David Shapiro: Does Hawaii state government work for the public or for itself?

A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s a striking disparity between the way the state cares for citizens struggling in the private sector and how it takes care of its own workers.

While disgracefully lacking urgency in aiding those devastated by unemployment and other economic hardship, the Ige administration and Legislature have worked tirelessly to spare public workers ill effects from Hawaii’s collapsed economy.

The Legislature’s first major response to the pandemic, as private-sector unemployment surged past 100,000, was a special session to rearrange state finances to protect public workers from layoffs and furloughs.

As a $1.4 billion budget deficit loomed, lawmakers in another session voted $150 million in pay raises for public employees.

Gov. David Ige has pushed back furloughs and layoffs of state employees by borrowing $750 million from the federal government the state can’t afford to repay and withholding federal aid to desperate citizens and businesses in the hope Congress would change the law so states could use the money for their own operations — i.e., paying public workers.

With the Capitol locked up like a fortress and schools and other state offices closed to keep COVID out, the state has been generous in designating its sheltered employees essential workers so they can get vaccinated ahead of seniors and the medically infirm.

We’ve seen little such urgency in state efforts on behalf of those toiling in the private sector.

A year after the shameful failure of the state unemployment office as tens of thousands lost their income, payments are still often late, phone lines and online portals remain clogged and offices are closed to applicants needing personal attention.

The state blames outdated computers, but after a year it’s just starting to replace them and it won’t help unemployment recipients for another year.

The state economic development agency has virtually no near-term plans to help people get back to work as it dithers on a hazy Hawaii 2.0 scheme that won’t be presented to the Legislature until 2022.

Despite U.S. Centers for Disease Control guidance that schools can safely reopen with proper protocols, Hawaii public schools have been slow to resume on-site learning as students fall far behind.

Resistance comes from teachers, who, like unemployment office workers, want the perks of essential front-line workers without actually reporting to the front line.

This isn’t to argue public workers should be made to suffer unnecessarily just because others are suffering, but neither should they feel entitled to shirk shared sacrifice when it is needed.

It gets old to see their union leaders constantly complaining in the news about their lot despite the extreme efforts to keep their paychecks whole — or better.

Where is their outrage about the dismal performance of the agencies where they work and the urgency to fix it?

Patience is running thin with public servants who serve themselves first and a government that keeps telling us we’re all in this together when clearly we’re not.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.