The Price of Paradise appears each week in the Sunday Insight section. The mission of POP is to contribute lively and informed dialog about public issues, particularly those having to do with our pocketbooks. Reader responses appear in Thursday's paper. If you have thoughts to share about today's POP articles, please send them, with your name and daytime phone number, to pop@starbulletin.com, or write to Price of Paradise, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, 500 Ala Moana, Honolulu, HI 96813.
John Flanagan
Contributing EditorBACK TO TOP |
Price-cap opponent keeps lid on testimony
In his Price of Paradise article (Star-Bulletin, July 14), Fereidun Fesharaki of the East-West Center said that the state's gasoline antitrust case was purely political ("some politicians will use any issue for popular gain"). He also claimed that "outside legal counsel misled the state."As lead outside counsel, I would like to respond. Fesharaki has made many related statements in the past month about the oil companies not making extra profits in Hawaii and their high prices being explained by high costs. The state deposed Fesharaki in the gasoline case and explored whether he had any factual basis for such opinions.
Because Fesharaki initially refused to appear for deposition at all and refused to answer certain questions once there, the state at one point offered to treat his entire deposition as confidential. Accordingly, I am not at liberty to cite it today.
Because Fesharaki's deposition contains information that anyone hearing his opinion would want to weigh, we have asked his lawyer to permit us to cite the deposition in response to his article in the Star-Bulletin. Fesharaki refuses. In fact, his lawyer wrote us that he "strongly objects" to any citation of his deposition.
The state believes that Hawaii consumers deserve more. Someone purporting to comment on Hawaii's gasoline prices as an expert should not be afraid of having his views under oath made public. The state will move to have the court release Fesharaki's deposition so it can put his charges in the proper perspective.
It regrettable that Fesharaki will not trust the public with his views.
Spencer Hosie
Hosie Frost Large & McArthur
Attorneys At Law
San Francisco, Calif
Editor's note: Spencer Hosie was the state's lead counsel in its antitrust lawsuit against Hawaii oil companies Chevron Corp., Shell Oil Co., Texaco Inc., Union Oil Co. and Unocal Corp.
Gas dealers trapped in costly position
I would have preferred that Attorney General Earl Anzai inform your readers of the real reason he slid in a gasoline price cap at the eleventh hour of the recent legislative session ("Oil company paradise, and consumer nightmare," Star-Bulletin, July 18).In April, Anzai suffered a second federal court defeat defending Hawaii's Act 257, which regulated the maximum rent an oil company may charge a dealer who leases a service station from an oil company. The decision stated that Act 257 effected an unconstitutional taking of property that did not advance a legitimate state interest.
The recent gas-cap bill changed nothing from the unconstitutional rent-cap bill. Now that the rent-cap law is unenforceable, the oil companies can now recoup lost gasoline profits by raising the rent of the small gas station owners. Because the dealers will not be able to raise their gas prices to meet higher operating costs, they will fail and eventually shut down.
Once again, a Hawaii official doesn't factor policy outputs and impacts when making a decision. Effective policy formation must take into account the outcome for the entire population, not just the target group toward which it is directed.
I hope the gasoline price-cap law also goes to court. With Anzai's track record, this questionable policy surely will be defeated.
Dan Morin
Salt Lake
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Curbside recycling more sensible
Regarding the Price of Paradise July 21 articles on the bottle bill: Curbside recycling programs would collect more than 40 percent of our reusable trash and cost only $5 million per year. The bottle bill will collect only 2 percent of our solid waste and cost more than $50 million per year.No matter how you add it up, curbside recycling is a better approach for cleaning up our environment.
The only reason why state and city bureaucrats don't like curbside recycling is that it won't create another bloated bureaucracy.
Linda L. Smith
Bottle bill expensive for stores, consumers
Thank you for providing both sides of the recently passed bottle bill in the July 21 Price of Paradise stories. It is clear that everyone involved in this issue wants what's best for the environment, but the question remains -- at what cost to the consumer?The law requires retailers either to accept returned beverage containers themselves or contract with a company to do so. Bottle bill proponent Suzanne Jones states that "this could be as simple as stores allowing reverse vending machines to be placed at their storefronts at no cost" ("Bottle bill is a boon," Star-Bulletin, July 21).
What these proponents fail to realize is that there is considerable cost to place a machine in front of a store.
Our members and other retailers in Hawaii pay a premium for every square inch of space on their property, including their storefronts -- which undoubtedly are the most valuable -- to sell merchandise. By requiring retailers to devote space to accept beverage containers means having that much less space to sell their products -- and this does not include the additional area that would be devoted to storing the returned containers.
Moreover, there are increased labor costs to accept the containers and sanitation issues resulting from the storage of dirty containers. All of these factors translate to escalating costs for the retailer, which inevitably lead to higher prices for the consumer.
If the proponents of this new law believe that there are no costs to the retailer or to the consumer except the non-refundable fee and the deposits that will not be refunded, they are naive and misinformed, and they are misguiding Hawaii's citizens.
Carol Pregill
Executive Director
Retail Merchants of Hawaii
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