anja wrote:

 

[Is someone fighting?]

Good point.  It is all fair discourse, even amongst ourselves.

And, in retrospect, daring them to "throw their constituents under the bus too" may not be the best way to argue the point.

Note: I don't know who wrote the passage in question, nor if they sent it anywhere.

I appreciate your reasoning, 'worried'.

blackburied

I mistakenly assumed the letter would have been posted here.

I'm attaching what I received last night.

David

From:      info@rboaa.org

     Subject:      SB2089 Final Push - Please Act Today

     Date:      March 4, 2012 8:50:03 PM HST

     To:      info@rboaa.org

We are going to try a final push on the Senators to kill this bill before it goes to the house.  They have a final reading and a floor vote before it crosses over to the House.

We do not feel that the Senators are reading our emails or faxes.  Therefore we request that each of you cut, paste and send the following via email and text ASAP (the email and fax numbers are provided below)

From:

To: "kazoon"....let's hope more people thought the same.

To: sodamo/David:   I, too, have a problem with how the last line was acted upon.  I do not appreciate the strategy....that person who wrote that text should not have mentioned "resident" owners...should not have "suggested" to the senators {and  PMs} that ALL owners be subject to the same legislation, if they will not drop the Bill.  Yes...the lawyer's comments sited discrimination as one of the issues....but the law firm was not suggesting a remedy, e.g. ...ALL owners should be included  to remedy the discrimination aspect.  But the "owner association" did, indeed, suggest that -- and asked everyone to use that strategy, collectively in a form letter.   I do not believe that senators here fear the rath of angry consititents faced with "local" strife against them. I do not believe that there are enough "voting" resident owners that could affect a local election against any one of those senators.

I do appreciate the reasoning stated by 'worried' {above}.  Now, I can only hope that not many people adopted that form letter word for word....IMO it's bad enough that one person sent it in -- the author. I  hope that most found it "troubling" and edited it for themselves.

Form letters:  I did read all of the testimonies, almost 600 pages, sent last week for the first SB and there were not many "form" letters...the overwhelming majority were individual comments {luckily}....but there were a few.   But, this time, a concerted action by someone motivated to speak for ALL owners provided a full text...and I fear that with the passing of the SB last week + those amendments....MORE people will be motivated to send the new letter this week.

Kudos:  I do appreciate that there is an association fighting this...owner's stand alone otherwise.

In general, I am  with 'kazoom' about form letters.  And, I'd l like to hope no one used that letter as it was written... but I am feeling that people probably did  -- to cut/paste is easier than writing one's own testimony -- and most people use form letters in a "good spirit" of solidarity -- I'm all for solidarity but we ALL need to be on the same page. Suggesting including all owners instead of only non-residents... was not a good idea, in my opinion.  Why not  hand them a loaded gun with instructions how to aim and shoot.

anja and all,

We need to give RBOAA a chance to get off the ground and acknowledge that

everything that is done may not be perfect.  RBOAA should potentially enable

us to raise money, hire an attorney, obtain a lobbyist, issue press

releases, etc. These are incredible goals, and should overshadow any

anything related to how they may have worded something. 

I also encourage RBOAA to become more transparent and communicate what they

are doing or expect to be doing.

Lets focus on the big stuff and not how a single communication was worded.

I too went through all the testimony and I believe its important NEVER to copy a form letter word for word (very, very few were)- unless you completely dont understand the written word (which there are some that dont - that english is their second language).   Its great to have suggestions though.  I mostly just wrote that the bill was plain confusing and I dont have a clue what this 990 form is.  I've been writing to the senator all morning asking for copy and I still dont have anything.  If i cant understand the legislation - how can they expect people to comply with it. (i do comply with the tax stuff already, but all this other stuff in there i truly find just plain confusing and without an understanding of their goal)

This is from another Board I have been following.  What do you all think of this question:

We've noticed that HB1706 and an amended version of HB2078 (HD2) also appear to be scheduled for a 3rd reading tomorrow.  Is anything being done regarding these 2 bills?  Should we be doing anything?