LIHU'E, Kaua'i — The Kaua'i Charter Commission has placed on the general election ballot this year a series of proposed charter amendments that would significantly change the way county government works, including term limits for the County Council, districting for the currently all at-large council, and a measure making initiative and referendum efforts a little easier.

Kaua'i is the only county without term limits for its council. The Charter Commission's proposal is to allow council members to serve no more than four two-year terms in a row, starting with the 2008 election. Any terms served before that would not count toward the four-term limit.

Every county has a different system. Ho-nolulu has a limit of two four-year terms, and this year voters will have an opportunity to change that. Maui County has five two-year terms and Hawai'i County four two-year terms. A benefit of term limits, the Charter Commission said, would be to periodically get new candidates on the council. A negative would be that experienced candidates could be forced to leave the panel.

Another measure calls for a three-district scheme, in which four council members would run at large, while three would be elected from three districts. District council members would be elected only by the voters of their own districts. Thus, voters would be able to cast five council votes — four for at-large council members and one for a council member from their own district.

The commission said one benefit would be to ensure each area of the island has representation, although a negative would be that it could promote a focus on district rather than islandwide issues.

If this measure is approved, a commission will be created to draw up the district boundary lines.

When citizens want to propose or repeal laws directly, they use initiative and referendum petitions. When the charter was first written, it called for petitions with the signatures of 5 percent of the number of registered voters. Later, that was changed to 20 percent, but the Charter Commission proposes returning it to 5 percent.

At the present registered-voter count, that would require a little less than 2,000 signatures to launch an initiative or referendum election.

The Charter Commission is proposing several amendments. One of them is to keep the Charter Commission itself — which now is established once every 10 years — operating for 10 years continuously. That, commission members said, is because a lot of work needs to be done on the county charter.

"We were thinking at the beginning of rewriting the whole charter, because it's got a lot of holes," said commission chairman Louis Abrams. "In our review of government reorganization, we came up with 70 recommendations — too many to work on without further study."

Former commission chairwoman Barbara Robeson agreed that there were too many important issues to deal with at once. Among them were changes in the county's taxation system, and the establishment of a city manager form of county government. Neither issue is addressed in the list of proposed amendments.

However, other items that are on the November ballot would give the county parks and recreation functions their own department; strengthen the county's salary commission; provide staff for county boards and commissions; increase the size of several commissions from five to seven members; give some commission members staggered terms; establish a fire commission with the power to hire the fire chief and hear public complaints; and have all county board and commission members named by the mayor and approved by the County Council.

The Charter Commission members are Abrams, Robeson, Ramon de la Pena, Michael Belles, Linda Moriarty, Galen Nakamura and Glen Takenouchi.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.