Isle leaders’ missteps put residents in critical state

Ineptitude comes with a cost as we "flASHback" on June’s news that amused and confused:

» Gov. David Ige abandoned the state’s $130 million investment in the broken Hawaii Health Connector and began moving local Obamacare patients to the federal exchange. It’s getting hard to distinguish between the price of paradise and the price of incompetence.

» Ige ducked the big showdown on Mauna Kea by slipping off to a Washington, D.C., panel discussion for his third trip in a month. Does no leadership qualify as the different kind of leadership he promised?

» Blaming "mental errors," House Speaker Joe Souki said it was a mistake when he reported on his financial disclosure that he doubled his holdings in Hawaiian Electric Industries as NextEra plotted to buy the utility. Souki confused his financial disclosure with his list for Santa.

» The City Ethics Commission, encouraged by the Caldwell administration, muzzled Executive Director Chuck Totto for talking to the media about City Council ethics violations that could nullify rail votes. Totto was accused of straying from the city’s ethical philosophy of see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil.

» The city plans to retrofit five of its retired buses into a fleet of mobile homeless shelters. It’s a prototype for the ultimate use of the Oahu rail system.

» Hawaii people are less likely than residents of any other state to be couch potatoes, according to the real estate blog Estately. Who has room for a couch in the tents so many here live in?

» On Wednesday, Ho- nolulu will become the last county in Hawaii to ban plastic shopping bags. Loss of the handy bags leaves Oahuans scrambling for new ways to wrap lunch, doggie doo and political campaign donations.

» The Board of Education voted to make sex education mandatory in Hawaii public schools. Now the poor kids have to learn sex from the same folks who have them testing below average in reading and math.

» After demanding pay-related performance evaluations for teachers, the Department of Education gave its top managers 4 percent raises without evaluations. It’s a theory of leadership known as "Eat My Shorts."

» The Neighborhood Commission certified the results of recent elections in which 598 candidates ran for 437 seats. It’s the only election in which winners serve two-year terms and losers have to serve four years.

» The U.S. military command is concerned about reports that China has deployed surveillance ships off the coast of Hawaii. How else can the Chinese protect their investment in luxury Kakaako condominiums?

And the quote of the month … from rail CEO Dan Grabauskas, warning drivers to exercise caution as train guideway construction moves into populated areas: "We have a saying — ‘Look ahead, not overhead.’" The rail project has a long history of not looking at its overhead.

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Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.