Council releases legal views on hotel bill

In an unprecedented move, the City Council voted 8-1 Wednesday to make public two confidential opinions from city attorneys.

The opinions relate to plans to ban or make it more difficult for property owners and developers to convert hotel rooms into condominium units.

Attorneys with the city Department of Corporation Counsel told the Council in two written opinions that the plans were badly flawed and called for action outside the Council’s jurisdiction.

Such opinions are typically "confidential and privileged attorney-client" communications, but their release was requested by Councilwoman Carol Fukunaga, who has been at odds with the hotel workers union over the conversion measure.

Councilman Breene Harimoto, the one Council member opposed to their release, accused colleagues of creating a precedent for the political expediency of a candidate, without naming the person.

Fukunaga is in the throes of a re-election bid.

He questioned why the opinions were being sought six months after they were issued on a topic that’s been a "political issue for one candidate," adding, "I fear that this … will become a political issue because this is so near to the election. I fear that the Council will get caught up in playing politics."

Harimoto, attending his last meeting as a Council member after his election to the state Senate, also objected to the lack of information on the matter on the Council’s meeting agenda, which referred only to an executive session "to consider the waiver in two separate instances of the attorney-client privilege for confidential communication with the Council’s attorney."

"Hard to believe that we will be discussing something that the public won’t know what the topic is," he said. "That’s a travesty of justice."

Fukunaga, who asked for the opinions to be released, denied that her request was politically motivated. But the veteran lawmaker also made it clear that she wanted to show the opinions to supporters of Bill 16, including the Unite HERE Local 5, which represents hotel workers, and its "super PAC" political action organization AiKea Unite HERE, which spent about $160,000 to support a hotel worker who challenged Fukunaga’s election.

"We wanted to make those opinions available to the proponents of the measure so that we could find ways of further addressing some of the concerns they made," Fukunaga said.

Bill 16 would have required hotel and resort owners to seek more approvals and give more notification before being allowed to convert any of their units to condominiums. The bill’s purpose clause notes that the growing number of hotel rooms being converted to condominiums threatens tourism.

Local 5 lobbied heavily for the bill, even holding a rally at City Hall. Fukunaga is chairwoman of the Council’s Public Safety and Economic Development Committee, which twice shelved the bill on her recommendation.

The AiKea PAC spent $159,249 to support the candidacy of Joli Tokusato, who said she challenged Fukunaga in part because of her rejection of Bill 16.

Tokusato lost, but Fukunaga must still defeat second-leading vote-getter Sam Aiona on Nov. 4 to win re-election.

Fukunaga on Wednesday told reporters she’s empathetic to the union’s concerns about condominium conversion in Waikiki and wants to work with the group to slow the trend. She said she hoped the opinions would persuade the proponents to "move the discussion in other directions."

Fukunaga said she does not think the Council’s decision to make the opinions public was wrong.

"In my estimation, the more that we can share publicly, information that would help us craft legislation, I think all of us would benefit," she said.

Local 5/AiKea representative Cade Watanabe told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser late Wednesday that the group has continued to press Fukunaga and other Council members about why they rejected Bill 16. Watanabe said he is happy to learn that the two opinions are now public.

But the union’s displeasure with Fukunaga’s decision to shelve the bill won’t go away because the opinions have been made public, Watanabe said.