Eight years have gone since Gov. David Ige began his first term, over the years developing an agenda that sought to narrow many of the gaps in state government service. At the outset in 2014, in the aftermath of the Great Recession, these included unfunded state liabilities in its employees’ retirement and health funds, which had been allowed to mount while the state paid other bills.
As a chairman of the Senate Ways &Means Committee, Ige had pressed for a law requiring paying down these obligations, and this fiscal conservatism followed him through his tenure on the Capitol’s fifth floor.
Owing in part to that and to the federal pandemic relief aid buoying Hawaii’s economic recovery, Gov.-elect Josh Green, who takes office Monday, will begin work with a healthier fiscal foundation, one that he must take care to maintain.
But he will also confront a number of unsolved problems, some of which have persisted due to lapses of the state’s outgoing chief executive. As a candidate, Green pledged to jump in with both feet to get things done, and there is certainly work to do.
To name perhaps the biggest cliffhanger, the project to rebuild the now-condemned Aloha Stadium, and to redevelop the 98 acres of state land around it, is languishing.
The plans for a surrounding entertainment district had bogged down in indecision and turf battles over how it should proceed and under what agency’s controls. These were agencies under the Ige administration, and yet the entire process suffered from a lack of leadership at the top.
Rather than helping to drive this enterprise in the direction he wanted, Ige waited until his time as governor was almost up before suddenly pulling the plug on the complex process and directing that funds appropriated for it be used to build the stadium itself as a wholly separate entity.
The governor was exercising his authority, for sure, but far too late in the game, yielding little more than confusion. And he never did unveil a revised plan, as he promised to do.
This was not only about replacing the stadium; it was about furthering a long acknowledged state goal to reduce the critical deficit in housing. Advancing that aim as part of the stadium site’s overall redevelopment ought to remain part of the plan. Green, who underscored affordable housing as a key plank in his campaign platform, needs to make a course correction.
There were some key decisions Ige made early in his first term that rightly should be counted as part of his legacy. One is the continued pursuit of the state’s transition to green energy, a long-term campaign that actually began under then-Gov. Linda Lingle.
Ige signaled that he would stay the course in his first year when he opposed the proposed sale of Hawaiian Electric Industries to the Florida-based company NextEra Energy. He found NextEra’s alignment with renewable energy aims to be insufficient. Ultimately this may have pushed Hawaiian Electric forward in its timetable to incorporate more renewable energy.
There are other credits, to be sure. One that Ige himself cites is his handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Faced with a pandemic caused by a deadly and unknown virus, Ige made the hard decision to shut down tourism, a far more radical economic step than what many other governors were compelled to take. It was the right decision — and Ige maintained guardrails such as mask mandates amid pressure to take them down.
There were repercussions, though, that the administration seemed ill-prepared to remedy. The road through the first pandemic year had many rough spots, not the least of which was communication — with the public, and with the Legislature.
But none was rockier than the abject failure of the state’s unemployment insurance (UI) system to cope with a flood of jobless claims.
This was largely triggered by an information technology system for managing claims that was long overdue for replacement. Ige, an engineer by training, always ranked IT overhaul high on his list of critical needs, but instead this crucial function was allowed to lag, leaving many claimants in dire straits.
And while the governor was quick to use his emergency authority to suspend protections such as the state’s Sunshine Law, he could have tapped that authority to redirect personnel quickly to address the UI crisis. He did not.
As the state prepares for the transition to a new administration, Green’s initial Cabinet appointments indicate an intent to keep some continuity, which is justifiable. Some key Department of Health officials, for example, will remain in place to manage Red Hill and other imperatives. A changing of the guard on the stadium project also seems in the offing, another good thing.
As Ige so well knows, it’s not the stated hopes and dreams that always drive the agenda; it can be something wholly unexpected. Emergencies happen, even pandemics; even then, a governor has to communicate well and act decisively.
Green will have his first test on those grounds very soon, possibly sooner than he’d like.
