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City Council ReportA resolution to amend the Honolulu Charter to give the people the power of referendum made its way through the Policy Committee and the Council but failed to make it to third reading. League testified in favor of this amendment proposal which had identical restrictions placed on our initiative power. The original resolution did not restrict zoning and land use, but at a policy committee hearing, it was added to the list of restrictions then deleted at second hearing on the council floor. League testified on not restricting zoning and land use, on lowering the signature requirement, on giving more time to the gathering of signatures on petitions, and addling certain safeguards such as posting stiff penalties for misrepresentation of issues and deceptive advertising. To prevent the situation where the effective date of all ordinances passed are delayed unnecessarily, we suggested providing a period for the filing of an intent to circulate a petition, the filing of which would trigger a hold on the affected ordinance. At the June 29th Policy Committee hearing, with about 10 people testifying, League was the only public interest group represented and the only group in favor of this resolution. The rest were all representatives of developers, construction industry, real estate industry, etc. Gary Gill moved to amend the motion to include our suggestion on a filing deadline, the extending of the 30 day sig-nature-collecting period to 45 days, and a lowering of the percentage requirement from 10% to 7% except that he used the base of "registered voters" instead of "the number voting in the last election" as stated in the resolution. The motion passed. Then Mansho moved to add zoning and land use to the list of restrictions. This failed with Mansho, Morgado, Felix and DeSoto voting for the motion. (Kim and Doo were absent from this meeting). The next vote was to report this resolution out to the Council floor with a 2/3 majority required. DeSoto, Mansho and Morgado voted in the negative and the motion failed. Gill moved to file the resolution which would have moved it to the council floor, but this failed by the same vote, and the resolution was held in committee. Since all amendments to the Charter must be approved by the Council by July 13th in order to be placed on the ballot in the coming election, referendum is dead for at least the next two years.
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