LegalNewsline posts “Paradise doesn’t include setting own tax rates, Hawaii SC rules.”

“Because [it] usurps the county government’s/county council’s’functions, powers and duties relating to the taxation of realproperty,’ we hold that the Charter Amendment is unconstitutional,”wrote Chief Justice Ronald Moon, with Justices Steven Levinson and Paula Nakayama.

But dissenting Justice Simeon Acoba…

The editorial in today’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin, “Court right to reject Kauai tax referendum,” reflects a pretty gross misunderstanding of the issues in the Kauai property tax decision, and of the limited role of the courts in a democratic society.

First, the editorial blows right by the fact that the case was manufactured…

Charlie Foster posts “County sues self.  Wins!” at his Planet Kauai blog:

However, the Supreme Court agreed with the lower court that theamendment violated the state constitution. Article VIII, Section 3 ofthe Hawai`i Constitution states that “all functions, powers and dutiesrelating to the taxation of real property shall be exercisedexclusively by the…

• Honolulu Advertiser: High Court: Voters can’t set tax rates at ballot box:

A Supreme Court majority of Justices Ronald Moon, Steven Levinson and Paula Nakayama allowed the suit. But in a minority opinion, Supreme Court Justices Simeon Acoba and James Duffy chided the majority for “manipulating the lawsuit so as to create a controversy…

I’m reposting an op-ed published by the Honolulu Advertiser last year regarding the implications of the Kauai property tax case.

Whose county is it, anyway?

According to Kaua’i government officials, how much property tax homeowners pay is an issue too important to be trusted to the people who pay them.

In recent years, the…

• Court backs county in ‘ohana case – The Garden Island’s report:

The Hawai‘i Supreme Court has invalidated a voter-approved charter amendment its proponents say was intended to save millions in tax bills for thousands of property owners who own their homes and live in them.

In an Aug. 6 ruling, the court permitted the county…

Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Acoba, joined by Justice Duffy, filed an extensive dissenting opinion in yesterday’s decision in County of Kauai ex rel. Nakazawa v. Baptiste (or, as it should now be called Kauai County Council v. County of Kauai), on the issue of standing that’s worth reading:

DISSENTING OPINION BY ACOBA, J.,
WITH…