Editorials
Thursday, May 15, 1997FAILURE by the state Legislature to respond to a Hawaii Supreme Court decision banning privatization of county and state services threatens to play havoc with government operations. The lawmakers' negligence has left public-employee union officials, who have exercised enormous political power in Hawaii for decades, with unprecedented leverage to dictate public policy. The alarm of neighbor island mayors is fully justified. The state can't ignore privatization crisis
The state high court ruled on Feb. 28 that Hawaii County wrongly hired a private company to operate a landfill in Kona. The sweeping decision proclaimed that neighbor island counties could not privatize services that "have been customarily and historically provided by civil servants" except under special circumstances. The Legislature had plenty of time to remedy the situation by amending the civil service law but did nothing, creating the present crisis.
Now the court has reaffirmed its ruling, adding that the Big Island circuit court should order the transfer of the landfill operation to the county as "rapidly as possible but consistent with practical and public interest concerns."
Hawaii County is poised to cancel 1,300 private contracts, while the mayors of Kauai and Maui are reviewing their counties' contracts. A Kauai landfill probably would have to be converted from private to public operation. Up to 100 contracts for private parks maintenance with individuals on Maui are to be canceled.
Mayor Jeremy Harris points out that the ruling does not apply to Honolulu because it has its own civil service law. However, Honolulu's applicable charter article is identical to the state law covering the state and other counties, and the city's private contracts quickly could be placed in similar jeopardy by a lawsuit. Harris' complacency is shortsighted.
Meanwhile, United Public Workers head Gary Rodrigues, while mouthing assurance that no emergency exists, is compiling a list of every county contract to determine which ones his union will allow next year's Legislature to exempt from the Supreme Court ban. Such an exemption system would be ridiculously cumbersome.
The question is whether legislators will have the courage to stand up to the new personnel czar they created through their inaction and return decisions on privatization to the governments that are supposed to be in charge.
GOVERNOR Cayetano knows what it's like for pets and their owners to endure four months of quarantine. He's experienced it himself with his pet bulldog. So it's understandable that he would be sympathetic to calls to reduce the quarantine period to a more bearable one month. The governor has approved new regulations that shrink the quarantine period but require rabies vaccination and blood tests. Animal quarantine
We can only hope that the new regulations keep rabies out as their supporters claim they will.
CARRYING their vendetta against state librarian Bart Kane to a new extreme, his critics are distributing ballots to library employees soliciting their opinion of their boss. The ballots ask the employees to indicate whether they have "confidence" or "no confidence" in Kane's management and leadership. Beleaguered librarian
The Board of Education, which had approved a book-purchasing contract with a private company, named a private panel to investigate the situation and come up with recommendations. A campaign to force Kane out is not an acceptable substitute for that effort.
Rupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
