Council shake-up expected Thursday
By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Staff Writer
City Councilman Donovan Dela Cruz is expected to replace Gary Okino as council chairman at a special meeting Thursday — the first change in leadership for the 10-month-old council.
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ouncil Vice Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi said yesterday that Dela Cruz would be a good leader because he can be a consensus builder. "He believes in bringing people together and working out problems together," she said.
DELA CRUZ
At 30, Dela Cruz would be the youngest person ever to head the Honolulu City Council.
Dela Cruz is serving his first term as councilman. All nine council members won elections to their positions in November last year.
In recent months, City Council Chairman Okino has operated outside the majority of the council, publicly sparring with Kobayashi over her handling of the budget and voting in the minority when the council decided to override the mayor's veto of a sunshine law training bill.
"There were several issues where we started to become divided instead of working together," Kobayashi said.
The reorganization does not come as a surprise to Okino, but he said: "I think I could still do a good job running the council. I just hope the new chairman can be as fair."
The council's chairperson presides at its meetings, oversees its budget, determines which committees will hear individual bills or resolutions, and decides which issues will go on the agenda. Often a spokesperson for the council, the chairperson generally gets more public exposure and a $48,450 annual salary, compared to the $43,350 for other council members.
A change in leadership requires the approval of five of the nine members, and seven have signed on to the current proposal.
Rumors of a reorganization have been circulating since August when Okino unsuccessfully tried to muster enough votes to remove Kobayashi as Budget Committee chairwoman and Councilman Romy Cachola as head of the Executive Matters Committee.
The move came after a contentious budget battle. In the end Mayor Jeremy Harris, calling the final document flawed, let the budget be adopted without signing it.
Kobayashi, Cachola, Dela Cruz and Councilman Rod Tam tried to remove Okino as chairman and now have the support of council members Nestor Garcia, Charles Djou and Barbara Marshall.
The Budget Committee membership would remain intact under the reorganization, with Marshall replacing Cachola as the vice chairperson.
"I think the members that are on now are familiar with the little ins and outs of the budget. It's not an easy task to be on the Budget Committee, and the members that have been on have been doing a good job," Kobayashi said.
The reorganization would leave Okino and Councilman Mike Gabbard in the minority, with Gabbard replaced by Tam as chairman of the Public Works Committee. Gabbard would head the Parks Committee.
Gabbard said he was not disappointed by the upcoming change in his committee assignments, noting that most Honolulu residents have no idea which council members are on which committees and primarily just want the council to tend to problems such as potholes and abandoned vehicles.
"To me the most important thing is to take care of things out in the district," Gabbard said.
Other committee leaderships would remain intact, aside from Okino's replacing Dela Cruz as Public Safety Committee head.
Djou would remain Zoning Committee chairman. He said he wants to resolve "this whole reorganization business" because "there are too many important issues facing the city."
Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070.
