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Kauai voters create
budget calamity

THE ISSUE The Kauai County government is challenging the constitutionality of a ballot initiative capping property taxes.

KAUAI voters created a potential budget disaster for their county in November by embracing the kind of tax limitation that has thrown California into financial disarray. A ballot initiative puts a cap on property taxes for owner-occupied residences, forcing the County Council to either gouge businesses, farmers, landlords, new homeowners and owners of vacation homes, or else cut services. Kauai homeowners should soon realize the harm they have caused if the initiative survives a court challenge.

More than 60 percent of those voting on the initiative favored it, obviously voting their pocketbooks. It calls for freezing property tax bills for owner-occupied homes at 1999 levels, limiting annual increases thereafter to 2 percent. Tax levels have increased by 50 percent since 1999, soon after Kauai's real estate boom began causing property valuations -- and tax rates -- to soar.

California's Proposition 13 put a low cap on property taxes in 1978 except -- like the Kauai initiative -- for new homeowners. Many Californians who bought their homes since then have seen their property taxes skyrocket while stationary millionaires continue to pay small amounts in tax on their mansions.

California had to find other ways to tax people in order to pay for needed services. Unfortunately, Kauai's County Council will be unable to do that because its taxing authority is controlled by the state. The county government is challenging the initiative's state constitutionality in court.

Eric Knutzen, Kauai's deputy finance director, estimated before the election that the initiative would cause county tax revenues to drop by at least $3 million in the first year. He said that could result in decreased police and firefighting services and reductions in other county programs.

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Bonuses unwisely extend
reliance on citizen soldiers

THE ISSUE The Pentagon is asking Congress to allow it to offer $15,000 bonuses to active-duty soldiers to join the Army National Guard.

STRESSED by ongoing use of citizen soldiers in Iraq, the Pentagon has embarked on using monetary incentives to bolster the ranks of Army Reserve and National Guard units. The strategy risks having Reserve and Guard members regarded by critics as mercenary soldiers, and would unwisely continue a Pentagon policy that relies too heavily on these citizen warriors. The nation's military obligations in Iraq would be better served with regular, active-duty service members.

The Defense Department is seeking congressional authorization to offer $15,000 bonuses to active-duty soldiers for joining the Guard for six years and matching bonuses for troops in key Guard units for enlisting for another six years. The Guard has dropped to 15,000 soldiers below its normal strength of 350,000, and Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the Pentagon National Guard Bureau, figures the bonus would produce 8,000 new Guardsmen.

Similarly, the Army Reserve has begun offering inducements of $1,000 a month for active duty to Reserve members who agree to accept activation on short notice. The Reserve has been running about 10 percent below recruiting goals.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says violence in Iraq could worsen after yesterday's elections because insurgents may exploit the period pending the certification of polling results and the assembling of the new government. The Army plans to keep 120,000 soldiers in Iraq through 2006.

Citizen soldiers now comprise about half the troops in the current Iraq rotation, but that is expected to fall to 30 percent this summer because Guard units have been used up. All of Hawaii's Army National Guard except its military band has been deployed to Iraq. Hawaii and Washington are the only states with more than 50 percent of their Guard troops mobilized.

"It's not a train wreck. It's not a crisis," Blum said of the Guard's current status. That was a more optimistic outlook than Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, who warned recently that the Reserve "is rapidly degenerating into a 'broken force.'"