On Politics: Finally, Hawaii politicos doing nothing might actually pay off for long-suffering taxpayers

Doing nothing proved to be the best policy choice last week.

Usually inaction by local leaders meets with disapproval, but taking your hand off the throttle is sometimes the way to go.

Here’re two examples of where saying no, or waiting or doing nothing, was the only choice.

First, last week at the state Legislature, the House sent to the Senate a bill that declines a 10% pay raise for state legislators, judges, the governor and department heads.

In a moment that is more crafty than illogical, the state law on those salary increases is written as a negative. That is, the Salary Commission proposes a set of increases and if the Legislature does not reject them, they become law. This allows legislators to say, “I never voted to raise my pay.”

But House Speaker Scott Saiki sponsored legislation to actually suspend the 10% raises. The House last week voted to defer the raises, and the bill now goes to the Senate for a final pay-raise hold, which is expected.

Not surprisingly, recent sampling of public opinion in the Star-Advertiser’s “Big Q” informal poll last week found 480 readers in favor of dropping the raises altogether; another 334 said to defer the increase through December 2022 as proposed; and 18 said to give them the raise, which is already deferred from last year. Legislators now are paid $62,604 a year.

In another bit of negative news, U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz may be Hawaii’s senior senator and an up-and-coming member of the Democratic majority, but all that may not be enough to save Honolulu’s imperiled train. In a report last week, Schatz said the time for “magical thinking” is over. Billions of dollars will not “fall out of the sky from Washington.”

Schatz was reacting to Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s written request to the four-person congressional delegation asking for $800 million more in federal aid for the rail project.

“The expectation should be that as long as local agencies can provide a path forward for completing the rail, that all of the federal funding previously committed will be made available, but not a penny more,” Schatz said.

The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation’s interim CEO Lori Kahikina said in March that “what we’re looking at is about a $3 billion shortfall.” She added that the project, which was supposed to finish in 2020, is now estimated to be completed in 2031, so even $800 million isn’t going to save this continuing disaster.

And something finally did successfully start last week, but without the tools to finish the job. The nine-member state reapportionment commission met and selected Dr. Mark Mugiishi, the chief executive of HMSA, as its chairman. Mugiishi, who is also associate chairman of the department of surgery and director of surgical education at the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine, is someone to watch in local politics. He was selected by Speaker Saiki to serve on the House Select Committee on COVID-19 Economic and Financial Preparedness, which drafted a plan for reopening the economy after the COVID-19 crisis shut Hawaii’s economy.

With regard to reapportionment, the committee is to draw the new boundaries for Hawaii’s congressional districts and state House and Senate legislative districts. The catch is that the boundaries are set by using data from the 2020 U.S. Census.

The problem is the data might not be ready until September. It usually is available in the first four months of the reapportionment year — but officials say the problems caused by the COVID pandemic triggered the delay.

Without the numbers there is no plan, and without the plan, there really isn’t anything to do. Strike Three!

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