Remember my recent advice about checking the footnotes?
Well, I followed that advice yesterday after receiving an email blast from Gov. Abercrombie’s office concerning his recent emergency proclaimations, which have rightly become controversial. The result? Now I’m even more skeptical of the governor’s actions.
Here’s the beginning of the gov’s email.
This week there was discussion in the media concerning the Governor’s use of emergency powers. Governor Abercrombie believes that when the health and safety of the people of Hawaii is at stake, the right thing to do is act as swiftly as possible.
Under the Hawaii Revised Statutes section 127-10 and chapter 128, the Governor has emergency powers to deal with natural and man-made disasters or emergencies; to maintain the strength, resources, and economic life of the community; and to protect the public health, safety and welfare.
Heeding my own advice, I immediately clicked on the provided links to check out the authority under which the governor has now declared a series of emergencies.
Section 127-10 provides that the governor can use the emergency powers intended to be used when we’re faced with enemy attack, and wield them to address other kinds of disasters. What are those other kinds of disasters?
As used in this section, “other disaster relief” means the preparation for and the carrying out of all functions, other than functions for which military forces are primarily responsible, to minimize and repair injury and damage resulting from disasters caused by fire, flood, tidal wave, volcanic eruption, earthquake, or other natural causes and major disasters caused by acts of man including massive oil spills, nuclear accidents, airplane crashes, and civil disturbances.
So where do a necessary highway repair on Kauai and the need to move nene geese from the vicinity of Lihue airport fall on the scale of tidal waves, earthquakes, massive oil spills and nuclear accidents? Pretty far down the seriousness scale. Are routine emergency provisions built in to most statutes so inadquate that sweeping exemptions from a wide swath of laws are really necessary to carry out remediation projects?
Take those nene on Kauai which, undoubtedly, should to be moved from the airport area.
The governor’s emergency proclaimation for movement of the nene suspends the following laws:
• county organization and administration
• historic preservation
• Kahoolawe island reserve
• collective bargaining in public employment
• contracts with the state or counties; tax clearances
• procurement code
• wages and hours of employees on public works
• animals, brands, and fences
• plant and non-domestic animal quarantine and microorganism import
• public lands, managemetn and dispostion
• forest reserves, water development, zoning
• conservation district
• wildlife
• state parks and recreation areas
• natural areas reserves system
• conservation of aquatic life, wildlife, and land plants
• general provisions relating to aquatic resources and wildlife
…and the list goes on. The others are equally broad.
The nene is an endangered species, so extreme measures taken at some other airports can’t be implemented here. But suspension of this long list of laws seems, well, overkill. In some cases, an emergency declaration is needed to access funding. That’s not unreasonable. But shouldn’t the governor explain why it is necessary to suspend collective bargaining laws, for example, in order to relocate 400 or so nene?
And somehow we’ve managed for more than 60 years to deal with the occasional discovery of unexploded military ordnance without declaring an emergency and suspending laws. Why does it suddenly require a 5-year suspension of state laws?
I worry that the precedent here is that the state is simply suspending applicable laws rather than effectively managing complex projects.
Or perhaps I just got out of bed grumpy this morning.
Oh, by the way…should we expect the governor to quietly declare an emergeny and suspend a list of laws to make it easier to manage the APEC Summit? I think the bad press would offset any advantages, although maybe it could just be announced a few months late?
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“But shouldn’t the governor explain why it is necessary to suspend collective bargaining laws, for example, in order to relocate 400 or so nene?”
Union work rules call for 4 guys per nene for relocation. One grabs the goose, one points out the direction, two supervise the other two. So 400 nene x 4 guys per nene = 1600 guys at 4 hours minimum per guy = 6400 hours at $50/hour fully loaded cost = $320,000.
After which, the goose flies back to where it started.
I’m just wondering what Japanese tourists are going to think if something like the following happens during the APEC Summit:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/24/occupy-wall-street-protes_n_979367.html?ncid=webmail1
Think of how much money the State spends on branding Hawaii, and then think about how all of that iconography can dissolve with a few powerful photographs of police violence.
Maybe Abercrombie will ban cameras….
Seriously, things would basically be the same if one of the other gubernatorial candidates had won, perhaps worse. A political leader is largely a sock puppet for a powerful faction of the status quo. Any savvy politician knows that. The problem in Hawaii might be that the status quo in general — meaning, this local tourist/military/big union/real estate economy — is really clueless. The society seems to be on cruise control.
I think that Abercrombie and Schatz know that APEC Summits are largely fruitless and kind of risky. But what are they going to do? Tell the truth to the public? We can’t handle the truth.
What is the truth? (SPOILER ALERT) The local economy never really diversified and possibly never will. Most people here — the elites, the populace — are happy with that. That’s why they live here. And that’s why it never diversified.
New York cops are pretty tough and sophisticated and certainly used to demonstrations. The footage may have been edited to feature their worst moments. However, HPD is not NYPD. (Let’s not even talk about the Sheriff’s sidekicks).
I’ve met some very capable officers from HPD but too many have a Selma mentality about an inch under the surface. If “professional” demonstrators show up, knowing how to provoke, that ole Southern cop mentality is going to surface and the whole world will be watching and the demonstrators will get what they want.
APEC is not Mayberry. I just hope the demonstrators can’t afford the airfare.
The police were pictured in the paper carrying heavy weapons when they cleared the Makaha bach of homeless residents many years ago. There was also a pic in the Star-Bulletin of two police officers in Darth Vader swat gear patrolling the streets of Kahala, if I recall, looking for a man who walked out of the State Hospital.
So don’t underestimate the HPD given expensive new toys.
Also, with regard to NY cops, they can be very violent. There are pictures on the web. They have a history of shooting any black man holding something in his hands that later might be excused by “I thought he was holding a gun.” Michael Moore even passed out brightly colored wallets as a stunt in NYC after such a shooting. I think the victim was asked for ID and then shot when he took out his wallet, can’t remember exactly.
And there is little in the way of consequences. We can expect that they will be insructed to do what they must, settling with the victims later is part of the expense of the event.
Actually, the NYC wallet shooting (Amadou Diallo) was a bit more complicated than Larry and quite a few others make it out to be, regardless of Michael Moore’s stunts.
Here’s the Wikipedia version, for whatever it’s worth:
In the early morning of February 4, 1999, Diallo was standing near his building after returning from a meal. Police officers Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphy passed by in a Ford Taurus when they thought Diallo matched the description of a now-captured serial rapist and approached him. The officers were in plain clothes.
The officers claimed that they loudly identified themselves as NYPD officers and that Diallo ran up the outside steps toward his apartment house doorway at their approach, ignoring their orders to stop and “show his hands”. The porch lightbulb was out and Diallo was backlit by the inside vestibule light, showing only a silhouette. Diallo then reached into his jacket and withdrew his wallet. Seeing the suspect holding a small square object, Carroll yelled “Gun!” to alert his colleagues. Believing Diallo had aimed a gun at them at close range, the officers opened fire on Diallo. During the shooting, lead officer McMellon tripped backward off the front stairs, causing the other officers to believe he had been shot.
The four officers fired forty-one shots, hitting Diallo nineteen times. The post-shooting investigation found no weapons on Diallo’s body; the item he had pulled out of his jacket was not a gun, but a rectangular black wallet. The internal NYPD investigation ruled the officers had acted within policy, based on what a reasonable police officer would have done in the same circumstances with the information they had.
The NYC police continue to discriminate and use excessive violence against black and hispanic citizens. The NYCLU has been fighting the NYPD stop-and-frisk tactics for some time, achieving victories but not yet stopping the practice. The wallet incident you detailed was only one of many such at around that time.
Nor is it just NYC. there are examples of police brutality at many large national or international events around the country. Seattle has been described as a police riot. The RNC saw massive arrests with hundreds (or was it thousands) discredited, including by videos taken by other demonstrators showing the police lied in making their arrests.
In Hawaii, the ACLU is offering instructon for those who would like to be observers during APEC. We should also keep in mind that merely photographing police here can result in injury(e.g. Damon Tucker’s recent experience).
Who knows what will happen, but we mustn’t assume that HPD will follow the law just because they are police. It doesn’t work that way.
Cops here tend to be pretty professional during big events with lots of people and supervisors watching. It’s during the little, mundane one-on-one encounters where too many of them can be arrogant, confrontational, provincial jerks who seem intent on escalating the most minor issues into something bigger, exactly the opposite of what professional training and common sense require. It gets like that when everything related to internal discipline is kept secret.
Also, could someone explain, I am not sure (for example) if collective bargaining is suspended only when nene are at the table, or if (for example) teachers on Oahu wanted to do a bit of bargaining with the DOE, if their collective bargaining rights are also suspended. Would they need to bring nene to Oahu? Ok, I’m getting carried away, but only because I find this more than a bit confusing.
Don’t bring nene to the table, they’re endangered! Bring poke or kalbi ribs instead.