Another day, another two newspaper morning, with the two Honolulu dailies giving quite different spins to Gov. Linda Lingle’s entry into the rail transit debate.

The Advertiser story: “Lingle tries to calm Honolulu rail spat”

I think it’s an unfortunate choice of words, as “spat” (according to the dictionary, “a brief quarrel”) seems to trivialize the seriousness of this political debate.

But more importantly, the Advertiser report misses part of the real news and buries the rest.

You’ve got to read down to the 6th paragraph to see the governor backing away from support for rail.

Star-Bulletin story: “Lingle ‘likely’ will sign anti-rail petition”

SB reporter Laurie Au leads with Lingle’s statement that she favors and will likely sign the anti-rail petition, although Lingle again fudges and doesn’t admit to personally opposing the transit plan.

Two very different spins, and the Star-Bulletin had the most complete report. It sounds to me like Lingle is really fanning the flames of conflict while posing as detached from the political street brawl over transit. More of that say one thing, do another political style that she has honed so well.

I noted this interesting bit of history from a pair of August 2002 Star-Bulletin op-ed pieces taking pro and con positions on what was then the city’s Bus Rapid Transit plan.

Then-State Rep. Galen Fox took the position in opposition to the proposed bus transit system and instead called for–ready?–a fixed rail system.

I support rail transit. Rail transit is a “carrot,” a better way to travel that draws people out of private vehicles because rail avoids traffic and operates on schedule.

As urban specialist Neal Peirce said during his recent Honolulu visit (Star-Bulletin, Aug. 20), light rail is the overwhelming choice of U.S. cities moving to mass transit, picked by 15 cities in recent years to lure people out of their cars.

The rail “carrot” works, Peirce notes, because a fixed line attracts development near stations, which is vital to financing Washington- and Hong Kong-type systems.

It seems to me today that underlying position staked out by the main opponents of the rail plan has been overtaken by global events.

Beyond the cost issue, the main philosophical position against rail is that people love their cars and shouldn’t be penalized for sticking to their individual automobiles as the primary form of transit. Therefore, more or enhanced freeways and highways are preferable to transit because they give priority to the automobile.

But it seems to me that both climate change and oil prices have taken the wind out of this particular sail. People are having to come to grips with the fact that the automobile is not the ultimate in personal travel.

I should say that Panos Prevedouros had quite a constructive proposal for amending the city’s bus rapid transit plan, calling for relatively simple route changes that would have reduced its in-town impact on existing traffic flow.

Yesterday I wandered through Gov. Lingle’s list of potential vetoes and noted a few bills involving increased transparency and accountability that are apparently not to the governor’s taste.

SB 2263, SD2, HD1, which provides for disclosure of proposed administrative salaries for administrators of the University of Hawaii.

From the bill: The legislature further finds that, recently, much of the university’s management and operations has been called into question, including its current practice of preventing public access to information on the potential salaries of new faculty and executive/managerial positions and expenditures of the board of regents. Over the past few years, salaries of university faculty and administrators have dramatically increased. They have escalated to the point that approximately 473 faculty and executive/managerial positions are currently paid salaries that exceed the salary of the governor of Hawaii, which makes the matter one of statewide importance and concern.

SB 2664, SD1, HD1, CD1, which requires the state historic preservation officer to be a “qualified historic preservation professional.”

(1) Be a qualified historic preservation professional in architecture, architectural history, archaeology, history, culture, or a closely related field, who meets the professional qualification standards established by the United States Secretary of the Interior; and

(2) Have professional experience with respect to historic preservation in Hawaii.

SB 2827, SD1, HD1, CD1, which provides additional notice to bidders who are not selected for contract awards who may want to protest those awards.

(b) The purchasing agency shall notify in writing all offerors that solicited an award of a contract of their non-selection not later than the day of the posting of the award. Information posted publicly about the award shall include, where applicable, but is not limited to:
(1) The names of offerors soliciting an award of the contract;

(2) The numerical scores given by the evaluation committee to the acceptable and potentially acceptable proposals, and if a best and final offer was requested, the names of the priority-listed offerors and their final numerical scores;

(3) The name of the successful offeror and dollar amount of the award; and

(4) The basis for making the award to the successful offeror; provided that trade secrets or other proprietary or confidential information shall not be disclosed.

SB 2668, SD2, HD1, CD1 regarding the UH Board of Regents. The bill requires the governor to provide written notification of a vacancy “within ten days of receiving notification that a member of the board of regents is resigning, has died, or is being removed by the governor.”

The bill also requires at least 12 regents to live in the districts which they represent.

It’s not clear why Lingle opposes these measures,and her reasons don’t have to be spelled out unless she actually does veto them. It will be interesting to see her spin.

Today I’m trying out a different blog editor, MarsEdit. Previously I did a somewhat tentative test of something called ecto, another tool which makes offline composing and editing of WordPress blogs possible. Unfortunately, I found it a little less than intuitive, and my initial post quickly sprouted several unwanted and unplanned formatting changes. I still don’t know where they came from or how I could have easily gotten rid of them. Hence this second try with MarsEdit, which visually appears cut from the same cloth as ecto. The goal of all this is to find a good solution for use during the Democratic National Convention in Denver. I’ve still got nearly two months to prepare, but sooner is better than later.

So far, on this limited experience, I give MarsEdit a thumbs up.