THE ISSUE : POLYSTYRENE BAN –Bill 127
| Council Member | Grade |
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MIKE WHITE: We (SAFE) award Council Chair a barely passing grade, for letting this issue sit on his desk for much longer than it needed to after passing first reading during last years session. We are however thankful that he eventually caved into the community pressure to schedule the bill and for voting correctly when the science was overwhelmingly clear. add your grade and comments… |
C- |
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ROBERT CARROLL: We (SAFE) award B+. Reason: If you dont ever say out loud that you support something, can you really get a Grade? add your grade and comments… |
B- |
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STACEY CRIVELLO: We received some feedback that Stacy and Yuki were neck and neck on how unsupportive they were on this issue, but it was ultimately determined that Council member Crivello attempted less damage to the legislation than Sugimura, Crivello appeared to be for the bill, but was the one who extended the start date 6 months (from July 2018 to December 2018) due to her insistence that Molokai business owners had back stock that would require an extended period to work through. Calls to Molokai businesses to verify proved this to be untrue. add your grade and comments… |
C- |
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ALIKA ATAY: We (SAFE) awarded Alika an A, for voting in favor of the ban. add your grade and comments… |
A |
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ELLE COCHRAN: WE (SAFE) awarded Elle an A+ as this was her initiative. add your grade and comments… |
A+ |
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DON GUZMAN: We (SAFE) awarded Don an B as he asked a lot of good questions about commerce law and how to apply the law fairly to on island and off-island companies. But he confused the issue and displayed a lack of clear lack of research of the issue by brining up a question about pre packaged foods i.e. Cup of Noodles, which was irrelevant and threw the discussion off course. Bill was written to address restaurants and take out only. add your grade and comments… |
B |
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KELLY KING: We (SAFE) awarded Kelly an A, for voting in favor of the ban. add your grade and comments… |
A |
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RIKI HOKAMA: We (SAFE) spoke to one constituent who was pretty upset that she left a long message on the subject that was not returned. There was concern that if this legislation passed that the county could be sued by the plastics industry. Corporation Counsel advised that if there was sufficient evidence that this was done for the public good that they would be able to defend it, in the case of a lawsuit. It was council member Hokama that demanded we have a scientific panel on the issue. It isn’t totally clear whether this was an act to help it get passed, or to actually stall it further, but we allowed this factor to influence his vote in a positive manner. add your grade and comments… |
B- |
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YUKI LEI SUGIMURA: Yuki Lei showed how far she is willing to go to make it clear to the Big Business that she has their back. She tried multiple attempts to prevent this bill from passing (*details anyone?) and also tried to extend the start date even further. While other council members demonstrated that they could clearly see through the conflict of interest in the testimony of the paid lobbyists for the plastics industry, Yuki Lei regurgitated the industry talking points, and ultimately only voted in favor in order to save face. Over any other council member was witnessed having discussions publicly with the lobbyists. Misquoted the science, said she found in the science where it says “polystyrene doesn’t cause cancer”- it doesn’t say that. Says styrenes causes cancers, polystyrene contains styrene, but we haven’t studied it yet, so we are going to label it a “probable carcinogen”. add your grade and comments… |
F |
*SAFE has added our own grades, based on what we know of the Council Members participation and their votes. We encourage the public to add any factual information they have and their grad as well. We will tally final grades based on the input from the community.
Next Issue -> MAKILA KAI
Look for the next issue to grade here, we will add it next week…