People power still relevant

If you think your voice doesn’t matter, think again. Recent developments in a couple of controversial issues here have refreshed hopes that people power works and is worthwhile.

Further, that despite a Hawaii government often influenced by familiar power brokers, it’s essential to be reminded that it still is a government "of the people, by the people, for the people."

In the last two weeks, public engagement caused two powerful state-government entities to stop, take notice and seriously reconsider their trajectories:

» The Public Land Development Corp., formed in 2011, is now facing a relook, even repeal, in the 2013 Legislature due to vocal opposition by many alarmed about a concentration of power over public lands in the hands of a handful.

Concerns about transparency and safeguards for development and the environment do need to be hashed out and clarified. Even PLDC backers such as Gov. Neil Abercrombie and agency sponsor Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz acknowledge questions of PLDC’s survival if public outcry persists.

» In another important issue — again involving Hawaii’s valuable land — two competing developers for Kakaako’s 690 Pohukaina mixed-use project publicly expressed confidence they could deliver a sound mix of affordable housing and still stay within existing zoning parameters, including a 400-foot building height limit.

For the Hawaii Community Development Authority, that takes off the table a controversial idea of allowing heights up to 650 feet via exemption.

In both high-profile cases, people took the time to testify in open forums, and it was enough to sway the dubious courses. That’s refreshing coming off an election season marked with balloting irregularities, mistrust, big-money influences and apathy.

Hawaii has the indistinction of chronically having the nation’s lowest voter turnouts; even CNN took us on as a cause for its "Change the List" campaign. In the Nov. 6 general election, about 61 percent of Hawaii’s registered voters cast ballots, compared with 66 percent in 2008, or about 456,000 people.

Several factors play into our apathy: A one-party state dominated by Democrats; resignation over entrenched power brokers; feelings of not being able to make a difference.

Of course, voting is not the only way to participate in a democracy; in fact, voting is limited in difference-making by its collective nature. Individuals can opt to make a difference in the community, instead or additionally, via action such as beach cleanups, volunteerism or fundraising for the needy. But when collective civic engagement occurs organically, and reasonable voices become part of governmental decision-making, that’s powerful and deserves notice.

The Hardwood Institute of Public Innovation offers a good definition of true engagement: "Civic engagement is appropriate when an agency is seeking to learn from the public. But learning is more than simply soliciting input, adding up the responses, and using the data to make a decision that is allegedly supported by citizens. It is about gaining and using public knowledge."

The role of staff or elected officials is to pose the right questions, listen and learn from the public, the institute noted. Civic engagement is not a process where the staff or agency always controls the outcome.

True enough. And in the upcoming annual exercise of lawmaking that is the state Legislature, many proposals and policy changes will emerge to affect our lives. Many will be fully vetted in the open; some less so. Like the formation of potentially powerful entities such as the PLDC, the concept might start off benign or sound, but morph into something ultimately untenable.

"A government that remembers that the people are its master is a good and needed thing," George H.W. Bush once said.

Hawaii’s people need to keep engaged and ever-vigilant in ensuring that its government remains so.