David Shapiro: Spotlight will soon shift from Legislature to Green

Former Gov. Neil Abercrombie was quoted as saying the Legislature runs the state three months a year and the administration the remaining nine.

Legislators don’t actually direct programs, but when in session they’re the focus of attention, with the governor and his team spending critical time at legislative hearings negotiating budgets, wrangling over policy, answering oversight questions and getting appointees confirmed.

In this context, the new administration of Gov. Josh Green doesn’t become fully untracked until the Legislature adjourns May 4 and he takes center stage with a Cabinet in place, a budget set that tells him his resources and a grasp of what he can do by executive action without legislative approval.

Green, an emergency room doctor, campaigned as a man of action who would be unusually bold in tackling Hawaii’s longstanding problems — cost of living, lack of affordable housing, homelessness, climate change, decaying infrastructure and dozens of other pressing concerns.

He has kept up the action theme in his early months, but so far it’s been mostly talk as he haggles with the Legislature on policies.

The public has been reasonably patient, but that likely changes once the Legislature goes home and Green gets the spotlight to himself; people will expect the bold action to commence.

A good model for Green as he takes on the longstanding problems is his own handling of the delayed opening of Kulanihakoi High School on Maui.

The failure of expensive public facilities to open promptly after construction is a sore point among voters, with the long bureaucratic delays in opening the new state hospital in Kaneohe and a city homeless center in Iwilei among the examples.

When controversy renewed over Kulanihakoi remaining shut because the Department of Education ignored a 10-year-old Land Use Commission order to install a safe highway crossing, Green jumped in and worked the problem forthrightly with Maui Mayor Richard Bissen, the DOE, the LUC and other parties.

He quickly facilitated a solution to get the school open next semester while the DOE expedites work on a permanent fix.

He’s going to need a lot more of that “just get it done” spirit to solve the bigger and more complex issues on his plate, and our state needs for him to make good.

Hawaii is in trouble as we pay the price of endlessly kicking the can down the road on the long-known challenges that threaten our way of life.

We’re becoming increasingly gentrified as local people lose hope of opportunity here and move away, while wealthy outsiders move in with different expectations and drive up the cost of everything.

We risk becoming a society in which newcomers live in luxury condos while too many locals live in tiny homes or tents, and the remaining middle class is in large part the public workers paid from the higher taxes needed to keep the development machine greased.

Green isn’t responsible for the long neglect of our problems, but it’s now on him to get us moving meaningfully in the other direction as promised — even if it means butting heads with entrenched power brokers.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.