David Ige’s campaign recently mailed an endorsement letter signed by George Ariyoshi, who served as Hawaii’s governor from 1974-1986.
Am I the only one to see warning signs here?
Ariyoshi touted his own record of fiscal conservatism while in office.
Instead of seeking additional revenues, I decided not to increase General Fund Taxes, live within our available resources, and still left a sizable surplus at the end of my tenure.
The former governor says Ige is in the same mold.
He understands State finances, having served as the Chair of the Senate’s Ways & Means Committee. Not just his knowledge, but his belief that Hawaii’s people are taxed enough, and that we must live within the resources available to us.
Ben Cayetano, another former governor, also supports Ige for similar reasons.
Cayetano had high unfavorable ratings by the time he left office, in part as a result of his penny pinching and hostility to public employee unions. The university suffered more than its share of budget cuts and austerity during his administration.
Do you remember the three-week strike by teachers and university faculty during Ben’s second term? It wasn’t pretty.
That’s why I’m worried about that phrase about people being “taxed enough” and living within “available resources,” because it has often been code for “stick it to public employees because their salaries and benefits are seen as an convenient pot of money to dip into.”
It’s not that anyone happily supports increased taxes. It’s that we first have to decide on what the public needs in terms of services, and then figure out where the resources can be found to support them.
I don’t think Sen. Ige has taken any kind of “no new taxes” pledge, but this still worries me.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Ige, who has zero statewide perspective, cut the stet hospital system to its knees in last session. We have no fall back, such as Queen’s or Straub without inter island travel, including an inflated Hawaiian Airline ticket.
He impacted far more than UH-Manoa.
George Ariyoshi was a terrible governor but not because he followed a policy of fiscal prudence. I agree that we should debate what kind of services need to be provided, but that debate has to consider the fiscal resources available. The problem with Hawaii’s public employees is not that they’re overpaid. The problem is that they’re are too many of them and that it’s impossible to lay any off in a rational manner during changing times. Government service should not be a lifetime gift free from the same perils and dislocations of the private sector, and public employee unions should not be dictating the course of government. As for Neighbor Island hospitals, that’s the price you pay for living in remote location. We left the Big Island for precisely that reason: too long a drive for mediocre medical care.
Some of us believe that the rail tax surcharge is unfair.
It should be statewide, not just O’ahu. It’s very important that the financing has to be shared by the rest of the state because everyone will benefit.
Public teachers union HSTA is supporting Ige — his wife was a teacher, is VP. Probably why he understands the public school frustration of top down management. Abercrombie supports public money for private profit/private preschools. Where will the money come from that? Abercrombie negotiates by giving last best final offer, take it or leave it, but he can find money to fund private and religious preschools? After going to feeder preschools for Punahou Iolani and religious preschools — would those kids go to public school or priavte and religious schools? Nice step to a school voucher system and demise of public education in Hawaii. That’s your vote for Abercrombie.
Ian, do you or any of your family collect a salary or wage as a unionized public employee? If so, this might be a good opinion column to disclose such a relationship or lack thereof.
The question came to my mind in light of your strong pro-union stance.
Mahalo
🙂
N
Being a unionized public employee doesn’t necessarily make you supportive of their actions. Indeed, it may make you more insightful into their shortsightedness and monocular vision. I don’t think that that is the case with Ian, but he doesn’t hide the fact that his wife works for the UH. So does mine but it doesn’t make her or me supporters of the crazy hold which the public employee unions have on politics in Hawaii. As for the HSTA, I have never seen a bigger group of cry babies. Life in the real world is full of last, best, and final offers that are considerably worse than the one that they received. Their delicate sensibilities need strengthening.
I’m worried about that phrase about people being “taxed enough” and living within “available resources,”
The phrases “raising tax revenues” and “spending more” are pretty worrisome to those of us who feel being undertaxed is not a problem
From each according to his ability,
to each according to his need………………….
sounds familiar.
t
(i usually vote Democrat but NOT always)
Nancy Cook Lauer –
Ian helped take down Hawaii public workers union goon Gary Rodrigues. Google it. Ian definitely should *disclose* that too. In fact, Ian should disclose everything about himself every time he posts.
right. makes perfect nonsense.
Well, Ariyoshi may tout himself as a steward of conservative spending, but it is costing us a tremendous amount today.
He could have had the vision to build the mass transit system (and learned from/hired the engineers who just completed San Francisco’s BART system) back in the 1970s.
Imagine how Honolulu would have benefited from such a system: fewer cars, better planning, transit-oriented design neighborhoods, managed growth, the list goes on.
Ian says “…we first have to decide on what the public needs in terms of services, and then figure out where the resources can be found to support them.”
Let’s consider that more carefully. There’s what the public really needs in terms of services, which is far less than what the big-government liberals would like to persuade the public to want. Instead of figuring out how the government can reach deeper into our pockets to grab more of our money to keep the bureaucracy bloated, we should be demanding that government scale back, get rid of lots of “warm bodies”, and let the public keep more of its hard-earned money.
Ige’s phrase about people being “taxed enough” is music to my ears. I like the TEA Party. That acronym TEA stands for “Taxed Enough Already.” I’ll be voting for Ige on Saturday. And as I slide my ballot into the machine, my middle finger will guide it into the slot in memory of the party honchos whose failed lawsuit tried to prohibit me from voting for Ige.
Strange to hear Ariyoshi remaking himself and speaking about living with our available resources. Under him were mass evictions of elderly and rural farming and fishing people. His administration made it open season on our finite resources in favor of development interests.
I suspect that more than one person will be pinching their nose with one hand, extending their middle finger with the other, and then move that ballot forward into the box.
Selfish blather! The nation’s infrastructure is crumbling. There are 60,000 bridges with suspect structural integrity. The highway trust fund is about broke. Amtrak is running 40-year-old equipment with no money to order new. Public school teachers struggle to educate 40 kids in their classrooms. And all we get from the Tea Party is sneering criticism of the people who have to deal with all that, whining about their taxes, bashing Obama for everything, and all the while bragging about how patriotic they are. Blech!
“Fiscal conservatism” under the Ariyoshi administration is so wildly misunderstood here, it is hilarious. It wasn’t cutting govt. spending and services to create overly generous tax breaks for the rich. Ariyoshi approached the state’s budget the same way a responsible family household would. Living within their means. And like most middle-class ‘ohanas, this inevitably means sometimes having to say no to the millions of wishes and desires that family members have. And I’m not only talking about selfish things like lavish vacations or fancy cars. Junior Boy may have a desire to go to MIT to be an engineer, but has no scholarship. Honey Girl might want a baby grand of her own to pursue her dream of being a serious concert pianist. Should parents go into hock and drown themselves in debt trying to fulfill each and very wish for their child, even if they cannot afford it?
Ariyoshi had a similar view of the state’s budget. The wishes and requests for funding were endless. Thousands of them could have been reasonably be thought of as worthy, even noble. But not every request could be fulfilled. Not everyone could be made happy.
Governors and mayors who try to live beyond their state/city’s means and try to make too many people happy (i.e. everybody gets what they want with no cuts or sacrifices) will almost inevitably result in a govt. that resorts to unsustainable means of creating cash flow and staving off budgetary shortfalls. But sometime in the future, there will be an accounting for. (Unlike the Feds, states and municipalities can’t print money.)
Ariyoshi recognized the folly of excessively relying on bonds or trying to sell lawmakers on dubious gimmicks like exorbitant tax credits for businesses would supposedly provide a net gain in revenue for the govt. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for his successors, which is why our state went through painful periods of furloughs and downsizing whenever the economy went sour and the bill of goods finally had to be paid for.
There’s no shortage here of people coming up with ideas to spend public monies that would benefit our society. But I see precious few ways being proposed that would pay for this never-ending wish list.