good morning welcome to the committee of the horn town gives me the chair i'd like to introduce our members for today's meeting starting with caught we also have our deputy corporation counsel mr gary mariah david underwood director of personal services and great king the central person purchasing agent department of finance before we begin i'd like to check in with our district offices starting with district office of lynette e are you there attention to the first and only item on today's agenda the litigation matters the special counsel authorization in the matter of the interest our protection between the bargaining unit eleven representing represented by the hawaii firefighters association and the state of hawaii state city and county of hundred county of hawaii county of maui and county of coal i e the communities in receipt of the correspondence dated august twelfth two thousand and sixteen from the department of corp counsel's transmitting the cats more heather hetherington and harris as special counsel in the matter of the interest arbitration between the bargaining unit eleven represented by the hawaii firefighters association and the state of hawaii city and county of honolulu county and county of coal you for legal services relating to the interest in hearing of the contested articles of the book bargaining unit eleven firefighters collective bargaining agreement and to enter into an expert consulting in support services agreement with the state of hawaii city county of honolulu county of course a county of hawaii what you for the consultation service is relating to the interests arbitration hearing of the contest the articles of the book bargaining unit eleven firefighters making themselves available in such short notice what's happened in this case is as good as you folks may know when we enter into a contract negotiations with unions we we need go sheet and arbitrate as an employer's group typically each jurisdiction will often represent themselves employer group to give it our best shot because we all know and historically that the first or the early contracts may often set the bar for subsequent contracts of interest and resumes of the attorneys who responded to the our call for any law firms or lawyers who are interested in doing labor work for the county retain mr katz and concurrent with that we're also asking for your permission to enter into agreements with the state e patrick kilborne and mr kilborne has done excellent work on behalf of employers in the past and i know that we as a as a whole ploy is have been satisfied and very workings of of how this mysterious process works some of this can be held in open session especially when we speak of the procedural things generally however if we do  delve into specifics about this particular negotiation in interest arbitration i would ask or i would recommend to the chair that we go into executive session for those matters thank  is here no thank you but i'm here to answer questions as mr moore i said about the process or what may have happened in this particular case to the extent that we can ok thank you mr king do you have any opening statements no no chair no opening statements and also and here to answer any questions you guys have ok thank you members of the floor is open for any questions and mr white thank you chair  it was unclear to in your description whether mr katz is being hired by the group or individually by maori mr katz because of  because the counsel had the foresight to appropriate one hundred thousand dollars to the department of the corporation counsel for the purpose of procuring you know  we county is the procuring agency and the other jurisdictions are entering into collective purchasing agreements with the county so that they may join in on  retaining mr katz ok and then it's my understanding that with the far depart we've already reached an impasse yet yes we have are you able to tell us the reason for the impasse this early in the process that for that i would defer to mr underwood is for underwood thank you you understand i can't go into details about the specifics of different proposals or whatever but to give you  the history of what's happened so far each of the contracts has a window in which we're required to pass any proposals for a successor agreement for the fire department we passed proposals and say i'm sorry we're at impasse we're not making any progress in negotiations so in this case it is a fairly contentious round of negotiations more so than in the past there's a a lot of articles on the table and we were not able to resolve them so in early august why firefighters association did inform the board that we were at impasse and the desire to go to to arbitration yeah i understand that you're unable to give us details in open session are you also unable to give us details in executive session it's crap i would not be able to that's one of my frustrations chair because as you know we end up with the final result without really having any idea at any point during the process of where we are and it's i guess one my other question is it's whether or not rank for rank recall is an issue for the employers this time around or whether we is that an issue in the negotiations that we ask for it to be removed or not i couldn't comment on specific proposals right now but the union has told me that we can get information from the union but we can't get it from our own team which really irritates the hell out of me as the ones that end up having to fund it i've been told that we have not requested the quick call even be on the table and if that's the case it's a two and a half million dollar increase cost without a significant change in and coverage and i find it irresponsible at best they could share maybe we can get a clarification either by mr mariah or mr under good underwood as to why we cannot be just close to that type of information what w prevent personally impose session to me for why they are prevented from disclosing certain issues or terms to the committee whether it be an open session or executive session here at beginning of each new round of negotiations there's a set of ground rules that are set out for that particular round of negotiations that's agreement that all parties basically sign and buying into themselves too  and one of those basic tenets of the ground rules is you do not discuss outside and bush ations the contents of negotiations so we sign off on that when we start so that's that's the binding document that we've  signed off on so so when at some point you you come to an impasse you're not able to disclose what and why it was you know you've come to an impasse correct because the negotiation process is can still proceed during an impasse and typically does just you know the impasse will start the arbitration the ultimate resolution of it but it does not stop the parties from continuing to talk while that is going on renewals is there a possibility to put language in as part of the agreement or rules that would allow you to disclose in executive session the the i guess the the discussion or the terms to the committee or to the council could that be i guess drafted in our agreed upon in and future negotiations so we can certainly propose that with us not being able to have a sense of where the negotiations are going is that we've got fourteen contracts coming up in the past four years those contracts and other increases that other nonunion employees have received have increased our employment cost by sixty five million dollars i don't think we can sit back and be comfortable with another sixty five billion dollar increase or even something half as high when when i enter into negotiations with the e u do i'm the funder and i'm sitting at the table in these negotiations we don't even have budget people or finance people at the table we have h r and our attorneys there's nothing nothing wrong with that at some level but if we don't have people that are responsible for paying the bills involved we're not likely to get the the same kind of responsible fiscal outcome that i think all of us sitting here are  kinds of work rules on the table all at once here we don't have health care that's handled separately and assisted a very different thing we don't have the funder say in the table because the fund the administration is not the funder or the employer they're not the funder when i sit at the table i'm representing the funder and i'm the ultimate decision maker so it's it's a it's a different way of doing things and i'm just really really uncomfortable with that especially seen that that sixty five million dollars is equal to the all the taxes generated in all of ca whoi district all of i look  district all of my district and all of miss bice's district combined that is just the increased cost from the last four years and that's an annual cost us not cumulative so it bothers me a lot that we can't even know where you're going and we end up with the final result that up or down and basically we've had no say in it so i'm i'm kind of getting to the point where i only say as a say no when it finally gets to us if we can be a part of the process then hell with it but other than that i'm really happy i know i think a lot of our members have the same sentiment you know there is that level of uncomfortable in the air at least frustration  when where basically asked to find at the very and and really have been a part of or at least been disclose of prior events that has happened but let me ask the before i mr couch i'll do a follow up to what you've stated who who are present who will be present at this arbitration in terms of representing the different areas mr cherry generally speaking of course i'll be there along with possibly other members of the corporation council staff certainly mr underwood on behalf of d p s will be there with also with other members of his staff and  share chair wise frustrations but one of the things that he hasn't mentioned and that we should throw on the table was we are the policy makers so if we're the policy makers why are we at the table you the administration is the administration of the policy we set the policy so we should be somebody from our body or we have least we should be able to hear the troubles you're having in executive session and i think i agree with mr white chair why it's ludicrous we're the guys that that set the policy and pay and we can't be at the table or we can't even hear what where you're appreciate i really do appreciate your end chair whites frustration all i can say is you know i personally have only been doing this for about five years now so i don't have the long institutional history of why we do things the way they do i mean i could just say well you know they are the framework is set by chapter eighty nine and a lot of the pro processes and perspire osses and procedures have been developed over time  in a one of the reasons why you know mr underwood and i are often constrained in being more candid with the counsel is we do have a setting aside the agreement of confidentiality we also have to be concerned about the union alleging that we have committed an unfair labor practice by prematurely or improperly disclosing the offers that have been exchanged the state of the negotiations you know because the we have these rules to protect the process i don't know what kind of feedback you know share white you're getting from union members or from the union but if you are receiving this information then i would have a concern that the union may be breaching their duties of confidentiality i know that we take them very seriously but i if if if if there is a breach on the other by the other side then i would have a concern about those t can i can i follow up in the i'll give you the follow up with mr couch is question the line of questioning is there any ok since this is the first contract in a series of future contracts for fourteen other ones that we're going to be dealing with i get back to the question again is there anything that we can i guess start to do or begin to i guess change the rules or the confidentiality agreement so that disclosure can be given to the council at least try to work on something like that or negotiate is it too late to negotiate for future contracts that are coming up have already been kicked off with the imagery in place ok members that's what it is now mr cox follow up on to what mr wright said i understand where he's he's coming from but you know since we are the policy makers nobody came to us and said how do you want to start the negotiations what i mean you're just negotiating have what you think we want from here and you know maybe i don't know where you think  we're coming from but you've heard you know the frustration that rank ranks not on the table all of a sudden had somebody come to us maybe an exact session ok we're going to go into negotiations what are your concerns we don't get any of that and i don't understand why that's never been the case and why it's not the case now and i you guys are doing what he has been done all this all along now it's time to step outside of the box and talk to the people who are setting the policy and paying for this to see where we want to go i think that's something that needs to be done sooner rather than later thank you thank you very much chair you know every time we sit here and discuss the situation that we're discussing today we kind of repeat the same frustration that we have and we understand that you are the messengers and that you didn't set this policy and what you're doing is what it's been done before and you're facing us who are saying we don't like this so what i would like us to spend some time thinking about is is there any way we can change this and how do we change it it's my understanding this is coming down from the state that we're following policies or procedures that are set by the state and if that is the case then maybe it would behoove us to get together maybe through eight sec because we are the state sector for economies to get together and say we don't like this policy and we want to change it's never going to change unless we initiate something and i would like to be a part of that but you know i don't know maybe with first of all we can verify that this is a policy that's set by the state  well i think i mean and we've heard your frustration in you know yes we've been here many many times and ultimately the structure is set by statute because the statute does vest the specifically defined the representative for the county as the mayor so the statute does stipulate that and then when we negotiate the employer group there's a basically as provision in statute that says how decisions are made and that's by majority vote with the state having x number of votes in each county having one vote so i understand the frustration i mean we feel it as well don't i mean don't i want to make it sound like we don't feel it but ultimately that's the structure that statutorily we're working in now and that's kind of where that comes that's from that's what the statute lays out so if we don't want this situation to continue and you know we all are very frustrated i'm sure we're not alone i've got to believe that our fellow counties are also concerned about this i think that we should start raising this as an issue you know we just went through a election i think we missed an opportunity to raise this as an issue i never heard it mentioned but we still have some time and we have a session coming up in january that this might be something that we  at it's not it's not working anymore it may have worked before but you know when i listen to your what and you listen to the numbers that he that he shares with us and we know those numbers are good because joe works very good with doing his research and when he says it's this month i know it's that much maybe we need to do something because otherwise we're going to sit here discussing this for the next ten years and nothing will happen and we have to initiate an action to change what we don't hit the nail on the head i mean we can see here and talk to we've learned the fish is not going to change unless the counties take this off as one of their causes and we will continue in the same trend has been done this way for many many years even when i was on the board of education the governor had five votes the department had three votes one of education had one do the math we could never win we could never win so it was always set up administration and the state administration seems to always have the most votes and why police and fire when they don't have any say or judicial duty on those particular departments and others makes no sense but i don't know way back when what the thought process was at that point other lumping all law enforcement to get them i think that was with the premise that they used so with that being said i mean we can continue to discuss this man it's not going to change unless we make that first step and make it in next week on the twenty second we're going to have an eight second meeting one of them so i will be bringing this matter up you know this will be a part of what i discuss with the other counties and i believe this is been discussed in in a general context and they all feel very much the same way is how come we don't have a say how come we don't have a seat at the table and i think that's maybe where we need to have have a seat at the table i think that's what i would like to see us move towards having the seats for that one a virus idea to represent our point of view to make sure that our points of view as the funding and as the policymaker is there because the mayor doesn't do that and neither does other saul you know i think this is important so that being  said i want to prolong the conversation and reach the white house more and more and more to discuss i think that's where i would start and i will make it a point to make sure that i get started and i will put down our agenda for our paycheck priorities here from i say that is because we should document what we're doing at least our intension are always talk was my document and yeah but that's the way yeah i would i would hope that whoever takes over p next you know attorney will follow up as well mr white i would i would appreciate if you could one of you can explain to us where in statute limits you to communicating with and the what you call the employer group and does not allow you to share things even in executive session because i you know we're part of the same team when it comes to cost but we are the ultimate funders and it's just it's troubling to me that there's a statute that says you can't share things even in executive session and i don't know if there's a specific statute or if there isn't one that i'd like to request chair that we ask or counsel to draft an opinion on that explains why we can't  explicit statute in chapter eighty nine that that sets out the confidentiality mine the standing and standard can correct if i'm misspeak is that this is a process that has been  again developed over the years and has been a mutual thing between the unions and the employers i understand that but you know we can't share anything with the public that we here in executive session so what the hell is the employer group at the start of negotiations so what does that does the agreement say to whom you can disclose information and to whom you cannot remain is it we will disclose we disclose information to our principal which is for us is the mayor that's that's our line of communication since he's the ultimate authority that's who we're allowed to share is there anything in the agreement that identifies that we are not included as principals it to the mayor does that can then there disclose it that information to the coun normally the mayor would be bound by confidentiality you know the u s would have to determine whether executive session would count or not but normally there is a prohibition against bargaining in public and publicly disclosing anything because that typically is counterproductive so there is a commitment by the mayor normally not to bargain in public or in the media i think that so i guess we'd have to determine negotiations i don't sign any kind of agreement to confidentiality i think the public as these negotiations are going on should have some understanding of what's being asked and you know asked for because i think the purpose of the confidentiality could be because they're asking for too much and no one wants a little minnow because i know that in the private sector we haven't seen these kinds of increases that we've seen in in these contracts and i'm assuming they're going to be asking for something very similar so i would question the sensibility of having these negotiations all private i think the public has a right to know what the heck their their public servants are asking for so the other issue that i have is that we are what six months into into this fiscal year these contracts don't come up these don't contracts don't end for another ten and a half months why does the statute allow for impasse ten and a half months before the contracts expire that's lunacy so i would also like to ask  department of personal services to recommend changes to the statute in the upcoming session that would assist them in having a fairer more balanced do we have any other questions at this point i'm going to move on to what asking the question what can mr mariah or mr underwood tell us what is the advantage or disadvantage of hiring a special counsel in this case or in  this i guess arbitration matter mainly it's the the skill and expertise and experience of someone like mr katz although well that's basically it just basically his level of skill his past performance in a way of representing other public sector employers in prior negotiations and arbitrations and i wasn't part of the discussion to hire a special counsel initially by the time i became involved the concept of having the employer group represented by special counsel was already formed and it was a matter  of recruiting and selecting the most appropriate person but having settled but the goal was to find an attorney that could represent as lead counsel jointly represent all of the jurisdictions with a high level of skill and expertise in the subject and that's how we ended up with mr katz and he may want to or if if need be i guess if you can explain or if you can explain in open session if you need to go into executive session with two so what would be the advantage of maui county and hiring this special concert or at least taking the lead on and would you need to go into executive sat so i think i'd prefer that ok other questions from the members before we go into executive session seeing non white i should have said verbalize it but i don't know whether you can answer this in open session or would prefer to do it in executive session but you've mentioned that mr katz ha had successes in the past do you can you share with us what those successes are in open session or would you prefer to do so i preferred to go to a closed session for that that discussion think you think after you any any further matters it's ok we've had a request that i'd like to the chair would like to entertain a motion to convene executive meeting pursuant to section ninety two dash five a four h r asked to consult with legal counsel on questions and issues pertaining to say no we have eight eyes one excuse motion carries members we're going to take a quick recess to set the chambers for executive session the open session is now in recess for all your discussions and your time for the administration as well the staff i think at that at this time this meeting is adjourned thank you thank you mr chair