I had a session last week with four of the gurus of the state Senate's controversial 1997 experiment with appointing co-chairmen for all its committees. It was a success and will be back stronger than ever in 1998, said President Norman Mizuguchi, co-majority leaders Les Ihara and Mike McCartney and one of their key "partnering" facilitators, private attorney Gerald S. Clay. Senate's experiment
with co-chairmenThey said it did what it was supposed to do. It brought more dialogue and less confrontation, got strongly opposed parties to talk around a table rather than merely confront and laid a groundwork for constructive gatherings of people who normally are foes to try to work out more knotty problems before their 1998 deliberations.
What's different in the 1997 legislative product because of the new approach, I asked. It's how it was achieved rather than what was achieved, they said. Senator McCartney gave an example. When he was a freshman senator in 1989, he defied the leadership to help bring to the floor a bill they didn't want debated. His reward: All appropriations for Windward Community College in his district were cut from the budget.
There were no such uses of naked leadership power in 1997, he said. Rather this was the most enjoyable session he has served in.
Mizuguchi counted it the most constructive session in his 23 years in the Legislature. Ihara said the senators committed to "partnering," which I'll soon explain more fully, are crafting a pathway to a new consensus about how a legislative body should work with less game-playing and fewer secret strategies.
Nobody showed any sympathy for lobbyists who now must lobby more senators to win their points. That's what it's all about, they said - getting more people into the act.
They didn't show much sympathy for a Star-Bulletin idea that we now have half-chairmen instead of co-chairmen. They said half-chairman or co-chairman Brian Kanno wouldn't have been able to block hearings on a workers compensation reform bill if a wider leadership council hadn't backed him. A group decision was that the matter needs more talking out between now and 1998.
My bias is that labor showed itself much too strong in influencing the 1997 session. They reminded me that they also heard from business, education, Hawaiian rights lobbies and many more. They saw some of these lobbies appearing before them in intimidating numbers or demonstrating outside the Capitol. Nothing new here, they said.
Sixteen of the 23 Senate Democrats committed themselves to a Senate partnering compact after a two-day retreat last Dec. 6.
IT follows a pattern being introduced into the construction industry to get the many contractors on a job to agree that problems among them will be addressed promptly when they arise and settled at the lowest possible level. It has resulted in more on-time completions and less litigation.
The Senate compact concludes: "Strive for consensus; at the same time recognize and respect the diversity of our strongly held individual beliefs." Clay and two other dispute-resolution specialists helped introduce the process. The seven Democrats who didn't join the compact still haven't joined but weren't denied co-chairmanships because of it.
Partnering in politics challenges old views of powerful leaders as too self-interested to do anything short of using naked power. But the key senators say they have made a turn away from that and are creating a new, better frame for the resolution of divisive public issues. We will have a better democracy and better Hawaii if they succeed.