WE are faced with the sort of legislative season that makes you wish for a room full of plumbers and carpenters: people who know how to make and fix things. Instead, the recent elections gave us underworked lawyers, ersatz bank vice presidents and most of the characters from last year's Legislature. How to size up the
1997 state LegislatureThe body, however, claims a sea change. Saying they felt the voter's wrath, leadership professes to have heard and learned.
But if legislators really felt the pain of the voters and decided to clean up their act, why would the Senate come up with such a bizarre scheme as dual chairmanships?
In the Legislature's world, process and style reign over accomplishments. Gamesmanship defines the winners.
Still, few observers think the Senate's current plan of two chairs for the price of one is likely to be anything but a disaster.
If the Legislature puts aside the New Age explanations - before there is a Committee on Aroma Therapy and calling for the construction of triangles with magic crystals over the prisons and schools - the state's real problems would come into focus.
The problems we know; it is the solutions that we need. This is a serious year, all the way round.
The economy cannot stand another study, seminar, conference or commission. It must be fixed.
Bankruptcies and foreclosures are soaring, out-migration is in, and even those who are working are nervous.
Legislators must nurture the economic spirit with the same zeal and understanding that would be devoted to any other ailing creature.
Two ways to move the economy forward are to cut regulations and to cut taxes.
Some in the Legislature have already shown an interest in actually reducing the size of government. If the Legislature could actually dismantle part of the business-choking apparatus in the state bureaucracy, the economy would grow.
This is also the year for decisions on major tax changes. Nothing speaks louder than two short words: tax cut.
I still remember former House Finance Committee Chairman Jack Suwa waving his arms as he gave a fine, nine-word speech: "Mr. Speaker, this bill is about jobs, jobs, jobs," he said.
This season, to solve the state's No. 1 problem, the focus must be on the same thing: jobs, jobs, jobs.
While it is too simple to say that new career opportunities and more money are the only things that will pull the state out of its troubles, it should be the goal and the measurement for this Legislature.
Running parallel to that guideline, however, is one that is equally important for Hawaii - the way we treat those who cannot fend for themselves. Our elderly, our sick, our young and our battered must not be left to a marketplace economy.
GOV. Ben Cayetano, after being forced last year to cut benefits to the poor, is now trying to hold the line against federal welfare cuts.
It is a question, not of politics and not of expediency, but of hope for our state. The mission, then, is to deliver both the jobs and compassion.
Can this 1997 state Legislature do both: heed the call for more work while saving the disadvantaged from a series of hastily passed welfare cuts?
It can, but it is a job for real workers.
The question for this legislative season is just how many real workers do we have.
