▪ Article on the Kauai Property Tax Decision

Kauai's newspaper posts "Ohana amendment decision the result of classic Hawaii politics," a commentary by Walter Lewis, one of the Kauai homeowners who intervened in the County vs. County lawsuit, an effort by county officials to strike down a voter-enacted property tax relief charter amendment.

The typical lawsuit involves a real controversy between the plaintiff and the defendant or defendants with actual or threatened injury to the plaintiff. These fundamental conditions did not exist in the Ohana measure case. Ever. The plaintiff and all the defendants wanted the same result and, as we all know, had no dispute among them and prosecuted this lawsuit with over $250,000 of taxpayer money to get political cover. And the County was unable to point to anything in the Ohana measure that was or would be injuring it.

Complete commentary here.  [Note: I represent the homeowners.] 

Sunday update:  Charley Foster's letter to the editor responding to the commentary.

Comments

[Charley Foster]

While the article spends a good amount of time on the procedural jiggering the court did to keep the case alive, I'm still way more disturbed at the violence the court did to the text of the constitution (deciding "counties" really means "county councils") than I am at the liberties it took with the intent of a procedural rule.

[rht]

As counsel for the homeowners, I naturally agree.

On the question of the term "county," the language of article VIII, section 3 of the Hawaii Constitution very plainly delegates property tax power to the counties, not "county councils" as you note.

HAWSCT has established fairly set rules of construction for how to interpret constitutional language, and the start point is the supposedly "plain meaning" of the words. If the words in the text are plain, that's also supposed the be the end of the analysis, and the courts can't go further to search for meaning outside the document.

The majority opinion held that the term "county" is ambiguous, and determined that when the language was drafted, the framers really should have said "county councils," since they intended to delegate the property tax power only to councils, not to the counties themselves (which would not preclude the people of the county from acting via charter amendment).