We arrived home late last night after nearly 12 hours of flying on our return from a week in Burke, Virginia, where we were visiting former neighbors (and two of our favorite twins, and a couple of great cats!).
This morning we were up early, went out for our morning walk to the beach, then opened the Star-Advertiser (warning: pay wall) to see a story about the Honolulu Fire Chief barring a firefighters’ retiree group from meeting in HFD HQ due to their political endorsements (or check the KHON News version of this story).
The retirees say it’s retaliation. The chief says he’s just doing his job.
The City Charter contains some prohibitions on political activities, Section 6-1112.2, .3 and .6, Revised Charter of Honolulu. These fall under the purview of the Honolulu Ethics Commission.
It’s pretty interesting. Civil Service employees are barred from using their authority to influence the outcome of an election, soliciting any political contributions from any employee or “from any person in any city building.”
There are additional restrictions and political rights of civil service employees spelled out. Most would not apply directly to a retiree group, and I don’t see anything that would require singling out a retiree group and barring them from use of a facility that is otherwise legal. Of course, some may read this differently.
Here are the highlights from the Charter:
2. Political Activities.
(a) No person in the civil service shall (1) use official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with an election or affecting the result thereof; (2) use official authority or influence to coerce the political action of any person or party; (3) be obliged to contribute to any political fund or to render any political service, nor shall such person be removed or otherwise prejudiced for refusing to do so; (4) solicit or receive any political contribution from any officer or employee or from any person in any city building or from any person receiving any benefit under any law of the State appropriating funds for relief or public assistance; or (5) discriminate in favor of or against any officer or employee on account of any political contribution.
(b) The foregoing prohibited activities shall not be deemed to preclude the right of any person in the civil service to vote and to express opinions as such person chooses on all political subjects and candidates or to be a member of any political party, organization or club. Any person in the civil service may make voluntary contributions to a political organization for its general expenditures. “Contribution” includes a gift, subscription, loan, advance or deposit of money or anything of value and includes a contract, promise or agreement, whether or not legally enforceable, to make a contribution.
3. Other Prohibited Activities.
(a) No recommendation of any person who applies for examination or appointment to any office or position under the provisions of this chapter of the charter which may be given by an elected officer of the city, except as to the ability or character of the applicant, shall be received or considered by any person concerned in the giving of any examination or the making of any appointment under this chapter of the charter.
(b) It shall be unlawful for any candidate for election to any public office or for any public officer or employee, any portion of whose compensation is paid by the city directly or indirectly, to solicit or assess any contribution or assessment for any political purpose whatever from any member in the civil service.
(c) No person shall, in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties by any officer or employee, solicit in any manner whatever or receive any contribution of money or other things of value from any officer or employee for any political purpose whatever.
Then there’s more silliness from the Democratic Party of Hawaii’s State Central Committee. The SCC, meeting in a rump session following the State Convention, reportedly authorized a lawsuit to block former Land Board chair Laura Thielen from running for State Senate as a Democrat, according to Civil Beat.
Although the issue was not debated during the convention, many Democrats thought an amendment to party rules that apply in such situations, which was approved by the full convention, was a tacit acknowledgement that Thielen’s case was mishandled by the party bureaucracy.
Democratic activist Bart Dame posted a long comment on that Civil Beat story. It’s too long to quote in full, and I highly recommend that it be read in full. But here’s a brief excerpt:
…in a long meeting on the Friday night of the convention, we reached a compromise around a more inclusive process for reviewing a potential candidate’s eligibility to run. It was the product of a few weeks of negotiations and managed to garner support from all but the most hardened opponents to Thielen’s candidacy. On Saturday morning, on the floor of the convention, delegates overwhelmingly defeated what was seen as an attempt to substitute more hardline language into the Rules. Since the convention had repudiated the hardline view, a lot of us were assuming there was general agreement towards putting this matter behind us.
Unfortunately, it appears State Chair Dante Carpenter and Oahu Chair Tony Gill had decided in advance of the convention to use the Sunday SCC meeting as an opportunity to secure approval for hiring an attorney to challenge Thielen’s ballot status as a Dem. For all their planning, they somehow failed to place the proposal on the agenda of the meeting. Surely that was an accidental oversight rather than a conscious attempt to conceal their plan.
All I can say is, “Don’t call me Shirley.”
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Ian,
You are behind the times in still mentioning the SA paywall. Most daily newspapers are behind a paywall now or soon will be according to most industry reports. Funny, how you never mention that PBN is behind a paywall when you quote them and they have been behind a paywall for over 5 years. Civil Beat tried to be behind one….it’s just that no one would pay them for the journalism they deliver. It’s just a fact.
I read PBN articles occasionally, and I haven’t been required to pay.
City ethics training stresses that city facilities are not supposed to be used for political purposes so there is a basis for telling retirees they cannot meet on City property if they are perceived as engaged in political activities.
Rene Mansho got into trouble because her staff was doing political work on City time in City facilities. That clearly crossed the bright line.
Use of City meeting rooms by a retiree group that is engaged in political activity is in a grey area. A good investigative reporter would ask Chuck Totto at the City Ethics Commission for a comment.
Lopaka’s point seems intuitive, even obvious, but I couldn’t find anything in the the Revised Ordinances of Honolulu, that specifically prohibits political activities conducted on Citry property, with City permission (or that of a City official). Odd.
I can’t help but think all we need to add is a two ponies and a trained dog and we’d have a full-fledged circus. Come on guys, get it together.
Romeo can sort this out.
I will give my proxy to Romeo, too.
Wonder what Tom would think of son Tony’s take on this? Tom was the original maverick when I cut my teeth on Hawaii politics.
As one who covered Dante from entry to exit in elected politics from Ka’u county councilman to state senator to mayor, I do not recall him marching all of the time to the party drummer (just ask ex-senate president Dickie Wong) . He was widely seen as an independent, even a “Repubilcrat”by some some.
Could there be more at play here?
What makes you think Romeo isn’t a Republican? We all saw him roughing up Ian on YouTube.
Geez Natalie, with investigative skills like that you should work for the SA. If you just go to the PBN site you will see dozens of stories with a little padlock symbol next to them. No pay, no see. Been that way for years.
Wow Lori, that’s odd. I ‘just went’ to the PBN (Pacific Business News) site for the first time & read several of the articles with no ‘pay wall’ involved. Perhaps they’ve locked you out for some reason?
Fire Chief Ken Silva should put politics aside.
The fire headquarters was built with taxpayers’ monies. It’s not his penny. Shame on him for treating the retired firemen so badly.
I don’t follow your logic. I agree the Fire Dept. HQ was built with taxpayers’ money, but that is exactly why it should not be used for partisan politics. Chief Silva was “putting politics aside” when he told them to take it elsewhere. If Mayor Carlisle used one city paperclip for his campaign these same critics would be demanding his head.
Fire Chief Ken Silva is not in Peter Carlisle’s side. He’s part of the old Mufi Hannemann aka Kirk Caldwell gang.
Silva is being petty. I wonder how many other rules he doesn’t throw at his own friends.
Then again, maybe Silva is a straight arrow who’s appropriately concerned about keeping all this political crap out of the fire house, and Ben and his cronies are simply lying to everyone and playing the victim to seek publicity and fool a few fools who are so blinded by their pathological hatred of rail, Mufi, Caldwell, Carlisle, green peas and God knows what else that they’ve preconditioned themselves to believe just about anything that reinforces their angry, uninformed preconceptions.
Why not just become a birther?
I’ve heard Ben Cayetano called a lot of things, but I doubt anyone has seriously called him “uninformed.”
Read it again. I didn’t call him “uniformed,” but since you brought it up, I’d by happy to, since it’s true.
Ben Cayetano is uninformed about many issues, and it shows. Parroting long-discredited deceptive arguments by Slater and co. does not an informed politico make.
And on the fire house squabble, I’d say he was far less than truthful.
Ben claimed the retirees were banned in retaliation for an endorsement they made three months later.
There would seem to be a big problem with that logic.
Wow Pants, perhaps you are blind. Sure, they have some stories nit behind their paywall….just like the SA. That’s the way a paywall works, general stories of little value are free and the rest are behind the paywall. got it?
Lori, almost all of the SA’s original content is behind a paywall. Free content includes some Breaking News (half of which is press releases or AP stories), and a few “Fake Tits of the Week” photos, which they use to try to pander to the lowest common denominator to draw them into Pulse/TGIF (the “entertainment” section).
Oops Pants, sorry I meant aikea808…
Ok Ian, i understand why my comment ‘is awaiting moderation’ – it was a moment of frustration on my part because Ms. Lori A.’s condescending attitude is dragging the conversation down to her level.
Thanks for understanding.
If we can revisit the insight that there is more to the right-wing than merely conservatives (just as there is more to the left-wing than liberals or progressives), this might help us to understand the Laura Thielen fiasco.
Every society has certain elements that tend toward certain far-right sentiments, even if they don’t get expressed politically in those terms.
When, after WWII, there was sociological research done on the ‘authoritarian personality’, a hypothetical personality type that tends toward stereotypical thinking, a tendency toward a fawning obedience toward authority and an abusiveness toward social subordinates (authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism).
Here are the primary characteristics of such a personality type as described in an updated study from 1998 (in the wiki):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality
In fact, even in the original research (which has been much criticized), there was some suggestion that the proportion of the population with these tendencies was about the same in all societies, whether it be Germany and Japan or the US or the UK. (Supposedly the funding for such studies dried up when this came to light.)
But recent research more explicitly suggests that there is indeed a disjunction between political beliefs and personal orientation toward authority.
That is, although a person might be ‘politically correct’, this tolerance can at times be a manifestation of the desire to submit to the ‘correct’ behaviors prescribed by authority. Again, the wiki:
On the one hand, it is comforting to know that even though there might be an ‘authoritarian personality’, that these sort of people can be co-opted into socially tolerant behavior (indeed, they become the most tolerant people because it is the ‘right’ thing to do according to the dominant social norms, that is, authority). (Or at least it is comforting to us because we were raised in modern societies that prescribe tolerance as a value, meaning that we believe in tolerance because we were socialized into it by authority….)
On the other hand, it is rather dispiriting that the driving force for tolerance in society might not be understanding or sympathy, but rather the blind desire to conform. (It does explain the academic world, where calls for tolerance often come from the most rigid and intolerant personalities.)
Ultimately, for such a personality type, there is still going to be a tendency to scapegoat or perceive deviancy (“aggression towards sanctioned targeted minority groups”) that will eventually manifest itself. Like the story of the scorpion and the frog, it is in the nature of the authoritarian personality to persecute.
But the trick to persecuting minorities in a society that officially embraces tolerance is to label or brand the targeted individual or group as ‘intolerant’.
That might contribute to what is happening in the leadership of the Democratic Party in terms of excluding certain politicians from the Democratic ticket. It resembles a kind of a ‘witch hunt’.
The peculiar part is that it focuses on Laura Thielen, who on the face of it would seem to be more liberal than the leadership of the Democratic Party, ironically.
Again, that might be expected. In an authoritarian society, it is the most tolerant, critical-thinking, educated, urban, creative people who are targeted (e.g., the Jews symbolized this).
In an officially tolerant society, however, the authoritarian personality still goes after such people. But there is a psychological reversal, where ‘obviously’ the tolerant person who is persecuted must be secretly intolerant.
This is not to say that those elements in the local Democratic Party who have authoritarian tendencies do not genuinely want to be progressive.
They do so badly want to be progressive. But they want to be progressive in order to conform.
And at the end of the day, they are not progressive in their actual policies. Like the scorpion, it’s not in their nature.
If you look at environmental policy or public education in Hawaii, it is not progressive. Quite the contrary.
So there is this constant resort to window dressing (e.g., banning plastic bags).