Resist limiting public input

Perhaps looking for ways to expedite the progress of various projects as the state tries to emerge from recession, state legislators are considering bills that would minimize citizen participation.

Severe scrutiny of several such bills is crucial as the session winds down in order to assure involvement of residents and keep interest groups alone from making important decisions for their sole benefit.

The issues include planning the development of areas surrounding rail transit stations, which are destined to result in considerable urban growth.

Dan Grabauskas, executive director of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, has said those areas are outside HART’s plan-making, although the rail system is prepared to accommodate preferences of the station’s neighbors.

However, Senate Bill 2927 would allow developers to make decisions that may depart from the needs and wishes of a neighborhoods residents and tenants.

The bill would allow developers to submit "exceptional" commercial or residential projects that could be approved within 45 days in rail station areas, which would be automatically reclassified as urban districts.

There is considerable danger in doing transit-oriented development this way, as the legislation would eliminate inputs such as meaningful participation or consultation by neighborhood boards.

The time frame would be shorter than it takes for the City Council to conduct the two or three hearings needed for approval of a bill.

"Massive developments sometimes require additional investigation, such as the impacts on traffic, infrastructure, etc.," Robert D. Harris, director of the Sierra Club’s Hawaii chapter, testified to legislators.

Such a short time frame, he said, "only harms the public and creates bad projects that fail to adequately analyze potential impacts on community input."

The public also is given short shrift in the current set-up of the Hawaii Health Connector, our state’s version of health insurance exchanges of individuals and employees of small businesses, a central part of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act.

Several members of Hawaii’s 11-person "Connector" board, newly formed, consists of representatives of medical and dental organizations, which raises the troubling issue of conflicts of interest.

We agree with consumer advocates in supporting Senate Bill 2434, House Draft 3, which would make the insurers non-voting advisory members. To protect the public interest, these insurers would be more fairly utilized as technical consultants but not actual members of the board.

If legislators wanted to help health care consumers, they would create a board of members who don’t have direct financial interest in the plans.

And then there is Senate Bill 755, which would authorize broad exemptions from some environmental review processes to rush certain construction projects.

While some in the Abercrombie administration offered assurances that the exemptions would have minimal effect, Gary Hooser, director of the Office of Environmental Quality Control, is incensed.

A former state senator, Hooser says the bill would scrap assurance of "thoughtful review, complete transparency and opportunity for public input in exchange for a unilateral process that includes no public input, no transparency and no system of thoughtful impartial review."

In these critical, final days of the 2012 Legislature, lawmakers must keep sight of the public’s interest. They should recognize the need to assure public participation in decisions that would surely have wide and long-lasting effects, and to prevent public resources from being directed by companies and organizations that might be tempted by self-interests.