A politically akamai reader wonders whether the Lingle administration’s key decisions on the Superferry were made by former chief of staff Bob Awana.
Why isn’t anyone asking what role Bob Awana played on all this? He was running the DOT when Haraga was iced out of any decision making. I assume that all the Superferry decisions were going through him, just like the decision to impose the Honolulu GET.
Lingle made it clear to her cabinet that all major decisions were hers and hers alone. Cabinet members were instructed that a particularly important or sensitive issue under their areas would be sent to Bob Awana to handle and the Gov to make the decision on them. Talk about micromanagement! Seven dead on Kauai!
This shows that when the boss is an idiot and doesn’t hire independent, strong willed individuals, the yes men/women cabinet is a receipe for disaster. She has said to insiders that she doesn’t want to run for any congressional seat and wants to be a CEO or Trustee in town. She is the same as Cayetano in her inability to effectively govern due to her poor management ability. Lack of trust and paranoria have really hurt the State since the days of Waihee.
Bennett just saw his chances of becoming the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court just get flushed down the toilet. Kirk Caldwell is correct to ask what legal reasoning or justification (in the form of an opinion or memo) did Lingle have in “waiving” the eviromental assessment for the Superferry. Before Lingle wants to get the Legislature to bail her ass out of the sling, she ought to be more open and forthcoming about what the hell she has been doing these last five years.
You remember Awana. He’s the guy who reportedly tripped over his own you-know-what while trying to arrange after-hours entertainment for delegates on a state trip to the Philippines and then fell victim to an extortion attempt by another suitor of the young woman involved.
The Maui News reported earlier this year that Awana had sidelined the director and taken control of the Department of Transportation by mid-2005, and its likely he was micromanaging hot-button issues before that. That appears to make it likely that his fingerprints will be found on the administration’s handling of the Superferry issue.
After years of media bashing of public employees for supposedly being overpaid and underworked, the reality is starting to emerge. The Star-Bulletin reported this weekend on the city’s fears of a worker shortage blamed on noncompetitive salaries and benefits that have been canibalized by politics.
Many city jobs are left vacant because there is not enough funding. Other jobs, however, are tough to fill primarily because of lower pay and lesser incentives working for the government, said city Human Resources Director Ken Nakamatsu.
“It’s difficult for us to compete pay-wise. When it comes to new hires, the first thing that comes up is pay,” Nakamatsu said. “We give them our offer and it’s almost laughable.”
In the past it was attractive to have a government job because of lucrative retirement benefits, including full medical coverage, Nakamatsu said.
However, because of changes in the state law, employees must work in the government longer to receive a certain percentage of retirement benefits.
“We used to be able to tout that as a major reason to work for the government,” Nakamatsu said. “Now we don’t have that.”
To add to those problems, too many city and state offices are understaffed and lack both resources like technology as well as things like training, modern management techniques, etc. All that means working conditions leave a lot to be desired.
The media have played the “public workers unions as public enemies” for so long that it’s going to be hard to shift gears and report on conditions “on the ground” in government offices. But recruitment and retention provide a baseline for judging conditions, and they don’t sound good.
In the face of these issues, I doubt that an intern program or streamlined application are going to turn the tide.
I know, it’s not Friday, but Toby and his new friend, Tiger, were very cute together when they met up over the weekend. Toby had such a good time with our favorite twins that it seems to have generalized to include other children. At least other children who happen to live in this house on our street.
It does seem clear that the Governor is at the center of all of this. Less clear what the tradeoff is, but certainly her theme of making Hawaii “business friendly” trumps everything else, even federal and state laws. My question is, by what mechanism can we hold her accountable, get to the real bottom of this? The press, and now possibly the legislature have all lined up behind her spin. Thank heavens for Caldwell’s voice. But, is he another lone figure, like the one tiny surfer in Nawiliwili in front of the giant Superferry machine?
Is it really necessary to keep pointing people at those blog posts? Somebody put more of her personal life on the internets than she maybe should have and has now taken it down, presumably to avoid professional and personal unpleasantness. There’s absolutely no public interest here–it’s just peeking at someone’s dirty laundry. What’s the point?
I guess one could ask what on earth was she thinking hanging her dirty laundry out for the entire world to see? There is a way to create a blog that can be read by invitation only, but she did not go that route. Someone of her purported education, presumed intelligence and non-teenager status must surely have known that it would eventually attract attention which was pretty much guaranteed to be negative. And, not that Ian needs to be defended, but the post pointing to her blog was couched in personal terms of his own concerns about revealing too much about his marriage in his blog. I would actually like to see Ian write a bit more about the secrets to a long and happy marriage – I bet there’d be a lot about treating one another kindly – something our talented, but unhappy first year wife, could take to heart.
In response to Davel’s comment above–I quickly had second thoughts myself and removed the reference to the “first year wife” blog immediately after getting back from our early walk this morning.
Watching this train wreck in slow motion somehow got my attention, probably because of my own history with this blog, and it required some effort to look the other way and let it happen on its own time.
Thanks, Ian. It’s hard not to look because she’s talented and her posts hit on things that a lot of us grapple with and that are interesting to talk about, but you’re widely enough read in the relevant community that it’s a kindness to let it drop. Hopefully she’ll find her way back to blogging about those things in a less personally risky way.
In response to Yoshio, yeah, she goofed, but it’s good for people to be able to make mistakes and learn from them without wrecking their lives. People who are relatively new to this community may not realize just how small and incestuous it is. There’s a big difference between a moderately embarrassing goof and one that becomes so public that it screws up your career and/or becomes the last straw for a marriage that’s struggling but that both parties apparently want to salvage.
Whatever Caldwell has said or written in the past, he supports a special session now.
I think Mina Morita’s comments in the Honolulu Weekly had a lot of merit.
She points out that in the governor’s zeal to be “business friendly” we are actually sending out an anti-business message; that is, if you don’t comply with the law, if you have friends in high places, etc., you can get business done in Hawaii.
Surreal stuff.