minutes on each item all up front, at once, at the start of the session.
The Council gets paid. What citizen can sit around all day waiting to stand for just two minutes, not knowing what time the council will get around to calling an item if they even get to it at all?
The new Council Majority is abusing every authority they have available in a blatant crusade to make it harder for the public to participate in OUR government.
Intentionally limited Job Search for County Clerks:
Even the job post for clerks was restricted, listed only on the County’s website, skipping Indeed.com where the County now lists 87 other jobs.
MAUI CAUSES spent a couple of hundred bucks posting the jobs nationally at the old clerk’s starting salary of $110k and got over 42 applications.
Once embarrassed by our actions, the Council Chair did post the jobs nationally but misrepresented the salary at only $52K.
Why? It would seem it was intentionally done to limit applicants.
Alice Lee wants to pay Moana Lutey $156,982 (that’s way more the even the Mayor gets) for a job that does not require a lawyer. Lutey was rejected by Mayor Bissen who removed her as the County’s top lawyer because she is so extraordinarily manipulative, divisive and abusive to the community.
Remember, we all just voted on a Charter Amendment that goes into effect in July to strip the hiring authority of the County Clerk position away from the Council Chair, specifically to block that power from being abused for political patronage and advantage – exactly as Alice is doing on Friday by hiring Moana Lutey. The half-assed job search they did was just a charade.
Given the importance of Chair Lee’s power grab, unless we speak out up-front, now, in any way we can, on Friday, Alice will continue the abusive policy newly set by Tasha Kama to disallow all upfront morning testimony, both can and had been allowed as a discretionary option , forcing us all to sit around all day in order to testify piecemeal when each item is called.
If you can, please make a contribution to Maui Causes so we can buy social media ads to mobilize our community: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=9G4H8PUWSTDB6
By design and intention, Alice Lee is leading the new Council Majority into a Fascist state.
Be ready to spend some time on this and be EXTRA VOCAL on Friday. Log on at
https://maui.bluejeans.com/295235670