Despite major surgery by voters last year, the state Senate is not cured of the maladies that have left the upper house so ineffective in recent years. State Senate fails
to show improvementVoters gave the heave-ho to three of the Senate's most powerful committee chairpersons -- Donna Ikeda of Ways and Means, Milton Holt of Consumer Protection and Rey Graulty of Judiciary. Republican leader Mike Liu also was tossed and Senate President Norman Mizuguchi barely won re-election.
Voters were tired of a Senate more interested in playing power games with the governor and the House than in solving problems. They were tired of a Senate that wasted endless time on side issues and sidestepped the big problems.
So what are the results of the "new" Senate's promised reforms?
Well, bickering and finger-pointing seem as pervasive as ever. A single senator, Brian Kanno, still can kill workers compensation reform without a hearing, despite the desire of other senators to hear the bill. The Senate wasted the best energy of yet another legislative session on same-sex marriage.
The Senate looks bad next to a House that heard the message of the 1996 election and has tried harder to focus on the public's agenda: the economy, crime, education, auto insurance costs and legislative pension reform.
The Senate's problems start and end with leadership. There has been none since Richard Wong took his considerable talents to the Bishop Estate. Mizuguchi and James Aki before him have been unable to unite Senate Democrats behind a cohesive program to deal with the state's most pressing problems.
Without leadership at the top, committee chairpersons hold great sway -- free to go off on power trips that tie up key legislation.
The "new" Senate made a bad situation worse by naming two chairpersons for each committee. Every Democrat was put in charge of something. It proved that if everybody is in charge, nobody is in charge and the big picture is lost.
The fit of pique by Ways and Means half-chairwomen Carol Fukunaga and Lehua Fernandez Salling over welfare spending was an example of how the Senate's obsession with game-playing results in dysfunction.
Unhappy with the administration's numbers, they threw a temper tantrum by passing a budget that drastically cut assistance to the poor, the homeless and the disabled.
It led to a huge protest rally at the Capitol and the Senate quickly had to back down. Wouldn't it have been nice if senators had resolved their differences with the administration civilly instead of making a grandstand play that caused needless anxiety for the most dispossessed people in the community?
If senators ultimately are hung by same-sex marriage, it will be their own fault.
Judiciary half-chairman Matt Matsunaga said in January that the Senate was committed to resolving the divisive issue early so lawmakers could move on to more important matters.
But he and co-half-chairman Avery Chumbley dragged the issue late into the session by refusing to budge from constitutional amendment language that would have resolved nothing and an excessive benefits package. They finally agreed to a reasonable compromise in a deal that could have been struck much sooner if not for Senate intransigence.
Chumbley had it right back in January when he said: "This year, it will be a defining session for political leadership." Pity the 12 senators up for re-election next year if they can't improve on this sorry record before facing voters.