In denying a petition by more than 11,000 Lahaina fire survivors seeking to postpone today’s reopening of West Maui tourism, Gov. Josh Green said it’s time for recovery to begin and declared, “We have to be decisive.”
The big question hanging over the Lahaina recovery — and much of Green’s gubernatorial agenda — is whether it’s possible in these contentious times to make sharp decisions that can win a critical mass of citizen respect.
Fulfillment of Green’s promise that Lahaina’s future will be decided by those who live there depends on two things: residents attaining clear agreement on their wishes, and political leaders mustering the will to resist their own contrary wishes and those of monied special interests.
In the first test of the governor’s pledge, he rejected the wishes expressed by a large number of fire survivors in favor of the visitor industry’s desire for an early reopening.
“There is no right time,” he said. “There’s just time. There’s time to heal. There’s time to bring ourselves back to a place where we can get housing for one another. There’s time to start recovery.”
So he’s going to let survivors direct the recovery unless he disagrees with what they want done?
Green prides himself on bold statements and decisive actions, but these can be far trickier in the public square than in the clear hierarchy of the emergency rooms where he spent his career as a physician.
Hopefully, he learned lessons from the stumbling start of his audacious plan to use emergency decrees to build 50,000 homes in five years to address Hawaii’s housing crisis.
His problem there was he focused too much on bold statements and too little on building consensus to support them.
His broad suspension of laws and regulations by emergency order drew lawsuits from environmental groups that depend on the rules to achieve their goals, along with ugly threats — some personal and violent — from those who have lost trust in government and gravitated to the political extreme.
Green said he wouldn’t stand for vile threats against his appointees, but in fact, the most strident critics got what they wanted.
His housing director resigned rather than put up with the vicious vilification and was replaced by a committee. We know how effective those are at bold actions.
Green backed down on suspending many of the regulations that drag out housing development, without any guarantee those who sued him would be placated. His initial ambitious goals, always a long shot, now seem out of reach.
It was an instance in which he would have done well to follow the first rule of carpentry:
Measure twice and cut once.
In an age of widespread suspicion, disinformation and distrust, we’ve moved far away from the old democratic ideal of working through our differences and hammering out agreements the majority can live with.
We’re about having it all our own way, demonizing the opposition and taking pride in not being governable.
The Lahaina recovery threatens to become a long and nasty battle unless leaders and citizens alike can change the dynamic and realize that over-hyped promises and angry rhetoric are poor substitutes for thoughtful groundwork.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
