Interview with Dominic Yagong
Interview with Dominic Yagong
By P. Keeney
Recently there has been a lot of discussion about the reorganization of the County Council, and I thought it would be great to know a firsthand account of what happened. So over the weekend I sat down with my elected Councilmember Dominic Yagong to get a clearer picture of the controversy. Here’s what he had to say:
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I know the previous legislative session with the budget had been a contentious time, what happened?
I don’t think it was really contentious, I think there was some disagreements between, well mainly between myself and the Mayor, actually, because when you really take a look at the entire budget process there was very little amendments to the Mayor’s budget. In fact, probably most of the Council members did not even bring anything forward. Certainly those that did this recent reshuffling of the Council didn’t bring anything forward in conflict with the Mayor’s budget. I think that the only person who really did that was me. It was a difficult budget in the sense that we had less revenue to deal with and we still had the same programs to run, but some of the things the Mayor went after I really didn’t agree with.
For example, selling off the Hamakua lands to balance the budget. I thought it was very curious, actually, to depend on selling the land hoping to utilize the revenues to balance your budget, because as you and I know, there’s no guarantee of selling the land, but when you use that as a means to balance your budget, what you’re saying is you’re going to have $8.2 million dollars to utilize for operation of the County of Hawaii. But if you don’t sell that, you have a budget shortfall, so that means at the end of the year you’re going to have to make some type of adjustment. So from a fiscal standpoint I don’t think that was a very good idea, but for an overall standpoint it’s crazy for us to sell off land in Hamakua that needs to be used for agriculture purposes versus some type of developer coming in and building large subdivisions. So I certainly didn’t agree with him there.
And I didn’t agree with him on the 2 % fund, I felt it was a slap in the face of the voters of the County of Hawaii who mandated that we set aside 2 % of real property tax for the purpose of preserving open space. And this just happened, it just took place, and then the very first budget session after the voters voice their priorities for open space, we turn around and take away the contribution. To me, that’s directly a slap in the face of democracy. So I felt that was not a way for us to balance our budget as well. I think that it was the easiest way to balance the budget because it equated to, over two years, $9 million dollars. And of course, Hamakua lands, you know, he’s saying $8.2 million dollars is what he feels he can get in revenue for it. So those were the really easy, low-lying fruit, but at the same time it was foolish, I believe.
Because he utilized those purposes to balance the budget, I had to go and look at other ways to balance the budget, and that’s where the conflict came in. Certainly when I came up and made my amendments, I wasn’t able to get those passed because I could not get a majority vote to pass it. But that had to do with people that, number one, did not even make any amendments to the budget. People should really stop and think about this for a second. The budget itself was $386 million dollars. What the Mayor does is he sets a budget, he does his due diligence and presents the budget to the County Council for review and to amend if we don’t agree. So if we have a $386 million budget it just absolutely amazes me that we have people on the Council who will take that budget and say there’s nothing wrong. Every single penny of that $386 million is just fine, it’s OK Mayor, good job. I mean for me it’s mind-boggling that people don’t want to take that ! responsibility, because if you do amend the budget it means that you have to take it from somewhere else. It means you have to take options and proposals and put it on the table. When you do that, it means you take it from another department or another category so now you have got to defend that. Most people would probably say I don’t need that hassle. I don’t want to get the Fire Department mad, I don’t want to get the Planning Department mad, I don’t want to get the Police Department mad, so I just say, OK Mayor, fine.
To me, if that is the case, you don’t need Council members. But in County government, or in any government, you need checks and balances. You cannot have one person making the decisions, and everyone says “Yes sir,” and stands in line, and follows along. You need to have checks and balances in government and I honestly believe that is what this whole reorganization effort had to do with. For myself I have never been that way, I’ve always been very vocal, if there’s something I don’t agree with then I’m going to put it on the table, and lot of people that didn’t like that, especially during this budget. I think a lot of the stuff that we brought forward was right thing to do, but the right thing to do and having the 5 votes is two different stories.
Could you give me a couple of examples of the things you brought forward to balance the budget?
Well, sure!
For example the Mayor talked about doing a hiring freeze, and as he went through all the different townships he would tell everybody “I’ve implemented a hiring freeze.” But if you take a look at the newspaper every week we were recruiting people and actually hiring people for County government. So I think there was a conflict there, I don’t think the whole truth was being provided to the people. So to me that was a fallacy. But what really bugged me was that in the Mayor’s budget there were 451 funded vacant positions. So in other words say we have a public works position at $85,000 we actually put $85,000 in the account to fund the position. Now to me if you’re going to implement a hiring freeze then why fund the vacant position? It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to me. So 9 1/2 million dollars for funded vacant positions in the County budget, so my thought was why take the 2% fund? All you have to d! o is unfund $4 ½ million dollars, and you don’t touch that. You preserve the integrity of the vote that the people took at the last election. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
Unfortunately the way the system is set up, if we fund the vacant positions, which is what the Council did, after the budget has been approved the Mayor can take the monies from that vacant position and use it for whatever he wants. So that’s why, for years, what I’ve been saying, and I feel like a man standing in the middle of the room screaming, I’ve been saying “The funded vacant position is a slush fund!” When you set a budget for your household, you set up a budget for specifically how much you’re going to spend and for what purpose. For me it’s not true budget when you’re putting money into something that you don’t intend to do. As a matter of fact there were positions that haven’t been filled since 2000 and 2005 so why do you need to fund those positions in 2009? It doesn’t make any sense. Why even fund it unless you want to use that money for some other purpose, and to me that’s misleading. I brought that forward,! and I strongly felt during this budget shortfall that we should not utilize the 2% fund and other things, but what we should do is look at our budget and be fiscally prudent by not funding things where that’s not the intent of the money. So that was one of those things that I thought was not proper.
Tell us about the reshuffling, and was it a maneuver in preparation for something else that we should be watching for in County government?
Well I truly believe that Pete and Brenda really got caught in the crossfire of all this. Certainly Pete did not deserve having his vice chairmanship taken away. I mean, he did absolutely not one thing wrong as a Vice Chairman or Councilman. Brenda Ford is outspoken as well, she really did a lot in terms of bringing forth legislation that maybe counters the administrations wishes, but she brought forth truthful legislation. But this whole reorganization was really about the very strong stance that I took against the Mayor in this budget. There’s no doubt about it.
I mean, here we have people that are freshman Council members that, really, honestly, are not ready to be in the position that they’ve put themselves in. As a matter of fact I mentioned this at the council meeting, that Guy Enriques came into my office, he sat down across from me and said “You know Dominic, I look at our budget book (which is about 7 inches thick), Dominic I have no clue what I’m looking at. I don’t understand the budget, I don’t even know where to begin, can you please help me?” So I took nearly two hours with Mr. Enriques in my office explaining to him how the budget works. Which is OK. I really didn’t mind doing that. But that’s where, you know, you begin to wonder, “How can someone after six months of being on the Council who does not understand how the budget works in the end do a reorganization because he said maybe we should give someone else a chance? You know it’s just amazing. !
It was definitely a power grab. There is no question that they do have a very good relationship with the Mayor, and there’s no question that some of their political allies are very prominent power brokers in the background. It didn’t serve them well to have someone, I believe, like myself is who is very vocal. I think if you read the papers, if you read the editorials, if you read the comments and the blogs, you’ll see that a lot of people really agreed with what we were trying to do. It’s very rare on the County Council to have anyone talking about really reducing expenditures in the government, exposing fraud and misconduct, which I’ve done repeatedly. Talking about reducing the size of government, whether it be through furloughs or no pay increases, those are all things that no one has the courage to say because there could be very serious political ramifications. Because, you know, the unions are very strong entities on this isla! nd. At the same time, when you’re faced with a $51 million shortfall, I don’t believe we were elected to sit on the sidelines and just look the other way.
I consider these other Councilmembers friends and colleagues, and you know I wish them nothing but the best. But I can tell you after being in politics for 10 years in the position that I have, I can clearly say that these guys don’t have experience and knowledge to pull something like this off. They were definitely coached, they were definitely lead, and I think right now, with the backlash they’re getting, I think they realize that they made a very, very big mistake because it had basically motivated this County to talk about splitting. It has motivated the people to say we need to do recall elections. It has motivated the people to talk about impeachment. It’s not because they took away my chairmanship and Pete’s chairmanship and Brenda’s chairmanship, it’s because it’s bad government, because it is power government, because it is bullying government and that’s not good for democracy. It’s not good for an island that n! eeds to stay together.
They talked about doing this because they need people to work together as a team. Splitting your experienced people from the positions that they really need to be in to help lead this County, that does not bring the team together! What they did was really split this island, it was a very big mistake. They’ve pulled out a can of worms that they now are having such a difficulty in dealing with. On the bright side even if we don’t hold the chairmanship or some other position, we still sit on every committee, we will still provide legislation, that cannot be blocked, yet. One of the things that was considered but did not take place, which would’ve been devastating, would be to limit participation in the Council committees. In the past, in the old boy network type of dealings, what they did was they didn’t have all nine members serve on the committee, where all the discussion takes place. The people on the out would not be involved on the impor! tant committees. Fortunately that didn’t take place. There was a move by Mr. Onishi to consolidate the committees, which means less chairmanships, and only certain people having the power as chairman, but they pulled that resolution back. Currently there’s no legislation that says if I submit something they can hold it and not have it heard. In County Council a chairman can only hold it for two weeks, so we still have the power of legislation.
Do you think the Mayor had any role in this, and if he didn’t, should he?
There’s no question that some of the things that were written in the paper I think were embarrassing for the Mayor, and that’s not my fault. For example back in March I sent a letter to Mayor Kenoi suggesting something we do in the private sector when the economy is difficult which is to ask our landlords to help us by reducing the rent. I made that suggestion because we have 45 properties that the County leases which come out to $3.3 million total in rent payment, so I said that even if we get a 10% reduction that’s $300,000 dollars.
He e-mailed me back saying “thank you, Councilman Yagong, I appreciate the suggestion.” That was back in March. In late April, I had a meeting as Finance Chair with Harvey Tajiri, the landlord for the Mayor’s office, about sale of the building. At the end of the meeting I asked Mr. Tajiri, “say, Harvey did the Mayor or the administration send you a letter about possible rent reduction?” He said no. And I said “Did anyone call you about it?” No, this is the first time hearing about it.
What I surmise is that instead of looking at the suggestion as a possibility, Mayor Kenoi just didn’t do it. So I wrote a letter to the 45 lessees and I said I was writing on behalf of the Finance Committee, that the administration is busy with the budget right now, and I’m asking if they would be interested in a possible rent reduction. I made clear in my letter that the administration would have to do the negotiation if they were interested I would pass their name on to the administration. I immediately got a letter from one of them, their lease for the whole year was $110,000 and they said were willing to reduce 10%, I mean that’s $10,000 dollars!
The Mayor’s office immediately sent all the 45 landlords a letter, stating that you are under no obligation to do this, etc., and that we did not know about this letter from Councilman Yagong. Now, that blows me away, because we had people that called who were interested and I think the landlords would help us, because we’re good tenants. The County of Hawaii pays their rents on time, we’re not going to leave. It’s a good business relationship.
So here we have an idea given forth to the Mayor and he didn’t follow up on it, but we did and we did it respectfully. So what happened next is the newspaper asked Mr. Kenoi why he told the landlords not to do this program. His response was that he never contacted the landlords. So the reporter came to me and I showed them the letter the administration sent the landlords. The newspaper read it and said, yes, you did, Mayor Kenoi! So the Mayor’s office actively discouraged the rent reduction and then denied it.
An incident like that does make the Mayor’s office look bad, but that was not my intention. In fact when I had a personal discussion with Mr. Enriques after this whole reorganization thing, I said “Come on, you tell me what it is that I did” and he brought that up as a reason, saying that I overstepped my boundary. Now who is feeding it to these guys, or are they just assuming it on their own? I don’t know. Was it the mayor’s office that said “You see what he did? Overstepping his boundary, overstepping the Council, going out on his own!” You know, I don’t care if it’s the janitor or the County of Hawaii, if a janitor can get a landlord to reduce the rent, why not? Not only do you the shake the janitor’s hand, you embrace it, because in the end who benefits? It’s the people of the County.
So, in fact, that was the only example that Mr. Enriques has given in public as to why he thought I should not be chair. Not only is it the wrong assumption that he made, but he didn’t even ask me about it. Because if he did he certainly would’ve gotten a clear picture because I didn’t try to circumvent the mayor, I was trying to help him. All the suggestions that I made have been written on my County letterhead, given to the Mayor, it is for open review, everyone can read it and you will see it was always in cooperation and working in tandem to try to reduce expenditures.
I do know that in the reasoning given by the council people that did this coup, they talked about wanting to have a situation where people work better with administration, and to me that’s an open admission of why this is being done. Now just because the Mayor and I disagree, which I believe is healthy and part of a democracy, they’re doing this because we did disagree, they are openly stating that they want the Council to have a better working relationship with the Mayor. So does that mean that he had something to do with it? I really don’t know, honestly, I cannot tell you for a fact that he sat with both of those guys and said now this is what you need to do, I can’t say that, and I won’t say that.
Is there something that can be done to help remedy what has happened?
There are several ways but the bottom line is when the council has five votes they can do just about anything they want. Unfortunately in this case here, even if it was ill-advised, they do have the five votes so you cannot undo the five votes unless one of them says “I made a mistake, I want to reconsider.” That’s very unlikely, so, as far as the public goes, the public has already has already expressed tremendous amount of anger against these members for doing what they’re doing. The question is, will that be enough to have one of them change their mind? I doubt it, but I think people still to need to express their anger and frustration not because they removed me, or Peter, or Brenda, but because it was the wrong thing to do, to disenfranchise the people of this County of Hawaii.
The second thing is Mayor Kenoi has an opportunity to veto that resolution, he can send a strong message there. Will he do it, I don’t know. If he were involved in any way, for him to do it would mean he would have to lose a loyalty of these guys, so politically I don’t know if that’s a good thing for him if he wants to get things passed in the council. So, if so, it may be very difficult for him.
And the last thing is the Office of Informational Practices is investigating, and it’s very likely that they will find that there was a violation of Sunshine Law, the question is whether or not they will deem it as a willful violation. If it was willful, there’s some possible criminal charges that can be brought up, or they could render the decision moot. So we’ll just wait until they have finished their investigation and were not sure how long that’s going to be.
To me, the only silver lining in this whole thing is that it’s put the majority on notice and that now people are going to watch every single move that they make to see whether or not they are playing the old boy politics or if they are going to make decisions based on what’s good for the people of the County of Hawaii. They are front page and center right now, so whatever they do is going to be scrutinized like they’ve never been scrutinized before and that’s good.
For example, the headlines in the papers over the past couple of days have said “Yagong asked for the council to roll back their salaries.” As you know we received a 22% raise last year, I voted against it and I think Brenda Ford voted against it. At that time I was already laying off people in the business that I operate because you could see in the economy where we were headed. So that where we felt 22% increase was ludicrous, but the council, they voted for it, so that’s fine. But right now I’m asking that the council vote to request that the salary commission reconsider and look at converting our pay plan to what it was prior to the 22% vote. That whole resolution and legislation is not about dollars and cents for the council members, it’s about principal. We are now going to negotiate a contract with the union workers, I’m going to put forth legislation for the Mayor to state that we should not negotiate for any pay increa! ses, not because they don’t deserve it, everyone deserves pay increases, but because we can’t afford it. How can we ask the union workers, whose contract ended or will end June 30 of this year, to stay status quo when we receive a 22% pay increase? So this vote were going to take on July 7 I think really is going to be a direction setter for the council. Are we going to lead by example or are we going to come up with all kinds of excuses like I work hard… etc, everyone works hard.
So I think that’s going to be a very important vote now because of what has happened with the reorganization. People are going to watch this like a hawk and see where these guys go, because for some of these guys it’s going to be difficult. Like Mr. Onishi who actually nominated himself to take my place as the finance chair, his brother is the president HGEA, the biggest union in the State of Hawaii. But even that relationship should not matter. The question is can the County afford it? And the fact of the matter is we can’t, because we know that revenues in the next fiscal budget are going to be worse than what we’re facing now. What we went through, that was difficult, but it was just a prelude to bad things to come, because revenues are going to be diminishing by the boatload. We can’t afford to have this negotiation end up in a pay increase, so that’s why I want to see this legislation now before negotiations begin, s! o that we send a clear message, not to try to divide or pick on the workers, but just to make people understand that people are losing their jobs in the private sector. People are losing their benefits. People are having their hours cut. People are being laid off. And we can’t be immune to that. We can’t allow for a pay increase during these economic times. So we’re trying to be proactive with that. So I talk about the silver lining of this happening, now it’s more difficult for these guys who are tied to these types of special interests to now do something in public that is against what the majority the people of the County feels.
Is there anything else you’d like to say?
I guess the only thing is I know people are concerned about the reorganization. But I just want to reassure people that we will continue to be effective in governing, and trying to do the right things for the general public. I guess the good news that I want to say is that there isn’t anything by the reorganization that limits us in terms of how we can be effective on the council. I think between the three of us, we probably submitted 80 to 90% of the previous legislation. So that won’t stop, we will still be effective. In fact, I commented at the council meeting that if you think I was aggressive before, this certainly has motivated me to be even more aggressive because I think we were on the right track. When you get stopped by the special interests, you know you’re on the right track when they do something this blatant, so it actually encourages me. Of course it still comes out to five votes, though, and like I said this being so visible in the public ey! e right now, I hope it will force these guys to really make good decisions.
County Council News, News | PhaethonKeeney | June 30, 2009
[...] Hat tip to Kohala News for interviewing councilman Dominic Yagong about the recent Hawaii County Council coup. [...]