For the record: I was able to speak briefly with House Speaker Joe Souki on Monday, and he says reports that he boosted his investment in Hawaiian Electric Industries prior to the public announcement of the NextEra merger offer are wrong.
A bit of explaining is necessary, and I’ll get to that soon.
On Wednesday, my report on the State Ethics Commission’s evaluation of its executive director appeared in Civil Beat (“Ian Lind: Ethics Director Survives Political Challenge“).
The bottom line is that a long and apparently contentious evaluation of Les Kondo resulted in no action being taken by the commission. In this case, “no action” means that the commission did not terminate Kondo, an action widely reported to have been urged by a faction of the commission members.
There are several additional things to note.
First, the process has been very secretive.
It isn’t just that the content of the evaluation has remained confidential. Even the criteria that were used have been closely held, discussed only behind closed doors and not publicly disclosed.
While personnel matters are allowed to remain confidential because of the privacy interests of those involved, the criteria used to evaluate an employee wouldn’t seem to implicate any matters of personal privacy. So the unnecessary secrecy here, especially in light of the public interest in robust ethical standards, is a problem.
Second, Kondo isn’t out of the woods yet. Commission chairman Ed Broglio’s term runs out at the end of the month. The commission’s regular meeting next week will be his last.
This likely means that the person appointed to fill the vacancy on the commission will be the swing vote who could determine Kondo’s future.
Unfortunately, the names of those nominees on the “short list” provided for Gov. Ige to select from have not been disclosed, although members of the commission appear to know who they are.
In addition, it will be important to watch whether the person selected to replace Broglio as chair is one of Kondo’s internal critics. A critical or hostile chair could create significant problems for the executive director.
And, third, the commission simply hasn’t done a very good job in publicly explaining the controversial positions it has taken. Comments on my Civil Beat column, as on other recent stories regarding the commission, reflect a deep split in public opinion. Some people reflect the view of legislators that the commission has been essentially making up new and more restrictive ethics laws that go beyond the language of the statutes, while others say raising the ethics bar is exactly what we’ve needed for some time.
Although I’ve had my differences with Kondo over certain interpretations, I do believe that the commission is simply doing its best to interpret the law as written. And that interpretation is informed by a broad presumption favoring high ethical standards, although some on the receiving end of the commission’s advice have not been happy campers.
And there’s also a lot of interest in whether the commission was under political pressure to “get rid of” Kondo. Hopefully there will be additional attempts to identify the political players who were applying behind the scenes pressure.
While Bill Balfour would not have been my choice to serve on the State Water Commission, I don’t think there are good grounds to block his nomination.
It seems to me that much of the testimony focused on what Balfour is not. He’s not a scientist. He’s not a lawyer. And, more specifically, he’s not Denise Antolini, a point made by several people who offered testimony.
But what is he? It seems to me that he came across as a straight shooter. He has a lot of management experience. Among those are a unique set of experiences that can, it seems to me, contribute to a commission dealing with statewide water issues. He has the confidence of a number of interest groups that need to have seats at the table.
He says he has walked or rafted the length of East Kauai Irrigation System and the Waiahole Ditch System. I’m guessing he’s walked much of the water systems on the plantations he managed, including Oahu Sugar. He was an irrigation manager before becoming a plantation manager, a position that requires dealing with lots of water resource issues.
He’s been the director of two city agencies, and knows the problems and limits, as well as the potential, of government agencies. His government experience is pretty diverse, and it seems like people who worked with him have spoken up on his behalf.
I also don’t think it’s fair to blame him for being part of prior water commission decisions that were later overturned by the courts. I haven’t heard anyone say that he was the driving force behind those decisions. It wasn’t that they were intending to make illegal decisions. To be fair, the law in this area has been evolving, changing course and resetting public priorities over the years, mostly in a positive direction when it comes to this area of law. He’s been part of that history, and understands that once the courts have ruled, you have to adjust to the new interpretations of the law.
And while he took lots of public criticism for being a “plantation luna,” those plantations are long gone. I see no evidence that he would, as the petition that has been making the rounds says, “favor the plantations instead of the rule of law.”
Would he have been my pick, had I been governor? No.
But is he unqualified to serve on the commission? No, I don’t believe there’s a case to be made that he’s unqualified, given his broad and diverse experience.
And, by the way, I do believe that Gov. Ige’s picks should be given some deference. So while I might not be happy with the choice, I won’t fault the Senate if they approve Balfour’s nomination.
I’ve exhausted myself today getting our taxes figured out, forms completed, and finally into the mail. I made it, but it was touch and go for a while.
So now I’m relaxing while watching the confirmation hearing for Bill Balfour, who Gov. David Ige has nominated to another term on the State Water Commission.
There’s been a lot of strong support expressed for Balfour, who has a long resume reflecting his experience first with water from the perspective of plantation agriculture, and his later career in public service in several positions in the city.
But the hearing again displays the growing maturity and cohesiveness of the environmental community, and the growing alliance between Hawaiian and environmental community organizations. They’ve also again shown their ability to mobilize their supporters on relatively short notice with smart use of social media.
At this point, I’m agnostic on Balfour’s confirmation, but find the growing ability of environmental activists to articulate their vision in ways that increasingly strengthen and extend their coalitions of greater long-term interest.
I think it was Alan Murakami, an attorney with the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, who pointed out in his oral testimony that a key structural issue is that in this age of global warming and increasing global water shortages, we may be at the point where the water commission needs to be professionalized to a greater degree, along the lines of the Public Utilities Commission. The issue are increasingly technical, with complex scientific and legal issues involved at each step. That’s a point that deserves highlighting.
Meanwhile, I lifted this list of resources relating to the Mauna Kea controversy that was being circulated on a UH email list. There are items here from a variety of perspectives.
Puhipau, et al., 2005, “Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege” (57 minutes)
UHM Sinclair Library AV Center – DVD 2902
Trailer Mauna Kea – Temple Under Siege (TRAILER)
Fox, Chole, 2015 (April 13), “Everything You Need To Know About The Viral Protests Against A Hawaii Telescope,” The Huffington Post
Mauna Kea – from mountain to sea
Sacred Mauna Kea – Ka Makahiapo Kapu Na W?kea
Hitt, Christine, “The Sacredness of Mauna Kea Explained,” Mana Magazine
Kahea – The Hawaiian-Environmental AllianceCoriell, Bruce, Indigenous Religious Traditions – Mauna Kea
Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai`i
Sponsel, Leslie E., 2015 (April 9), “Sacred places are an integral part of the human condition,” Honolulu Star Advertiser, p. A13.Petition – Protect Mauna Kea: Stop Further Development and Stop the University of Hawaii’s Lease Renewal for Mauna Kea’s Public Lands! MoveOn.org
