EVERY time a business diversifies out of Hawaii or sells to out-of-state ownership, the need for better public officeholders increases. Picking good leaders
in the voting boothWe used to have a major pool of dedicated, talented, community-focused businessmen to help lead the territory and state of Hawaii.
We still do, but it is shrinking. More and more of our ownership, even of the two daily newspapers, has passed out of state.
Liberty House bankruptcy proceedings were first conducted in Philadelphia.
Our two biggest banks are cutting back their economic research departments, which have been a major source of public information on the economy. Pacific Century Financial, parent of Bank of Hawaii, and First Hawaiian Bank both are increasing their out-of-state investments. Ditto our two biggest private landholders -- Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate and Campbell Estate.
There was a time when big business was too dominant in the islands. Before 1954 many of our territorial legislators got their marching orders from Merchant Street.
The rise of labor to power and the leveling democratic influence of statehood cut business back to size. Now the influence of government labor unions is just about as strong in the Legislature as the old Big Five influence was.
The way around business in 1954 and the way around management of government by government labor unions in 1998 is at the ballot box.
Residual sovereignty, along with residual responsibility, rests with us, the voters. We let Gov. John Waihee and four legislatures bloat the size of state government in 1986-94 because there were surpluses in the treasury.
Together they pretty well spent it all. They added public jobs. They boosted public pay. They padded public perks. A lot of people were made happy with our taxpayer money and not enough of us complained. After all, each 1 percent boost in the economy produced a more than 1 percent growth in state revenues because of the elastic nature of our tax system (a subject for another day).
Businesses tolerated all the red tape needed to get things done because there were profits to be made.
Now the money flow has ebbed. Profits have slimmed. But many of those added people and perks are still on the government payroll, along with a lot of built-in inefficiencies in managing them.
Investors -- even our local ones -- now look at our red tape, poor schools, still-high living costs and take their money elsewhere. It's called globalism. It hurts those who can't compete, helps those who can.
HAWAII has wonderful assets -- a superb environment, the world's most successful mixed ethnic community, friendly, caring people willing to give a day's work for a day's pay.
We have the tools to compete and come back. But we have to be more self-reliant. We still can pick knowledge from the brains of our highly paid business leaders who are mostly highly paid because of the know-how they have, from our university scholars and from others in all spectrums of life.
But we must be more self-reliant than ever. A key to that, more important than ever, lies in picking good leaders when we go to the ballot box. Here lies our residual sovereignty to take care of ourselves. Here lies our and their residual responsibility.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.