Category Archives: Legislature

Former Gov. Lingle in the middle of Illinois budget standoff

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Hmmm. Remember Linda Lingle? Yes, Hawaii’s Linda Lingle.

Back at the beginning of 2015, she signed on as a consultant, and chief operating officer, for newly elected Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Rainer, with Lingle in tow, lost little time in that he would be tying a number of non-money items into his proposed state budget for the 2015-2016 fiscal year.

According to a New York Times summary:

Mr. Rauner has tied passage of the budget to changes in workers’ compensation and collective bargaining rights for unionized public employees, measures that he says will help revive the Illinois economy and bring in much-needed revenue. Democratic Party leaders in the state reject those suggestions, saying that the governor is making demands that are unrelated to the budget.

And this in a state where Democrats hold super-majorities in both houses of the State Legislature.

According to Politico:

…Rauner’s agenda was nearly dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled legislature—it includes such nonstarters for Democrats as tort reform, workers compensation reform, term limits, redistricting reform, and, first and foremost, collective bargaining curbs on public employee unions. The curbs would give local governments, including school boards, the right to decide if they want to collectively bargain with workers and which benefits should be on the table.

The budget should have gone into effect on July 1, but the governor and legislature didn’t reach a deal. And the state is still operating without a budget as we hit the end of 2015.

Meanwhile, after several courts ordered that public employees continue to be paid despite the budget impasse, the administration has been borrowing to pay its bills.

The Huffington Post reported on a recent speech by House Speaker Michael Madigan, where he spoke about the state’s budget crisis.

Here’s an excerpt of Madigan’s speech, as reported by the Huffington Post:

This goes right to the heart of the difference of opinion between myself and the governor. .. The history of the American government prior to 1933 was pretty much to remain out of the business of managing the economy. The beginning of 1933 with the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, there was a dedicated effort by the federal government to in effect manage the economy and to work always to create jobs, to raise wages, to raise the standard of living. That has obtained through both Democrat and Republican administrations. … That’s been the policy of this country for all of these years and that’s where I say I don’t think any government should be in the business of lowering wages and the standard of living. The responsibility upon the government is to move in the opposite direction. To do what the government can do and do well – raise wages on a continuing basis and maintain a good standard of living for everybody in the country.

Among those hardest hit by the budget stalemate have been social service agencies, who are not being paid and are having to suspend staff and programs as reserves are depleted, and the clients they work with across the state of Illinois.

Steve Brown, spokesman for the House Speaker, had a bit to say about Lingle, according to Politico.

— Brown suggested — and we’ve heard whispers of this in the past — that Lingle’s hiring had something to do with ties to a close Rauner adviser and strategist Nick Ayers and “dark money” that flowed from groups tied to him and attacked Lingle opponents. Background on that here: http://bit.ly/1RSlisr. Ayers is a Georgia-based political operative and past head of the Republican Governors Association.

— Ayers’ Target Enterprises, which handles campaign ads, was one of the biggest payees during Rauner’s record-breaking, $65 million campaign for governor.

— An audience member asked Brown what evidence he’s seen of her work in the Legislature: Brown said so far she organized a parade for the state fair.

Well, perhaps the least fortunate are taking the brunt of cutbacks, but Lingle was in line to be paid nearly $200,000 annually. However, it isn’t clear whether the lack of a new state budget has delayed implementing her new position and salary.

Here’s what an Illinois newspaper reported back in May 2015:

The former governor of Hawaii is making more money as an aide to Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner than she did when she oversaw the Aloha State.

Rauner’s office, along with payroll records filed this week by the Illinois comptroller, show Linda Lingle will receive $60,000 for a state contract running from April to June. After that, she will go on the state payroll as an employee with an annual salary of $198,000.

In 2010, during her final of eight years as governor in Hawaii, Lingle was paid $117,306.

And so it goes for our former governor.

Gov. Ige offers no aid for dealing with UH athletics deficit

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Did you catch Star-Advertiser sports writer Ferd Lewis’ article which got Governor David Ige on record about funding for UH athletics? See “Gov. Ige will let UH athletics figure out its financial future.”

That’s a pretty slick, giving the governor’s position sort of a pro-autonomy spin.

I might have written the headline in less favorable and perhaps more accurate terms: “Governor turns his back on Hawaii football fans.”

Here’s sort of the guts of the story:

“It is a matter of setting priorities,” Ige told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s Editorial Board Friday.

As a legislator, Ige said, “We granted the university the flexibility to decide what their priorities are within the funds that we give to them and I expect that they do that. If they decide that athletics should be a priority, I think they should decide that.”

And the unstated follow-up? The governor seems to be saying that if it UH officials decide that athletics is a priority, “I think they should fund that.”

The problem with that perspective is that university officials from the president on down have been signaling their clear position on priorities. Few universities, including UH, have self-sustaining athletic programs. They require broader public support if they are going to compete with even modest success in sports like football.

And, as so many have noted, UH athletics plays a more prominent role in the state because there’s no local pro or semi-pro team for the public to follow.

So there’s likely a disconnect between the university’s priorities and the state’s priorities. No mystery there. And it’s increasingly obvious that the university can’t justify giving athletics the necessary financial priority to allow its football team to compete without beggaring the educational mission, at least not without substantial additional outside assistance.

Ige apparently wants to wash his hands of UH athletics without appearing to do so by just tossing the decision to the university leadership. But that leadership has already spelled out in pretty clear terms what the consequences of the lack of state support will mean. Maybe dropping out of Division 1 football into a lower tier, perhaps ending football altogether.

Neither would be the end of the world, but in the world of Hawaii politics, it’s disingenuous to say this would or should be purely an internal UH decision.

Ige went on to say that he stopped going to UH football games when the prices were raised in a search for increased revenues. That seems like a pretty clear statement of the governor’s own priorities.

I frankly don’t know what the right decision is. But don’t let the governor get away with saying it’s all someone else’s decision, and by implication someone else’s fault.

Legislator’s tie to NextEra consultant shows gaps in required financial disclosures

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NextEra Energy recently disclosed the list of consultants it has retained as part of its bid to take over Hawaiian Electric Industries (Honolulu Star-Advertiser, “NextEra spends on firms to help it purchase HEI“).

The full list of consultants is contained in a document filed in the ongoing review of the proposed merger by the Public Utilities Commission. There are no details of the type of work performed, and the list is full of abbreviated names and corporate acronyms that make tracking relationships tedious.

The Star-Advertiser did note that one of the consultants is tied to State Senator Donovan Dela Cruz.

As of July 31, NextEra Energy has paid several local law firms, communications agencies and consulting agencies, one of which is tied to a state politician.

DTL HAWAII, a strategy studio where state Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz (D, Mililani Mauka-Waipio Acres-Wheeler) is the vice president for communications, received $84,000 from NextEra.

This is interesting because it demonstrates more gaps in the financial disclosure requirements of the state ethics law.

Dela Cruz filed his 2015 annual financial disclosure at the end of January. It reported no changes in employment from 2014, when he had reported earning $25,000 to $50,000 as “director of communications” for WCIT Architecture.

A check of state business registration records shows that DTL is a limited liability company, with a business purpose of “culturally based strategic planning, community outreach and branding.” WCIT Architecture, and a WCIT officer, Adam Wong, are listed as managers of DTL LLC. So it appears that DTL is essentially a subsidiary or sister company of WCIT.

There is no information as to whether any of the NextEra money for “community outreach” trickled down to Dela Cruz.

Nor is there an indication of whether the senator has advocated for NextEra within the legislature, or how Dela Cruz balances his role as the director of communications for this development-oriented firm and his legislative duties.

But those issues go beyond my original point here, which is that DTL doesn’t appear in the most recent financial disclosures filed by Dela Cruz, although he does list the company on his LinkedIn profile, and his legislative profile lists his current affiliation as “vice-president for communications” for DTL.

And even if his financial disclosure did list DTL, it would not indicate whether any clients he did work for had issues pending before the legislature or potentially influenced by legislative action.

These appear to be gaps in the financial disclosure provisions of the ethics law that should be addressed.

Souki’s reported investment in Hawaiian Electric a “mental error”

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My column over at Civil Beat today describes House Speaker Joe Souki’s reaction to my earlier report, based on his official financial disclosures filed with the State Ethics Commission (“Ian Lind: House Speaker Joe Souki’s Financial Reports Are Full of Errors“).

Here’s an excerpt from the CB column:

But when asked this week about the boost in Hawaiian Electric shares, Souki said the official disclosures he filed were wrong, and the number of shares he owns has not changed since 2012.

“I didn’t buy a single share,” the 82-year old Souki said, noting that he inherited the stock from his parents back in the late 1980s. “I still have just 729 shares.”

“It was a mental error on my part,” he said.

It wasn’t the only “mental error” he made when filing the financial disclosures over the past couple of years.

As I noted in the earlier post here about these filings, Souki filed one report in January 2014 that answered “None” in response to questions about financial interests in ten different categories. Most of those answers were not correct, but he then certified the answers as valid.

When I asked about this essentially blank disclosure, Souki seemed confused, and finally simply attributed it to more “mental errors.”

So what’s really going on? That’s a very, very good question.