Hawaii County Council members could serve for 12 consecutive years under an upcoming council proposal.
A bill introduced by North Kona Councilman Holeka Inaba proposes a charter amendment that would double the length of council members’ terms in office from two to four years. At the same time, it would reduce the number of consecutive allowable terms from four to three, changing the maximum consecutive tenure for a council member from eight to 12 years.
The amendment also would effectively restart the clocks for all of the current council members. It includes a provision that would permit any member reelected in 2024 to serve a four-year term and allows them to run for two additional consecutive four-year terms regardless of how many terms they already have served.
The bill, if passed, will add the charter amendment to the 2024 general election ballot.
Council term limits have been a contentious subject for Big Island voters. A similar proposal for four-year terms — albeit one that did not reduce the number of consecutive terms, therefore allowing for 16-year tenures — was a proposed charter amendment that made it to the 2020 ballot.
Just over 37,000 voters supported longer terms in 2020, while a little over 42,000 rejected them.
Inaba said the 2020 charter amendment may have failed because there wasn’t enough public education about the potential upsides of four-year terms, and added the reduction in consecutive terms in his bill is meant to balance out the increased term lengths.
“It’s not in the public’s best interest for us to be switching out every two years,” Inaba said. “There’s a lot of time spent trying to keep our jobs every other year. It’s hard to see what someone’s made of after just two year in office.”
Inaba said the current terms are insufficient for council members to implement longer-term legislative projects.
He said he and Hamakua Councilwoman Heather Kimball have been trying to work on an overhaul of Chapter 11 of the Hawaii County Code, which deals with affordable housing. But much of that project has been spent awaiting a report from the county Office of Housing and Community Development, which he said was commissioned in November 2022 — and amended from an even earlier request — but is only now nearing release.
Inaba, who is currently in his second term, said the current model only allows council members to pursue short-term, incremental projects, and that long-term projects run the risk of falling apart if the council member who began them is replaced before they can finish.
As for his own plans, Inaba said he intends to “stay on the council for as long as the public wants me there.”
But opponents of longer terms have been outspoken in the past. Former South Kona Councilwoman Brenda Ford — who served from 2006 to 2014 before being term-limited herself — said she “doesn’t like” two-year limits but prefers them to longer alternatives.
“It’s expensive and time-consuming to run for office every other year,” Ford said. “But I’ve seen too many people who just sit on their butts on the council — problem children — who want a $70,000-a-year job.”
Ford said it is vastly preferable to be able to vote out “do-nothing” council members after two years rather than endure them for four, and added that reducing the number of consecutive four-year terms from four to three does not change that preference at all.
“People like to talk about how bad politics are from the outside looking in,” Ford said. “Believe me, it looks infinitely worse from the inside looking out. There’s a lot of people looking for a $70,000 job where they don’t have to do anything.”
The County Council’s Governmental Operations and External Affairs Committee will discuss the bill at 1 p.m. on Tuesday.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.