The Committee on Government Operations and External Affairs convened on December 2, 2025, to review public testimonies and vote on three key agenda items: the appointments of Wesley Sagawa as Director of Public Works and Daniel Gervin as Director of Environmental Management, and the adoption of Resolutions 398-25 and 399-25 regarding workers' compensation counsel and immigration enforcement protections.
Testifiers in support of Resolution 399-25 included:
Nominations and Appointments:
Resolution 398-25 (Special Counsel): Corporation Council staff confirmed that the firm Young Guni Hero Brook and Kim was the sole qualified applicant for the workers' compensation counsel position, with reasonable fees recommended for a three-year agreement.
Resolution 399-25 (Immigration Protections): Councilmembers Kagiwada and Kimball introduced the resolution urging the State of Hawaii to protect citizens from unconstitutional federal immigration actions. Key provisions requested of the state include:
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the 23rd session of the Committee on Government Operations and External Affairs. Today is December 2nd, 2025, and the time is 9 a.m. My name is Jen Kagiwada. I'll be chairing this committee. We'll go ahead and say who's here today, and then we'll take some public testimony. This morning, uh joining me here on the Dais. We have Council members Galimba, Kimball, Viegis, Inaba, Oneshi, Kirkowitz, and Hustis. Councilmember Conili Kleinfeller is absent today. Mr. Clerk, could we please go ahead and see if there's public testimony? Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Just noting that we do have testifiers via Zoom and here in the HELO chamber. We also have testifiers in our Kona chambers. So what we'll do is we'll start with them and then we'll take our HELO testifiers and with our Zoom testifiers. So Scott, if you could start us off, please. Thank you, really. This morning we have Sam Guggenheimer in support of resolution 399 to be followed by Martina Way, also in support of resolution 399. Sam, go ahead, state your name for the record and proceed. Your three minutes. Shall I go ahead? All right. So I submitted written testimony. I uh that you have. I am going to summarize the testimony. Um we wholeheartedly support resolution 39925. Um I think it's great. We think it's great that the county council is taking such wonderful leadership on these issues of protecting civil rights of all residents. In addition, we want to call your attention to a toolkit that has been uh published online by six organizations. The National Immigration Law Center, ACLU, Indivisible, Local Progress, Not Above the Law and Public Citizen. It is called No Secret Police, No Troops in Our Streets. I provide a clickable link in the written testimony to this. There is model legislation proposed in the ninth section of this toolkit, which includes not only the provisions currently in resolution 399, but additional uh provisions which we would recommend be used either in an amendment to this resolution or in further action by the council. In particular, I want to call out four limiting the state deputization of federal law enforcement agents for generalized policing, a task force ban, limitations on the state's National Guard, and no acquisition of prohibited law enforcement equipment. The task force ban 30 seconds in particular is uh to prevent things like the joint terrorism task force cooperation with the FBI, which we believe is also an important issue. And finally, we'd like to see some public advocacy. I've provided a uh copy of our Aloha over ICE in public testimony, and I believe Patty Cook and Hilo will reference this too. Thank you. Thank you, Sam. Matina, go ahead and start your testimony. You have three minutes. Good morning, Chair and Council members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Martina Wing, a longtime resident of Kaluakona, and I'm here to express my strong support for resolution 399-25 and the council taking action to protect our residents from federal agents overreach. I grew up in a democratic form of government. I immigrated to US as a citizen, believing in the same form of government. I consider our local and state governments are still run democratically messy and entrenched as they are. What is happening on a federal level is horrifying. The list of deeply troubling actions of the executive branch is long. Combined with the spineless Congress capitulating.