The Star-Advertiser started another week with a hit on what it calls “the troubled law,” referring to Act 48, the foreclosure reform measure passed by the legislature last year. Today’s story focuses on mediation programs that could alleviate the backlog of foreclosure cases pending in state courts. Perhaps it’s time to take a deep breath and slow down here…at least that’s what the story headline appears to suggest.
Here’s what online readers are seeing this morning, at least as of this writing–about 8 a.m.
![[text]](http://ilind.net/images_2012/meditation.jpg)
Or maybe this was just another victim of auto correcting software. Adventurers might check out Damn you, Auto Correct!
The question of whether the election of an anti-rail mayor could derail Honolulu’s transit project is definitely worth asking. Civil Beat tackled the question with a story by Mike Levine on January 12, before Ben Cayetano announced his firm intention to make a run for mayor.
For those with access to the Star-Advertiser, Keven Dayton tackled the same question in today’s newspaper.
I think the answer reached by both reporters is that while the mayor doesn’t have a way to simply pull the plug on the rail project, an anti-rail mayor could most likely create enough uncertainty to scare off federal support, causing the whole transit project to fall under its own weight. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it could be effective.
I also recommend Mike Levine’s story today on Civil Beat, “Can Honolulu Council Members Talk in Private About Proposed Laws?” There needs to be a lot more discussion about such matters. My own view is that trying to squeeze all the politics out of, well, politics, will not result in better public policy decisions.
Avoiding secret decision making, and opening the political process to public participation, is the clear goal of sunshine laws. But how far we should push in the direction of an absolutist, “in public and on stage or its illegal” approach to the search for policy consensus seems to an open and legitimate question.
Take the situation in Washington. I think there’s general agreement that the absolute, ideologically-driven partisan divide in Congress is not conducive to the best policies, or any policies at all.
Part of that can be attributed the absence of that degree of collegiality that previously allowed personal friendships and working relationships to develop across arbitrary party boundaries. Unlike today’s polarized politics, where everything is battled out in the glare of the expectations of respective party extremes, there used to be a level at which more normal, human relationships could be developed, and that provided a basis for compromises across ideological lines.
I highly recommend two books by historian Michael BeschlossTaking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes 1963 1964
LBJ was a master of Congressional politics, and it is eye-opening to see how he worked to gather votes to support landmark legislation, using emotional, personal, political, and policy arguments to persuade.
Pretend that we–you and I, blogger and readers–have to reach a consensus on how to approach this issue. We begin knowing that there’s a substantial distance between some of our views, as evidenced by Kauai blogger Andy Parx, who confessed being “irked” by my some of my positions on this issue. Do we build a consensus by firing online broadsides back and forth? Do we hold a series of panel discussions broadcast via community media? Not a bad idea, but what happens when we still don’t have enough agreement to move ahead? If we’re still limited to these fully open debates, I might still not have any real idea of the motives, experiences, and perceptions of those arguing different points of view. I would be looking for points of agreement, commonalities that I could use to draw opponents into more productive discussions. Often, though, that kind of personal information isn’t shared in public settings, but in private conversations. Automatically bad? I don’t think so, especially if it can create movement in what would otherwise be a policy standoff, but your mileage may vary.
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Ian,
Sorry to tell you but you have a couple typos also. You have boring when I think you meant morning and major when you meant mayor…..and so it goes.
Damn you, Auto Correct!
“I think the answer reached by both reporters is that while the major doesn’t have a way….”
Ian,
I think you got autocorrected yourself 🙂
Good morning and thank you for your wonderful blog!
Maybe we should call it what it is starting to resemble : Tribal Warfare … “lack of collegiality”…”polarized politics”…”ideolgical lines”…we are turning into the Middle East where tribal warfare and inter-family grudges take precedence over the “betterment” of the country…
Yep, the mayor’s race isturning interesting, what with Caldwell and Carlisle both evidently supporting rail and “ol’ gentle Ben” spoilin’ and railin’ against rail.
Could it be that our has Ben thinks it doesn’t support Makaki heights enough or any of his special interests? But to me makes more sense than his one “conn-vent-in center” project did… or maybe he’s justly jealous?
True, mass transit or rail ain’t cheap, but it’ll never be cheaper. And with an urban city corridor from basically Manoa to Leeward/ Kapolei with mountains on one side and ocean on t’other it makes sense, ‘specially cause the auto based special interests ain’t ever goin’ get a parallel freeway like a Pearl Harbor channel tunnel to add capacity to the existing mess.
How many times does mass transit/ rail have to be brought before the voters to obtain final, actionable buy-in?
“And with an urban city corridor from basically Manoa to Leeward/ Kapolei….”
.
.
There is no such urban corridor on Oahu. It is almost completely low-rise suburbs. Someday, perhaps, Kapolei will turn into the high-rise, mixed-use urban center that it was meant to be, with people living in apartments and working in Kapolei and forgoing a daily commute to other areas on Oahu. When that day comes, a light-rail system within Kapolei might make sense.
There is the local saying that “Hawaii is the hub of the Pacific”. In the UH Manoa geography department that is regarded as a joke. As UH geography professors are fond of saying to the notion of Hawaii as a ‘hub’, “The geography does not bear out the metaphor.” There is no hub to the Pacific rim. It’s ridiculous. Just because a few local politicians throw the phrase around to pump themselves up does not make it true.
Likewise, Honolulu is not comprised of a true “urban corridor”. Even official “urban Honolulu” east of downtown and west of Diamond Head has a population density half that of San Juan, Puerto Rico. We can call it an “urban corridor” in order to feel important, and we can say that Honolulu has the highest population density of any American city — as former Mayor Mufi Hannemann was fond of saying. But it would not be true. It is low-rise and suburban in character.
This might change with Abercrombie’s vision of a ‘Second City’ stretching from downtown to Diamond Head, just as it may change in Kapolei, and this is where a rail system might work in the future. Some people say that this might be too expensive to build a rail systems in these high-density, mixed-use environments. But that reminds me of the joke about the drunk who lost his keys in a dark alley, so he stumbled across the street to search for them under the bright lights of a gas station because that would be “easier”. It makes no sense. You build rail in high-density, mixed-use areas or none at all.
I respectfully disagree – it seems to me that the need already exists. It would link nodes of relatively high density areas in what has been defined as the primary urban center. Kam Hwy and H1 in this area are above capacity already perhaps 8 hours per day (4 rush hours each in the morning and afternoon).
Further delay, and the dollar and time lost cost merely goes up as most of the route would be expensive cut-and-cover type tunnel construction in high density areas with massive disruption to daily lives if we sit on our hands and pass the problem on to the future.
To do things in transportation “after the fact,” as you seem to advocate, that is without vision, would be like delaying the building of the Panama Canal due to concept that eventual global warming (so that the Northwest Passage north of Canada/Alaska becomes navigable) will reduce the need of the project, maybe a hundred or more years after it first came into use!
I agree that we need to plan for the future. Everyone agrees with that. But this planning needs to be realistic and informed. Back when Mayor Fasi presented his concept of a rail system from Pearl City to Hawaii Kai, the State was proposing to build a tunnel from Hawaii Kai to the North Shore. At that time it seemed like a realistic project to the State government. Almost anyone today would disagree with that assessment.
I do think we need to build a light rail system now in Kapolei, stretching out to Ewa Villages. In the light of recent trends, it seems that Kapolei will eventually be the great success it was planned to be, with mixed-use, high-density living. Also, some sort of rail system in town from Kalihi to Diamond Head might be viable. But the rail system as planned does not seem to conform to any sort of trend. It is not pro-active, it’s random. It is not really a visionary project. The areas that it is planned for are “leap-frog suburbs” that will never develop into high-density areas. The trend is for those areas to develop their own core businesses and become a bit more self-sufficient, precluding some commuting, but never really becoming high-density, mixed-use.
Rail or something similar might make sense some time in the future, problem is the future is always the future and we never act on anything so when the future is here we have something done. Hawaii hasn’t planned for thr “future” since 1959.
yet we’re generally considered to be among the most “liberal” states that elects very few Republicans.
why? politics and power hides behind sales and marketing.
i’d love to lol on this irony, but i can’t this time. oh well. time for a cocktail.
Throwing around the word “rail” leaves a trail of question marks behind. Depending on how our island is planned, one or another system of transit (or multiple systems, as Portland OR has), might be called for.
But we’re excluded from the planning process.
Portland wanted to develop something like an “urban corridor” but they wanted it to be retail-and business-friendly to spur a lagging economy. So they put in a system that would do that, in conjunction with redevelopment that disfavored parking. It’s a huge success.
We’re going to end up with a single rail line that no one will want in their neighborhood and will serve the interests of large developers over the needs of ordinary people. What are those needs? I don’t think anyone has asked us.
As a veteran of 4 or 5 public boards & commissions, I agree with your intuition that this is messier than most people appreciate. Here’s a proposal for improving the Sunshine Law:
Make Sunshine apply to the State Legislature. They pass the law but exempt themselves. If they had to live with what they do to others, it would create a living laboratory to work through the complex balance between transparency and getting work done in a reasonably efficient and effective manner.
Based on my experience on the Hawaii County Redistricting Commission, the Sunshine Law is a something of a straitjacket.
Given the need for creating a record, the rules allowed only serial comment in the meeting, and killed any real opportunity for spontaneous discussion.
I, and the other members of the commission, found it very frustrating, not to mention the inability of being able to discuss things outside of the meetings with more than one other commissioner. Nor, according to the law, could we have serial conversations.
Hi Mike!
The State Reapportionment Commission got around the Sunshine Law by carrying out all substantive discussions with their lawyer present and advising, thus protecting those conversations under the “lawyer-client” confidentiality privilege.
Of course, it made it more difficult for us observers to fathom their thinking. And, to their detriment, it allowed them to develop a mistaken “group think” conception of the task in front of them. Some of us were warning them for six months they were veering off-course, but their walled off deliberations allowed them to just wave off our objections.
Ooops.
I know you were involved with the County redistricting, but since I got you here, let me share my impression the Hawaii County Advisory Council to the state reapportionment effort was almost useless. The Kauai, Oahu and Maui councils met and developed clear positions, but the Hawaii county advisory group was AWOL and dysfunctional. The senate seat for the Big Island was won DESPITE the Hawaii County advisory council, not because of anything they did. It was the MAUI advisory council, who pressed the hardest on your behalf, while the Big Island advisory members refused to muster for duty.
Slight Amendment:
I have listened to my recording of the latest State State Reapportionment meeting and feel obliged to report the Commission has changed their approach from their earlier practice. The latest meeting included a great deal of open discussion and deliberation as the commissioners wrestled over how best to adjust the population count in response to the Supreme Court ruling.
Also, their attorney provided an in-depth review of the meaning of the Court’s ruling. It was a sea-change in approach–much more transparent. As a longtime critic of their past practice, I need to give them credit–and thanks–for being so open.
The Portland urban corridor runs through many areas with densities quite similar to those between Kapolei and Ala Moana Shopping Center.
My experience is that the City and County has been continuously planning since the 60s, and that the result has been a pattern of development that has successfully diverted most development away from the North Shore and the Windward Coast in order to “Keep the Country country”.
Those here on the blog who were around then know that in the 70s the possibility of suburban development in Kahaluu, Waiahole, Waimanalo and other Windward areas was very real. Folks sat down in the road in front of bulldozers.
As a result of those protests and the widespread belief that the Country should be kept country, the existing plans were changed in the late 1970s and early 1980s to direct the bulk of the growth out to Ewa and Central Oahu and to downtown Honolulu. That is where 80% of the island growth since 1980 has gone.
Also, starting in 1997 and concluding in 2004, the City adopted an islandwide urban growth boundary to protect tens of thousands of acres of ag land from development. No urban development is allowed outside the boundary, and to date, none has been approved.
While there are substantial differences between what has occurred in some other rural areas of Oahu in the past and the fight over the future of the remaining country farmlands between Waipahu and Kapolei happening now, there are also meaningful similarities, particularly with regard to many, but not all, of the goals and motivations of both those supporting preservation and those against it. All one need do is replace a few names. (And by the way, while it is true that part of West Oahu has subjectively been designated part of the urban corridor, personally, I agree with what he famously wrote — “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.”).
From “The Birth of the Modern Hawaiian Movement” by Haunani-Kay Trask
http://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10524/144/JL21142.pdf?sequence=2
***
Just before the Takabuki appointment was announced on June 19,
1971, Kokua Hawai’i took out a full-page advertisement in the
Sunday, June 13th Advertiser that listed the “Kokua Hawai’i Peoples’
Land Program” as follows:
1. We must save our farm lands to grow food. We must stop the
developers who want to pour concrete over everything.
2. We must stop people from moving here until we can first take care
of our own local people’s needs.
3. We must take care of our air, land, and water. If we kill water,
nature will kill us.
4. We must get back our land from the few big landholders that have
almost all of it. It was stolen from us in the first place.
5. We must use our land to house and feed our people and learn to
rely on ourselves to do it—not on the mainland.
6. As a start, we demand that Kalama Valley be saved for the local
people and that the tourist and high-income development planned
by Bishop Estate and Kaiser-Aetna be stopped.
***
My wish is that we could agree to keep all the country, country, but the strategies of those opposed to this may be hard to overcome.
Another quote from the same book:
“Noel Kent, SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) member and Valley supporter, wrote a letter to Kokua Hawai’i after the split, attacking them for succumbing to the “divide-and-conquer” tactics of the establishment.”
Then, the developers divided us by race; now, they seek to divide us by place.