Is the governor trying to help or hurt rail?

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Governor Lingle, whose signature is required before the environmental impact statement on Honolulu rail, says her review of the matter will be “thorough.” I do not automatically assume this means she’s decided to throw a monkey wrench into the matter.

Given her experience with Hawaii Superferry, in which opponents successfully persuaded a judge that corners were cut in the environmental review process, the governor could actually be moving to protect the city from making the same mistake.

City officials are worried that this is not the case for two reasons. First, Lingle is raising issues that state agencies could have raised when they offered comments during the EIS process but didn’t. Second, Lingle is raising financial issues not related to the EIS.

Financial issues would, of course, be very much on the governor’s mind. She’s got a devil of a financial crisis, not of her making or the legislature’s, and she’s been having trouble getting some people to realize the money simply isn’t there for valued state services.

Rail is different, though, a long-term project whose financial requirements will mostly come outside this economic slump, even if the recovery is as slow as predicted. It also will create local jobs and local spending that could hasten recovery.

Writing in the Honolulu Advertiser over the weekend, Sean Hao reported that “more than half a dozen state agencies submitted comments and concerns” during last spring’s environmental study without raising the concerns the governor mentions now.

But the most interesting part of the article was, for me, the very last sentence, a quote from state transportation director Brennon Morioka, who said, “the more credibility the document has, the better chance it has in standing up in a court of law.”

It’s a good point. A careful reading of it by the governor, especially if it doesn’t take too long, could be a good thing.

But by this point I think we all realize that nothing, including a careful gubernatorial review, will prevent further court challenges. The people who oppose rail have made it manifest through their actions and words that this battle will never be over.

If something has not been reviewed, they will complain that it has not been reviewed. But if it has been reviewed, they will complain that it has not been adequately reviewed.

The most frequently heard complaint of late, that the city did not adequately consider other ways to build rail, is baseless. The city plainly did. The complainers just don’t agree with the results.

Nov

28

Every citizen’s duty: understand the crisis

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Hawaii state tax revenues are now down almost a third from what they were in the good times that came before this recession. Did you know that? I’m running into a lot of people who have strong opinions about the players in this crisis but don’t know that.

It seems to be easier to blame the crisis on someone’s incompetence, venality or some other evil trait, than to actually read up on the crisis and try to understand it. If this persists as the shallow view of the emergency on the part of a majority of the electorate, it will almost certainly lead to solutions that aren’t the best.

The best behavior, I suspect, would be to avoid attacking the players – the legislature, the governor, the unions, the employees, the business community – and focus on the math. Because people who don’t bother to understand the math are coming with “solutions” that are nothing of the sort, there being insufficient funds for them.

Perhaps it would be helpful to again try to dispel some myths about bad behavior by the key figures in the crisis:

Governor Lingle began cutting spending on her own a year and a half ago, and took a voluntary pay cut at the beginning of 2009. I still get email from people wondering why the governor’s pay isn’t cut. It was.
The legislature, after getting an official estimate from the Council on Revenues on how much tax revenue to expect in the current fiscal year, passed a smaller budget than that amount. Revenues then fell even more. The legislature actually tried to be frugal.
Union leaders have demanded more for their members than there is money to pay for, but it is their job to pursue the best deal for their members, not to roll over and play dead.
The business community, currently opposing any tax increases, has tried to minimize layoffs, with many operating at a loss until better times. But many have gone out of business altogether in this crisis.

The economy will start to improve minimally in 2010, most economists think, but county governments, whose property tax revenues lag actual recession by a year due to the reassessment process, will have the sort of crisis in 2010 that the state government is having now. This isn’t over.

One of the newspapers had a headline that said “Teachers want…” in reporting the teacher’s union demand that the state not simply wipe out in-service days to cover Furlough Fridays. One union official said he was waiting to see if the state government was committed to education. The grammar of the headline, and of the union leader’s comment, require comment. A demand by the teacher’s union does not automatically mean a demand by teachers. Union negotiations always start with demands for more than will finally be agreed to. What teachers want and what their representatives initially ask for should not automatically be considered synonymous. Second, a commitment to education does not automatically equal more money for teachers. To argue otherwise is another form of Napoleon’s “L’etat, c’est moi” or the old “What’s good for General Motors is good for the USA.” This is always the case, but especially in a fiscal crisis where there simply is not enough money. Any teacher who thinks this crisis can be resolved without some pain is not a good student of the crisis.

No one benefits from this emergency. Government workers can take no comfort at all except from the fact that in many parts of the private sector it is worse.

Nov

26

The truth about Black Friday

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There are bargains galore on Black Friday, if your idea of “galore” is “last year’s models.”

In good times and bad, the widespread practice of retailers is to put a premium price tag on the newest merchandise and slash prices on last year’s fashions and gizmo models that are about to be discontinued.

Black Friday, so called because of the usually mistaken view that it is the day on which a store’s accounts swing from the red to the black, is basically a clearance sale.

You can see the new stuff. You can buy the new stuff. If you think there will be short supplies and fights for the last ones, you may want to buy the new stuff. But if you go to the store Friday expecting real deals, it will be the older merchandise that is priced to move. There will always be exceptions, and a smart store will do some very high profile exceptions, but this is the general lay of the land.

How much of an opportunity Black Friday is, depends on your financial constraints, and on how fashion-conscious are the people for whom you’re shopping. For example, are you buying last year’s video game for a child whose classmates will recognize it as such and send him home telling you that you bought something old? But if you see no problem in buying last year’s car when it’s price is reduced to make way for this year’s car, then there are flat screens and laptops with your name on them.

If you’re more concerned about crowds than cash, be advised that most big box retailers already put their deals online at 7 p.m. Wednesday, HST. The single biggest price war this season will be Amazon versus Wal-Mart.

Want a simple way to see which high-end stores won’t have any deals to speak of? The ones that don’t want to encourage bargain-hunting are the ones that open at 8 a.m. when the big boxes are opening before dawn.

Are you a procrastinator? The single most important difference this year, from your perspective, is that retail chains this year have been forced to be more frugal in ordering merchandise, so the risk is greater than usual that they will run out of something altogether before you rouse yourself to go get it.