DOT disregards its duty to public

So many bureaucrats, so few results.

The Star-Advertiser Hawaii Poll this week revealed residents’ opinions on some disturbing situations: Galling conditions at the Honolulu International Airport and of our deteriorated roadways, and the futility in making headway on those conditions by those in charge. Compounding the ineptitude is a state Transportation Department neither accountable nor answerable to the public’s concerns.

First, the airport’s conditions — in which nearly half of 401 respondents rated mediocre, and another quarter rated to be worse than that.

The airport’s dated and worn facilities as well as stalled construction projects have been recently reported in Star-Advertiser stories. Underscoring the problems, though, is the tepid behavior of the very agency responsible for improving things: the state’s Department of Transportation (DOT).

DOT Director Ford Fuchigami recently warned legislators about the poor condition of the state’s 15 airports, including at Honolulu. He cited the “progressive deterioration of the quality of terminal facilities, which no longer reflect the best of our state, and are increasingly well below the standard of other airports serving leading global destinations.”

Decision-making for the airports system needs to be centralized under an authority or corporation, he said, in order to free it from complex state requirements, such as the procurement code.

So — here is the man in charge acknowledging his and his agency’s inability to get much done, unless a new sub-entity is created. It is a stunning admission of failure, of a governmental quagmire that bureaucrats can’t — or won’t — confront.

This is how public operations stagnate under state officials without the fortitude or leadership to cut through red tape and problems; instead, efforts go into devising complex work-arounds. And it is a woeful abdication of responsibility — by Fuchigami, but also by a silent Gov. David Ige who should be out front demanding better.

That extends to Hawaii’s roadways, which 26 percent of Hawaii Poll respondents criticized as “very poor,” 38 percent rated below average and 27 percent rated as middling. That left less than 10 percent of respondents giving high marks for the quality of roads that we all pay to help maintain.

The city’s Caldwell administration, to its credit, met the criticism squarely, explaining the repaving that has occurred so far, and what’s on the horizon.

However, the state — again, the state DOT — was wholly unresponsive to citizens’ concerns. Despite attempts over a couple of days for response to the poll’s findings, the DOT ignored repeated calls for comment, let alone explanation.

Unacceptable. Responsiveness matters. Being accountable to the people — taxpayers who pay for government employees’ salaries — matters. Government is only as good, or bad, as the people running it.

“Ultimately, the public loses because it isn’t getting the information it needs to self-govern. This isn’t about the government vs. the press. It’s the government vs. the citizen,” David Cuillier, then-SPJ president and director of the University of Arizona School of Journalism, wrote in March 2014.

Public agencies and their public information officers who are slack about information concerning citizens need to be called to task — by residents and by the administration.

Here’s the inspired motto of CAPIO (California Association of Public Information Officials), one of the nation’s largest PIO organizations: “Because good government requires good communicators.”

Public accountability demands that officials remain engaged and responsive. That starts with the governor demanding results from his departmental directors, and in turn, those directors demanding that their subordinates respond meaningfully to public concerns.