SB755 started out last year as a gambling bill proposing to authorize two licenses for “peer-to-peer entertainment,” including poker.
This week it morphed into a virtual smorgasbord of exemptions from environmental reviews and regulations for a wide range of state and county projects. Worried about the impact of that big interisland cable to move electricity between the islands? You better be, because it looks like this will allow it to be done without any pesky environmental restrictions.
And the proposed monster draft of SB755 is suddenly on tomorrow’s agenda for a joint hearing of the committees on Water, Land, & Ocean Resources, and Energy & Environmental Protection.
How did it happen? Someone lifted the title from SB755 (RELATING TO ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT) and replaced the entire bill with a totally different bill on a totally different subject than poker. Gut and replace, as they call it.
The proposed HD2 wouldn’t just gut the bill, it would gut environmental regulations for at least a three-year period.
And that’s not all. The bill is very wide ranging. Here’s the assessment of Hawaii’s Thousand Friends.
It’s easy to submit testimony online. Nows the time.
Meanwhile, it’s the Spring Equinox, the end of winter. Our last few weeks of Hawaii winter brought a lot of unusual things, including hail and a tornado. You have to wonder what Spring will bring.
One thing is a cut in how many articles you can read in the online version of the New York Times without a subscription.
Beginning in April, visitors to NYTimes.com can access 10 free articles each month, rather than 20.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
FYI:
http://www.civilbeat.com/posts/2012/03/19/15263-lawmaking-101-hawaii-style/
Thank you, Ian. I thought that in order to do the “gut and replace” the bill title/description had to match. This is much worse.
And if that’s not enough, the description on the bills “status” page still indicates that it’s about gambling. Who is in charge of this?
This bill was probably chosen as a “vehicle” for a different proposal because the title is broad enough to encompass this and many other proposals (see comment below about previous iterations of this same bill).
The description of the bill on the status page will not change unless and until the new contents are approved in committee. The new language is currently only a “proposed draft” and the description in that draft itself (from which the bill status page description will be pulled if approved in committee) does match the new contents.
Thank you for that explanation, Ohia. The following should then be added to the “Lawmaking 101 – Hawaii Style” list:
* Provide no mechanism, other than a hearing notice, that a bait and switch, aka gut and replace, has been done.
* Schedule two hearings for the same room at the same time.
(This second one happened yesterday, and I found out about it after I had raced down to the capitol and ran from my bike to the conference room.)
Indeed, imagine what it must be like to be the staff person who actually has to write this stuff, on short or no notice, and make it look plausible, with no input, as s/he holds her/his nose. Must be dispiriting, even corrosive, being used to do the dirty work as the powers-that-be plan their next move in a game of charades.
who is in charge of the asylum? Obviously no one that cares what you all think.
I hope people are angry enough to sign this petition circulating around. I hope they’re angrier enough to spread it around.
http://www.civilbeat.com/posts/2012/03/20/15274-protecting-hawaiis-unique-environment
Choon James commented on Honolulu Civil Beat “The line of demarcation must be clear – the People’s right to know and the right to equitably participate in public policies with legislative decision-makers in a fair and open process are not negotiable.”
Draw a line in the sand. Lend your support to this non-partisan petition http://signon.org/sign/an-open-letter-in-defense?source=c.em.cp&r_by=28138840
Share this with friends! “
There are nearly 200 signatures to the petition
since yesterday. The natives are restless. The
politicians better watch out.
http://signon.org/sign/an-open-letter-in-defense?source=c.em.cp&r_by=28138840
It’s bait and switch, pure and simple. It should not be allowed. There is enough subterfuge in lawmaking without it. There can be no openness in a government that allows such a practice.
As they used to say in the Ginsu knife commercial, “But wait! There’s more!”
SB 755 actually started out as an annual, late July excise tax holiday on school supplies before it morphed into a peer-to-peer gaming bill before it morphed into a “damn the environmental tprpedoes, full speed ahead with the bulldozers!” bill. What a case study in “gut-and-replace” tactics and what an opportunity for someone to test the Hawaii Supreme Court’s interpretation of the “three readings” requirement.
Even more interesting, perhaps, is why House leadership finds these shenanigans to be necessary. An even more extreme bill, HB1893, was introduced by the Speaker and referred jointly to ERB/EEP, the latter being headed by a member of the dissident faction, and then to FIN. When the bill was not heard by ERB/EEP, it was re-referred to FIN alone, a hearing was held, and the bill was deferred. Perhaps this “milder” bill, albeit a “gut-and-replace-job,” is a second attempt to accomplish a similar end in a way that is more palatable to the EEP chair.
We shall see.
Who actually does this? I understand the Hawaii State Legislature is a den of thieves. But there have to be individuals who actually plan and implement these actions.
Is it all about money?
Is there even a long term plan to fix the legislative corruption problem, let alone a way to stop them when they arise?
I am not sure if Hawaii is so corrupt, at least not so much anymore. It’s said that contrary to popular perception, small towns are much more “corrupt” than cities because people are so related to one another (although it is not considered to be “corruption” by people in a small town). Also, when a relatively poor and undeveloped society (e.g., Texas, Russia, or an Asian society, etc.) develops very rapidly, where there is both a lot of poverty and huge amounts of money swirling around, there is a lot of corruption.
But I don’t think the corruption has been as intense or extensive since the 1990s as it had been before that. Hawaii is no longer a developing society, the economy has matured. That means that the economy has slowed and cooled and so there is less money up for grabs, and there is a lot less poverty (in fact, one of the big problems is people buying too much), but it also means that institutions have grown up and replaced personal relationships. The population is far more sophisticated than it used to be, no matter how poorly educated people may seem.
To make my case here, I just googled “Kukui Plaza corruption” and found the following column by Bob Jones in Midweek, who argues here (in 2006) that Hawaii has a “culture of corruption”.
http://archives.midweek.com/content/columns/justthoughts_article/hawaiis_culture_of_corruption/
It seems to me that most of the examples of corruption that he cites are from another era, and that the more recent examples are rather minor. I think that Bob Jone’s perception of corruption might reflect just how long he has been in Hawaii, which is pretty long, I believe.
I once heard an interview on the radio in the 1990s with a Hawaii State legislator who was a transplant from California, where he was involved in politics. He stated that there is very little corruption in Hawaii. He said that what distinguishes Hawaii’s politics is a startling lack of openness and candor.
I think that this might reflect a strong in-group/out-group distinction in a family-oriented, island culture (people seem friendly but are fundamentally shy and cliquish). It also might reflect that the political tradition in Hawaii is not so much one of democracy, but rather corporate rule cloaked in the rhetoric of progress. But it’s hardly as corrupt as it used to be.
Another cliche is that “greedy developers” are behind all this legislation. I don’t know. But that reminds me of an interview with a journalist I saw in a documentary on land development in Austin (“The Unforeseen”). He joked about the cliche of “greedy developers”, and said that while some developers are “greedheads”, most are not. Most developers are nice, ordinary guys. But all developers, even the greedy ones, believe three things about building new suburbs:
1) It’s good and it’s inevitable.
2) Everyone is going to make a lot of money.
3) It’s a whole lot of fun.
These assumptions are myths, but one gets a sense that the truth has not sunk in, not just in Hawaii, but nationally.
Locally, all these land use laws were passed long ago because the politicians knew that someday we’d run out of land to build on. That day is now. But what’s strange is that these politicians like Ariyoshi, Waihee and Cayetano had the foresight to pass these laws, but they did not speak up and tell the population that you can’t just keep building houses.
That failure to wake up the population and the home building industry to reality reflects a lack of leadership. There is more to political leadership than shoveling money around. Leadership means telling people what they already know in their hearts but don’t want to face — but doing it in a way that inspires people. Here’s a famous example of leadership:
In other words, you can’t keep slaves anymore. People are not property. You’re going to have to pay people to work for you or do the work yourself.
Likewise, there are only so many houses you can build on a little island. At the end of the day, you need a real economy.
But the problem is we has politicians who talk about building a ferry system so that people on Molokai can work in Waikiki. That’s not leadership, that’s scary. And to some extent, it’s their very success in the past at shoveling money around that has precluded the need to be real leaders.
What are they planning to do that is so horrible it won’t survive the existing environmental, zoning, and building requirements? Those protections were put there for a reason. The long-term ramifications of this bill are positively frightening.
While I was reading the reactions here and on CB to this “gut and replace” maneuver, I noticed that the comments all related to environmental protection. My own habits of thought include environmental concerns along with a concern for tourism: over-development can kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
But it suddenly occurred to me that there is one thing that none of us are talking about, and that is the rule of law. Basically, this would be a stealth law saying that all previous laws in this area would no longer apply, at least not temporarily. Is that Constitutional?
During the Civil War, Lincoln suspended habeus corpus. That was controversial, but it was done out in the open. Likewise, the Patriot Act compromised civil liberties for the sake of security; that was controversial, but it was debated in Congress and in the public (many Republican civil libertarians opposed it).
But SB755 is being pushed through under the radar. Is that totally legal?
It could be that if Aiona or Hannemann were elected, they might be doing the same thing as Abercrombie and pushing for this sweeping land development deregulation. But SB755 is more than deregulation, it is the legalization of the bypassing of the law, and it is being done secretively, ninja style. It’s a legal double whammy.
But isn’t this exactly the kind of thing that used to send Abercrombie, more than anyone, else into conniptions?
Listen and call in to Town Square, 89.3 FM, at 5 p.m. today. 941-3689.
Well, it’s a whole lot better but still not good. Here’s the explanation ion the Committee Report of what they did:
Your Committees adopted the proposed draft with the following amendments:
(1) Deleting the provisions that temporarily make the Office of Planning responsible for the issuance of special management area permits and shoreline setback variances for state projects;
(2) Deleting the provision that permits the Governor to amend the list from time to time of specific types of state projects that are exempt from the need to prepare an environmental assessment;
(3) Deleting the provision that allows county mayors to have the authority to establish and amend an exemption list of county projects as conferred upon the Governor for state projects;
(4) Deleting the provision that allows the county or state agency’s list of exempt actions to remain valid, even if the Governor or a mayor establishes a separate list;
(5) Deleting the provision that allows the Governor’s or mayor’s list to remain valid after the repeal of the section, until terminated by the Governor or a mayor;
(6) Repealing the list of exempted state projects established by the Governor on June 30, 2015, provided that the governor may extend the exemption for any project identified on the list for which construction has commenced but not yet concluded by June 30, 2015; and
(7) Making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity, consistency, and style.
Your Committees note that section 13 of this measure amends section 343-7(a), Hawaii Revised Statutes, to reduce the deadline for appealing the lack of the environmental assessment for a state or county project from 120 days to 60 days. Your Committees further note that this 60-day deadline is the same as the existing deadlines for other challenges under section 343-7(b) and (c).