Public not allowed at Kauai committee meetings on feral cats

LIHUE (AP) — A Kauai committee tasked with coming up with solutions for the island’s feral cat problem has been holding its meetings behind closed doors, which Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura says allows members to express their ideas more freely.

Yukimura brought the committee together to help draft a feral cats bill that she plans to introduce to the County Council. The nine-person committee has been meeting for more than a year without allowing members of the public to join in, The Garden Island reported (https://bit.ly/1TKsbAB).

Basil Scott, a member of the committee and president of the Kauai Community Cat Project, said the meetings are being kept under wraps because of the contentious subject matter.

“I have had a problem with this because the meetings are held in secret,” Scott said. “It’s not illegal to the letter of the law, but the spirit of the Sunshine Law, the intent, is that openness must be maximized.”

Yukimura said the committee’s meetings are not subject to the Sunshine Law, which requires certain proceedings and records of governmental agencies to be open or available to the public. Holding the meetings in private keeps things from being taken out of context and prevents committee members from having “to spend a lot of time defending themselves from people who were not in the room,” she said.

Yukimura would not name the members of the group but said the Kauai Humane Society has representation on the committee.

“We are looking at how to allow and regulate managed cat colonies while at the same time holding caregivers accountable for reducing the number of cats over time, which they assert will happen,” Yukimura said.

The Kauai Community Cat Project estimates there are between 15,000 and 20,000 stray, abandoned or feral cats on Kauai.

Yukimura said there will be room for public debate once the feral cats bill is introduced. She did not provide a time frame for when that would happen.