What is the legislature going to do? Will the House leadership be able to overcome expected opposition from neighbor island reps and the group of progressive Democrats who are likely to be feeling less than generous to the Superferry? I wish that I knew the answers.
The Department of Transportation, for its part, reported its intent to make an emergency purchase of $18,936.33 worth of “helmets, face shields, body shields, protective body equipment, protective gas mask, etc” to arm its harbor police to confront “civil unrest” at Nawiliwili Harbor on Kauai. The request was initiated on September 18 and signed on September 21, the day Gov. Lingle held flew to Kauai for a public meeting. I have to wonder what the “etc” on the DOT shopping list might include.
I also have to wonder what kind of training harbor police have been given to deal with the kinds of situations in which they would use body shields, face shields, gas masks, and such? You can put me among those who doubt they have to training to utilize this equipment in a safe and lawful manner.
House Majority Leader Kirk Caldwell had an interesting entry on the House Majority Blog on Monday, calling out Governor Lingle by asking directly for the legal basis of her decision that no environmental review was necessary.
Simply put, the state incorrectly issued an exemption for the harbor work, putting the Superferry in a bad financial position, and further hurting Hawaii’s reputation as an unfriendly place to do business. Now Governor Lingle is asking the State Legislature to call a special session regardless of the court ruling, but she refuses to share with the State Legislature or the public the specific written opinion by the Attorney General that determined no environmental assessment was required for the $40 million harbor renovation.
The Governor’s refusal to give us the formal reasons why the State gave harbors an exemption from environmental law flies in the face of her asking the legislature to fix the situation legally.
Frankly, I would like to hear the governor tell the truth rather than repeat the spin. She needs so admit that she and her administration screwed up big time by not pressing the Superferry company to include at least an environmental assessment as part of their due diligence. She needs to acknowledge that her position was contrary to law, even though she apparently thought that it made good economic and political sense. Instead of upholding the environmental process, she aided and abetted the company’s evasions of the requirements, and let them get away with playing off one level of government against another.
Larry Sinkin, the attorney who unsuccessfully challenged the Coast Guard’s latest security zone, has a good summary of what happened:
The story I am told about the Maritime Administration is that Superferry told the Maritime Administration that the State of Hawai’i was not going to require any environmental work to be done regarding Superferry operating in Hawaiian waters.
Skeptical of that story, the Maritime Administration told Superferry that they would have to provide a letter from the State of Hawai’i saying that Superferry did not have to perform any environmental assessment before a final decision on granting the loan guarantees would be made.Superferry then turned around and told the State of Hawaii Department of Transporation that the Maritime Administration loans depended on the State not requiring an environmental assessment, which is not what the Maritime Administration said at all.
While saying that this information did not influence his decision, the Director of the Department of Transportation essentially confirmed that he understood the Maritime Administration to have made an exemption from preparing an EA a pre-condition on the loan guarantees.If true, this version of the story would reveal Superferry to have manipulated the process to influence the Department of Transportation to exempt Superferry operations from being subject to a State environmental assessment.
Actually, most reporting has referred to “the Superferry” as an entity or a person, with little attention given to who within the Superferry’s internal power structure developed and carried out this evasive maneuver. Who actually provides the brains of the operation? Who delivers the political brawn? Was it Mr. Garibaldi, the CEO, or Lehman, the major investor, or someone else we haven’t heard much about?
Finally, I was thinking yesterday that our interisland airlines are bleeding a lot more cash than the Superferry, yet there isn’t the same political stampede to bail them out. Even if the Superferry inexplicably decides to keep it’s entire staff in paid-standby mode for the year, they’ve said their costs are $650,000 per week or about $34 million for a full year.
I did a quick check yesterday, and it appears that Aloha had losses in excess of $44 million during the first two quarters of 2007, and Hawaiian added more than $15 million of red ink during the same time period. During 2006, each of the carriers reported losses of more than $40 million.
It’s clear that the airlines are much more important to interisland travel than the Superferry, and these losses are truly staggering. But the politicians have stayed largely on the sidelines and let the airlines pursue their own legal options.
So why the rush to expend so much political capital for an untested and untried ferry system? I don’t really have an answer.
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Great (and important) post!
To respond a bit to your question on why so much support for the Superferry, one can guess. Perhaps it has military value. Perhaps something else. What I suspect is that the Governor is not telling us (very like Bush/Cheny running their own secret government). If we find out at all, we find out afterwards what has been going on.
This is speculation, which is easy to do sitting here at the computer before breakfast and my morning coffee. But we found out only during Lingle’s trip to Indonesia that her visit had a national and military agenda that was unspoken of in her messages and only came out from Indonesian news coverage (assisting the murderous Indonesian military with helicopter repairs and who knows what else). On her current trip, which is supposedly to promote tourism and business, she is taking along Maj. Gen. Lee. Why? We don’t know. So it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that there is more to this Superferry thing than we know.
Even if there isn’t, the Gov’s secret activities outside of the business of Hawaii government simply make one wonder if there is. And you’ve mentioned the arming of the harbor police. That feeds my curiousity about whether there is a secret agenda.
“Actually, most reporting has referred to “the Superferry†as an entity or a person, with little attention given to who within the Superferry’s internal power structure developed and carried out this evasive maneuver. Who actually provides the brains of the operation? Who delivers the political brawn? Was it Mr. Garibaldi, the CEO, or Lehman, the major investor, or someone else we haven’t heard much about?”
A corporation seeking to feed at the public tit should, as a condition, make it’s decision making process transparent so the public knows who is milking it. The individual responsible for the strategy of not getting an EIS should, of course, if actions are to have consequences be identified and terminated from employment. Before the brain trust called the legislature gets involved it would be nice to know who is lobbying whom at this particular moment. Is it too cynical to suspect that the “unnamed politicians” mentioned in the sentencings of the corruptionists at the Airport might be involved here also. Does anyone know of a book collecting, or even listing, the great publicly financed fiascos that have occurred since the U.S. showed up? There’s the Ala Wai canal, the State convention center [mostly empty most of the time] the above ground sewer system in Waikiki; Waikiki itself perhaps. I’m not from around here so I have a deficit of knowledge and would like to learn. Mahalo in advance.
Thank you for this. The issues certainly have moved beyond the environmental realm. Now, whether or not the ferry would pass an environmental assessment, it would establish a precedent for massive projects being able to strong arm their way through lawlessly, with the help of our governor’s office, possibly our elected officials, and our media all the way. The coverage last night on KGMB was unbelievably biased, disgustingly so.
I’m not one for conspiracy theories, however, the plot certainly thickens. It would appear that our judiciary is still functioning, but coming under attack.
Why the spin that this is such an essential service? It’s expensive, damaging, and since when has creating jobs been an issue in Hawaii?