Monthly Archives: August 2010

Charges of constitutional violations appear off-base

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We happened to watch the KGMB-Hawaii News Now last night at 6 p.m., and I was interested in the promo announcing an upcoming story about law violations by the state.

It turned out to be a story on the Senate hearing on the state’s finances. Senators were told that the state ended up with a $22 million deficit at the end of the fiscal year.

Brooks Baehr reported:

State government ended fiscal year 2010 in the red. It is the second straight year Hawaii has operated at a deficit and by in doing so violated the state constitution for a second straight year.

According to the story: “The state constitution requires a balanced budget, but no one gets penalized when it is not balanced.”

The allegation is not clearly sourced, so its difficult to tell whether the charge that the deficit created a constitutional violation came from the senators or from Hawaii News Now. Even if it came from senators at the hearing, wouldn’t you compare it to the actual constitutional provision while reporting and take note of discrepancies?

Baehr pressed Ways & Means Committee Chair Donna Mercado Kim about the issue, suggesting that the absence of penalties or consequences is a problem. She was noncommital.

But wait. What are they talking about?

The constitution addresses the budget, not the actual, end of the year financial picture. The BUDGET.

“Budget” is clearly different from “actual”.

The budget is the plan, in the form of bills, prepared by the governor and eventually passed by the legislature. The Hawaii State Constitution says that there have to be sources of revenue, also identified in bills, to cover all of the budgeted expenditures. The budget provision of the constitution addresses just that–the budget–and makes no reference at all to actual, end-of-the-year financial shortfalls.

The State Constitution (Article 7, Section 8) clearly refers to the budget, the plan of proposed expenditures. Plan, not actual.

Within such time prior to the opening of each regular session in an odd-numbered year as may be provided by law, the governor shall submit to the legislature a budget in a form provided by law setting forth a complete plan of proposed expenditures of the executive branch, estimates as provided by law of the aggregate expenditures of the judicial and legislative branches, and anticipated receipts of the State for the ensuing fiscal biennium, together with such other information as the legislature may require.

The section goes on about the budgeted expenditures and sources of revenue, contained in various bills, that have to match in order for the resulting budget to be legal.

The legislature passed balanced budgets in each of the two years, so there was no violation of the constitution, contrary to the Hawaii News Now report.

What the deficit does mean is that the budget submitted by the new governor will be that much harder to balance in order to meet the constitutional requirement.

This is one of those situations where the Lingle administration was unfairly maligned with the charge that they violated the law. I wonder why someone along the way didn’t catch the problem with the story, and also if anyone will offer the public a correction and the administration an apology?

Waikiki Surf Club: Christmas Day, December 25, 1948

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The Waikiki Surf Club was just a year old when they put on a winter event featuring a six-mile surfboard race that sent paddlers from Waikiki out around Diamond Head and back.

The winners of that inaugural race posed for this photo. It’s just one of several photos from that long ago Christmas that I found among my father’s papers.

From left to right: Rabbit Kekai (#1), George Downing (#2), Robert Krewson (#3), Herb Bessa (#4), Edward Whaley (#5), Wally Froiseth (#6), Dorian Paskowitz (#7), Frank Freitas (#8), Blue Makua (#9), Russ Takaki (#10).

->Click on the photo to more from the Waikiki Surf Club in December 1948.

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Hawaii judges’ financial disclosures now available online

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Times do change, and sometimes for the better!

No, I’m not just saying that because it’s my birthday and I’m trying to feel really good about the passage of time.

What prompted the comment today is my discovery that the financial disclosure statements filed by state judges are now available to the public online via the Judiciary’s website.

While ostensibly public, these used to be closely guarded by the Supreme Court Clerk. Anyone wishing to examine a judge’s disclosure had to sign a form and the judge would be notified. As you can imagine, this was enough to discourage most attorneys from taking a peek. I went through the files several times in the past, and it wasn’t unusual to see that perhaps one other reporter and maybe an attorney or two were the only people who had looked at any of the forms over the previous year.

Now it is completely different, and what a refreshing change it is!

From the Judiciary website:

Judges and justices are obliged to not permit personal financial interests influence their judgment. See Hawaii Revised Code of Judicial Conduct, Rule 2.4; HRS § 601-7(a). In most instances, a judge will voluntarily recuse from participating in a case when the judge’s interests or the interests of the judge’s immediate family might be affected. In other instances, a party may move to disqualify the judge. In rare instances, a “rule of necessity” will require a judge or a panel of judges or justices to hear a case in spite of a conflict of interest. See, e.g., Schwab v. Ariyoshi, 57 Haw. 348, 555 P.2d 1329 (1976).

To provide information by which a litigation party can determine whether to move to disqualify a judge for pecuniary conflict, and to provide information from which disciplinary authorities can determine whether a judge should have recused, Rule 15 of the Rules of the Supreme Court of the State of Hawaii (RSCH), requires full and part-time judges to publicly disclose financial interests. The disclosures required by RSCH Rule 15 are like the disclosures required of certain Hawaii State executive and legislative officers and employees.

Judges from the Supreme Court down to part-timers in district courts are listed alphabetically, and are not broken down by court or circuit.

The disclosure categories are similar to those used by elected officials, who file with the State Ethics Commission. Sources of income for the person filing and their spouse, creditors, real estate owned, sold, or purchased, fiduciary positions held, and business ownership (including stocks owned).

The discovery made my day!

Compare and Decide

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Misleading Hannemann adMufi Hannemann’s campaign calls this campaign mailer “Compare and Decide”.

It’s what you might expect from a campaign mailer late in a potentially tight race. That is, designed to mislead the reader and distort the records of both candidates, one positively and the other negatively. Of course, that’s what a lot of campaigning is all about.

Mufi looks pretty impressive, at least in his own telling, but the comparisons, although full of distortions, helped me to understand the broad differences .

It boils down to this.

Mufi’s whole career has been as the candidate of the corporate-political elite. He’s been encouraged to run, supported in his campaigns, and “taken care of” with corporate or political appointments when he lost, and has the perspective and baggage that flows from that privileged position.

Neil Abercrombie has run for office at every level of government–county, state, and federal–and he has won on his own, the voters choice and not the corporate elite’s choice. He’s won despite the fact that the power structure, from Senator Inouye to the insider corporate circles, would have preferred someone else.

Voters have trusted him, not because he doesn’t make mistakes, but because they are his own mistakes, not those of the elite who would cozy up to him to do their bidding. When push comes to shove, he’s been on our side, not theirs.

So you’ve got Mufi, the consummate insider, and Neil, the outsider who has fought for and earned each of his positions.

Rather than tagging each of the distortions or omissions in the “Compare and Decide” mailer, I’ll just demonstrate what would happen if the spin were different?

It might look something like this.

Education:

Neil: Masters Degree and Ph.D.

Mufi: No graduate degree

Experience in elected office:

Neil: elected to city, state (House and Senate), and federal offices

Mufi: Experience limited to city government

Other experience:

Neil: Chaired the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Air and Land Forces, with oversight for U.S. Army and Air Force operations, budget, and equipment and weapons systems procurement worldwide.

Mufi: Managed the Punaluu Sweetbread Bake Shop (Naalehu, Hawaii)

Compare and Decide!

You see how it works?