i L i n d . n e t

On Saturday, the Advertiser reported another brawl on the north shore involving “a large number” of young people, probably young men, just one in a series of similar brief reports that have not been probed. On Sunday, the Advertiser’s front page included a Los Angeles Times story deeply critical of a California community’s failure or refusal to recognize an ongoing problem of youth violence that eventually led to a high-profile murder of a surfer from Hawaii.

At least one reader commented on the irony: “This leave me wondering how long it will before Hawaii has its own wake-up call from alcohol and aggressive behavior.”

That’s a very good question.

And I’ve been trying to digest Rob Perez’s Honolulu Advertiser series on the Hawaii grant-in-aid process. It’s a compelling read, but I felt like there wasn’t quite enough information presented to allow the reader to independently assess the main thrust of the stories. I haven’t thought it all through, but I’ll take a chance and dump a few early morning thoughts on the table.

Before proceeding, however, I should set the stage by saying that Rob’s series breaks new ground, raises provocative issues, and challenges the system in ways that should produce positive results. Good job.

It got me thinking and raised questions in my mind.

First, divorcing the grants process so completely from the purchase-of-service process may give readers a skewed perspective on how nonprofits get money from the state. Many of those competing for grants get their bread and butter state funds through purchase of service, and hope to supplement those or fund new initiatives through the grant process.

In any case, in assessing Rep. Magaoay’s campaign fund, Perez writes that “more than 70 percent of that support came from people with ties to the nonprofit community.”

But interpreting those ties isn’t necessarily straightforward. A quick look at Magaoay’s recent campaign reports quickly turns up a few contributors unmistakably tied to the nonprofit world, including several professional fundraisers and nonprofit heads.

But with more and more nonprofits with high profiles and large budgets tapping the corporate and professional world for their boards of directors, it becomes difficult to say which of their different hats are being worn when board members contribute to political campaigns.

For example, Hawaiian Electric senior vp Robert “Robbie” Alm serves on several nonprofit boards. So should his campaign contributions be attributed to the interests of Hawaiian Electric or to one or more of those nonprofits? Or to Alm’s own strong personal views? It would appear the Advertiser counted this contribution as one of those linked to nonprofits because it fit with the analysis. But, again, without more published details it’s hard to assess the published findings.

An earlier analysis by the group Voter Owned Elections looked at the same campaign data and attributed Magaoay’s full bank account to development interests keen on influencing the future of his north shore district, where the highly controversial expansion of the Turtle Bay Resort has tremendous long term implications.

There’s also a sense in the Advertiser series that it must be bad when people with interests in pending legislation end up buying tickets to fundraisers. In my view, that general viewpoint feeds the prevailing public cynicism about elections and politics generally, the same cynicism that editorial writers later bemoan.

My own view is that it is very difficult to be serious about influencing legislation and not becoming immersed in the legislative process, which includes attending fundraisers because that’s where you meet and interact with the people who share your interests. It is, after all, a pretty small group that participates in the legislative process on any particular issue, and even those competing with each other have a lot in common.

Lobbying, like sales, is about building relationships and trust. You don’t do that in a one-shot meeting with a legislator, or while presenting occasional testimony in public hearings. Instead, you’ve got to take all the available opportunities, including fundraisers, to further those relationships.

And then there’s the question of what sort of reforms in the process make the most sense and best serve the public interest. At the opposite end of the spectrum from the grant-in-aid process would probably be something like the charity giant Aloha United Way, which sets priorities and then relatively strictly applies those to those applying for funding.

But I wouldn’t consider AUW’s track record ideal, as it has its own biases and political factors, and shuts out significant segments of the nonprofit community.

And then there’s the political backdrop that’s never mentioned, the Republican-led slashing of federal funding to a wide array of necessary social services that has forced communities and states to scramble to find ways to meet the pressing human needs. Many of these are basic services that shouldn’t be left to the shifting winds of the nonprofit world, but that’s where we are because of the ideological commitments of a series of Republican administrations at the federal level over the past three decades to cutting out government-funded services.

Hundreds of billions for Iraq? No problem. A hundred billion for health care? That would break the bank. Go figure.

Thanks to the Star-Bulletin for giving yesterday’s “10 who made a difference” recognition to a cat person for her rescue work. Bravo.

I ran across a few photos from my first winter on the mainland. I was a freshman at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. When the place turned white, I was prepared with my brother-in-law’s parka. In any case, any Whitties out there may be interested in seeing what the campus looked like way back when.