My strange odyssey at the city council comes to an end today. Seven weeks ago, I started a short-term staff assignment for Honolulu City Councilmember Duke Bainum, at his request. That night, he died.
In the confusion and chaos that followed, I stayed on to help hold things together and continue to serve the district in Duke’s sudden absence. Now it’s time to move on. The rest of the staff are hanging on until a new council member takes over or they find new jobs, which ever comes first, but it seems appropriate for me to step aside now that things are seriously winding down. It’s been interesting, for example, to see how many council services staff who were there when I worked at the city back in 1988-90 are still working there today. I’ll just say that there have been a surprising number of familiar faces.
In any case, I’ll turn my keys in this afternoon and see what happens next.
Coincidentally, I just noticed that this list of fired bloggers was just updated this month. The Star-Bulletin’s decision to terminate my job due to unhappiness over this blog in 2001 still stands as the first known instance of losing a job over the issue of blogging.
Yesterday’s mention of the hot link to one of my photos in a KHVH Radio web page got quick results. By the end of the day yesterday, the photo had been replaced with what appears to be a formal Congressional portrait.
Speaking of my photos, I got a short email from former Star-Bulletin webmeister Blaine Fergerstrom with a bit of news:
We got a preview of Hawaiian Hall at Bishop Museum last Friday. Two of your photos are prominently featured (with credit) in an exhibit on the Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s.
Hey, fame and fortune? Well, not quite. But it’s fun to be part of history, and I’ll look forward to seeing the exhibit when we attend the opening reception next week.
I also noticed that the First Amendment Center took note of the recent sunshine law case on the Big Island where a judge ruled the county council violated state law by holding private discussions of a council reorganization.
Hawaii’s sunshine law does allow some off-the-record discussion in such circumstances [see Section 92-2.5(c)].
(c) Discussions between two or more members of a board, but less than the number of members which would constitute a quorum for the board, concerning the selection of the board’s officers may be conducted in private without limitation or subsequent reporting.
But in this case, apparently, the facts were otherwise.
If anyone has the pleadings in this case, I would love to see them!
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It’s too bad SB thought that way, if they had more quality reporters like yourself (instead of firing the ones they had) maybe I wouldn’t be seriously considering canceling my subscription due to the growing tide of repackaged news, reader submitted , and BS local color stories… Such a shame that the trend toward getting rid of professional reporters and replacing them with reader generated content has been the trend. I want real reporting, not Aunty’s reporting (no offense to any Auntys out there).
Ian, you are a very good photographer. Remember the photo of the ducks that I purchased from you? I intend to use it on the back cover of my next book, to be published in 2012. The front cover will show a photo of sailboats by my pal, Ted Trimmer, also a good photographer.
It’s odd that this time, your blog did not require my password to post a comment!