▪ County of Kauai ex rel. Nakazawa v. Baptiste: Kauai Property Tax Decision Summary Page

Here are links to all the posts on the "Ohana Kauai" Charter Amendment case, in which the Hawaii Supreme Court in a 3-2 decision held that friendly government officials have standing to institute lawsuits against each other to challenge a charter amendment enacted by a vote of the people.  Chief Justice Ronald Moon authored the majority opinion, which was joined by Associate Justices Steven Levinson and Paula Nakayama. 

In the words of the dissenting opinion, the majority, on its own initiative and after briefing and argument, rearranged the parties by

deleting [the Defendant Kauai County Council] as a defendant in this case and adding it back as the putative plaintiff in order to create a supposed controversy between the County Council and Defendant Mayor of Kauai . . . manipulating the lawsuit so as to create a controversy that did not in fact exist when the suit was filed, when it was decided by the Circuit Court of the Fifth Circuit, when it was appealed to this court, and when it was argued by the parties before us.

The majority also held that the term "counties" in article VIII of the Hawaii Constitution means "exclusively county councils," and that the voters of the counties do not have the power to amend their county charters to establish property tax policy.

Associate Justice Simeon Acoba, joined by Associate Justice James Duffy dissented.  They accused the majority of "subverting the judicial process," and would have dismissed the case for lack of standing and held that because there was no controversy between the parties (government officials suing other friendly government officials) at the beginning of the case, it  should have been dismissed without reaching the constitutional question. 

The issues in the case are summarized in this post.  Below are the posts about the case:

• Case documents
  • Majority opinion (Moon, Levinson, Nakayama)
    
  • Dissenting opinion (Acoba, Duffy)
  • Motion for reconsideration (filed Aug. 16, 2007)
  • Briefs of the parties and amici
  • Transcript (unofficial) of the Feb. 15, 2007 oral arguments
  • mp3's of oral arguments

• Commentary
  
  • The Wall Street Journal: This Side of Paradise
  • One WSJ reader's reaction to the above story
  • Because They Can: Judicially Excising the People from the Definition of “County” in the Hawaii Constitution, 31 State & Local Law News 9 (Apr. 2008)
  • Hawaii Government Sues Itself to Quash Property Tax Relief - And Wins FlashReport (California) opinion piece
  • Podcast: Rick Hamada Show Commentary on Kauai Property Tax Decision (mp3)
  • SLAPP Suits, Ballot Measures, and Curbing Eminent Domain Abuse
  • Ohana amendment decision the result of classic Hawaii politics, a commentary by Walter Lewis, one of the Kauai homeowners who intervened
  • Podcast: KKCR interview with counsel for the intervening homeowners (mp3)
  • More Commentaries on Kauai Property Tax Decision
  • Star-Bulletin Editorial Misses The Real Story
  • Commentary on Kauai Property Tax Decision
  • Honolulu Advertiser op-ed: Whose "County" is it Anyway?
  • California Political Review: Government's Creative Assault on Property Tax Relief

• Media reports of the decision
  
  • Honolulu Advertiser, Star-Bulletin, Pacific Business News reports
  • The Garden Island (Kauai newspaper) and HawaiiReporter's reports