LIKE any good three-ring circus, the state Legislature is a blur, moving on many fronts. Few can keep up, so here is a good news alert about how the Legislature is helping. Cracking down on
unpaid campaign loansNever again should small business organizations, the banks, the developers or others with a sharp eye on the bottom line dare complain about the Legislature not understanding them.
Bean counters from Hawi to Hanapepe can take heart because the Legislature, most particularly Rep. Terrance Tom, Judiciary Committee chairman, has heard them.
As we know, the problem with business in Hawaii is not the stifling bureaucrats with list after list of petty requirements.
It is not the crushing tax system that pries loose its slice of flesh for every picayune transaction. Nor is it the usurious commercial lease rates that extract thousands of extra dollars from each humble shopkeeper.
No, the big problem facing business today is how to get politicians to pay back their campaign loans. We know of politicians, mostly failed candidates, walking our city right now, who owe hundreds of thousands of dollars to local businesses and individuals.
The loans were made on a handshake, without security, and they haven't been paid back.
No wonder the economy stalled. How can we expect business to flourish if our own leaders are carrying this huge unpaid debt?
Well, Terrance Tom has come up with a solution. He is cracking the whip and demanding that politicians pay off their campaign debts within five years.
And if some vagrant, panhandling politician takes a loan and doesn't pay it back, Tom wants this scofflaw to pay up. Within five years. If he doesn't pay within five years, he couldn't run for office again.
Is that tough, or what?
We live, however, in a cynical age. There are those who think the campaign loans are not just loans, but great excuses for politicians to get campaign contributors to dump huge amounts of unreported money into their campaigns.
They say the law is actually written to let politicians ignore the campaign spending law. They say politicians can get their buddies to round up a lot of money from special interests or even from foreign businesses and then get someone to call it a loan.
State law requires politicians to report who gives them contributions. This is to make sure that if a politician gets all his money from the muskrat farmers and then starts talking about a tax break for muskrat farmers we will all be able to say "A ha!"
But if the pol gets his money with loans from someone no one has ever heard of, we will never know who owns him.
EVEN Robert Watada, the director of the Campaign Spending Commission, admits that unless the loan loophole is closed politicians will use it to raise and spend secret money.
Interestingly, the Tom plan demands that loans be paid back in five years.
"The concept of a loan is to be paid back," Tom, who is a lawyer, reasons.
Five years, however, means that someone running for governor on suspicious loans would have an entire four-year term under his or her belt before the money would have to be accounted for.
Hawaii is still a young state. While it has had the opportunity to handle many problems in new ways, perhaps campaign finance is an area best left to the older, more experienced federal government.
The feds say if you want a loan, go to the bank just like everybody else.
