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Since the proposed City Charter will be a top issue in the coming legislature the League's Charter Committee met recently and draftee the following material to help Leaguers review and refresh their position on the Charter.... Report from the Charter CommitteeYour Charter committee met in November and discussed in some detail the position we thought it advisable to take with the Legislature end the public in the coming months. First -- We advise that we stress the need for adopting the Charter as written, in order to avoid the many amendments that will be proposed by pressure groups which might result in the destruction of the value of the document. Second -- We feel we should stress the fact that the Charter was approved by the voters of Honolulu by a 3-1 margin, Third -- We should point out to members of the majority party who have adopted a position in favor of home rule for Honolulu, that provision is made in the Charter for people of our city to amend the document if they are displeased with the way in which it operates. Certainly it seems that the right of the people to determine the structure of government under which they live is basic to the Home Rule principle. Fourth -- We think we should draw attention to the fact that the Charter Commission studied for two years prior to adopting the Charter, they had expert advice and a staff sufficient to do a good job. The session of the Legislature is only sixty days and during this period our legislators will be concerned with well over a thousand different bills. It does not seem likely that they can "sandwich in" rewriting the Charter in such a way as to provide us with a better document than we now have. We think it important that our members recall that the Charter Commission did not incorporate in the Charter many of the principals of good government for which the League stands. But the time for us to have achieved our desired ends is past. No charter committee is going to provide us with a Charter that pleases everyone. We took a position in favor of the charter as a whole. We are not arguing at this time the merits or de-merits of any particular section of the document. Instead we are limiting our arguments for the passage of the document to the four abovementioned statements.
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