The April 3, 2008 Liquor County Adjudication Board hearing will mark the beginning of yet another year with Donald Fujii as chairman. That means another year of Fujii calling the shots. To defendants, he’s usually curious and often asks questions (some board members rarely, if ever speak) but isn’t known for being all that sympathetic to the plight of licensees. His board colleagues “reelected” him overwhelmingly at last month’s hearing—in fact, no one even bothered to run against him.
This is all fitting, considering that the April 3 board agenda is also just more of the same. There’s another case of an establishment allegedly serving an already intoxicated customer (Kahului Ale House) and two more cases involving licensees getting allegedly caught in minor decoy sting operations (Moose McGillycuddy’s in Lahaina and Deli Corner in Ka‘anapali). All three are pleading no contest to the charges.
Of course, the overwhelming sameness that seems to afflict the Adjudication Board these days also means that someone somewhere will say or do something completely inexplicable, and that makes the whole thing worthwhile.
In other news, LC Investigator James Kendrick has moved on to other things—namely, the county finance department. Hired by the LC in May 2003, Kendrick left the department earlier this month.
According to LC Director Franklyn Silva, Kendrick (who also works security at the Kama‘aina Loan pawn shop in Wailuku) took a promotion by transferring over to the county Department of Finance. “He was an SR-18 [a county bureaucratic rating] here and hebe an SR-24 over at Finance, so it’s a pretty big jump,” Silva said.
-Anthony Pignataro
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