A ConCon is a shareholder’s meeting

Although my involvement with HawaiiConCon.org is mostly from a technical and perspective, I could not help but try to come up with a “Computer Minute” of what a Constitutional Convention (ConCon) really is and why it is a unique government function. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far and I’d love to get your feedback on it by commenting on my blog at HawaiiConCon.org:

A ConCon is very much like a board of directors meeting and we citizens are the shareholders.

This corporate analogy can be extended to explain why a ConCon is important and dramatically different from, say, making constitutional amendments via the legislature.

A company (a government of the people) is owned by its shareholders (voters) and trusts its day to day operations to be executed by its management team (government body). While the management team has the power to make any needed decisions to run the business, there are several things that management teams are either unable or unwilling to do without a mandate from the Board of Directors (ConCon Delegates). For example, in all but the rarest of occasions, the management team will not fire itself, nor will it decide chart a course for the business that might result in self-obsolescence. The Board of Directors is uniquely positioned to put the needs of the company above the needs of the management team and make appropriate adjustments to ensure it continues to deliver shareholder value.

A given organizational system can be engineered to do essentially anything its creator wants it to, but one thing a system cannot do is perform meaningful change to itself. Change can only be driven by forces external to the system being modified. We all know countless stories of companies, individuals, and other organizations undergoing significant transformation and all of those accounts have at least one thing in common: the key drivers of those changes either were or became an externalized force which then implemented the changes required. Systems cannot change themselves.

Our government body, like all systems, cannot change itself. We have decades of earnest attempts at reform and change followed by decades of disappointment in Hawaii to support this claim. In a democracy like ours, meaningful change is typically brought about by empowering an opposing political party. The rise to power of Hawaii’s Democratic Party in Hawaii’s early ‘60s and the subsequent sweeping changes in nearly all areas of government provides a striking example of dramatic change brought about by external forces.

States with Constitutional Conventions have an alternative path to making systemic changes. Our last ConCon of 1978 established term limits for the administrative branch, a balanced budget and OHA among other changes. In the thirty years since, we’ve not seen the effective empowerment of an opposing political party nor any meaningful change .

By holding a ConCon, an external agent (in this case, ConCon delegates elected by the voters) can make fundamental changes to the existing government system. If you agree that our State is in need of meaningful change, the government body cannot implement these changes by itself. It’s been over 30 years since a ConCon mandated meaningful change. If the voters believe it’s time to take a serious look at our state’s direction and structure and we don’t see an opposing political party coming into power any time soon, then clearly it’s time for a ConCon.