and before we proceed if everyone please turn off your turn your cell phones to the silent mode and mr clark please proceed mr chair proceeding with presentation of testimony agenda items we've established limited telephone interactive communication that enables individuals from honolulu to provide testimony from our district offices individuals who wish to offer testimony from should now sign up with the district office staff individuals who wish to offer testimony in the chamber the sign up at the desk located on the eighth floor lobby just outside the chamber door testimony at all locations is limited to the item listed on today's agenda and pursuant to the rules of the counsel each testifier is allowed to testify for up to three minutes with one minute to conclude if requested when testifying please state your name and the name of any organization you on committee report fifteen dash fourteen to be followed by david j opportunity to know j d cam most of those years and practice against him i've also had the opportunity to witness that prosecutor's office in chaos and i was thinking about it in maybe fifteen years ago my go to move would have been stay away from this the office is running good let's go back to chaos i realize the problem with chaos is it creates more chaos it messes with the  judicial system prosecutors are afraid to do anything because there is no order there's no rules there's just chaos and what is jeopardized is fairness what you want from a prosecutor is essentially to be fair it's not about winning it's about doing the right thing it's about being fair and just and that's what j t cam has brought to this office in the two previous administrations under the prosecutor chaos rule people were scared people didn't want to make decisions people were worried that every time they did something something might hit them out of left field which might jeopardize their job when j t came in and trust me me and j t have not always seen  he and i have tangled up more than our share of share of occasions and but it never got personal he's not a personal friend of mine he is a professional acquaintance of mine and it never got personal no matter how heated no matter the words that we use to each other because we've known each other for so long it never got personal and she always did the fair thing now sometimes we could disagree about what the right thing was and sometimes we could disagree about what the fair thing was but i never did believe that g d did something that he truly believed was not fair that attitude permeates the office not everyone in the office that's their marching orders take responsibility for your cases prosecute properly and be fair don't be scared that if you make a decision that is might be considered pulled or different that somehow you're going to get penalized for it now that wasn't always the case and again i've been here long enough to tell you that there have been administrations were not just simply didn't happen there is no reason not to confirm j t kim is prosecutors or prosecuting the morale has never been higher and again i'm talking about the people i deal with and the third and fourth floor so district court circuit court every single day i'm in court probably more than any other defense attorney who's private and i deal with new prosecutors i've dealt with prosecutors have been around for a long time and they all have a confidence about them that you guys could be proud of and you know where that comes from comes from the top because when the top doesn't have that confidence everybody underneath doesn't have that confidence i would hope that you could see what he was doing he's done for opes i talk to much as you know i hope you can see what he's done for this county  he's he's he's done his job honorably and he needs to stay me fifteen years ago it's a kick him out throw him out let's have chaos that's great i realize that's that's a young man talking fortunately morning chair in the morning council good morning please excuse my dress i was not prepared to are expecting to be the administration's representative coming down here this morning to address you  said i am here in my official capacity as a deputy managing director and i want to make sure you know that i do represent our mare and our ministration and i also wanted to let you know that we as an administration being in the direct line of management for the department of prosecuting attorney we have heard what's going on here during the prior few meetings we have heard the recent complaints of or concerns i should say of our employees coming forward from the bartman a prosecuting attorney and from outside and as managers we have taken action what the specific steps or details of our actions where we discuss that because those are personnel private matters but we have taken action and i can tell you for i've been in the direct line of management of our prosecutor  ym for four years now and in those four years we have had one personnel incident that just occurred about two months ago and it was it was taking care of quickly and it wasn't a detrimental incident it was just a little difference that occurred and other than that we have had no complaints professionally no complaints about performance no complaints about violations of any laws bargaining agreements policies regarding j d kim and his management of the department of prosecuting attorney so with that said from the management's point of view we don't see a reason for this body to refuse to bring back j t kim as our prosecuting attorney we are also open to answer questions for you questions we can we can't give you all the details in open session but providing corporation counsel allows us to provide certain answers we're willing to do that and with that said thank you very much look forward to helping  mr chen for coming down good to see administration come down on the fourth meeting we were not seeing presence in the last three meetings for the representation of the administration but i appreciate regular performance evaluations of the directors of those have been done for mr kim they are part of his personnel record i am not privy to releasing that type of record and i know they're available so yes it's been done but we're not the entity that's allowed to provide that access n chairperson white numbers of the council this is pretty serious i got here i'm here because i read an article and i thank a member carl for making this pos ok the article said there was a five two vote all right disapproving right and then said not disapproving but in relation to this not accepting his employment and then there was another vote to disapprove and then member carol voted he wasn't going to disappear write to me that's what this is  t ok and that's why we're here and that's what makes it a beautiful system right what makes it a terrible system is the managing director not disclosing public information all right how many hours are spent all this type of thing justifying his appointment right that to me is what you need and you're being i stop of the kinds of information that will make your decision meaningful to me right this issue is not person from my perspective it's not morale is their issue the managing director has that duty and has fai instance from my perspective to support mr kant as he should have done but didn't and why i don't know i can tell you i've i have three items on my own on my notice ok one is there is the report the committee report which is what i'm addressing now and within the committee report or resolutions to approve and a resolution to disapprove ok and i we have just one continue under that objection what happened is that personal and public is being dissolved by this administration ok so if you don't know that you get chaos right if you look at the resolutions you'll find that it says you shall act ok that's incorrect whereas you shall decide that is a misstatement of our charter our charter says you must decide you shall decide period ok but then it goes on to say if you don't decide then the confirmation is affirmed what that means is the shell in the first instance is permissive it's not mandatory ok it's not mandatory it's permis ok and that should be reflected in your resolution and that makes the resolution fundamentally flawed and defective because that's the fact you have to operate on ok and that was adopted in one nine hundred ninety two ok and i've submitted testimony which you have that relates to that and it all goes to you have expressed powers in article eight that cannot be absolved or nullified by another provision without me knowing that you know voters booth and that's what's happening with this resolution if you're getting a whereas that's half complete and you're thinking you have to act and you don't and if you want to act you're going to have to change that resolution and you can't do it in the sixty day period so i would ask you to table this table ease resolutions i don't believe you can have this express power negated by a subsequent amendment to our charter i don't think you can do that without affecting that when they've done it in one thousand nine hundred two they did it it replaces you as a legislative body and replaces you with what initiative people oh minority of this consul will rule on a decision like that why they won't let a boat come out and then you'll have an affirmation that's latently unconstitutional and that's in our charter now and it's not in your resolution and it should be for it to be valid so glad there are so many lawyers here that in my testimony thank you very much we gave you a little good morning my name is kristin coro and i am a former deputy prosecuting attorney county prosecutor's office i worked under j d kim i've been a licensed attorney for sixteen years and the majority of my career has been working in the criminal justice system both at the state in the federal level before i came to the prosecutor's office in maui i was a queens county new york prosecutor and then i was a captain in the united states air force jag corps and i was both a prosecutor and a defense counsel in the air force i was also assigned as special assistant u s attorney in honolulu while i was in the air force i've seen a lot of different bosses i've seen a lot of different offices run i know what a good prosecutor is i'm an experienced prosecutor i know what a good bosses and i know how an office should be run i can say honestly that the maui county  office under j d kim is an excellent place to work he's an excellent boss to work for he is fair he's knowledgeable he is respected by his deputies we all know he's done this work for a long time he was good at it we go to him when we need advice he is always had an open door policy with his deputies we understand that his ethics and his counseling of us is beyond reproach he always coun us to do the right thing to do the just thing we don't have to wait for the defense attorney to tell us when something is done wrong j d has always counseled us to do the right thing there is nobody in the office or anybody that i've worked for that has better command over his deputies and in office or the law there's nobody that i would rather go to for advice on anything that i'm seeking to do as a  prosecutor he heat he's the right person for the community as a prosecuting attorney it's a privilege to work for him and i would hope that this counsel reaffirms him as the prosecuting attorney good morning chair white vice chair guzmn members of the council my name is mark me here i've been a deputy prosecutor attorney for three different agencies for the last twenty two years i served in the maori county as a prosecutor from one thousand nine hundred two to two thousand and three and i met mr kim first when i entered the office back in one thousand nine hundred two and since then he's been my friend but also my mentor even when he left the office briefly to go into corporation counsel and when i left in two thousand and three and joined the attorney general attorney general's office i continued to go to him when i had a problem that i couldn't solve dealing with a criminal issue he was always a person who would always give me the time and the answer to the question i was seeking but it's not only the fact that i also believe that he's probably one of the brightest prosecutors i've ever worked with val i feel that i strongly support him and it's his commitment to this community and to the office the job of the prosecuting attorney is a difficult one i've worked for or alongside the last five prosecutors for the county of molly and in my twenty two years as a prosecutor i've also been a supervisor for five years and i oversaw the district court in a family court i know what makes a good prosecutor and what doesn't and i know that j d kim has the commitment to this community as a commitment to the law as a commitment to being faith fair and just with the system and he's the brightest man one of the brightest men i've ever known and worked with i hope that you will consider his reappointment that you vote in favor of appointing him so that he can continue to do the work that he's been doing for the last four years even if i've been out of the office since two thousand and three i did keep in contact as an attorney general i was coming over once a month through the years two thousand and nine so i was in the office seeing what was going on and even after two thousand and ten i kept in communication with the office i even took out the time in december of last year i spent a day in the office basically i'd come back to kind of look at what was going on in the office and i agree with the attorney who just testified the office as far as i could see was in the prosecutors were doing their job and they were happy about the work that they were doing not to criticize the previous administration but there have been a time when the officer had gone through a bit of a dark cloud and j d took it upon himself to take up the responsibility and the difficult job of leading that office into the light and bringing them back to believing that they can be law that they could be a government agency that could do the right thing so again i strongly support john de my name is joyce of aki and i come before you today to disapprove the re appointment of john kim as prosecuting attorney i'm a current county employee that worked in the prosecutor's office for five years in two thousand and ten filed a hostile work environment charge against a clerk they had been working for the prosecutor's office for over thirty years when j d was appointed into office i became victim number two and targeted by j d and his staff staff as they set me up for failure s friend was hired as a receptionist she started as an s or ten a grade higher than any new hire and the reason was because she had legal experience but through her own admission she did not she was shown special treatment or training by the office law manager herself which is a personal friend she started in two thousand and twelve as n s r ten and his knowledge or temporary assigned as it as our sixteen no written policies when i left everything was verbal decisions change like the wind depending on who you were how do you run the largest law firm without policies i suffered from anxiety chest pains and extremely high blood pressure and advised by my physician to quit my job i was placed on sick leave for four weeks during the time i prayed a lot and i actively look for another position i took a demotion within the co and to just get out of that toxic office during my five years there my evaluations were always satisfactory how can you tell me when the deal we spent thousands of dollars educating the public about the seriousness of bullying why is the county condoning this type of behavior emotional abuse on a daily bases that is encouraged by employer and supervisors unacceptable if you choose to ignore this problem i guarantee you one day someone will snap and it will become a bigger issue than just mob we call any and a greater liability to the county of another employee just put in her resignation without any type of job lined up i still fear retaliation for myself and my family but more fear for that it continues byron for ga to quote it in the news this crime of violence leaves its victims not only with injuries that they have on that day but leaves them with memories of fear and terror that goes on into the future please disapprove the reappointment of j and where all of our problems were encountered once mr kim became the prosecuting attorney in two thousand and eleven i felt mr kim targeted our unit because he thought we were responsible for his friend being demoted under the previous administration but it is not true he dictated to our supervisor what everyone should do i was assigned by my supervisor under his director of the court room with the heaviest workload and not rotated out after a year which we normally do on december twenty two thousand and twelve i found myself sorry about my voice i'm not used to talking in public on the summer twenty two thousand and twelve i found myself in the emergency room with a blood pressure of two hundred  eighteen over ninety two i had a bad headache i was nationalists and i felt very sick just her and the doctor asked me if there was anything going on in my life and i told her that there was a lot of stress or he told me  contested it got sent to the people support in honolulu after two hearings with the appeals board it was still in my favor i was off from work for a little over a year because i could not return to that office i could not step into that building i was very depressed because i like my job and the people i work for we had a good team my anxiety about returning to the office was very high i never had any problems before and never had any bad reviews i returned to work in february two thousand and fourteen unable to return to the prosecutor's office i was temporarily place in public works i was told to find another position with the county i was given a vacant list position bacon vacant position list but was not given access to positions where people were getting hard a list in may two thousand and fourteen frustrated in the way i was being treated i filed and you'll see claim with the honolulu office because i waited too long the time had passed and they could not help me they referred me to the why civil rights fourteenth two thousand and fourteen mr kim sent me a termination letter and aug twenty ninth i was was my last day if you with the help from the here hawaii civil rights commission we went into mediation and we were able to solve unacceptable attorneys who have worked with me know what happened and i know you cannot speak because your job would be on the line you have to do what you have to do in this administration to survive we all understand that thank you thank  i thank you ms upon a for sharing your testimony and a few questions i have a copy that was sent over to me recently the department's internal for vacations were you advised as an employee of policies and procedures and how did were you advise of these policies and procedures was it through email or was it after after j d came on most of it was verbal we never had anything in writing and things always change depending on who you were so you would receive emails regarding protocol but it was not included or amended in the internal followed by dale cole good morning council members my name is me law and i was a former employee of the prosecuting authority for twenty two years i left the prosecutor's last year up to over twenty four fourteen district family courts a for advice or experience on a fair work environment i was commonly i was almost called almost all the time for the office to discuss minor incidents that either i did or my stop it i was constantly being micromanaged and targeted it they were dictating who threw a sign on certain division and even looking at my era and custody schedules my division that used to be running smooth has turned chaotic procedure changes all the time and snotting in writing they said they're gonna change the whole procedure because they're no longer effective but a used to be minimum two weeks and then the changes to five days and later on he told me i can offer it for zero one day but nowadays for a month or even one year before court is fine that's your problem it's going to it's kind of hard for me to do my job when i cannot communicate with him you know openly he also wrote me opera just simply asking a question week working with him was big coming difficult and my stress level was getting high and it was affecting my health so i decided to step down from my support of us or a position to the open position of the juvenile section the juvenile section used to have three clerks but then i was expected to do the work by myself for almost two years they did not  i feel the position for my assistant also what i notice is they don't want to to help your fellow coworkers when they have a lot of work need to be done i thought stats and  is important but yet they're right or have someone do the overtime and write up these people it's really hard to see the copying until now so i just left morning and council members my name is dale i was advised not to testify today because i am currently employed in the prosecutor's office these three had already l did not want to be here and feel i feel it is sad that it had to come to this but after reading the february twenty seventh two thousand and fifteen molly news i felt i had to come forward there was no mention that there may be problems and will look into that into them instead as mr kim stated only a handful of employees have expressed dissatisfaction with his management when i was a general agent vice president of insurance agency on oahu even if one employee left i was very concerned and wanted to find out why mr kim may think eight is small a small number but the issues being raised and what i experienced and witnessed are serious and please know that all eight are from one section of the office the district court section if staff if which it's not yet consists of twelve positions that eight staff members includes a staff with twenty seven years of service has twenty plus and as joyce mentioned that one that just started two years ago and turned in her nation and her last days this friday we try to convince her to please stay as this is the reason why we are here she is single doesn't have a job lined up just came from the mainland we just don't want it happening to anyone else we had hoped that it would have stopped after one two three who have testified today there's reasons why the others could not come forward and we know this is political and whether you say there's no retaliation it does affect people's livelihood it has affected their health even till today as you have heard and again it is only happening in this small area which should be a great concern to any administration we have nothing to gain by being here as we know we are dealing with politics people said what can you folks do yes why we put a nice self out here we have a lot to lose being out here so why are we all here exactly why are we out here why did it come to this why do we have to testify as we had an excellent supervisor ok i will conclude we agree hundred percent that for some it's a great environment and that we are here to work let us do our job don't hinder us we've been doing great we're challenges with furlough friday just were paul graham excited just prior to all of this with very little staff and very little overtime a lot of the attorneys who work with us know us know what we do what we have gone through some know some don't we are not out there we do not publicly want to tell people what we have reasons which include but this is what had to happen and i thank you and we do want liberty and justice for all thank you thank you so there is any need for clarification seen and thank you ladies mr clerk next justifier amylin he got to be followed by lewis littlepage administration because i was from honolulu i was in the maui county prosecutor's office for a long time there are a number of prosecutors that have been working together there with j d him for maybe upwards of twenty years  obviously i was not part of that circle but i can say as somebody who came from the outside that when j d cam took over the office and began administering the office i noticed i don't you know i didn't have any history with any of these people but that's something that i could notice that people seem to be a lot more relaxed were able to have a lot more confidence in doing their jobs a i work progressed in the office under j d cam that became my experience as well i really felt that j d had my back that if i made a decision that he would back me up you know if i made a mistake i never had any fear to go to him and say hey j d i just screwed up i did this is what happened and rather than you know come down on me or anything got you know we would work to find a solution to some of the things that j t has made clear to me as part of what he wants to see in his administration is teamwork you know if i mean mistakes happen we're lawyers we make mistakes sometimes if somebody drops the ball that's one issue but for j d the second issue is why didn't one of your team members pick it up so people can the attitude and as far circuit court is concerned where i  confirmation thank you thank you very much mr he got members any need for clarification she none thank you for being here today to clerk next testifier is lois littlepage t morning jefferson morning members of the council my name is little page on the current at the prosecuting attorneys the county of one of the first things that john kim did when he became the chief prosecutor that the mission of the prosecution office that was to do justice very simple very eloquent and that's exactly what we have tried to do now mr kim strategy against licensed contractors this task force included prosecutors from the four different counties apartment of commerce and consumer affairs department of labor department taxation task force was supposed to look at and evaluate existing and proposed new laws while there are significant gains that we came from that agency from the task force the only new laws that were recommended to the legislature and that became law passed by the state legislature were the ones that came from the county of meli delegation led by mr kim those were the ones that became law mr kim i think has showed that he is motivated he anticipates the needs of the prosecuting attorney and formulates riginal and far reaching strategies and solutions he always takes the ciphers and effective action his leadership style would say promotes creativity energy subordinates and strikes an ideal balance of direction and delegation he encourages the highest levels of performance by encouraging individual initiative as i said he's been highly recognized as a teacher coach as leader any prosecutor in the state would be proud to serve in the county and because of the prosecuting attorney's office they know they will grow professionally and personally under the direction of j s the ability to combine teaching and coaching he creates an atmosphere of tolerance a mistake in the course of learning and i'll just finish up by saying i mention the military because i was in the military for twenty years mistake about it the office of the prosecuting attorney is a fighting unit we fight for the people the county melly for our numerous guests and visitors and for their businesses we fight against crime and corruption corruption and mr elected attorney general and requested the staff to submit a courtesy resignation so basically it's fair to say that you serve at the pleasure of the appointment of the head prosecutor yes that does not take my actions i have gotten in trouble not so much him but with other key for us accusers because i feel they need to do with the right and correct  basically set up by the county and so when the head prosecutor is appointed he also has the power to rearrange the supervisor positions at the deputy prosecutors level as well as team leaders is that correct he has the camera range and basically make it a more effective unit as he sees fit yes as a good supervisor going to expect he would do so but can you answer the question he does have the power to rearrange more staff but you have an effective police department who fights crime and we have to prioritize the thinks of backlogs they come in you know and they have to be  is made steps to try and deal with that backlog basically what's one of the first things i did when i got here is i addressed the backlog in a particular area so you know have basically screening who handles the screening for the felonies and once we have an individual screener for drug cases we have the section that just deals with prosecuting obviously we saw firsthand right here today of those in your comment is in regards to lawyers being egotistical and having problem with taking a shower yet our testifiers are not attorneys they are a individuals who were not in the office for like the last couple months were in the drug unit and possibly that may be where the backlog is that may deal with the fact that perhaps and i'm only speculating they were not doing their job and perhaps that the needed to deal with other people to take care of the backlog backlog and drugs always builds up there is a big problem  necessary to increase the efficiency of the office ok and then you you mentioned i guess the mission of the department was to do justice i think that's been addressed played some of the private far i'm always suspicious of opponents who say hey this guy's doing a good job keep him but that's another issue what about justice within the no complaints at all prior to these hearings i have seen only high morale i have seen you have there been personal problems they've been handled properly as personal problems they are not implemented a vertical prosecution model correct yes ok so in implementing that vertical prosecution model did the screening division at some point not exist or where there are no screeners basically if you can answer that question was a non was the screening division was it still operational or or was it not far as i know it was operational how many screeners than i do not know i did not follow that like with closely could you assume that the vertical prosecution model had somewhat of results or caused to the current lack of log is not really clarify and that's fine no i do not think it goes any and i say backlog i don't think colonel r c senator good morning chairman reminders of the council i thank you for this opportunity to speak on behalf of mr kim who i highly endorse for this job the only reason i'm here today is because of what i've been read in the newspapers i'm a little bit appalled i think this is an injustice it's happening and i can speak without notes when there's an injustice happening because i've been doing it for about twenty years now and mr kim is a man of high integrity who conducts himself as a professional he's honest he's straightforward we'll shake your hand win lose or draw much like mr couch addresses why and i'm a little concerned about somebody on the opposite side and i'd take you to the stanley cup where at the end of the stanley cup the teams shake hands they've gone to battle and we go to battle trust me we go to battle but he does it with integrity and he does it with honesty and that's all you want from a prosecuting attorney in terms of the courtroom now you've got people who have come out against him and and in any organization i would submit to you that's going to happen that's how it works in the real world i was a person who started working at the hotels when i was nineteen started at the marriott went to a hilton and ended up at the westin over here in kaanapali and they had guest cards and i guess could fill up the cards and the only time i brought into h r is when somebody is complaining about me but the thousands of comments that said i was doing a wonderful job they never brought it to my attention so i want to bring it to your attention this man is doing a wonderful job we don't agree on everything we'll continue to battle each other but we'll do it respectfully and you should be respectful to the process is a good man and you're dragging him through that mud unnecessarily shameful frankly shameful disguise then with the county a long time his professional career has been in advancement of this county and the people who want to complain and that's fine you're entitled to complain we've got collective bargaining agreements that gives you a grievance process that allows you to complain about our buses and that's great ok but don't don't let petty politics interfere with this important position th consequences of this decision is a big one and if you want to go back to how it was for the first year or the first eight years before mr kim showed up that's your choice but the morale is never been as good as it is since richard bisson was the prosecuting attorney he's hired competent attorneys he's hired reasonable attorneys and like every organization not every attorney's perfect but but his hires have been pretty administrative issues the county corporation council has forbidden me to speak to the council in letters verbal e e mails and asking mr patrick wong who is over there if he wishes to continue this ill thought out and egregious violation my first amendment civil rights you're only able to discuss the when and then i will i group referred to the prosecutor's office allegations of vile a multiple violations directed against the county mr kim after reviewing them said that he would not investigate nor call a grand jury nor indict the county of maui or the current executive administration subsequent to that we have obtained engineering expertise and further  information regarding the diversion which the initial allegations were related to and believe that this diversion represents a risk to our community there is significant property damage and potential i believe mr kim has basically erased the line between the judicial and the executive branch he has failed to prosecute or at least look into the crimes we suggested and currently is complaint i just ask you which i don't know how you know i don't know the procedures and i upon i understand that but this this this meeting is to be conducted based on the information necessary for the consideration  experience with mr kim he has failed in his office to represent me as a citizen of this community and does not deserve although he may be a great person and may done a wonderful job he has failed me thank you very much for coming today intention is to go through the test fires and hopefully we'll be able to conclude that by around twelve thirty and with that we will then take a lunch break and our meeting that was scheduled for one thirty this afternoon will convene and then recess to a later time they will figure out later so the chairs plan right now is to get through testimony take a lunch break and then reconvene shortly after one o'clock probably about one ten so with that let's proceed next testifier joel gascn to be followed by key sorr morning council members chair white my name is joe gascn i'm a legal clerk for with the department of the prosecuting attorney county of maui having worked for the department for the past eighteen years i have been through a few administration the past four under johnston kim's administration has been a learning experience for me and i've learned a lot from him and his knowledge under his administration we have charge of record number of filmy cases our office works as a team we together as a team get the work done i say let the departments record speak for itself the department prides itself in helping every victim the matter who they are or where they come scord amongst us i do not believe that our office would not function and you know our office would not function a daily basis in getting custody is done charging cases that we are charging be it every day we're on a deadline in two thousand and eleven in two thousand and thirteen i had some medical serious medical issues i was able to be away from a position for days or weeks at a time and be at peace knowing that my workload would be taking care of because of our team looking out for each other this is how we take care of each other and the public not everyone is satisfied and everyone has their own opinion but i believe that our department is competent and that we are one of the hardest workers in the county i value mr kim a mystery vary in their for thank you for being here and i further add like you know as far as policies in our office is concerned i don't know about anybody else but we've always had e mails you know from the administration and we've always seen you know as far as it's really a joy to work for him i have worked with the state government for thirty four years and my last and this five years with the county and working with mr kim and the current  mayor and the administration has been the most rewarding years of my life my career i just want to say that mr kim is the kind of boss that everybody once and that's why i've stayed longer i could have retired five years ago but i decided to stay and as far as you know the secretaries the legal clerks i know it's a demanding job you almost have to have this undying drive to constantly war and i think for some of us we have to realize that if you can't sustain the w then you have to look at other options in your life and i hope that all of you will vote for mr kim today thank you thank you mr sorell members an i've been a criminal defense attorney on my way for about the last nine years prior to that for about eight years i was a deputy prosecutor here for the county or my known j d over there for about twenty years he attended my wedding he came to my wife's funeral guzman over there for about fifteen years he also attended my wedding he also came to my wife's funeral i wrote mr good's much i for five hundred dollars first time he ran for county council to support him as endeavor to be a county councilman i mentioned mr guzman this morning because i believe he is abusing his authority and his power to mount this arbitrary anti john kim campaign he is actively seeking out those who want to disparage mr kim let me tell you about m and why you should not be following his misguided political retaliation and he can smile all he wants over there but he knows he did not sit well with him this freedom of political expression has caused animus towards mr kim how dare an attorney that works for the county support someone else for his belo and again mr guzman and i were deputy prosecutors at the same time mr green i mean i would appreciate it if you wouldn't refrain from getting personal and to speak to the merits of mr kim's appointment well man in the county council of maui will come back to order slipper please proceed when i worked with both gentleman at the prosecutor's office mr campbell was the one who you could go to for advice on the law for advice on the cases mr kim was the one you could trust mr kim was the one that people knew they could believe that they knew they could listen to regarding the la i can assure you that i disagree with mr kim on many issues i am in his office complaining many times but you need to appreciate that's the business i'm a criminal defense attorney and he's a prosecutor his job is to prosecute the cases my job is to defend them but i can assure you there has not been a more fair prosecutor in the last twelve years than mr kim i have been a defense attorney under three of the last prosecuting attorneys mr kim is the only one that will allow you to sit down and explain your position for instance mr kim is the only one that believes someone with a drug problem she get treatment and not necessarily a prison term mr kim is the one that you can believe in that will be fair and just i can't think of another member of the molly colony bar with whom this position should be in trusted better than john david kim certainly  secure person thank you council members unlike my night i'm going to be short i think we'll see if people have testified said it probably more eloquently than i can say it but i'll give you a quick background on who i am i've been working for the county prosecutor since april sixteenth of two thousand and ten approximately five years i was hired by the prior regime mr coble worked under him for a body year and then i've had the pleasure of working for mr cain for the last four years i am a college basketball player that's probably shocking i've got twenty years in  army ten years regular army and ten years the last ten years i served with the oh why army national guard i'm currently a jag officer for the twenty ninth of combat team i will tell you that when i was hired in this office i had just come off a combat deployment to the  mideast between trying to be spun up on the job and learn how to do it and many of the other things that were going on in my life at the time and some of the stresses that i think i carried over from the combat or at least the point i had i think i was pretty oblivious to what was going on  office at the time it took the change of administration to j d to take over where i actually started noticing what i consider to be a sea change in the attitude amongst the support staff and the camaraderie amongst the attorneys that i've had the pleasure to work with the last four years again i didn't really notice it until j t had taken over and i do believe that it's his leadership in the standards that he set that is cause that to trickle down to our line deputies like i said i played basketball in college i've seen good coaches that took teams that were under all victories out and they get i've seen coaches that took world class teams that were set up for a championship and turn them into losers i've worked for civilian bosses that could make a decision to save their rear end couldn't give you any kind of an answer or they would give you an answer they think you want to hear i've worked for military bosses that that i'm quite sure would lay on a grenade for the lowliest private that they've had working for him and other military bosses wife seen make get was decisions that have gotten people hurt i think i have a fairly refined view on what leadership is a lot of it is based off of the poor leaders that i've had to work with or serve with or play for over the years and i will tell you that from my perspective what i know of j t he is not a poor leader he's a good leader he set the tone in that office he does not micromanage us he gives us the freedom to succeed we need something some sort of advice or any kind of guidance on the wall or plea agreements or anything like that he's got an open door and i feel i can come to him and ask him questions he's not always going to give you the answer that you want to hear it may not be in the form that you want to hear but i respect him for his candor i will tell you that i have not agreed with every decision j d has made in my four years there but i do believe that in the end like we say in the military you're part of solution or you part of the problem i believe is part of the solution in this office and i've not observed anything in my four years there that would suggest that he represents a systematic problem in that office he's not perfect but it's a challenging position and anybody who works tell you that you can't you can't be perfect one hundred percent of the time he does what he can and i believe he makes the right decisions in the best interest of what our mission is and it's an important mission and i respect him for that and i just want to say and what time's up but i do respect everybody who's testified here we have a world class support staff at that office and  i respect the work that they do and i just appreciate the time and i hope that you guys make the right decision based on our mission make an objective decision not off of you know personal agendas and things like that what's in the best interest of this office and i believe that team what was the marketable change beyond what you mentioned well i will tell you that one of the things that i take the greatest amount of pleasure in that office is working with our support staff i love every single one of them and i enjoy talking with them on a personal level and actually getting to know them and i will tell you that i've had conversations with the vast majority in fact they're all women have been there for a long long time and like i said i truly mean that when i say they're world class they're better than any support staff i've ever had the military anywhere else and i hear the stories that they tell what it was like with the prior administration or even the one before that i've heard them talk about going home at night crying over the stress that they've had to experience i listen to their stories and i truly believe it when they say that  over a lot of that stopped i will tell you that from a from a prosecutor standpoint i believe from what i observed at least in the year that i was there under the prior regime i believe that the sense of teamwork wasn't necessarily there there were there were some individuals there that again i'll go back to what i said earlier i think that they were part of the problem not part of the solution and a lot of the problems that office revolved around those people and i just think that there was a lot there was a lack of guidance from top to bottom in any military organization you hope the person on the top is going to hold people accountable beneath him and make that trickle down and i from my standpoint i could be wrong and i don't want to sound like i'm begging on the prior administration too badly because i i was hired by them and i was not absolutely miserable there but i will tell you that i think there was a certain level of insecurity that started at the top and trickled down and i think it affected the office and i think it affected the way we as prosecutors worked in amongst each other and i know i'm i'm rambling here deputy with the corporation console and prior to that i was clerking with judge cardoza before and before thousand practicing in california in private practice when j d first approached me to come to work for the office i was very very hesitant to go and work for the office having worked in court consul and been on my for a while i heard the horror stories about that office under the previous administration you know i wasn't too then i can't express enough that my absolute privilege and i was very lucky to be given the opportunity to come and work for him in his office my experience there is only under his administration so i have no point of reference but i can tell you from my for the community before you know your fellow coworkers and that's what he fosters that's that's why our office develop that loyalty because of the teamwork there you don't want to let your fellow members down  i did take the kitchen to come and speak on my own time i think it was a very important because as a prosecutor our obligation is to the community i believe that me being here in testifying in support of j d today is looking out for the best interests of the community and i thank you for the time thank you for your consideration and thank you thank you very much mr any clarify and  thank you very much mr chairman members of the council my name is richard miniter i'm a deputy prosecuting attorney but i'm on vacation and here to testify as a private individual even did not know until now that i was going to appear here to testify i mean to address a travesty a blatant case of abuse of power and authority something that all attorneys are supposed to stand up against many of you are being led to believe that the prosecutor's office is mismanaged and yet not a complaint was filed against mr kim until these confirmation proceedings started now people believe that the reason why g d has not yet been confirmed by the council is because of such things as personnel and mismanagement it is not let me tell you publicly the real reason why this is that my just the money is not a personal attack it is merely stating facts minute we're not going to turn this into a circus some of us have seen what you posted on facebook and it's pretty repulsive i am going to object to that what was repulsive have since learned that council member covello had no idea that her name was being used in this conspiracy to violate the charter i do not appreciate the fact that i was interrupted and did not have my full three minutes but i would conclude by seeing and this charade please confirm g d so that we can go back to doing the company's business and the people's business thank you very much for the opportunity to  campaign season he did in fact send me e mail and e mail scuse me face book situations where squirrels were dead saying that my how the school should be placed in my house is harass my family  mr robert rivera to inform them of what has been going on and with his his i guess number three person in the prosecutor's office they said that they would take care of the matter and this wouldn't happen again and that was it so as far as i'm concerned that matter is over but it seems as though he wants to bring this up so i would probably have no other form of steps to take except for defile workforce violence in the workforce action so i will be proceeding with that just for the record thank you thank you if i may have the opportunity and because my name was brought up within this testimony i just want to say yes i was in that meeting and it had to do with similar negative whatever  experiences on facebook so that was why i was there not to get into details but just so it's on the record thank you very much for the record we all receive letters and contact telephone numbers  contact phone calls from employees within the department and without that and outside of the department that are now working with the county addressing the issues of mismanagement things like that  as my job as a council member is to bring forth these type of allegations especially in this nomination period when we have a due diligence forty two to act in terms of either approving or disapproving the nomination it is our duty to investigate and if they want to like basically go forward and say that it's all connected because i lost are they weren't supporting me in the campaign is absurd that that is completely absurd i'm doing my job just like everyone else is doing i'm responding to constituents who have concern the least of our brothers and sisters and that is what i'm here for to testimony stage i would say mr chairman is a sitting member with a few years of experience i would requested you go to coral industry people's chamber if they don't follow decorum a you as a rich i expect them to be physically removed from these chambers and will not tolerate disruption of decorum industry moves thank you thank you point noted mr cl mindy fletcher psystar to be followed by kim whitworth chair council members my name is mindy fletcher psystar i am a legal system at the prosecutor's office and i wholeheartedly support the confirmation of john d him as the prosecuting attorney for the county of maui i have known mr kim in a work capacity for approximately seven years and professionally for over fourteen years while i was working as a paralegal for low and ball in august i have always found mr kim to be gracious generous and a true mentor for many of us in the legal community including myself mr kim is completely committed to properly interpret the law and protecting the community he applies his wealth of knowledge and experience to his decision making process i would also like to say that in two thousand and eleven while i was an employee at the prosecutors i had a heart attack at work i was out for three months and i was fully supported by all my team members of the prosecutor's office my name is kim worth i'm currently a deputy prosecutor serving under mr kim first of all i'd like to thank all the council members i emailed all of you personally i sent you letters and some of you were gracious enough to meet with me so i could tell you about my experiences in the office i also want to address why i got involved because previously i had not been involved in this process doing my job and i had no idea there was a problem with this  confirmation i was as i was watching the meetings who weeks ago at my desk while i was diligently working i just heard and saw what was happening in council chambers and became so upset about it because i did not feel the truth was walked down here four o'clock and it was during the work day but we worked all the time till six seven eight o'clock at night so are the talks payers dollars are at work long into the evening and for the deputies most a lot of weekends i would like all of you just to take a moment because in all of this i think the voice of the people who support mr kim are improperly being heard because some of them do not want to come forward because they're not comfortable coming up here or support staff or behind the scenes they don't feel like they can stand up and speak but i'd like you to turn around and i'd like every member here to stand up everyone who is in s'pore him to stand up right now so these council members can see the amount of people who have turned out today to support him the amount of people who previously did not get involved in politics we don't want to be involved in politics we want to do o serve the people of maui thank you all and you could sit down a lot of the members on that side of the room our support staff who have been twenty years plus i as a female attorney gave you a letter with my very personal story a personal story that i did not want to come up and tell you but i feel like has to be known but as a female attorney a seventeen year practitioner who has worked for the federal government whose works for a corporation counsel in new york city which had nine hundred attorneys has worked for three administrations i was treated by mr kim with respect i was always treated equally to my male counterparts he raised my salary to meet my counterparts which i was not paid under the previous administration and he made sure as female attorneys we were heard he has offered me management positions he has spoken to us frequently about our case loads he has an open door policy that was not the case under the previous administration unfortunately i'm out of time but if you have questions you all have my emails you all can ask me personally if you want any more information and i urge i thank those of you who took the time to meet with me in person so i could share with you my experience in working with and under john cam and for those of you that haven't ha opportunity i'll try to be quick i have the experience of having been hired by three incoming prosecuting attorneys for the county and i'll take the time to thank them richard bisson hired me as a prosecuting attorney when i was working as a marine biologist he took a great risk in bringing me into this position in the community and who knew that i would develop not only a knack for it but a true love and commitment to serving the community in this capacity i left in two thousand and five to work at the general's office for two years the incoming prosecutor bennett co i think him for bringing me back to the office he asked me back and i worked for him until two thousand and ten when i left to pursue a interest in the private sector in two thousand and eleven when john kim was appointed he brought me back to the office and has been a great leader since then i've known him since one thousand nine hundred nine for the last part of the sixteen years a great part of it he has been my mentor my partner my supervisor and my overall department head and each of those capacities he's shown me that he not only expects from us a high level of work product because his success is measured by our successes and his performance evaluation is played out every day in the media by how his prosecutors are consistently achieving solid dispositions for the safety of the community he's the head of law enforcement in our county and he's doing a fine job he's a good man he has a strong moral compass he's a strong leader and best of all what i can say about him is i believe he's put his employees i speak for the deputies and myself in the best position to do their job well that's what he wants because that's the person he is that you serve the community the law enforcement agencies that he collaborates with the law enforcement agencies who have made a record of their support of him and the people of this community by confirming him thank you thank you mr jones stand before you today as a deputy prosecuting attorney for the past twelve years here in this county serving our community i've gone through several administrations like many of the previous speakers hope he brings light that's the whole i am speaking in me i am the juvenile prosecutor in our office and i handle over ninety percent of our juvenile process adjudications in our office when i was given the opportunity to serve that position i was given that opportunity by j d and i remember it clearly he gave me two things that i needed to do was to bring john justice and to bring hope to our youth j d you are a wonderful judge you are a wonderful judge of character you are a wonderful boss and i support members for allowing me to testify here in favor of j d can obviously i don't have the years of experience s of my colleagues have testify here today i come here from his perspective of a you attorney i've known him since two thousand and eleven at that time i was working in a different office different prosecutor's office and i met him through a trial training he was one of the instructors of the training and even then when i met him my perception was that he was genuinely interested in shock to us and helping us to understand what we needed to do as new prosecutors and within my group i was brand new basically one month on the job and it is my pleasure has been my pleasure to work for him and mama conti for since december two thousand and thirteen and all i have to say is that is a leader within the other counties he respected is a tried and tested trial attorney and i follow his leadership thank you thank you mr members any need for clarification scene thank you very much chairman white and and council members my name is on a macone i am the director of victim witness in our department of prosecuting attorney and office and i'm here this is not an easy thing to do been sitting back i'm here to support j d i've been sitting back i wasn't planning on talking but in hearing all the testimonies that has been provided i felt like i wouldn't do justice if i wasn't here to speak on behalf of j d  i've been with the office since zero seven november of zero seven and i left for personal reasons and i was hired back by j d as a community prevention manager  and eleven and in doing so i was able to reach out to five thousand over five thousand high school students as well as intermediate students talking about cyber bullying sexting all the issues that kids are going through right now and jay do you felt and he believe that it is that is where the core where we need to reach the kids at that age and that was his belief when the funding for that position ran out i was fortunate enough to apply for this position and i'm here and i have to continue to say that j b in hiring me his belief was collaborating with agencies and helping the victims that we continue to serve today and i'm just here to use to let all of you know that that is his priority his priority is the victims that he serves and although many people may not agree with things with some of the things  and do and i know we've heard testimonies but i have to personally he say as a director of that then witness he does support our division and he's very supportive in anything that can assist our victims as but especially with our youth kids and i'm so grateful that he has allowed me to continue to go out into the community and talk about technology and things that kids are going through that are struggling and that is his and what i have to say about j d is he is a family man and i appreciate that he continues to so a part me because i have six kids of my own and the future for my kids i want to be able to assist them and be able to let them know the awareness the prevention that's going on in our community but i am here to say that i am in support and i can i can only pray and hope that you guys will make the right choice and that's all i have to say thank you very much he also members thank you for the opportunity to be here probably want to ask yourself why is the international longshore warehouse union here well because j d kim is the perfect man for the job this organization stands behind him stands behind his representation behind what he represents in the community fairness and what's right as an individual i'm here  i've served on a number of boards and commissions had a brief amount of time to spend with j t kim regarding his department and i think you have a great man there i no one in this world is perfect you can always find fault with anyone but i stand beside you and you can please confirm him you know honestly thank you prosecutor's office for about twenty eight years as a deputy prosecutor in the end as a prosecutor and mr kim is an all standing attorney with great knowledge and experience he is a fair and good leader in the office he has a good working relationship with his staff at other agencies in the past four years on the mystic kims management office had no complaints on hostile work environment to include no warden grievances filed as a law office manager in the prosecutor's office i do not see any harassment in retaliation revenge bulling in office we work follow and refer to personnel policies and procedures the respective union contracts and the county of including consulting that respective personnel services upon making any decisions and proceeding according to mr kim is not a micro manager and trusts his supervisors to perform good duties and be a working supervisor mr kim took over and i took over as a law office manager mr kim and i had found out that the clericals were doing work assignments not according to the duties of positions as assigned so we did a time study and we we organize it where everybody is a everybody is doing the duties of position according to the title class because we can get much high volume that we need to efficiently process this cases quickly in a timely matter and let's go said my last closing sign we have we do have a large office as what you mention in your testimony that you you had to read look at the work a sign of importance to their dude is a physician she doing and what we did is we looked at the duty she was doing was carrying a heavy caseload doing like complicated work assignments was that's not her level that's like high volume major districts so that's why you go in your essay reading and pay scale when you gain this knowledge and you're able to do the higher level which is which is stressful because one to get those if somebody filed one of the kids tests or would get it or if there's any problems or issues like they would come and see me or like they would see the supervisors or they get my doors are open i'm willing to band that wasn't on there john king john had nothing to do with that so that that work environment complaint was under the previous it i mean not and yeah it was according to if i remember the testify correct it was taken care of followed by geoffrey team  chair let me just say this and i am asking you that i be given that three minutes process what they heard was an extension of one during the american civil war a house divided against itself can join in unity amy for clarification prosecutor with the county prosecutor's office and i came here today to voice my enthusiastic support for the reappointment john kim as my county prosecuting attorney i've been licensed to practice law here in hawaii since one thousand nine hundred eighty seven i regrettably turned down an opportunity to to work in the prosecutor's office that year instead i went to the mainland and practice civil litigation for the next eighteen plus years however i was blessed with the opportunity in two thousand and five to apply and received an appointment to be a deputy prosecutor been so employed as a trial deputy here for the for the last nine plus years and during my tenure i have been under three administrations i've been recognized by each and ministration for my efforts on behalf of the county which has been in which it has included being nominated for employee of the year twice being selected as employee of the year being selected as a team member of the year and most recently last year i was awarded the community service award from crimestoppers  worked in district court my first year and then for the next four years three months twenty one days i was in family court division juvenile section at that i was county and for the  administration i worked in circuit court division prosecuting felony level property and violent crimes now in my county career i have prosecuted thousands of cases and i have screened thousands of cases in fact during the first administration when i was placed into the juvenile division there was a backlog of seven hundred cases with the help of j d kim when he came in from corporation counsel to work in the prosecutor's office by his administrative and i took those seven hundred cases and i received twenty to fifty a week to screen i reduce that backlog to zero and then i was still maintaining my duties as a trial deputy now i first met j d in a social setting about eight years ago and what immediately struck me was not his professional and personal to me or which is very positive but the depth of his knowledge in both civil and criminal law during my tenure as one of j d s deputies he has continued to impress me as being the go to person in the office when seeking out answers to novel and complex legal questions j d has always impressed me that he is there for everyone in that office and i can go to that office knowing that i'll be treated equally just like anybody else because that's what the law provides equal protection in and out of the office so please allow g d to serve the community so capably as he has done he allows me to come to work to work he gives me the direction i need and delegates as he should to allow me to do my job please allow him to do his job thank you thank you miss most members of the need for clarification really raise the mike a little bit good afternoon my name is ayesha hill i'm a private criminal defense attorney and i'm coming here in support of mr j d cam which is somewhat antithetical i think to my position however over the years i've seen his leadership throughout the prosecutor's office he is a very fair equitable man he doesn't take sides and what i've seen while i know not a whole lot about the background of some of the allegations here i can say that his general leadership throughout the prosecutor's office has fostered a significant increase in the well being and happiness of the people that i come in tom contact with who are the the prosecutors in court obviously and so i just i don't have enough adjectives to describe my perception of what his job is he has a sense of fairness a sense of justice and while i don't always agree with what his plea deals or recommendations may be in my cases i can say he is fair and so i just support him wholeheartedly thank you thank you very much mr or in the district offices who would like to provide testimony please identify yourself to the appropriate staff and proceed to the testimony lectern where the district office phone at this time upon an office are there any additional testif thank you let not your office is there any additional testif mr chair there are no further individuals in the district offices nor the chamber who wish to offer testimony it appears we have some one in the chamber please please proceed and then fill out the paperwork when you're done ok here we go again john i like this week at the end because i'd like to listen for a while to introduce yourself please michael co feature i'm speaking today as a concerned citizen and i will also space say that i'm speaking as a marijuana criminal prosecutors and defense attorneys knowledge rest up here so i find a prosecutor discretion to be one of the most value assets for a prosecutor but i would as i was listening today i really resented the personal attacks the county members council members i thought that was inappropriate many times i've stood here and i wanted to name council members by name and refrain from that out of respect for the county and its members i believe those are the individuals that were standing people should hear that out and say all supposedly have better educations and i do the other thing i actually observed here was the complaints and the problems of some of that for a lack of it and clerks in the office i would venture to say that if you went to the individual departments within the county motor vehicles finance wherever you're going to find people that don't agree with what's going on in their departments one of the observations is that the county council as a whole is not filling some of the positions necessary when someone's workload becomes above their head or a they have to take on more than they're actually capable of in any particular decision making process you have a problem one of the cures that needs to be done by the county council to help these problems out everywhere including the prosecutor's office and i would say the public defender's office is they need more employees and you need to start paying people what they're worth you'd be surprised how easy are people or able to absorb stress if they're paid appropriately and i thank you thank you mr covert members any need for clarification see none thank you for coming today mr kir you members as i mentioned earlier we will break for lunch at this time prior to doing so do we have documents to distribute to the members all of the testimonies had been distributed earlier however mr chair we are in receipt of testimony as well members is there any objection to receiving testimony  meeting and then recess that meeting and determine later what time that that might take place so please be back here at one thirty and be ready to go on this issue once again yes you know this is one of those confirmations that i think all of us when we went into the first meeting was going to be a complete slam dunk it was going to take a little while and we would be over and done with it didn't turn out that way there were concerns brought to us and and concerns that i think all of us felt we needed to address in some way shape or form and it's always difficult when those concerns are brought to us at the very last minute what i was heartened by today was the you know my feeling that the support staff provided very heartfelt and and convincing testimony in favor of j d and i i believe that the majority of the folks that  were testifying as deputies did the same and i know a couple of them and and trust their judgment but you know the again i think this is partially because the administration probably thought it was a slam dunk that this would go through without a hitch i don't believe that they they made a strong case  resolution before us actually two resolutions before us one proven one to disapprove and it's my understanding that both of those are alive and can be brought forward and by mr victor you know at the appropriate time but i still feel that there are some things that are a bit troubling that that we have come across during the more thorough review and so you know just to put this in some bit of perspective when a judge goes for a confirmation the review is done in open session they're required to provide their five best cases in their five worst cases and they're required to disclose any any blemishes on their record and with you know as we as we heard during the testimony the there's enormous power and responsibility in the department of the prosecuting attorney because they are the ones who decide who goes to court you know the ones that decide who pleads out who gets handled in the harshest terms and who gets let off the easiest and then we must as a counsel expect the highest level of standards in that department and what we heard today makes me feel you know reasonably comfortable that those standards are being achieved however we have had concerning allegations brought to our attention by members of the you know frontline and professional civil servants in the department about unfair and what they feel are double standards within the agency and you know for me this is not personal you know cheney has always struck me as a wonderful guy and very affable he's always got a smile on his face and of course that's you know that's tells me that he's got no real real qualms about getting around and getting the job done however you know the the the concerns brought by current former employees prompted me to look a little bit deeper and as i've done so i'm now at least have a heightened concern about what i have found what we've learned is that the nominee was suspended from employment and devoted only a couple of years prior to his first nomination as prosecuting attorney we only found that out  because it was included in a federal case a federal court document yet no information of been put forward by mr kim to explain  suspension or to provide us any details on it and from that federal case we also know that first deputy prosecuting attorney was also once terminated and again we have no additional cla information furthermore you know non disclosure of reprimands and emotions in the department that the nominee is being tasked to run is concerning because you know we expect our prosecuting attorney to be honest and straightforward and and upfront with everybody the council should have been told of these reprimands back in two thousand and eleven in the hearings and in our current hearings and had those disclosures been made and the nominee would have had the opportunity to explain to us exactly what what had taken place to try to clear up some of these misconceptions i took the time to do a little more research and i requested copies of the nominees performance reviews and asked to review the nominees personnel file although we were offered to view the file we did not receive copies of the performance  of counsel services went to the office of the attorney of the prosecuting attorney to review the personnel file and inform them that he would only mean viewing publicly available documents and would be making copies of some of those documents without the prosecuting attorney denied access for the review  that to me is a bit troubling because in this kind of a case you would expect someone who's applying for the job to be forthcoming and be willing to distribute whatever information would help his case and as i said earlier the in the judicial interview process you must provide all those kinds of  have to kind of get my arms around because while we were we were not allowed access to the file it's clear that there's a bit of a double standard because information from information from one of the other people's files in the department was shared with at least one council member so there's a bit of a double standard there you know the thing to point out is that the reason that we felt we had access to that information was that it's it's allowed by law under the uniform information practices act and under way or vice statute ninety two f fourteen what must be disclosed and made available to the public for copying is the following it's all information under ninety two dash f a fourteen which includes the person's name compensation job title business address business telephone number one lot of the basic information in a file but it goes on to say that what also must be disclosed or must be provided is the is employment sorry information related to employment misconduct that results in an employee's suspension or discharge including the name of the employee in the nature of the related misconduct the agency's summary of allegations of misconduct findings of fact conclusions of law and then disciplinary action taken by the agency this interpretation by the nominee to keep all files confidential is  troubling to me because of the sharing of other people's files and i believe that this counsel deserves to have all the information that it can  get to make an informed decision the fact that performance reviews are not shared with us is also concerning this is contrary to office of information practices noting that the expectation of privacy may be diminished for example when the person is a high ranking government official and while there is no case law in hawaii specifically addressing this issue there is one case heard by the supreme court of alaska which found that the public interest in the head librarians performance report outweighed the individual's significant privacy interests they also found that a performance evaluation did not in any way deal with the personal intimate or otherwise private life of the head librarian the same logic i believe should apply here i'm also deeply concerned by the stonewalling by the indication that their main interest is to keep us from getting requested documentation i know for a fact the vice chairman who has been sent a letter on february thirteenth requesting a meeting with the nominee but had no response follow up letter was sent on february twenty fourth requesting written information from the  and we finally got a response only yesterday furthermore due to sunshine law requirements in the members we can't distribute that stuff for the meeting in taking a quick pass at the responses from the nominee it appears a backlog of cases contrary to some of the comments were that were made during testimony the backlog has actually grown by forty five percent from about four hundred roughly four hundred sixty cases to six hundred sixty five it's also not clear from the documents what the what the two the true because it's doesn't none of the documentation includes a number of cases that are actually in court there have been other allegations that i'm i don't feel is appropriate to to disclose at this time but that was what led me to to investigate a little bit further you know turnover is a big concern and the turnover has increased under the nominee's watch and we've gotten the variety of concerns about personnel handling the support personnel and looking at the documentation on the turnover it does doesn't reflect a huge increase it's increase of i believe from about thirty under the previous administration t thirty thirty six over a five year period so that that to me is not a substantial change but at the same time you know i feel that we're were owed explanations and we should not be as the approving body as a body who is responsible for holding the administration accountable we should not be in a position where we're begging for information and not having it be forthcoming i feel that what we have heard from him from not been able to to give you the members access to the information that i feel should have been provided and i feel that we have two options today and it's up to you all to decide which which course we take if you are comfortable that mr kim should be confirmed today then that's that's one course the other course is that you know i believe most of us feel that mr kim is is a good person and is moving and seems of the department in a positive direction the same time there are still questions that remain regarding the issues that i've mentioned the other option is that  we vote to disapprove the nomination just in order to give us another sixty day bite at the apple so that we can evaluate the things that we've not yet been able to see so  i'm not in at this point i will not well maybe i should you know and that way we can have discussion and move from that point forward motion to approve the appointment of g d him as prosecuting attorney second then move by mr victor in a second by mr couch to approve j d kim as the prosecuting attorney for the county of maui mr victory no thank you i know this has been very extenuating we have gone in my and this is my third time doing dish i've not ever seen so much research done maybe it should have been done in the past i don't know i'm not sure on that back we should delved into a lot of i don't ever recall personnel files being brought up on the two prior appointments and not only mr kim but his predecessor so i'm kind of curious why that's become a real big issue but you've made your point and i respect that i think the people of my county should know what how far that's on the question i have not sure also we've heard from many of his nominees support staff as well as attorneys both within his department and outside of this department somewhat formerly worked for him supporting him claiming that morale is at its highest point that teamwork has been really a big emphasis and that the work is being done very efficiently now to the contrary you bring up other documents saying no it's not and then their staff that came and told us what was wrong happening what had gone wrong and how they felt they were wrong again i think all of that into consideration i think all of that into consideration i believe that j d has demonstrated a number of times his ability to work with people now with these questions asked  i remember not many of them practice directly where the issue was to be asked that we were there directly asked him i don't recall in the hearings but maybe i missed it and i apologize if i did the com vented a lot of this issues in executive session so it's difficult to comment on those areas we can only comment on what's happening here and now it's just very very very strange that things would come up after the fact nothing was said before a lot of a new a lot of accusations have been me today i feel that it's very uncalled for defaming any or any character of any of our members or anybody in this room in any capacity is very distasteful very distasteful and decorum have to be kept stepped in a little earlier but that's fine i understand sometimes we try to give just enough rope  then well maybe we should have pulled the rope a little quicker should i shut the door at that point it's unfortunate but i believe in the overall i would i really believe it is still and has continue and will continue to do a good job and i would not hesitate after these proceedings are over to call for an audit of the prosecuting attorney's office we can do it hasn't been done but maybe it's time to do that and maybe that's what really needs to be done after everything is said and done but i'll let my other members have their chance i want to thank you mr chair you've done a job trying to control this and unfortunately some people forget that we do things in a respectful manner and i've talked to at least fifty plus people fifty plus people and all of them that where support undying and very very positive and welcome i'll just point out one one flaw in your comments we can't ask the author to do anything but we can initiate one on our own so that we can do that that's why i will do that which ever and will just go down the down the row mr goodman thank you chair i guess i first of all like to thank you for handling today's meeting just for the record i'd like to place the section three point six hours of the council said subsection three and that is to conduct investigations of the operations of any department or function of the county and any subject upon which the council may legislate and ever then turn to chapter three section eight dash three point two the prosecuting attorney  prosecuting attorney shall be appointed by the mayor with the approval of the council and may be removed by the mayor with the approval of the council so there has been testimony that says that  maybe myself or the other members have abused their power but i believe not because i believe that we've exercised our due diligence under the charter i believe that the importance of the position of the prosecuting attorney for the county of molly it is to people's attorney it is assigned to effectively and efficiently investigate and prosecute all crimes in mali county is  people's attorney that seeks justice with integrity fairness and compassion to create and preserve an environment of safety and security for the citizens of maui county i arrange this position a status just as important as a judge the power of the prosecutor to have discretion charge and prosecute anyone in this county a very powerful that role is something that needs to be taken seriously when we go through the charter and it is our duty to make sure that we represent the people and in saying that other jurisdictions like choli beguiling those prosecutors are elected you know we sit in the shoes according to our charter and the shoes of the people so we have to vet through all the qualifications any thing that we hear that might trade or us to investigate we all would duty to do so this is been a very difficult issue for me because for me our role is for checks and balances and we have that duty there confirm or deny the charter does not distinguish between appointment and reappointment chair so it's not an automatic when someone comes to this floor and is basically here as a nominee and we're supposed to that it out to see if he's going he or she is going to get the appointment we have to go through the same process that we did as though that person was a fresh nominee and i believe that we in some ways failed to do so to vet it through and if you see the record that was established in two thousand and eleven you can see a more than a thirty page to i believe a thirty page document showing questions in vetting through of the council hall afic ations soul and so forth the p i a committee that we went through this year the first one we believe the second one we had two questions asked on the floor into executive session came out and voted wow executive session is not that there are no minutes for executive session so what do we have on the record two this is it's been a heartfelt it's not like i'm not it i'm sorry now mike started my career at the prosecutor's office chair and it's been a difficult task to listen to those why found to be credible on both sides and i may have been accused of trying to let this council hear the issues but it's been a hard task to determine credibility now i've been placed in a very very difficult situation the only thing that i can say is that look somewhere in between there is the truth and i'm not going to do to judge credibility because i believe both sides the opposition as well as the support are valid in terms of the reality you know that sometimes when you're doing a case you're just going to have to find the common grounds and this is why in my analysis i took more of a stance of the the circumstances looking at not only the personnel issues of course that's that's the one that triggers triggers the investigation or at least the analysis what i wanted to look at mr kim's work background i never had the opportunity in two thousand and eleven to look into it but this time i do and so i wanted to know what the work background was and as well as any performance evaluations that were out there to help me determine and also to make an informed decision i also wanted to look at ad basically the data that would come from backlogs turnover these are the things that i could see through that least give me some kind of indication not using the testimony of both sides i mean leaning one side or the other i wanted pure data and so i was fortunate enough to at least some write a letter february twenty fourth two thousand and fifteen to ask mr kim's office and mr kim to send me some documents and i had a few questions and i would like to place these questions on the record number one was to briefly describe any efforts taking to reorganize the department within the last forty years number to provide copies of the department's internal purt personnel policies and procedures provide a brief report on staff turnover within the department for the last eight years for the position that was vacated identify the position title and employee's reasons for leaving provide a brief report documenting the department's staff's travel to conferences and seminars during the past four years provide monthly reports with the just wear system on case backlogs for the past six years briefly describe the department's lobbying efforts at the state capitol during the four most recent legislative sessions and estimate estimate of associate travel and other related costs well i know that the last one is more budgetary in preparation of the budget but i thought maybe that could also be included i was able to receive the response of the data yesterday sometime in mid morning but however chair i was as you know most of us were in committee meeting all day yesterday so i wasn't able to thoroughly review all of the data what is presented to me so far is i believe you indicated some of the backlog cases that were listed in the according to the response letter one thousand nine hundred ninety three so that that's another issue in terms of the department's internal personnel policies and procedures i would have liked to have seen been more kept up to date and there are other factors in here as well and i haven't had the opportunity to make photocopies because it is very villainous in terms of the documents presented but the other concern that i had just like you chair was non disclosure of the material fact it was brought to our attention via some court documents that in two thousand and nine mr kim while serving as a deputy prosecutor was reprimanded and demoted for his personal backlog of cases and for not seeking authority to settle a jury trial case this appears to not have been disclosed in the two thousand and eleven council minutes when he was first initially confirmed and so i asked myself well than did anyone asked a question or was a requirement for him to disclose that that misconduct or that employee mark and his background and i realize that i had to look at our rules of professional conduct which governs the conduct of attorneys tribunal of all material facts known to the lawyer which will enable the tribunal to make an informed decision whether or not the facts are adverse now i realized ok is this is the tribunal mean us so i look that up and it looks as though and rule three point nine in the comments a tribunal includes the representation before bodies such as legislatures minister paul counsels and executive and the ministry to agencies acting in a rule making or policy making capacity but this is in making body like a court should be able to rely on the integrity of the submissions made to it these are in our tourney rules subject to the office of disciplinary counsel i'm not sure whether this body would have a claim or would be required to report to the o t c but if it was allowed in two thousand and eleven or if mr kim had disclosed it it would have allowed that counsel to at least looked at that material fact to decide whether or not he should bin and initially confirm without having that knowledge without having it's it's something that i don't know if it can be cured he would have had at least the opportunity to explain what those misconduct or the the reprimand were to that counsel and they would have had that opportunity to at least make that an informed decision i believe that they were not given that opportunity to make that informed decision and so now here we are now in two thousand and fifteen and it's the reappointment and i look back in the record and i was also there in executive session i do not recall this subject matter being forthcoming but these are my issues i think any good attorney or any good legislator would have brought this forth and what had issues with it when you look at the judicia nomination process which i believe is like like what i said to judiciary judges almost that's the same status as the prosecutor because if not for the prosecutor the judges only at the discretion of the prosecutor so to me that position is as equal as important as a judge and as you stated a git a judge a judiciary nomination process the  the judge has to basically disclose everything i think we heard from the judge when asked the question would he have disclosed an incident that happened in his prior work work files and he said yes of course if this body and let me tell you know their story when i was a prosecutor there was this public defender that had moved from the south to practice over here as a public defender and attorney and he was a good attorney good public defender you practice for about two and a half years but then he got disbarred and and the reason why he got disbarred was because the why bar association discovered that he was reprimanded and the other jurisdiction and the other state which he did not disclose so it's these little infractions that that really doing people and i think that this this this instance things need to be explained and if we sweep this under the table i believe that by doing so would fracture the integrity of the legislative body as this tribunal and i agree with you chair there has been administrative delay it may not have been intentional but i that there was an administrative delaying produce producing documents the need to provide personnel file it's a given why can't why can't we who represent the people look at a person's work history and his performance to take the top job of being the top prosecutor in the county to basically defend and also  look after all the victims why why wouldn't we have that access like like you mentioned chair i also believe that under h r s we are at least entitle to the performance evaluations i sent letters february thirteenth at least the subject matter i wanted to meet personally with  rivera but i was advised that i would be waiting for at least the chair to come back and i also received the responses as i read on the  record and the responses of that one of the in particular matters was the vertical prosecution model and when you look at the application of the vertical prosecution model i can only assume and it's just an assumption i can't prove it that the nine hundred forty two backlog and the three thousand and fifty four counts could be the result of the implementation of the vertical prosecution model and that was set forth i believe there was testimony in two thousand and eleven where mr kim was going to utilize this type of model of the testimony that we received to date it sounded like it was in place for about two years and there may have been a lack there of screening division but i'm not sure i cannot verify that chair just like you had stated i looked at the turnover during the previous administration is about thirty eight thirty two now it's thirty six fifty one point four percent i also notice that in the prosecutor's office was presenting their budget there was a question about the workload from myself to mr kim on the work the workload versus the amount of attorneys that you need and those certain divisions and mr kim stated that there hasn't been turnovers what we've done is reassigned people so that they get a fresh and different perspective of where they fit into the prosecuting unit so when i read that but there is no turnover and it was presented on the record and then i look at the data and it looks as though there is turnover i get a little bit in consistencies so i feel a little bit uncomfortable i would get comfortable i know that by march six our sixty days will expire which under the charter we have sixty days to either approve or disapprove and so if if we were to not approve mr kim at least the mayor would have the opportunity to submit his name again and and apply for him as a nominee back to this council and the time clock would start again at sixty days  if that was given the if we were given that opportunity most likely would follow mr victor reno suggestion and invoke our powers to investigate under that previous section that i been comments about the last confirmation process and i think responsibility i chaired that committee on behalf of the council regarding the previous confirmation process i can sides of the issue before us this afternoon i can tell you that a few things we've seen the good and bad of patronage hiring every deputy comes forward because their job is dependent on the prosecuting attorney ladies aloud that he saw the child is reading written the prosecutor has debility to hire and fire the deputies  of patronage and we've seen it today this morning but i can tell you that what i have learned conducting the previous confirmation process and see it in this one is that disappointed that there's concern about not having full disclosure provided to the councillors to make a fully informed decision we requested if it be in the states judicial selection committee would give any comment or guidance everyone chose not to provide comment for whatever reasons the felt  appropriate so it's not like the council's committee did not going to solicit qualified comment from those in the legal field tell you that you know listening to some of the members today my disappointment is what they believe is the public's now  vision or how they look at the department of prosecuting attorney so i don't have a problem either requesting the auditor or having counsel movie on it forward i don't have a problem either putting in the code or adjusting the charter whereby maybe we need quarterly reports from the prosecuting attorney on certain things that we may feel is important it in a corporate venue whatever that may be so the council can make better informed decisions in the future whether to be a quarterly report that the county agreed to offer it i think maybe that was a somewhat things that make us better informed decision makers but i'm definitely not in a happy place i why for the last four to six years we always seem to be in this type of calm so situations  and many times we are in the same situation having an issue of how much information or the level of disclose will that counts as working off  d things need to change i would do my part to make things happen in a positive manner but i'm just sharing some thoughts chairman because i understand i can be open to  supporting mr kim but i can also be open to the nile to give counsel sixty more days if it is appropriate for us to do the appropriate due diligence because i would like the community and our people to know that those in the prosecuting attorneys feel this is the highest level of integrity department that people shouldn't question whether they can trust it or not it should not be a question and therefore you know it's not only the face of mr kim today we saw a lot of face it represents the department of prosecuting and right now i wouldn't know what performance i would give any fan to be th of performance because i don't know exactly what is or isn't the truth i think there's three sides right now mr chairman we've heard one side from one group for the other say from the other group and there's the definitely will a push an audit i definitely will make the proposals on putting in the code or the charter things that maybe we should consider to be better in our confirmation process requirements i think it's healthy that some of you share the senate views judicial confirmation process and their requirements of information chad asked maybe we should have the supreme court give us a letter stating attorneys in good standing because i think that is one of the requirements of the charter even for mr wang must be an attorney in so why do you foresee while my team was in washington d c this past week i took it upon myself to try and do my due diligence not much time because the day before we made the decision on february eighteenth i believe i felt like i got whacked with every cast iron frying pan because it was overwhelming to hear listen to just about thirty somewhat support staff attorneys former employees as well so does that give me the  expertise to make this kind of a decision i have no choice as council member to base on what i know how to do my my investigations call also recognize that there are many employees that game forward that supports his management style and there is a collective group that collective him not that fell in justice working there and then who does he report to i don't do performance evaluation on the  directors and like you said we probably don't have access and it's necessary then we need to request it so i think we're at fault also as far as council because we lack a process we lack a process on how do we confirm our appointments so our house needs shaping up to in my opinion and if that means that we make some changes to the charter then the problem but going further and i think we need to identify what is the problem superficially i can see some of the problem being and i'm just an outsider  also i cannot help but feel a big disappointment that these employees did not receive in my opinion the kind of union representation that they should have been receiving  whether it even was to go to personnel and the lack of response from to their inquiries or concerns that they passed on to them management personnel that to say thank you we received a letter we will look into it or what have you so i think the problem there is a problem not only in the effect that we've had with these professional civil servants and how they felt throughout their working conditions whether or not it's a network of people you may see our favorites or what they are also support staff that came forward appreciating the change of pace  a telephone call from a former employee of thirty two years that normally i know would not even step forward but she had thirty two years of nothing but good working conditions but the major improvement that had come from this administration i take that into heart because this individual would normally not not even i mean she's mentioned if she didn't have her grandchild that she wanted to spend the rest of her years with she probably would still be working there because she enjoyed their working condition with j d kim that being said i have to add i didn't appreciate one of the testifiers who came in at the explosion for whatever else  my name was thrown out too and i have no clue why or what who this person really was or is but i just need to do that so does this process whether we're going to go for  sixty more days if we vote no am i going to find more information or is it want to allow us to see his personnel records today are we going to g an opportunity to express what was mention as far as disclosing the suspension that was mention are we going to allow that today to so i ask these questions because i think i think we need more i don't know how much more details i can get so i'm like mr hall comma how i'm feeling as i can go and  can go yes does that make me wishy washy i don't think so you know i you know and the when you take the  student of a wine medicine as compared to the western approach the western deals with the symptoms my teachings is with the why medicine you get down to the root and a cause what's causing the problem so if i look at that how much of a major problem do we have in the department with the management and outs if there is one where do we b if if it means for us to be able to expand and get the information that was listed do we as counsel have truly the right and somebody need to explain that to me truly the right to scrub through one's personal records and if that is civil then we need to require it from the administration to allow allow us or mr kim to allow us to to delve into it if that's necessary so you know i don't do the performance appraisal that's not my  job in management and in my experience if my dear direct reports are not doing their job then it will show in the performance process our cooperation council you know we did our confirmation we had no process you know you had a big amount of people that for whatever reason they were in opposition but our process was as such so it is my hope that we will this will allow us to have a better process put in place i'm not a lawyer this is only my second term but it's sometimes get pretty dramatic but it allows us to dig in and do our job our job is to make sure the county is running accordingly as we provide the check and balances if this is a process we do to provide the check and balance we've got a tough job you know i've got no report cards to degrade it by except my my documents of opposition as well as support so that's basically all what i have to go on and the testimonies that were before us today so that being said i'll just listen to the rest of my colleagues but i think you missed it you're for putting up with all of this thank you mr couch thank you mr chair i just wanted to start off with saying that you know having mentioned that i hadn't gotten any calls and whatnot i finally did get some calls i guess people read the paper of get a call and so i got cause i got calls on all different sides meetings and all different sides and some of the stuff i heard in some of the meetings was very disconcerting you know when you have employees who have grievances you listen to those also you have people who say well you know we have we have no problems with you we have all that testimony that was up here today  the people that came and talked to me and had concerns were the same ones that we had letters from the same ones that  we went into executive session and i just want to read from the committee report real quick it says following the executive meetings your committee reconvene in regular session where we talked about those issues that were brought up i haven't heard anything new from the folks just based on the information received your committee voted eight to zero to recommend adoption of the proposed resolution approving the appointment of john d kim as a prosecuting  attorney i haven't heard anything new from what those letter said and what was talked about in executive session so i'm a little concerned there but what the new stuff i heard on the other side was know a lot of people who were happy with the change in administration there we have reading from one testify or says that from day one of  atmosphere in our office changed for the better those days of coming to work and having your every move scrutinized came to an end no longer did we have to fear being wrongly accused of not performing our duties as support staff no longer was there fear of retaliation or backlash if i was to bring any of my concerns that i may have had to my immediate supervisor our office manager and or j d our office became a happy place once again and that was all because of j d j d is an exceptional person and he is an asset to this department the people of maui county needs a prosecutor that leads by example is fair and honest that person is john di kim and we talk about performance evaluations every year at budget it's a performance space budget we ask the court counsel we ask him we asked every department based on performance measures that they set including caseload and we talked about vertical versus horizontal prosecution we asked the prosecuting attorney every year about his performance so i'm not quite sure what other performance evaluation needs to be done and if there is one then let's do it  cama said we can always investigate if we need to if there's if we perceive an issue we can investigate and we can even investigate right now i mean it would be a little bit of extra latitude that the chair would have to grant as in we should bring mr kim up here have him talk about it if it's stuff we can talk about in open session let's talk about an open session if it's stuff that needs to go into executive session again we can do that too but  we you know let's let's cut some of this bureaucracy out let's just do the discussion now if there's an issue from what i hear from the testimony and what i've been getting in my phone calls there's an overwhelming positive occurrence over there systematic change i believe is what one of the testifier said so and another one said he brings a lot to the office yes and you know mr chair especially you've got employees a lot of employees and i'm sure you have some that just feel you know somebody is not doing a job right and you just have to deal with it in in dividual basis so unless i'm less you're one of the very few that have nobody complain about you those are the things we have to weigh i think we've got enough information now to way yes there is some information about prior performance prior to becoming mr kim becoming a prosecuting attorney for the county of maui his last four years the performance that we've seen at least through the budget process and through everything else appears that no matter what happened before he's done a good job we know people who've had bad performers before they get into their new position they do a great job you know that i'm guessing all of us play it one time or another so you know that past stuff what's the actual performance there's been some really good performance in the last four years i hear from the police officers i hear from the folks you even the public defenders come up here so i think you know i understand you motion as it is on the floor unless some other compelling evidence comes forward where compelling comments and i think past performance discomfort whatever that those types of feelings have been occurring throughout all the discussion deliberations on this a point re appointment and you know i mean it starts off with mr ching just last minute i didn't realize coming down here to represent administration and your comment about stonewalling your comment about things not being forthright you know disclosure mr ots you know wasn't given full am you know disclosure and what have you is very very of paramount importance and that was never disclosed to us and it's one of those things were if you don't know to ask or wonder then how do you know to go there and so i think things would have been different early on in the original appointment if those types of things were disclosed and we were able to thoroughly vetted and i think you know i'm and i like mr hope camas comments and in regards to doing our appropriate due diligence i don't believe that we're really fairly given that opportunity at this point and there's a lot of the testimony city yeah mostly in sort of for me out of context in the sense where the women who i give them total credit for coming up because it's hard to speak against when entire room is opposite from where you're you're standing and you know they're not in the same division or what have you so the people that were i don't doubt their testimony my believe that they shared truthfully from their firsthand experiences and that's great but you know the women have their concerns being victimized their experiences of bullying of retaliation and a hostile work environment and and on and on i take that to heart and i believe they're speaking the truth in their experiences and so i am going to definitely hear them my young going to speak on behalf of them and be supportive of that because i know how difficult it was for especially the one woman to come here who still on the payroll are working in the office is a step out and speak her piece i mean that took a lot of guts a lot of courage but she's speaking out and to have that just falls of the wayside and brushed off as nothing for me is is unconscionable so you know mr okama mentioned a black guy on this this department and i agree and i think with if it's an audit or an investigation or changes to the charter or whatever change the process to be at the top of the list of how they operate and right now that's not what i see that is not what i've been hearing i mean i saw hostility and bullying in some of our testifiers here today and that was very unbecoming of a prosecutor in this in this county and so just with that first hand experience that i had experience myself here is is very troubling and  i'm the point where i'm not in favor of reappointment but also i'm open to hold you know off doing our due diligence as best we can but chair i know the feeling of being stonewalled by this administration because it hasn't only happened during this deliberation but it happens within my committee work too and it's hard to get your job done it's hard to do with girl thurlow job and so you know i want to make sure that we have equal protection for all in all positions in all the partment and this in particular is one of those departments that wow if there's a cloud of doubt fear that's a day and it's a scary thing so look for your recommendation and see where this all goes but definitely know that mr kim is doing the best that he can and  anything he's done right by a lot of people but then again perhaps you know in other ways not so much and i want to make sure that those people's concerns are addressed somehow in a fair open appropriate manner and  comments i'd like to make like mr couch at the last meeting i mentioned i hadn't had any of those calls i did get some calls and e mails after that i want to say that the majority the vast majority in fact almost all were in support of the nomination and people called to say that they want to be you know that in spite of the negative it's negative things that we might have seen that there were a lot of positives and i heard the same things in those phone calls that we heard in testimony today i was very impressed with all the brief reference to morrell and how high i'm a real has gotten to me that's really really important because if you want a department to work well morale is very very important because people will go the extra mile when they have high morale i want to say that first of all before spending else that i certainly respect differing opinions i love the democratic process i think it's great you know it's painful and it's messy and it takes a lot of time but it does get everything out on the team no not everything a lot of things out on the table and i think that that's very important and i respect the people on both sides of this issue and i want them to know that because that's our right as americans i was very impressed with the commit with the comments about  commitment to our community and i see that you know he's part of our community i know he's very committed and he's trying his very best to do good i was extremely impressed with th testimony from our military people people who have been in the military and still are in the military and their comments about teamwork that brings to me a very important perspective we all know that in the military there no time for fooling around it's a team and your life is on the line and so when people have that perspective and they perceive what is going on in their department to be a model and i really particularly was impressed with those folks i was also interested in the comments about bringing aloha and hope i think that's very important in a place like the prosecutor's off people that go there need to have hope and they need to feel and they have to feel that people understand and are trying to help them get better and go on to a better life and i sense that that is what people are saying exists there same problem we have here you know there's a legation is that the governor doesn't know what he's doing he's not listening to the testifiers there's all kinds of charges back and forth and you know i think we just got to realize that in a political process this is the way it is and there is no perfect process what i have to go by you know we can sit here and go on and on and on and investigate and take it apart do it for another sixty day isn't spend time in grief and tearing apart of the community but what i have a lot of things by is results and when i look at the results i see a staff that is mostly extremely satisfied with  boss among all the paperwork that i got i got very little paperwork that was negative the vast majority is good i was a boss myself i had over three hundred employees and i'm very sure that some of them like me and some of them felt that i was a total you know what and that's just the way it is it's like being a politician some people hate you some people like you i mean this is just the law of averages you can i hope it's going toward your side but you know you never know so i guess i don't really want to spend another sixty days in this limbo of digging around and worrying about who's looking at what and who's not looking at what i have enough stuff in front of me to make a decision today i would like us to get over this and let this department get back doing its work i think it's very very important for the safety of our community and first taking care of business so i you seem to have a lot of support over here you seem to really want to go in the right direction but the people under you i feel i'm responsible for all of them deter news and your civil service and everyone else because we're the ones that give the go for you to be in charge and i feel that you are in charge of all of them whether it's your turn as you hire a lot of staff or the civil service people that you are responsible for making sure that they have an your new york so i'll have to leave that just life for a while but when i did have this conversation with you you agreed he said yes it is his responsibility and yes he needs to go with you and make and i would put the question to him again it's really difficult even though this huge support to need to remember that is not one hundred percent support we need particular of our people i would hope that my conversation with him would start a process they would reevaluating how they're looking at problems that they have that we wouldn't have complete but there would be handled in the department the other thing here at the get three three twenty recess have and some members have specific questions that we would like to ask him that's with your permission of course and secondly i would like to ask mr wong some questions in regards to some of the statements made by my colleague because i'm not a legal beagle so i no what he was referring to fires tribunals and these different issues and i really think i speak for myself maybe everybody else understood in the room but i also had some constituents asked me what that meant so i'd like to  appreciate the context within which i'm answering reference was made to i believe rule three point three of the rules of professional responsibility  should be considered is the title itself where it says candid talk candor towards the tribunals and an attorney shall make not make knowingly false statements towards the tribunals typically rule three point three applies when an attorney represents a client before a tribunal one of the questions that came up earlier also is whether or not does body would be considered a tribunal in my opinion this body would in fact be a tribe you know no different than a board or commission where in an attorney represents a client before that board of your commission on the reason why the rule is written the way it is it's present or allow attorneys to make presentations to boards and commissions and tribunals as if it was a court a court of law in the context of rule three point three if you read the entire rule and it's comments comment one that advocates task is to present the client's case with persuasive force performance of that duty while maintaining confidences of the client is qualified but it advocates a duty of candor to the tribunals however an advocate does not vouch for the evidence submitted in the cause the tribunals is responsible for assessing its probative value that comment taken in the context of the entire rule in my opinion humbly is meant for i do appreciate that at least that clarification my next question for you is also been brought up that certain questions had not been asked by disconsolate in regards to certain issues that have been brought up really representing the fact that mr kim had been reprimanded in a prior administration my question to you is this i've been here this is my third round third rodeo if you want to use that term and it's the first time i've heard that brought up by anybody in any context is that a normal question on line of questioning that we have had in the past maybe we should in the future but in the past has that been a line of questioning that i cannot remember and i apologize if i missed it again i apologize  in the context member of the reno of the questions posed relative to disciplinary action taken by or against any of the nominees for prosecuting attorney and or for  corporation counsel at least as it relates to my confirmation proceedings two of which i've survived at no time was i asked whether or not i was previously reprimanded in any prior employment scenario as it relates to mr kim as a candidate for prosecuting attorney i do not recall that those questions were propounded to mr kim in his previous two thousand and eleven confirmation or maybe even currently however if i may further add i believe member fellow and also member cochran did speak to the process and quite frankly member all comma also mentioned questions about the process being mindful of our process in fairness to law if the questions do deal with prior employment certainly ask questions directly and maybe in your process and maybe in your look to whether or not the charter and or an ordinance needs to be composed in order to address these concerns and that's fair you certainly have that capacity to look forward to that but in relation to your question number victory you know specifically as to prior employment in any reprimands my answer is no that that is not a line of questioning that i've stages things were coming up and they were they were brought up and as chair because it had come out of committee already as chair i had to address them and i think it's fair for me to to ask the question that i ask for information and and expect a response from the applicant that hasn't been forthcoming i've been feeling a bit stonewalled and have not been able to review some of the documents that i had hoped to see but and i hate to admit this but mr couch actually made a pretty good point  that these you know the things that i was that came up and that i was interested in looking at would probably have been more much more pertinent in the two thousand and eleven confirmation discussions  and so i'm i'm able to step back from that a bit nevertheless i want the administration understand that the stonewalling is not going to help them in the long run i don't put all of this on mr kim's shoulders at all but it it has become somewhat of a common element so you know the the operational concerns the fact that we can get information on a timely basis then sit well with me but at the same time i recognize through the testimony today that you know we need to give credit where credit is due and and i think mr kim has shown through the testimony today that he has a staff for the most part  to to the job and to the county and to the people of maui with that said we still have some work to do and there were comments about either conduct an audit or an investigation and i don't think an investigation is quite warranted but whether we do an audit or an investigation is a discussion for another day  can't discuss that today but i you know i heard from testifiers today in whom i have a lot of trust and their comments were heartfelt and  so i think you know the chair as comfortable putting you know putting aside the the items that i request and i'm not putting  issue because i think we had every right to ask for the items that we were not provided so i will be moving ahead just to clear out or clear up the fact that there are certain documents that are public documents it's absolutely clear in the statute but  i think i've said most of what i need to say but you know i really i don't have to hear any more from mr kim myself because i think his people spoke at length and with eloquence and commitment to support him and the items that that i was interested in reviewing would have added a lot more to the two thousand and eleven discussion because we wouldn't have had a track record he would have had people coming in and speaking on his behalf that could say what his leadership was like so  any further comments concerns mr obama german i thank you i thank you for your comments much appreciated and understand what you but you shared with the council at this time but i would agree with you the issue needs to be kept alive and i for one  after listening to all i get it i took the opposite approach i gave nobody five minutes nobody not like i don't have enough things on my calendar so nobody got five minutes with me i just read everything often this is not how we would like to make one county one government one community move forward but so saying that i still have my reservations but i will  learn it because we're going to start setting the measurements and it's going to be an interesting bu what my colleague council member cochran mentioned that it did take a lot for the women to come up here that were in opposition i would have to say  thank them for that because i was giving an antique gun under seventeen and they've added some bullet it's but same doubt i do hope that they may allow y ellow to move forward and those that do remain were not have to face any retaliation so at this stage i would support the appointment of mr kim based on the fact that he will fix the problem that is identified or maybe identified as to the  challenges these individuals employees or former employees have stepped up to identify i support is appointment because i've had well i would like to thank you for your comments with respect to the kind of retaliation because i think that the concerns you shared earlier about how you felt after the first  the first round of meetings i felt the same way and i felt i felt very hurt for them because i felt that the administration and their union had left them completely out in the cold and i don't think any employee deserves to ever feel that way and i would like to think that mr kim and his staff will move ahead and in a nurturing way not have been directed way and and in a way without retaliation and i think we can likely count on him for that because we we are all on that was me we are on notice and you know not that we're going to be watching like hawks because they're over there and we're over here but at the same time we need to be vigilant vigilant and at the same time we need to depend on him to make everybody comfortable make things happen in the right way and time i would like to at least cast my vote in the minority i believe that you know just looking at the vote it looks like he's going to get confirmed or he'll be approved but someone you know when i when i saw mark my hair up there and he was my supervisor and and one point in my life he made sure that the victims who maybe one or two had i like the putting the department on notice especially during this upcoming budget session as mr holcombe a put it in there is a paragraph from administrative officer  relation to yourself and vice chair queries that have put all your requests have put them behind and in noncompliance to federal and state requirements the reporting of gra ends and thus put them on a monetary hold status so we don't go into details on that but it would be very interesting to see how it gets vetted out through our budget process regards to this statement i think that's a really bold tainted because of statements made by some of these people that came in today but that been done before so what is new with this we have been called a lot of names in my lifetime and thank you it's never been always that pleasant don't go but in final closing i'll say d has proven with many of the people that he works with he's a good leader those who have been the minority well couple of things number one where's the union who's supposed to be helping them that's my first question so let's not do it on his back where is the representation by dept paying dues member by their union and if they're not represented by the union and why if their civil service then on top of that who's supposed to be representing them at that point in time so there's other cracks in the system so let's not throw it all on the man but the system itself and so that needs to be looked at also i said i i've said that and it will be whatever ails me still does want to do as far as charter that's fine needs to be changed needs to be changed and hey maybe final statement is maybe we oughta get an elected code or in the charter to change the way to change what we request in the way of information of nominees and i think you know i am happy to work in that direction you guys have all made your comments and now that we're at this point i am more than happy to have mr kim come down with the understanding that we have to take the vote in time for mr carroll be out here he says four thirty but i let's shoot for four fifteen reprimanded on the former administration i don't know how much you want to comment in and get into that and that was one of the issues that had come up maybe we should ask in two thousand evan that's agree but it's being asked now and if you want to elaborate find it him at another time and the response can be in writing and we can do it in executive session or so that sort but i don't want to i don't want to put him on the spot at at this juncture and what about the personnel that have come forward and had these challenges and we ask if you need to do some more and i'm absolutely ok i mean i guess i don't know all of us would like to hear from mr yeah and so how would you my question how would you look up on helping these people in the future employees their complaints if it's under the collective bargaining agreement the police are represented and there are serious allegations i followed the steps of labor law basically the seven steps of just c and so if i seem to be standoffish at times to my employees and their complaints i cannot make it personal investigation because as a department head the decision of discipline to come down or to change those issues has to be based on an unbiased investigation so i cannot get involved in investigation as deputy corporation called so i seen too many times where the department in has listened to one side said he has done or she has done an invest and we lose and so if it appears to my staff that when they make those complaints and i'm standoffish it's only because i'm trying to follow current labor law and the practice of seven steps is just cause and anyone who's been in that management position with a union understands that and so i listen there's sometimes a you can just criminal matters up really quickly doesn't fall under the contract and i've been able to respond to those but i've always been open and listen to those those concerns and if our supervisors are wrong then i correct the supervisors i do not punish them ploy for bringing up those concerns and see representative guzmn about their concerns and i asked my staff an e mail blast because that's the only way i can get a hold of them all at one time that remind them that this is a process that we need to go through guzman is doing his own investigation through his his due diligence as he quote to make sure i answer his concerns do not waste your time trying to figure out who these anonymous persons from our office came because there's a no retaliation policy for people who file complaints and that's plain and simple we have a discrimination policy that was written when i was in the deputy corporation counsel i assisted in writing that and so i understand that and i would not allow retaliation in my department just to set up a lawsuit that's not that's not good county government so i reminded them i'm pretty sure they all listen to me  and if they don't and those are the consequences there is no retaliation to should be i mean you don't know you're not doing a good job unless you get complaints and you have to address those expected someone in his position to be much more respectful of the responsibilities that we have in this chamber everyone in here knows  it's not always fun to sit in these chairs it's not always easy and this is a bit of a particularly challenging one because everything came at us so late in the game and so to have someone come in is not been an easy decision because my heart of aloha just goes out to these women and you know their feelings is is your feelings there's no wrong except what you're feeling is right and that might sound very subjective and i know we have all our legal matter s that we have to avoid and hopefully administration is also listening and paying attention because there's got to be a means of allowing this group to to move  forward and to we've heard them and i know it wasn't easy it's not easy to come in to step up to the plate like that and voice their they're being targeted trust that there is speaking the truth because that's what they felt you know and of course the process was unfair to them i've said that before and whether it's the union whether it's administration or whether it's your side so hopefully you know that triangle can be close so that they can truly move forward you know whatever it's worth i just like to say that at the same time i have to appreciate all the the good comments that have come through you know you cannot avoid the good the good things you have to appreciate and you know mama that that comes before you so with that you know i just want to see that hopefully i'm making the right decision well for myself hopefully i'm making the right decision  trust that that i am but still keeping that chatter in the back of my head what these individuals experience and our experience as they go through their adjustment in dying thank you thank you no there's two don't think we need a roll call measure passes seven eyes to nose no one excuse and i'm sorry dated january sixteenth two thousand and fifteen from the department of corporation counsel transmitting a resolution disapproving the appointment of john d chemist a prosecuting attorney and number three filing of that communication so much of that  and them and the world