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Editorials
Friday, January 26, 2001Harris’ incentives
for high-tech industryThe issue: Jeremy Harris proposed offering incentives to high-tech companies to come to Hawaii.
ECONOMIC development was an issue in Jeremy Harris' debates with Mufi Hannemann in last year's mayoral election campaign, and the theme carried over to Harris' State of the City address yesterday.
The mayor, delivering his seventh annual message, has his eye on the 2002 gubernatorial race, and that interest may have been reflected in his proposals aimed at attracting high-tech companies to Oahu, which sounded more like things a governor would consider.
Economic development, especially on Oahu, has traditionally been a concern of state, not county, government, but Harris clearly intends to change that.
The mayor proposes a high-technology park on 50 acres of city land at Manana in Pearl City. The land, formerly used by the Navy for storage, was purchased from the federal government in 1994 as part of the deal to finance the Ford Island causeway. The park would "provide attractive lease rents and other tax benefits for information-based companies," Harris said.
The mayor intends to cooperate with the Campbell Estate to encourage high-tech companies to locate in Kapolei, Oahu's so-called second city. In conjunction with Hawaiian Electric Co., he wants to provide low-cost electricity generated by the city's HPOWER garbage-to-energy plant to high-tech companies in Kapolei.
And he wants to launch an Asia-Pacific Urban Technology Institute based in the new Kapolei municipal building.
The idea here is to work with the private sector to exhibit the latest technology employed by the city and companies doing business with the city and offer Honolulu's expertise in dealing with urban problems to cities throughout the region.
For local, non-high-tech small business, Harris will use city-owned space in Chinatown as an "incubator." Nearby will be a small-business development center in partnership with the federal Small Business Administration.
Meanwhile, the state has its own Mililani high-tech park and high-tech office space in Manoa already in operation. The state is offering tax incentives to high-tech companies and Governor Cayetano is asking for more incentives in the current session of the Legislature. Cayetano also wants to establish research facilities for private companies on state land in Kakaako in conjunction with the proposed relocation of the University of Hawaii School of Medicine.
The Harris initiatives, while probably useful, could conflict with or overlap state efforts. They should be coordinated with the state to avoid waste and confusion. There is already too much duplication of functions between the state and county governments.
The mayor's vision of a bright future for Honolulu as a regional leader in high tech is attractive and seems attainable if government, business and the rest of the community pull together. But it's important to ensure that the state and city are working from the same set of blueprints.
Domestic violence
as ground for asylum
BATTERED women in countries that provide them no protection were given new hope in an order issued by Attorney General Janet Reno in the waning hours of the Clinton administration. Reno overturned an immigration board's 1999 denial of asylum to Rodi Alvarado Pena, who fled to the United States from Guatemala seeking refuge from savage beatings by her husband. Reno's order at long last recognized that crime against women is a human rights violation when tolerated by government.
U.S. immigration law recognizes "social group" as one of five categories, along with religion, race, nationality and political beliefs, that can be the basis for persecution warranting asylum. Reno asked that the immigration board reconsider the Pena case after approval of a rule proposed by the Justice Department last month that essentially would add women and children as a social group.
"Such a group exists. Its members comprise half of humanity," says Charlotte Bunch, director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University. "Yet it is rarely acknowledged that violence against women and girls, many of whom are brutalized from cradle to grave simply because of their gender, is the most pervasive human rights violation in the world today."
Bunch points out that 60 million women are believed to be "missing" because of sex discrimination, mainly in South and West Asia, China and North Africa. More than 50,000 women in India are killed yearly, she adds, "because their inlaws consider their dowries inadequate." In some Middle East and Latin American countries, husbands often are exonerated from killing their supposedly unfaithful, disobedient or willful wives on grounds of "honor." Some 2 million girls a year are genitally mutilated.
About 49,000 people applied for U.S. asylum in the past fiscal year. A few hundred of those cited inclusion in a social group as the reason for their persecution.
The addition of women and children as a social group could cause those numbers to soar, but recognition of sex-based violence as ground for claims to asylum is overdue in a country that welcomes victims of persecution.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
Frank Bridgewater, Acting Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
