With the “First Decking” deadline coming up on Friday, legislators and lobbyists are making last minute runs at saving their favorite bills or issues, often by maneuvering around House and Senate rules and procedures.
Here’s an example. SB2893, “to perform a comprehensive analysis of the social and financial costs and benefits of different types of gambling and their impacts on the State,” was referred to the committee on Economic Development and Technology, and then on to Ways and Means. When EDT failed to hear the bill, it missed the “lateral” deadline, which is when bills have to get into the hands of the final committee. That effectively killed the measure.
But a new hearing notice has been posted for a joint hearing of EDT and WAM, “pending” a joint re-referral. I suppose this indicates a deal has been struck to approve the new referral. Those not familiar with the insider rules may not recognize that a joint referral is different from a double referral. With a joint referral, the two committees act together, rather than consecutively, allowing them to meet the First Decking deadline.
There’s also another way to view it. The bill has a very general title, “Relating to Gambling,” although it is aimed only at establishing a study commission. It’s the kind of convenient title that would technically allow entirely new language to be substituted later, keeping the possibility of a more active pro-gambling bill to pop up again. More to watch for.
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The general term for these legislators are
“sneaky” and “elusive”.
We should start naming names and
attach their faces.
They are hiding behind the walls
and hoping voters are too busy to pay heed to
clandestine motives.
I really don’t think this is a fair assessment.
We give legislators just 60 days to get their work done.
That’s 60 legislative days.
They’ve inserted recesses to stretch the process out, but it is still a challenge to get anything fully vetted in such a short period.
Add all of the competing interests into the mix, and it gets very exciting.
I’m very sympathetic to the challenge.
It’s just that it puts lots of pressure on those who are concerned about specific issues but aren’t in a position to dive into the legislative session on a full time basis.
And knowing the tricks of the trade certainly helps.
Sneaky? Maybe some of the tricks are sneaky, but it’s hard to tell because sometimes they are also necessary.
Sneaky, yes, and undemocratic as well. Look at the bills for which the rules are broken. Special interests can do it but can ordinary people? Try and convince your representative to break a rule and have a bill heard that actually died for want of a hearing.
To commenter Taxpayer, I have named names on my little blog and this session tried to more consistently post pictures of the legislators. It’s common to write “a new hearing notice has been posted”, but that detaches the issue from the reality that someone posted a new hearing notice. It didn’t just happen by itself.
The gambling bill died. It didn’t stay dead. Some people worked really hard to revive it. Who? How? How come they can do that?
SNEAKY are all the big name players in town (HTA, Chamber of Commerce, Waikiki Improvement Association, Banks, Hotels) that stand to profit but are staying relatively quiet behind the scenes.
Can’t our leaders do better than that?
Back to the merits of the bill:
Appears Hawaii’s first legal casino could be a bar on steroids “somewhere” in Waikiki. Of course, a gaming commission will have to be formed.
PS: If Hawaii tourism and business leaders aren’t pushing the legalization of gambling behind the scenes, then is it safe to conclude that public employee unions are in order to generate tax revenues (as they imagine)?
As someone who has always tried to follow the issue of gambling in Hawaii (although I find it very difficult to do so), my impression is that the “big name players” that you mentioned are not enthusiastic about gambling at all. They have always seemed to be fairly skeptical about gambling in Hawaii, which would go against the image of Hawaii that they have tried to foster. In fact, it might be possible that their “low-profile position” on gambling might be due to their potential opposition to it. Their policy position is low key because they would be going up against some rather powerful senior politicians. From what I’ve seen, these politicians are well-intentioned but surprisingly uneducated. They are powerful because they are older, established politicians.
My impression of how a lot of public policy gets made in this town is:
(1) backroom deals versus open debate;
(2) the deal-brokers don’t really know much about the issue at hand;
(3) a full-court press on public relations after the policy has been decided (e.g., “To Catch a Wave”).
It seems to be that it’s more or less like this everywhere. One of my favorite anecdotes of all times was a story told by Henry Adams (I think), who visited colonial Virginia. He was invited to a smoke-filled inn where all the rich big shots hung out and drank; at one point, a speaker read from a list of items that would face the Virginia colonial legislature, and those sitting in the room silently listened and then voiced their approval or disapproval. The next day Adams went to visit the colonial legislature in action, when they were taking votes, and the issues and votes were exactly the same.
It also seems to me that Confucian societies in east Asia are particularly paternalistic in the sense of “father knows best” and ignoring public input. Also, those political systems seem to be based more on personal relationships rather than institutional frameworks (for instance, the biggest players in a political party are often not even formally involved in politics, or so it would seem).
What distinguishes Hawaii from other places is (2) above. This is the issue of the small-town cultural style and its effect on competence. Asian societies are very competent. In contrast, when it comes to health care in Hawaii, for example, Asians from Asia that I have met in Hawaii tend to go back to Asia for medical care; they will claim that half the time they are treated in Hawaii, the surgery or treatment will be botched or makes no sense. Maybe paternalism only really works when the authority figure graduated with top honors from Harvard or Tokyo University, whereas in a small town the mayor is my uncle’s friend’s cousin’s brother. There reaches a point of development where small town ways don’t work anymore, and you can’t just build more houses or create rail jobs or throw up a casino to make things better.
But what is disturbing is that even in Japan, the famous competence seems to have faded twenty years ago. Japan seems to be following the model of Hawaii’s politics, with a consensus based political system that has fallen into disorganization. Perhaps in the 21st century, citizens need to think for themselves.
It seems to me that the big appeal of legalizing gambling in Hawaii is that it would be easy. In the debates on gambling aired on PBS, the politicians’ main argument was “We’d actually prefer to raise taxes instead, but that is difficult.” Legalizing gambling in Hawaii is like inviting Walmart into town: it requires no effort at all. One can contrast this to building a film industry in Hawaii, which would be difficult, expensive and a long-term effort, but which would have all sorts of benefits with excellent jobs created. With a casino, locals could get a few job as security guards, bartenders and prostitutes, but the dealers would be from other places (and even that is not such a good job). The profits would generally leave Hawaii. But it would be easy to do. In fact, it would require no effort at all.
But it seems to me that Abercrombie’s people really want a casino and they are making this push because they can point to it in the next election. Unlike a film industry, a casino would build itself up on its own in a very short period of time, and Abercrombie could say that he is creating jobs (few and junk though they may be). Politicians like to build things and point to them, even if these concrete structures make no sense; later, the politicians claim that there is no money for maintenance, even though they want to build even more things to display their “legacy”.
As for my assertion that Abercrombie’s administration is pushing for gambling, here is a recent Civil Beat article on the topic.
In the comment section, Abercrombie’s communications director James Boersema makes a pitch for a casino in Waikiki — without identifying his job (he is outed by John Temple). So, by inference, I am assuming that Neil and gang are pushing for the casino.
http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2012/02/14/14878-john-radcliffe-prophet-or-pariah/
One of the benefits of commenting on a website such as this one on public policy, is that my own perspective on an issue can be jostled into change or alteration. I find this does not happen through interaction with other writers, but by being compelled to develop and explicitly express my assumptions and reasoning. I get the sense that most of those who comment here (and elsewhere) are not particularly interested in developing or changing their perspective. In any case, writing about gambling has been stimulating in this way.
Gambling might have its problems, but now that I think about it, I suspect that the biggest problem might be putting corporations in charge of gambling. The real problem is corporations.
People disparage cock fighting, but that is a tradition that goes back to Spain and southeast Asia. Is it any worse than factory farming? To me it is vastly more humane than industrial agriculture. I get the sense that gamblers are not betting the farm in cock fights, that it is largely a social event. It does keep money in the economy. So why not legalize that?
Also, illegal gambling dens in Chinatown are portrayed as hives of corruption. Is it really that bad? It sounds more like gambling between people who know each other socially. The house takes a percentage because they provide a venue and free food. The money stays in Hawaii. Why not legalize that?
Perhaps when it comes to gambling, the worst corporation of all is the state. The government would simply use a lottery to create a new layer of bureaucracy, even though the lottery would create social problems. So what’s wrong with small-scale lotteries run by civic organizations? If a church has a raffle, the lottery tickets may sell for hundreds of dollars each, but I don’t think anyone buying raffle tickets from the church is going to lose their house or become addicted to gambling. A church-run lottery has virtually no overhead and the money goes directly to charity. So why not legalize that?
It could be that some people gravitate toward corporate structures or toward the authority of the state. Someone from Europe once complained to me that folks in Hawaii always have to buy the expensive name brand of a product, never a generic version; also, local folks always have to buy a car brand new, never used. I think that is how it is in Asia, where people feel they have a personal relationship with the corporation. This is much more rare in the US, but it can be found in the way some Americans identify with and feel loyalty toward Apple, Inc. (and, oddly but touchingly, with the late Steve Jobs). Also, Asians tend not to have much of a libertarian strain or the same automatic distrust (paranoia?) of authority that Americans seem to. On the other hand, Americans often prefer McDonald’s to mom-and-pop restaurants because McDonald’s food is consistent and predictable, and many of us have developed a sense of familiarity with that corporation by eating there since childhood. Hmmm….
But in terms of gambling, the desire for a night in shining armor in the form of a corporation is a dangerous way of thinking. Non-corporate forms of gambling seem to me not as neo-colonial. But it seems to me that the kind of people who become politicians don’t really understand that. (Would they even understand what ‘neo-colonial’ means?) Maybe politicians are even attracted to the power and authority of corporations, just as they are to the power or the state.