I feel silly having to ask the obvious questions, and there are two of them.
First: How in the world did Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s staff miss the deadline for the judicial nomination for Maui’s Second Circuit Court? And the “miss” was by two days, not two hours! In this case, it was a constitutional deadline, not one of the squishy internal deadlines. Surprise! Consequences!
Second: Although the governor issued a press statement announcing the missed deadline, and the resulting ceding of appointment authority back to the Judicial Selection Commission, I haven’t read or seen anything about reporters putting pressure on the governor for an explanation. Have the questions been asked? And asked again? Has there been any behind these scenes snooping for info?
It seems to me that this is an indication of continued disarray in the governor’s office. Where’s the state’s administrative director when we need him? Or what was he doing instead of minding the store and making sure deadlines are being met.
It’s also a sign of timidity on the part of the media. It seems like most, even Hawaii Reporter, ran with the governor’s statement and failed to press on what had gone wrong.
The Maui News had a bit more. At least they asked the question.
Calls to the Governor’s Office for further comment and explanation went unanswered Tuesday afternoon.
This is not the first time the Judicial Selection Commission has faced selecting a judge. In 2002, then-Gov. Ben Cayetano missed a deadline for an appointment to a Maui court, and the commission appointed Joel August to fill a 2nd Circuit Court vacancy created by the retirement of former Judge Artemio Baxa.
That was quite a PR coup for communications director Jim Boersema, who skillfully kept the hounds at bay.
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Is it “skillful” for the Governor’s staff to keep the public in the dark? Or is it evil?
Well, I certainly don’t think it’s “evil.”
And I do think it seems to have been pretty skillfully done. It worked, for them at least.
I would have liked to see an equally skillful response from a media hungry for the real story, or perhaps the whole story, or maybe just the back story.
Another question that should be asked is where was the AG in all of this? Why wasn’t the AG ensuring that the pick was timely made? Even tho the AG should be facilitating, not interfering with, policy implementation by its client departments, judicial appointments are one of the relatively few policy areas in which the AG is — and should be — involved. That being the case, why are we hearing from the AG — and why did the AG apparently only get involved — after the fact? Does the Governor even talk to the AG? Or does he still derisively view the AG’s advice, like that given on the constitutionality of some pension reform legislation last year, as not “brought down from the Mount by Moses on tablets”?
This was error upon error.
It’s one thing to miss the deadline. If that’s all, you issue a press release saying simply that you’ve decided to defer to the selection committee.
But to announce the invalid appointment seems to indicate that someone didn’t even know that they missed the deadline.
How many years til they find their sea legs?
May I suggest Neil was distracted by reading how he lost $70,000 for messing up his last Supreme Court appointment.
Just remember: these are the professionals. Abercrombie fired all the ‘amateurs’ last year.
No one who has never been part of the administrative staff in a major public office can possibly understand the avalanche of work that pours in every day. Further, every letter, every email, every phone message is a potential ticking bomb. What happened here? Simple: It slipped through a crack and they missed the deadline by a couple of days. Good heavens! Move on!
Maybe a “Schedule Czar” needs to be appointed at maybe $90k/year.
Sorry, Jim, not buying that excuse. While it may be true that “every letter, every email, every phone message is a potential ticking bomb,” almost none of them will blow up because they arev addressed a day or two late. Things like this have a shelf life known far in advance. It was sloppy, just plain sloppy.
So often the bloggers are looking for the Machiavellian angle and missing the stupidity angle.
Often not stupid people, but stupid organizations that prevent smart actions and responses by their structure, processes, communications protocols, etc.
Jim Loomis is right about the volume of work and the overload on the folks at the top of the chain, especially if they do not delegate decision making on routine matters to the civil service.
And if you uproot or fire key people or reorganize the organization, expect three to four years before everybody has learned their new jobs, how the processes work, and the strengths and weaknesses of those they work with.
Ok, so he forgot. Maybe.
I suggest measuring the Governor more by what he has clearly done deliberately, with this sort of thing not forgotten but not a foreground issue.
Perhaps it will turn out to have importance in a larger context, but that could take time to develop.
I don’t see this as a measure of the governor, but of his organization. And it’s still not functioning well, if this is an indication.
Yes, pressure is always there. Things come up. But these things don’t get forgotten very often. Actually, is is extremely unusual, as far as I can tell.
If this falls through the cracks, what else is slipping through where there isn’t built-in publicity attached?
Isn’t the governor’s organization a measure of the governor?
Creeping senility!