Ige fails to address coming challenges

The State of the State address gives the top elected official the opportunity to say where Hawaii has been on his or her watch and, importantly, where it’s going.

In his final such address in his 4-year term, Gov. David Ige offered barely a glimmer of how he intends to counter the very real hurdles that confront him, and settled for delivering a laundry list of projects.

Some of those are fine as incremental steps and worth acknowledging, but Monday’s speech on the whole was too backward-looking, rather than a call to action on what lies ahead. That’s what was needed.

Perhaps at the beginning of a year when the governor will be seeking re-election, he wanted to stick to positive themes. But even as campaign-year speeches go, this one was uninspiring, less noteworthy for what Ige did say than for what went unsaid.

For starters, there was no reference to Hawaii’s Jan. 13 ballistic- missile scare, in which the state disastrously fumbled what was supposed to have been a routine test of the alert system.

Ige might have felt enough had been said, but surely lawmakers and the voters who were listening were expecting at least a brief, pointed statement about civil defense in general — and on how he’d ensure against a repeat performance.

Not a word was spoken, either, about the Thirty Meter Telescope, the plan for a new $1.4 billion facility atop Mauna Kea. That’s been hotly contested, principally by Native Hawaiian groups. Its developers have set an April target to get the needed permit.

How does the governor intend to navigate through a final showdown? Who can say?

Ige made the issues conspicuous by their absence from the topic list, which did include other benign references to the state’s host culture. “We must find a just place in our relationship with our own history and with the people of the first nation of Hawaii,” he said.

Further, the address was short on details, especially where his top priorities, housing and homelessness, were concerned. A few bullet points:

>> Ige said he’s requesting $100 million to “maintain the momentum” in the state’s push for affordable-housing inventory. That’s a positive commitment, if he can indeed get lawmakers to set aside that much.

However, he also asserted that the state is “on track to meet our goal of 10,000 new housing units by 2020, with at least 40 percent affordable.” If that’s happening within the next two years, a skeptical public would like to hear how. There were no specifics.

>> The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands was given $24 million in 2016, “the highest level of funding in the department’s 90-year history and more than double what had been set aside previously.” However, actual results are what matter, and the land trust has done a less-than-stellar job delivering on its commitment to Native Hawaiians.

>> Good news: There has been improvement in public housing management, and a 9 percent decline in the homeless count has been recorded. Ige praised businessman and philanthropist Duane Kurisu for directing a public-private partnership on the Kahauiki Village residences for homeless families near Keehi Lagoon.

But taxpayers want to hear how similar projects would be scaled up or replicated, making Hawaii’s response to homelessness equal to the challenge. Current efforts, all these years into the campaign, remain fairly small-ball initiatives — and even Kahauiki Village material- ized largely due to private grit.

>> Traffic mitigation projects, and tax modernization and enforcement were other priorities Ige cited. The ongoing efficiency and management problems in both areas, however, were not addressed. The public is well aware that all is not well, and can see through the happy talk.

The legislative session is ramping up for what will be a rough ride, with many competing demands on the public purse. If Ige intends to bring his own vision to bear on its final yield, it would help to know what that is. Voters are no more enlightened about it, after hearing his address.