Musings: Deconstructing Dirty Tricks

As the County Council prepares to vote tomorrow on overriding the mayor's veto of pesticide/GMO Bill 2491, the smell of dirty tricks hangs heavily in the air.

I'm talking about the eleventh-hour allegation that former Councilwoman Nadine Nakamura, now the mayor's top aide, orchestrated the bill's take-down with Councilwoman JoAnn Yukumura and county Communications Director Beth Tokioka via text at the marathon Oct. 15 meeting.

The accusation — subject of a post by blogger Andy Parx and memo to the mayor from Councilman Gary Hooser — was made by Kauai newcomer Jennifer Ruggles. Jennifer claims she was sitting behind Beth at the meeting and had an hours-long, unobstructed view of Beth's phone, thus allowing her to document the three women strategizing and “conspiring for a deferral” throughout the 18-hour meeting.

It all sounds very dramatic — until you look at it with a discerning eye.

First, consider the source. Jennifer is a paid political activist with the Pesticide Action Network who just six months ago was stirring up shit on the Big Island. She incorrectly reported in the Oct. 17 PAN blog that the bill was “veto-proof,” and on Friday had a letter in The Garden Island claiming she “recently participated in the democratic process for the first time.”

Jennifer also can be seen in the disturbing video of the mayor's veto, which starts with the camera man accosting Beth and demanding to see the messages on her phone. It is apparent in the video that he doesn't know who Beth is, which makes it highly unlikely Jennifer would have been attuned to the intrigue supposedly playing out on Beth's phone in the Council chambers.

Yet as Andy reports, citing an email from Jennifer:

"I felt concerned because it didn't seem ethical that the person who works most closely with the mayor, who after his presentation revealed the administration's agenda in opposition to the bill, should be lobbying JoAnn Yukimura and conspiring for a deferral with Nadine Nakamura during a public hearing," Ruggles said.

"The lobbying was especially inappropriate because it was happening during public testimony. Beth initiated these conversations disregarding the many people who had slept overnight to have their voice heard."

Let's just take a moment here to dispel the bullshit notion that anyone had to sleep overnight to have their voice heard. The campout was all part of the street theater and the drama.

Then consider the timing. If Jennifer was so deeply alarmed, why did she wait a full month to make her concerns known, which “coincidentally” takes it to the doorstep of the veto vote?

Finally, consider the substance. Andy claims in his post that the text-a-thon reveals:

In essence, Nakamura had set up the bill for veto by crafting and introducing the measures that her future boss would use as a reason to veto the bill.

However, Andy fails to mention that those very same amendments were introduced in committee, where they were supported by Gary Hooser and all the red shirts clamoring for the bill's passage in its amended form.

Andy goes on to claim:

Had the mayor vetoed the bill the day after it passed it would have left plenty of time for Nakamura, who eventually voted for the bill that night, to vote on the override which specifically requires five votes according to the county charter.

Except that's not true. With the six-day notice required by the state Sunshine Law, it would have been virtually impossible to get the override on the agenda in time for Nadine's last Council meeting on Oct. 23. And there's no guarantee she would have overridden it, anyway, when she had moved previously for a deferral.

Andy also claims:

The first irony in all of this, one that  [Councilman Tim] Bynum and Hooser intimated at, is that most of the midnight-hours at the Oct. 15-16 meeting had been spent proposing and passing amendments that were written, researched and insisted upon by Nakamura. 

Except if you actually watch the video of the meeting, you will see that the late-night amendments were introduced by JoAnn and Gary, with Gary and Tim supporting JoAnn's more questionable revisions.

Andy also repeats the spurious smear that Tim made against Nadine, where he accused her of “highly inappropriate and unethical behavior” for expressing her concerns about the challenges she would face implementing the bill as the mayor's managing director.

As someone who has watched the county administration fail to implement the vacation rental bill — even in the totally gutted form that Tim sponsored — I appreciated Nadine's candor in addressing that key issue.

It's an issue I've been raising since the get-go, which leads me to the underlying flaw of Bill 2491: its sponsor, Gary Hooser. Gary has been far more concerned with gaining personal notoriety as “the people's candidate,” the David that faced down the multinational's Goliath, than in ensuring we have a meaningful bill that works for this county.

Gary wanted all the glory, which is why he failed to consult with Nadine, the Council's top vote-getter, before introducing the bill. Instead, he and Tim, the two weakest members on the panel, were its sole champions. As a result, Gary had to sit back and let Nadine and JoAnn have their way with the bill in committee, because he depended on their votes to move it forward.

Now, with the eviscerated bill barely clinging to life, it's sad to see him resort to dirty tricks for the second time in as many weeks. The first was the fake huhu, fanned by Andrea Brower, over the supposed “one-two punch” of the mayor vetoing the bill and releasing the legal opinion, a ridiculous claim that The Garden Island swallowed hook, line and sinker.

For those of us watching this travesty unfold with growing distaste, tomorrow's vote can't come soon enough.