On Politics: Coronavirus cooperation between state and city easier said than done — but must be done

There are 27 months until Hawaii’s next governor is sworn in, but it is already apparent that current Gov. David Ige and Mayor Kirk Caldwell, who wants the top job, need to work on this coordination thing.

The lack of a plan was obvious last week as Ige and Caldwell spent much of the time stepping over each other.

The state was in the process of being rescued by the federal government as stubbornly high numbers of COVID-19 cases continued to surge across the state.

Ige was asked last week to comment on a state auditor’s report blasting the state Health Department. The report said “instead of cooperation and assistance, we encountered barriers, delays, and ultimately were denied access to those responsible for leading the department’s contact tracing.”

A Health Department spokeswoman needed time to review it. Ige said he hadn’t seen it and when asked about the developing pattern of not providing the public with information about the state’s COVID-19 fighting plans, the governor became obviously testy.

“We have been committed to transparency, clearly we are under emergency conditions,” Ige told reporters last week. “We will make information available as time permits.”

One of Ige’s first actions upon declaring the virus emergency was to suspend portions of the state’s Freedom of Information laws, including open meeting requirements. It was clear that the Ige administration could not handle transparent government and COVID-19 together.

That was much the same result when the Ige administration was forced to work in conjunction with the city to write the new mandatory work-from-home orders.

How long should the stay at home order last? Two weeks, four weeks? Hours before the order was signed, who knew what it was?

“I sent it back to him (Gov. David Ige) and said I’m not going to do what Dr. Anderson requested,” Caldwell said Wednesday afternoon. “I’m not going to do something I don’t want to do.”

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported on Thursday: “Caldwell said Ige agreed to the two weeks on Tuesday morning. Ige said he believed 14 days is enough time to make progress against the pandemic and he can always renew for another two weeks if not.”

About the same time last week, the paper also reported that Caldwell was telling Oahu private schools to be solely distance-learning, only to have Phil Bossert, executive director for the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools, email “the heads of more than 100 schools informing them Gov. David Ige had issued a press release that essentially exempted them from Caldwell’s planned restriction.”

At the news conference Caldwell also said that while the city wants to crank up a program for hundreds of contact tracers, the state says it wanted more detailed job descriptions and would approve about 10.

U.S. Surgeon General Vice Adm. Jerome M. Adams spent half a week here, acting like the adult in the room, doling out federal money for a massive increase in testing, inspecting facilities, and warning officials they have little time left to get a handle on the virus before it spiralled out of control. Adams repeatedly said Ige and Caldwell seemed to be cooperating with each other. Perhaps he was hoping that if he said “cooperation” enough, they would catch his drift.

For the public, it is not that Ige and Caldwell don’t play well together; instead, they may not even be on the same playground.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.