i L i n d . n e t

You never know what nuggets of information will be found among the requests for exemptions submitted to the State Procurement Office.

Delays caused by the need to repair the 2,000-gallon buckets used by Hawaii National Guard in fighting wild fires allowed the fire that burned thousands of acres in Waialua in August to start up again after being brought under control, according to a request for an emergency purchase of two new buckets. Two new replacements were purchased from a West Indies company for $69,237 and had to be flown in because it was continuing to repair the existing buckets was determined to be uneconomical, the emergency procurement request stated.

The governor’s office is requesting approval to spend $21,000 to design, print, and insert unspecified materials for delivery to Oahu households by MidWeek, described as the “only publication on the island that reaches 91.3% of Oahu households”.

Costs of insertion include design and printing costs. If another vendor were selected, these costs would be itemized and separate, causing total cost of the project to increase exponentially.

The nature of the materials isn’t described except to say that it will be approved by Lenny Klompus, Gov. Lingle’s senior advisor for communications.

The Department of Taxation is requesting an exemption from normal procurement procedures for a three-year, $200,000 contract with an as-yet-unselected law firm for an unspecified tax court case.

It is imperative that the case proceedings begin as soon as possible in order to avoid jeopardizing the Department’s positionk including potential discovery sanctions for delay.

Sounds interesting. Too bad there’s not more info included in the request for exemption. I suppose the procurement office just has to take the agency’s word for the need for speed and the potential cost to the taxpayers if the case is delayed.

My piece in Honolulu Weekly last week (“Smoke gets in your lives“) reports on the quiet initiative launched by the Department of Health and an anti-tobacco alliance pushing for total smoking bans in island apartment buildings and condominiums. It’s clearly the next battleground for the tobacco-free movement.

This week I noted a Seattle Times story on a pilot project banning smoking in three buildings managed by the King County Housing Authority. And according to Puget Sound Public Radio, there are already 11,000 apartment units in Oregon and Washington where smoking is prohibited.

With pro-smoking lobbyists still maintaining a presence at the capitol, periodically passing out new flyers to legislative offices even while the legislature is not meeting, we can expect the smoking issue to continue to be hot in 2008.

And in case you missed this one, income inequality in the U.S. continues to get worse, hitting record levels in the latest period, according to a study by the Congressional Budget Office. I guess that “trickle down” theory was a polite way for the “Haves” to say “piss on the rest of you”.

Oops. Excuse my language. Where’s the editor around here?

Well, as long as I’m apologizing for language, I may as well go ahead and share the anti-eavesdropping graffiti spotted at a downtown Honolulu bus stop.

It’s the same theory as the corporations that use a triggering event to justify all possible losses at the same time rather than stringing out the bad news.

In any case, this street rebel appears to have the right reaction to the Bush spying agenda.