Musings: Back to Work

I woke up early and felt inspired, so I have two posts today. They're actually related, if you consider that politics is a sort of addiction.

The Council gets back to work today with a light agenda that carries a surprising amount of weight: two proposed resolutions that show Council Chairman Jay Furfaro is making good on his pledges to ensure a level playing field for all members and get more Council documents on line.

One resolution establishes a human resources sub-committee charged with determining whether the Council and County Clerk’s office have sufficient personnel to transact county business and recommending any needed revisions. Jay is appointing Mel Rapozo and Dickie Chang to that panel, along with Tim Bynum, who has long claimed that County Clerk Peter Nakamura and former Chair Kaipo Asing co-conspired to deliberately thwart his own noble efforts to put more Council documents on line. Now he’ll get a chance to see whether that was really the case, or if it was due to more mundane factors, like insufficient staffing and equipment. That is, if he can move past his own addiction to being the victim....

The other resolution creates a rules subcommittee tasked with reviewing and proposing amendments to the Council’s rules. That’s another area where both Tim and former Councilwoman Lani Kawahara claimed Kaipo’s iron-fisted reign prevented them from fully discharging their duties. Jay has named JoAnn Yukimura, Nadine Nakamura and Derek Kawakami to that panel, so we’ll see if they can come up with rules that ensure everybody plays fair.

Kudos to Jay for making the Councilmembers find solutions. That is, if they can all get past their ego addictions.