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Friday, June 12, 1998

State shouldn't pay athletic travel costs

I wholeheartedly support the athletic programs at the University of Hawaii. My wife and I have been, and intend to be, boosters. With that said, I must express outrage at the governor's statement that he intends to use taxpayer money to bring other schools' athletic programs here.

It began when we, the taxpayers, were told there would be cuts in some very important and needed programs, i.e. education. Then we had a somewhat unusable convention center forced upon us.

Now comes the audacity! There are certain public employees, judges, corrections officers, etc., who haven't had a pay raise in five to seven years. This happened because the state has been screaming poverty. Yet, there seems to be enough money floating around, now that the legislative session is over, to pay for mainland schools to travel here.

Please note that the mainland is not experiencing the economic bust that Hawaii is fumbling through. What's wrong with this picture? All I can say is, thank God the elections are almost here!

Dennis M. Corrigan

Don't paint Cayetano as a Dr. Kevorkian

I do hope this letter does not sound too political during our election year, but I had to get this off my shoulders.

First, we should thank heaven for our erudite governor. He has dealt with our state's problems in a noble and selfless fashion.

Second, with respect to letting people die with dignity, our chief executive's views are humane and are not part and parcel to Dr. Kevorkian. My father's last hours were made comfortable by humane injections of morphine by his doctor at Tripler Hospital in 1991. We all deserve to die with dignity, sans pain.

Michael E. Powers

Board of Water Supply is accountable to no one

One of the practical problems with autonomous governmental functions (the theory behind them always sounds good) is they forget who they work for. Consequently, it was no surprise to learn that the Honolulu Board of Water Supply has accumulated a huge surplus over the years and now opts to keep it rather than rebate it.

BWS rationalizes the decision as a hedge against needed capital improvements in the future. But if the new Kailua water tank is representative of these anticipated future improvements, its rationale is suspect. It proposes to spend $13 million on a tank that is absolutely not necessary by its own standards.

Could its desire to spend frivolously be influenced more by its accumulated wealth than by objective necessity? Since the board is not accountable to the public via its autonomy, we can't expect to change these questionable management policies.

Donald A. Bremner
Kailua

Irresponsible leadership means turmoil in schools

Public Schools Superintendent Herman Aizawa has stated that he wants to increase class size, while educators nationwide have been fighting for years to decrease the pupil/teacher ratio for very obvious reasons.

This coming fall, numerous schools will be on different schedules. Schools within the same complex can be on incongruent schedules. Many families will be in chaos until this situation is rectified. Granted, this is not Aizawa's fault. However, where was his leadership input?

The education budget has been slashed for the coming school year. This major deficit was created largely by overspending.

The overspending budget was, of course, approved by the previous Waihee administration. Yet the government "corrects" the situation by punishing the innocent keiki, who had absolutely nothing to do with the overspending mess we are in.

The school system does not need this kind of irresponsible leadership.

David Nosse

Facts disprove theory Heco expansion is needed

Your June 1 editorial concluded, "Having suffered through several prolonged blackouts here, and having read about the dreadful weeks-long outage in Auckland, New Zealand, we are prepared to accept Heco's position that the line is needed." Consider these facts:

In 1997, Oahu's frequency of outages was the lowest in 13 years.

On Sept. 10, 1988, about two-thirds of Oahu experienced an outage because of a failure in the circuits leading from the Kahe Power Plant.

On April 9, 1991, Heco experienced a power outage that affected all customers on Oahu, again due to the failure of its circuits.

The power outage in Auckland, New Zealand, resulted in part from cutbacks in maintenance due to the power companies' drive for profits. Another factor was the effect of the unseasonably hot and dry summer on the soil, which in turn affected the aging gas and oil insulated cables.

Outages in Hawaii will be a common occurence until all power lines go underground. In the past two months, there have been several power outages as a result of cars hitting utility poles and salt contamination of overhead lines.

Conclusion: The proposed line would not have prevented the two major outages described above.

Christen Mitchell
Safe Power Action Network Coordination

Port, Bornhorst were effective party leaders

The comments in E. Hasegawa's May 30 letter were inappropriate, at least on the contributions of Richard Port and Marilyn Bornhorst, former Democratic Party chairpersons. Hasegawa implied that these prior leaders did not use "common sense" and were not "in sync with the community's values and desires." I disagree.

Since July 1994, Richard and then Marilyn worked side by side with the League of Women Voters, Common Cause Hawaii, the Campaign Spending Commission and the state Ethics Commission to change our laws governing campaign spending, lobbying and ethics to reduce the influence of special interest money, and to ensure that all our elected officials put the public interest first.

Richard and Marilyn were also very much in sync with community values. They followed through with legislative priorities set by grass-roots Democrats in 1995 and 1997. They were successful in limiting the high-three retirement plan, in ensuring greater fairness in our tax laws through the implementation of a more progressive tax code and through low-income tax credits and, in this last legislative session, in opposing the proposed general excise tax increase.

I believe in and have high hopes for the success of current Democratic Party Chairman Walter Heen. But the ohana spirit, if it is to prevail, requires us to recognize the contributions of those who preceded him.

Jane Sugimura
State Central Committee
Democratic Party
Aiea

Senate must pass tough tobacco bill

Now that the U.S. Senate has completed its first debate on tobacco control legislation, it is clear that those who want to do nothing have used delaying tactics to avoid passing a meaningful bill that would protect kids from tobacco addiction.

Since debate began, already more than 15,000 minors have become regular smokers. Even more alarming is that one-third of them will die prematurely from tobacco-related disease.

It is time for every senator stand up for children and demand a tough, effective, comprehensive tobacco-control bill. Continued delay not only means a victory for the tobacco industry, it also means a continued threat to the health and lives of America's young people.

Lila R. Johnson
Chairwoman of the Board
Hawaii Pacific Division
American Cancer Society

Paper took little notice of D-Day anniversary

It is unconscionable that a major story on the 54th anniversary of D-Day was not in the Star-Bulletin's June 6 edition.

Veterans deserve better, especially from a state whose economy depends so heavily on the military. Let's not ever take our veterans for granted.

Proctor Gilbert
Kailua

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