Abercrombie tries reboot of faltering ‘New Day’ vision

Say your son or daughter is away at school and you text them, asking how everything is going and they reply with:

“We have prepared and are now implementing a comprehensive action plan to meet our current and long-term challenges.”

You text back: “How about money; do you have enough for the semester?”

“We are on the way to balancing the budget,” comes the reply.

That sort of response drives parents nuts and is much of what Gov. Neil Abercrombie served up this week in a summer address to the state.

With not enough locally produced money, food or energy, Hawaii is full of challenges verging on becoming problems and then crises, so Abercrombie is legitimately a governor with many worries.

It was Abercrombie, who in January warned us that if we didn’t shape up, the state canoe would “huli.”

As it turns out, we weren’t so much in danger of capsizing as it was the Abercrombie ship of state’s insistence on running into every iceberg in the ocean.

From proclaiming in January that he was the governor and “not your pal,” to incorrectly arguing with police officers about what his pension tax plans would do to their retirement in February, to vowing to “roll over” the AARP in May, to his twin June fumbles of attacking the Pro Bowl and then requesting that state board members resign without cause, Abercrombie’s gubernatorial learning curve has been a flat line.

So this week Abercrombie attempted a reboot.

Abercrombie’s new “New Day” plan shows encouraging signs of grasping the need for a strong state reorganization. The governor talked about moving the state budget director and comptroller into positions as chief financial officer and chief operations officer with the hope that it would lead to a streamlined accounting system.

Abercrombie is finding out that while Hawaii is a small state, it is a government of many moving parts running in something less than a coordinated fashion. Think Rube Goldberg, not Swiss watch.

So even during his address, portions of his plan could be in conflict. For instance, while he was promising to authorize $1.4 billion in new construction projects, Abercrombie also was forced to cut $50 million from next year’s budget. He partially did that by not selling bonds this year, which saves $10 million in debt service or interest payments, but results in the state not having new money this year for construction projects.

Key in planning for the next year is saving money, Abercrombie said. Much of the saving will come from cutting back the benefits of state employees. Surprisingly, Abercrombie, always a big friend of labor, should get more applause for his “last, best and final offer” ploy to the public school teachers, which if successful, will add a new, powerful tool for management in labor negotiations. But Republicans, not Democrats, are the ones who can brag about arm-wrestling the public employee unions.

Along with getting more money, Abercrombie also identified another state budget problem: We’ll owe more money next year when we have to pay back a portion of the Hurricane Relief Fund, and we ought to be putting something in a rainy day fund.

When the Washington Place media event was completed, Abercrombie had overcome one of his most endearing faults, the inability to “stay on message.” While those hoping that he would thwart his handlers and let Neil be Neil, the governor carefully stuck close to the script in reading his teleprompter.

If he had been left to launch into Abercrombie riffs, perhaps the governor could have added the new, big ideas that were so needed but lacking from this address.