Newcomers take hits from vets in mayoral debate

It was open season on the newbies at the first — and likely last — live televised debate between the Honolulu mayoral candidates before the Aug. 8 primary election.

Given the opportunity to question each other individually, the three hopefuls with elective office experience took aim at first-time candidates Keith Amemiya and Rick Blangiardi, currently the top two fundraisers according to recent campaign financing reports. And when their time came, Amemiya and Blangiardi also jabbed at each other.

In all, the first eight of the questions that the candidates were allowed to ask one of their opponents were directed at either Amemiya or Blangiardi. Former U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa got the ninth question and Hannemann got the last one.

Former Mayor Mufi Hanne­mann, who grilled both men about their lack of knowledge of details of the city budget, said “This is no time for on-the-job training … they don’t know how to manage this budget. And that’s why I’m saying you can’t take a chance on a rookie coming in when he doesn’t know the first thing about putting this budget together in a fiscally responsible manner.”

Councilwoman Kym Pine questioned Amemiya’s purchase of a Kakaako condominium “using a government loophole” that allowed him to gain a profit, and asked if he would sell it to a working class family at his purchase price. Amemiya called the question inaccurate and misleading. He and his wife bought a market-priced unit for their son “in the hopes that one day he would have a place to stay,” he said. The unit hasn’t been sold for a profit and is being rented to a working class family, he said.

Hannemann tested Blan­giardi’s grasp of the city budget, asking him if he knew the three special funds that automatically subtract funds from property tax revenues and if he’d “continue to support skimming off the real property tax revenues.” Blangiardi said he didn’t know the three funds and that “finding out something like that is pretty basic.” More importantly, Blangiardi said, “I know how to deal with those funds and I think that it’s more important from a leadership standpoint on how you conduct the business affairs of the city.”

Hanabusa noted that in April, Blangiardi ran ads saying that it was wrong for the government to mandate a shutdown until the end of May and asked if he still felt that way. “That position’s evolved with the times obviously” and was based on the notion that hospitals needed time to get ready for a larger caseload. “Only that never happened,” he said. “And so my initial reaction was that that was a little bit of an overreach and I really felt that good public health and a stable economy are not mutually exclusive concepts.” Blangiardi said “I could see then, having worked with small businesses throughout the state for years, how crippling this epidemic could be.”

Blangiardi asked Ame­miya if, given that he was endorsed by the two largest public worker unions, he would, like him, support postponing approved pay raises until the economy improves. Amemiya said while state lawmakers approved the pay raises, “our public service workers are a key component of our economy; they’re also a key component of our government. We need our government serv­ices at the state and county levels more than ever.”

Amemiya said that while he’s come up with a housing plan, Blangiardi has not, and he called on him to give specifics about a policy based on “tough love.” Blangiardi said, “We’re not in a time to be bringing out long-term plans. I’m much more in the immediate.” He said his “tough love” concept refers to his support of sit-lie bans to help chronically homeless individuals coupled with the need to accelerate the development of facilities to help them get care.

The 90-minute debate, put on by KHON and affiliate KHII and hosted by reporter Gina Mangieri, was held in a nearly empty Hawaii Theater. The debate was co- sponsored by AARP Hawaii and the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement.

Because registered voters are already seeing their ballots appearing in their mailboxes — and have the opportunity to return them — it’s unlikely there will be any more televised forums or debates.

All five candidates, when asked about tackling the financing of the $9.2 billion rail project in the midst of a pandemic that threatens its projected funding, all said specifically that they would oppose increasing city property taxes to fund rail construction. They also were either vague or downright opposed to the idea of stopping at Middle Street.

Hannemann said that if all private-sector funding opportunities are exhausted and there aren’t federal dollars available, “I don’t think there’s a problem to take a pause” and reassess the situation. However, “we cannot stop the project” and it must be built to Ala Moana as planned or the city risks losing $8.63 billion.

Hanabusa said she believes the federal government will push through a major infrastructure plan that will help fund the project. “However, if it doesn’t work, then we have no choice and we’re going to have to pause and reassess where we are and how do we move forward.” Pausing at Middle Street is a bad idea because “you will open yourself up to a lot of litigation,” she said.

Amemiya said everything needs to be done to try to finish rail, including modifications to the project to reduce costs. “But if we’ve exhausted all alternatives, then of course we need to put a pause, but I don’t think we’re there yet.” Amemiya said. Stopping the project could result in the city needing to return $800 million.

Blangiardi said he’s skeptical that the city will be able to pay for it to be completed or that federal assistance will provide more funding. “I would absolutely want to examine stopping it. I don’t know enough about it … if we could stop it at Middle Street, but that would be for me the ideal location … we could re- engineer and convene surface transportation.”

Pine said the project just can’t be stopped at Middle Street. “We have to have various places where you can unload and offload people based on where they’re going. You’re going to need hundreds of buses to stop in a 20-minute period to pick all the people up in that very short period of time. So we’re going to have to do a re-analysis of multiple, different stops along the way where we can unload people to go to different locations. Otherwise, there’ll be a traffic jam at Middle Street.”