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Prepare for battle
over court seat

THE ISSUE Sandra Day O'Connor has announced her resignation from the Supreme Court.

NOMINATED by President Ronald Reagan to the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has not been the kind of conservative that many Republicans might have wanted on the bench. O'Connor has been known since then as the moderate who cast the decisive vote in numerous 5-4 decisions during the past 24 years. Her resignation has given President Bush an opportunity to turn the court rightward, igniting cultural warfare like never seen before on the Senate floor.

Sen. Daniel Akaka called O'Connor "a voice of reason and moderation on the court" upon learning of her resignation. "It is vital that she be replaced by someone like her, someone who embodies the fundamental American values of freedom, equality and fairness."

Unfortunately, that is not likely to happen. One of the president's main re-election campaign promises was to appoint social conservatives to the bench. He has said that his favorite justices are Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the court's most conservative members. Nominating anyone less conservative would be seen by Bush's core constituency as betrayal.

O'Connor is a classic conservative in her strong support of states' rights against federal domination. That was not what those with conservative views on social issues had wanted. She wrote eight years ago that Oregon's law allowing physician-assisted suicides was consistent with "liberty interests" entrusted to the "laboratory of states." When the high court allowed the federal government to prosecute medical users of marijuana last month, she lambasted the notion of "federal police power" usurping states' authority.

She has been regarded as an important if not swing vote on major social issues such as abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty and the separation of church and state. Her replacement by a social conservative will not by itself result in the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 abortion-right ruling, but it could lead to restrictions.

O'Connor might be remembered most in Hawaii as the author of the 1984 decision upholding the state's 1967 Land Reform Act, which forced the Bishop Estate -- now called Kamehameha Schools -- to offer leasehold land for sale to owners of homes that stood on the land.

The law was enacted "not to benefit a particular class of identifiable individuals," she wrote, "but to attack certain perceived evils of concentrated property ownership in Hawaii -- a legitimate public purpose."

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Funding changes
should help schools

THE ISSUE The state Board of Education has made public its plan to redistribute school funds.

A new plan for distribution of money to the state's schools includes significant changes aimed at achieving reforms sought in state legislation last year. The changes, which include startling cuts for some schools, should be worthwhile in the long run. The budgeting blows and boosts will take effect over a four-year period, giving time for school officials to adjust and the Board of Education to monitor the results for feasibility and fairness.

Hawaii has long taken pride in distributing education funds equitably, a result of having the nation's only statewide school system. However, the parceling out of money still has been less than even and, most important, has not reflected student needs that differ from one school to another.

The Legislature overrode Gov. Linda Lingle's veto of the 2004 reform bill, but she approved of its "weighted student formula" for distributing funds, wanting it to take effect in the current school year instead of 2006-2007, as now planned. Factors such as poverty of children's families, the percentage of children for whom English is a second language and those in need of special education services are included in the formula.

As a result, 137 of the state's 252 schools are projected to receive less money and 115 will get more. Some of the cutbacks will be drastic: The budget of Honaunau Elementary and Intermediate on the Big Island will be slashed by more than half, while several other schools will see theirs cut by 25 percent to 45 percent.

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