Editorials
Thursday, October 1, 1998

State privatization law
needs strengthening

ATTEMPTS to privatize government services were set back a year and a half ago, when the state Supreme Court upheld objections by the United Public Workers to a Hawaii County landfill operation. Since this year's Legislature failed to enact laws to effectively restore the option of privatization, it remains an issue critical to the state's economic recovery.

When 150 business people attended the Hawaii Congress on Small Business last week, top priority was given to amending legislation to give states and counties maximum latitude in privatizing services. The same group had made privatization its second priority three years ago, behind workers' compensation reform. While headway has been made in workers' comp, the move toward privatization has stalled.

The most damaging blow was inflicted in March 1997 by the Supreme Court decision invalidating the privatized landfill operation. The ruling threatened other privatization efforts by prohibiting any transfer of services historically performed by government workers to the private sector.

The Governor's Economic Revitalization Task Force issued a lukewarm approval of privatization, but the participation of UPW leader Gary Rodrigues made the endorsement suspect. Sure enough, the Legislature bowed to union insistence that any review of government services eligible for privatization include an assessment of existing private contracts that could be threatened with cancelation.

The legislation was a victory for public employee unions trying to protect their turf. It was also a defeat for Maui Mayor Linda Lingle and other neighbor island mayors, who had asked legislators to give them authority to privatize some services. Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris at first dissociated himself from his peers, claiming wrongly that the high court decision wouldn't affect Oahu. He joined the neighbor island chorus after the UPW filed four lawsuits challenging Honolulu's privatization activities.

When Governor Cayetano put forth the economic package recommended by his task force, he said that Rodrigues would support privatization. Somebody forgot to tell Rodrigues. His definition of privatization bears no similarity to that sought by the mayors.

Smear campaigns

REPUBLICAN gubernatorial candidate Linda Lingle is getting lots of advice these days as she tries to wrestle control of state government from an entrenched Democratic Party. So it was particularly eye-opening on Tuesday when she got public guidance from a well-known Democrat.

Former U.S. Rep. Cecil Heftel, in a boisterous speech before the regular meeting of the Rotary Club of Honolulu, warned the Maui mayor about the "power structure" of his party. Although Heftel didn't identify specific culprits, he believes the Democrats certainly had something to do with the smear he suffered in 1986, just days before losing his party's nomination for governor to John Waihee after leading Waihee for months in the opinion polls.

Right before his primary, rumors surfaced that Heftel was, among other things, a homosexual. Now, 12 years later, come similar rumors being floated by unidentified parties that Lingle is a lesbian. Heftel said Lingle did the right thing by attacking the allegation head on and denying it publicly. He also saw nothing wrong with GOP Chairwoman Donna Alcantara charging in a fund-raising letter that the Democrats will resort to "intimidation tactics and smear campaigns" as Nov. 3 nears.

While Lingle backers are basking in the support of Heftel, and Cayetano's people discount the impact of his public attack, voters would appreciate a return to the discussion of issues rather than more mud-slinging from either party.

Kosovo conflict

THE Clinton administration and NATO may have little choice but to take action in the Serbian region of Kosovo following the latest massacres of ethnic Albanian civilians by Serbian forces. The slaughter of 18 women, children and elderly Albanians amounts to brazen contempt for repeated warnings of NATO intervention in the event of continued atrocities.

Armed conflict has been going on in Kosovo since 1996, with the surfacing of a guerrilla group to resist the police state that President Slobodan Milosevic imposed with the breakup of Yugoslavia and to fight for an independent nation. It escalated in June, when Milosevic authorized a crackdown on demonstrations by ethnic Albanians, who comprise 90 percent of Kosovo's population. NATO sent fighter jets and reconnaissance planes to neighboring countries as a warning, but Milosevic paid them no heed.

The Serbs have killed at least 600 Albanians, mostly defenseless civilians, destroyed scores of villages and rendered 250,000 Albanian Kosovars homeless as winter fast approaches. The Pentagon has said it is examining ways of providing humanitarian aid, but that would be difficult if not impossible unless the fighting is stopped.

Britain has called for the convening of an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to look into the massacres and warned that NATO is ready for targeted air strikes against the Serbians. But the West does not support the movement for independence in Kosovo, prefering that it be granted autonomy within Serbia, one of the two remaining states of Yugoslavia.

Any NATO military intervention that might be applied should be brief, precisely targeted and limited to achieving a cease-fire under which emergency humanitarian assistance can be provided. That should be followed by a resumption of efforts to resolve the conflict through diplomacy.

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Rupert E. Phillips, CEO

John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher

David Shapiro, Managing Editor

Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor

Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors

A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor