Hawaii just right for business, pleasure

Last year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gathering on Oahu demonstrated what many astute private and public associations have long known: that Hawaii can be a superb place for conventions and doing business. However, Republican senators have attacked an upcoming federal judicial conference on Maui, suggesting that business meetings anywhere away from home at attractive locales should be erased from all agendas.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested recently in a news release that federal judges should follow the example of young people in college or in the military who "use Skype with their families at home" rather than travel to exchange ideas.

"Likewise, a judicial circuit court should be capable of using technology to share information without requiring a trip to an island paradise," Iowan Grassley opined. "The court should re-examine whether this is the best use of tax dollars."

He was referring to this year’s Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference scheduled Aug. 13-16 at the Hyatt Regency Resort & Spa on Maui. Federal judges in the Circuit Court of Appeals in the nine-state region including Hawaii gather yearly with lawyers, law school deans, court staff and special guests — this year, Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito. The 2010 conference also was on Maui; recent annual gatherings were at the California beachfront resort of Carlsbad; the waterfront at Monterey; and the Idaho ski resort of Sun Valley.

Cathy Catterson, the judicial circuit’s executive officer, has rightly pointed out that the cost for lodging and air travel to Hawaii is comparative to mainland destinations.

A letter by Grassley and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., ranking GOP member of the Senate Budget Committee, pointed to sport fishing and a golf tournament on Maui preceding the conference. It expresses outrage that the registration desk at the Maui hotel is open to conferees on Saturday and Sunday and the golf tourney is Sunday afternoon, although the conference doesn’t "officially" begin until Monday. Indeed, how dare the judges enjoy a business trip enough to arrive early!

Of course, those and other recreational activities are at the attendees’ own expense, not the taxpayers’. But that fact hasn’t stopped the senators from agitating that "the program reads more like a vacation than a business trip to discuss the means of improving the administration of justice."

Hawaii Tourism Authority CEO Mike McCartney stressed the important fact that Hawaii is not only a world-class leisure destination, but also a place to host productive and quality business meeting. APEC, "attended by leaders and delegates of 21 world economies, is a testament to the growing view of Hawaii as a serious meetings destination," McCartney said.

He’s right, of course. But these occasional, wrong-headed dismissals of Hawaii as merely a place of play reveal how education and the marketing of the state as a serious business destination must constantly be nurtured.

In addition to the Western mainland states and Hawaii, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals includes Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands — which certainly makes the 50th State a justifiable geographic choice to discuss issues affecting this Pacific part of the world.

Grassley compared the judicial conference on Maui with the General Services Administration "debacle" of a 2010 conference in Las Vegas, revealed last month. The comparison is absurd. The yearly judicial conference has been recognized for decades as a useful session that brings judges, lawyers and others to various locations in the nation’s largest appellate circuit. A flimsy political attack during an election year should not be taken seriously.