Yellow light still flashing for state

It’s been a long and mostly depressing ride since the national economic meltdown began in 2008, more or less.

All manner of trimming the sails and throwing furniture overboard was required to keep our state government cruising smoothly, more or less, and the latest forecast from the state Council on Revenues suggests we should behave prudently in the year to come as well.

The council — which estimates each year how much the state can expect to reap in taxes — voted 4-3 to lower its economic growth forecast for fiscal 2014, from 4.1 percent to 3.3 percent. The lower estimate means about $43 million less in taxes than originally thought. And that was the optimistic view: Some of those council members thought the forecast should be lower.

Now is obviously not a good time — if there ever was — for the state to go on a spending spree.

See who’s giving to your candidate

We all love our apps, and Common Cause Hawaii hopes to generate a few new helpful ones from a $52,000 grant it just won from Voqal Fund.

The nonprofit is using that money for Civic*Celerator (www.civic.celerator.org), a series of work- shops and events aimed at developing applications that can provide information about political candidates’ financial backing, using data from the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission.

Imagine rocketing past the glossy campaign advertising to get at the real facts, maybe through your laptop, maybe tapping an icon on your smart phone. Could that strikes fear in the heart of politicos? It should.