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Capitol View
Hint to Noelani Elementary School in Manoa Valley: Keep your enrollment up and look busy. Ben Cayetano is governor for two more years. Cayetano revives
his favorite blasts
from the pastIt was back in the early '80s, when Cayetano was running the state Senate Ways and Means Committee, that he looked up the Noelani enrollment figures and saw that a large proportion of the students were from outside the district.
Because Cayetano was also looking for a place to slot the new University of Hawaii law school, the idea was hatched to close Noelani and open the law school inside its walls.
Closing a school is always traumatic, closing a successful and highly rated school is even more difficult and Cayetano was forced to abandon the idea.
Like quarters, hairbrushes, pens and old business cards lurking under your car seat, there are many gone but not forgotten ideas lingering in the Cayetano car.
Nearly four years ago Cayetano, working with his Economic Revitalization Task Force, came up with his tax change policy to increase the excise tax and bring more tax exemptions to residents.
It was another idea first put together while Cayetano was a state senator. While the idea was compelling and logical, it didn't work a decade and a half ago nor did it click the last time it was brought up.
If there was ever a gubernatorial Holy Grail that has lured three incumbents, it is the pursuit of an aquarium at the seaward tip of Kakaako.
In his closing year, Gov. George Ariyoshi first proposed the plan to build a city-defining aquarium along the Kakaako Park coastline. Critics dubbed it "George's fish zoo" and it just didn't move.
Later Gov. John Waihee picked up the idea. Although he was able to make a splendid park out of the old city dump at Kakaako, Waihee couldn't get a goldfish bowl up on the shore.
Enter Ben Cayetano, who has two years left in his last term and wants "at least some holes dug" for a new aquarium. The effort looks fine on paper. He's got the town's big fishes lined up, but the Legislature is going to be a tough sell.
You can't build a multimillion-dollar state aquarium by executive order, but Cayetano is exploring a range of other uses for the executive order.
First, Cayetano is expected this month to issue a change to the existing executive order that handed the Ala Wai Golf Course property to the city. He wants a park and has come up with a series of recommendations to move the plan along.
Finally, perhaps Cayetano's most controversial early plan was the staggered work hours project first decided upon when he was lieutenant governor.
Even that plan had its antecedent in Cayetano's dislike for mass transit. Even when he was the state house transportation chairman, Cayetano was skeptical of the expensive mass transit plans and thought there were more creative solutions.
But Cayetano was never able to develop a critical mass of support for his plans. He sees the staggered work hours proposal as cutting out as much traffic as a light-rail transit system.
Again, Cayetano's executive order will be viewed by legislators who will have a difficult time figuring out what is in it for them.
To put it on a more noble level, as Thomas Jefferson said: "Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities."
Past ideas, however, seem to have their own majority rule.
Richard Borreca reports on Hawaii's politics every Wednesday.
He can be reached by e-mail at rborreca@starbulletin.com