Burns hails Isle gains, ‘Pacific Era’

Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.

Democrats, in control of both the State administration and the Legislature, have given Hawaii four years of advancement unparalleled in the history of the State, Governor John A. Burns said last night.

In personal income alone, the Governor said, Hawaii leads every other State in the rate of growth, 19.1 percent as compared with the national average of 8 percent.

Burns spoke at a fund raising dinner for 9th District Demorats at Wahiawa.

The Governor, suffering from a sinus ailment and his face swollen from a tooth infection, urged voters to return Democrats to power in both the administration and the Legislature.

He said Hawaii’s personal income in a five-month period in 1965 reached $815 million and rose to $934 million for the same period in 1966, an increase of 14.5 percent, and the highest growth rate of any State.

Unemployment in 1962, he said, stood at 4.7 percent, a figure which had dropped to 3.5 percent in 1965 and had dipped even lower since then.

“This,” he said, “is almost full employment.”

Burns pointed out also that Hawaii has provided 31,000 new jobs since 1960, while at the same time producing historic lows in unemployment.

He said the Legislature has “provided the tools” for transforming Hawaii’s education system, including the University of Hawaii, into the “finest system in the world.”

“This is designed to assure the best possible education to all students in the State, no matter where they live,” he said.

Burns delved briefly into other areas of his administraton’s accomplish- ments, and said that for the first time in the history of Hawaii every piece of land in the State “now is assessed in relation to its true market value.”

He cited the case of an Oahu sugar plantation, where the Tax Office reassessed several parcels of land and brought the tax bill up from $55,000 to $255,000.

He said the Democrats in the administration, working as a team with the Democratic-controlled Legislature, “has Hawaii moving on all fronts.”

“We are, whether you realize it or not, approaching a new era in the history of mankind in the Pacific,” he said.

“No other previous civilization in history can touch the approaching Pacific Era.”