Both the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin followed up this morning on the tip reported here yesterday concerning the state’s failed attempt to award a sole source contract for the Superferry environmental review.
But both reported with a straight face the self-serving spin served up by a Department of Transportation spokesman who said the request to bypass normal competitive procurement was the result of expressions of interest by other potential bidders. Excuse my directness, but what a crock!
DOT would rather not mention the protest against the exemption filed by Maui attorney Lance Collins. As I reported in Honolulu Weekly last month, Collins knows a thing or two about how the procurement process can be stalled by a protest. The protest first triggers an in-house review and can then be appealed, triggering a more formal hearing process, and that decision can eventually be appealed to court by a dissatisfied party.
So the protest made the short-cut to a nonbid contract pretty much impossible, leaving DOT little option but to revert to a standard selection process. It may be a small point in the scheme of things, but it’s grandly irritating to allow the continued lies of the administration to go unchallenged.
It’s also a great example of “blowback“, a term made familiar by a book several years ago by Chalmers Johnson. In the current case, it was state harassment of Akaku on Maui that gave Collins a lesson in some of the intricacies of the state procurement code. It was that experience that informed the challenge to the Superferry contract. If the state hadn’t been meddling in the first instance, it might not have faced this particular challenge in the second. And so it goes.
Sean McLaughlin, former CEO of Akaku, Maui Community Television and now director of Access Humboldt, a California public access provider, is warning of the potential impact of a pending FCC decision that he says could put an end to local control of public airwaves. It’s good to see Sean continuing to bring key media issues to public attention.
A reader in Honolulu says she watched the Thunderbirds but worries about another aspect of Air Force Week in Hawaii.
I just read your blog on the Thunderbird show. I will admit that we went to Waikiki and thoroughly enjoyed the show. But I was thinking about the irony of keeping the water clear and yet having those jets fly fast and low over dense Waikiki.
But I wanted to drop a note about the military visits to ALL public elementary schools on Oahu last week, as part of Air Force week. It’s recruitment at it’s most subtle and most dangerous. Look what the Air Force can do for you! Look how cool we are as part of the Air Force. Don’t you 4th graders want to grow up and fly planes too? ‘Course we won’t go into what we DO in those planes and what happens to kids like you in places like Iraq. But look, we’re helping the school (they helped serve lunch at my daughter’s school).
This side of the week was also ONLY shown in a positive light in the Advertiser (I don’t watch the TV news). And I found the lack of reporting in that case just as annoying as you found the Thunderbird coverage.
Another reader added a local consumer gripe:
Last Friday night I attended a fundraising event at the Ala Moana Hotel. Finding the garage full, and a little late to meet my hosts, I decided to opt for valet parking; a bit of a treat and necessary nonetheless. Only after I got out of the car did I find that it costs $20 to valet park there.
The fundraising operation was not given the option to validate for valet parking. At first I was so hu-hu with the whole thing I wasn’t going to tip the valet, but I softened pretty quickly and instead decided to ask what was going on. Apparently the owners jacked up the parking prices wholesale with no consideration.
In summary, after telling the valet that word would pass quickly at the hotel’s lack of kama’aina friendliness, I wished him good luck finding another job and tipped him $2.
I’ve cited San Francisco columnist Mark Morford’s hilarious writing in the past, but last week he unloaded on our Iraq adventure, tackling sticky issues head on. Good thing he lives in a very Blue area of the country. But he gets to the point and his point is definitely worth reading.
Charley Memminger’s column yesterday described his termite-driven vacation. We’ve got one of those coming up later this year, but the cats make logistics much more difficult. We have nine cats that will have to find other lodging for at least one night, perhaps two (depending on timing, etc). Timing is critical, because getting nine cats from Kaaawa to a pet hotel is no simple logistical feat. It will likely take two trips, and since Kaaawa is at the edge of the known world, each of those trips will take some time. It also probably means some of the cats have to check in the night before scheduled termite treatment, the others first thing in the morning.
No big deal, really, except boarding fees are probably in the $20 per cat per night range. I can probably find a spot in a Waikiki hostel for not much more, but they probably won’t register a wailing cat in a secure container. Twenty bucks per cat times nine cats times two nights…and that’s if all goes well. What happens when the crew arrives and declares that its too windy or too wet for the tent to go up and it all has to be rescheduled? Ouch. I could put us all up in the Royal Hawaiian with something left over for dinner if I could just figure out a way to sneak nine cat carriers and all that cat litter up into the room without being caught.
Oh, well. Right now it’s just worrying. As the date gets closer, all this will turn to panic. Stay tuned.
Maybe the proposed shield laws for journalists should be expanded to include stenographers, since that’s who seems to be doing the “reporting” at the HA & SB when it comes to the Lingle administration.
Is it just me, or does the strategy taken by the Superferry investors (Adm. Lehman et al) mirror that taken in Iraq? They bullied their way in, ostensibly to bring a hot new service, less obviously to grab resources. It’s designed for luxury and tourism, expensive; not utility which would be less expensive. They acted all the way like there was going to be no impact, “no worries.” Then, when the local community is painfully divided, governmental agencies all falling into line, courts possibly being overruled by our lawmakers, they are just another poor company proving how hard it is to do business in Hawaii. If only we would get it together, they would bring something wonderful to us. Even using the employees as a kind of hostage group now. “What about these poor employees, they might lose their jobs…” Never mind the increased urbanization of the neighbor islands, the certain effects of creating what is, in effect, a highway between islands, and a subtley perceived dependence on them even before they have started! Maybe it is a good idea for many other reasons, but an EIS would allow us to look at those, too. Alas, we find ourselves in another quagmire.
What about staying in one of the vacation rentals in Kaaawa, might be cheaper than boarding the cats.