Editorial: Beat malaise by engaging, voting

The latest Hawaii Poll makes for some depressing reading. It’s not just the downer experience of seeing how many residents are fed up with their government. It’s that the critics have a real point.

Truth be told, government has been letting down the public, in a big way. And as discouraging as that is, the public has a responsibility it hasn’t been fulfilling, either.

That’s keeping an eye on what’s going on, and voting in elections to serve the public purpose. Some people do this, of course, but far too many treat the whole democracy enterprise too casually, if they vote at all.

The poll took the political temperature of the Hawaii public through a phone survey of 800 registered voters. It was conducted Sept. 12-17 for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser by Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy.

With or without its 3.5% margin of error, the numbers are alarming. Only 27% of those responding assessed the state as being on the right track; 61% said Hawaii is on the wrong track, with 12% unsure.

More to the point: Most people felt there was little being done to set things right, least of all by the officials they elect or the bureaucracy they pay to do just that.

A kind of political paralysis has crept in, Peter Landon, a Maui resident, told Star-Advertiser writer Sophie Cooke, expounding on that theme. Nothing has been settled with the Thirty Meter Telescope, he said by way of example, and the government has not made an effective move to adapt to the rising sea levels.

Those observations about two difficult issues are hard to dispute. But what may be even more dispiriting are the instances of incompetence, bureaucratic delays, lack of transparency and, worst of all, corruption.

Unfortunately, there are ample examples in all these categories — and a great deal the public must do to hold government accountable.

Just at the tip of the iceberg lies the recent report of delinquent payments on a Department of Hawaiian Home Lands lease that were allowed to accrue, up to $242,000, by its land management office that plainly wasn’t doing its duty; another $470,000 in property taxes and penalties also are uncollected.

Delays on various upgrades at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport are only now being overcome. And as for transparency: The “gut and replace” method of lawmaking — moving the body of one bill into another, cutting the public out of the debate — is anything but transparent.

The civil engineering firm Lyon Associates is at the center of one corruption case. The firm’s president, Frank James Lyon, has admitted to paying $240,000 in government bribes to gain a contract; the recipient officials were not yet named in federal court documents.

There’s rarely been a more notorious corruption case than the scandal that broke surrounding the former police chief and his wife, the former deputy city prosecutor, Louis and Katherine Kealoha. Their conviction on conspiracy and obstruction has just begun the process of according justice.

FBI target letters also were sent out to the city’s top criminal and civil attorneys — respectively, Keith Kaneshiro and Donna Leong — though the final outcomes there are unknown.

On the positive side, candidates are lining up to replace Kaneshiro as the chief prosecutor, an elected position. And the mayor’s race is shaping up with a range of choices.

And the public-engagement allowances under Hawaii’s election system, now basically all vote by mail, were designed to make the task of choosing new leaders as easy as possible.

If the door is opened wide, the coming election season is the opportunity to walk through it. As heavy a lift as it is to keep watch on those pledged to public service, that is the only route to greater success, and satisfaction, with our democracy.