Editorials
Monday, March 19, 2001

Gambling proposal
is irresponsible

Senate President Robert Bunda
has proposed "a comprehensive study"
on the economic effect of legalized
gambling in Hawaii.

This is a bad idea whose time should never come.

Senate President Robert Bunda would form a committee, which presumably he would name, to look into all forms of gambling from a lottery to casinos. He has asserted that gambling could provide funds for teachers and the sorely pressed schools, for government workers pressing for wage increases, and for other state expenses.

This scheme is the second shot in what appears to be an emerging campaign to persuade Hawaii to permit legalized gambling. The first was Gov. Benjamin Cayetano's trip to the Bahamas in December in the company of executives from what they euphemistically call the gaming industry. He returned to raise the possibility of opening Hawaii to legalized gambling.

The whole thing reeks of political and fiscal irresponsibility. The politicians are looking for an easy solution to a looming financial crisis or for another source of funds that will permit them to shovel dollars into their pork barrels without confronting the hard questions of priorities.

If the teachers deserve a raise, if the schools need new equipment, if government workers make a case for better wages, if social programs must have more money, fine. Then let the politicians earn their pay by deciding where they can trim less worthy programs or to make more worthy programs more efficient. If necessary, raise taxes. They should not duck their responsibilities by opening Hawaii to sleazy gambling.

This is not about ladies bridge for a cent a point or the boy's Saturday night dime-and-quarter poker game. Hundreds of millions of dollars are involved. Legalized gambling would draw the mafia from the mainland and the yakuza criminal syndicates from Japan as sure as the sun comes up in the East. Listen to Joe Bauknecht, clerk of the court in Manitowoc County, Wis., near a gambling facility. He writes:

"A casino will generate millions of dollars for your state. So here is how you may end up spending all that money: New jails, more guards, more police, more courts, more staff and more social programs to help those who become addicted.

"Crime may increase -- burglary, theft and assaults. People will have to find new ways to get money if they spend all they have. There are many stories about people who have lost everything, homes, businesses and family due to gambling."

Bauknecht sounds like the voice of experience. The people and politicians of Hawaii should heed him.

---

Balancing legal protest
and conference security

Officials here are preparing for protests
of the Asian Development Bank
conference in May.

ORGANIZERS of demonstrations against the Asian Development Bank conference in Honolulu may be optimistic in predicting 5,000 to 7,000 protesters, but preparations for such a turnout is justified to assure public safety.

That does not mean preparing for battle, but rather taking measures to prevent violent confrontations of the kind that devastated Seattle two years ago. Force should be a last resort with priority given to the peaceful exercise of rights of both delegates and protesters.

Officials here are rightly trying to avoid the mistakes made in Seattle. Capt. Ron Griffin of the King County (Wash.) sheriff's department recommends that Honolulu police remove obstructions as quickly as possible and have a fallback position beyond which no protests would be allowed.

The American Civil Liberties Union says Seattle police would have been wise to form "corridors of security perimeters" that would have allowed delegates to get to meetings. By not doing so, Seattle officials "did not protect conference delegates' right to assemble," the ACLU contended.

That failure led to confrontations between delegates and protesters. Seattle officials overreacted by barring free expression from 25 blocks of downtown Seattle, the ACLU charges. That led to a battle zone that overwhelmed law-enforcement agencies trying to gain control with tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets.

"If the police had prepared properly before the demonstrators converged on Seattle, they could have found a middle ground between heavy-handedness and naively hoping for the best," the ACLU asserted.

Hoping to avoid naivete, officials in Hawaii are in danger of opting for heavy-handedness. The City Council is considering ordinances banning devices that could emit an "obnoxious substance;" allowing police to arrest people who deposit glass or nails on the roads, which police can do under existing law; and prohibiting anyone from wearing a disguise "to conceal oneself while perpetrating a crime or to escape lawful detention or custody," a useless stacking of one law upon another.

Sydney Hayakawa, the Department of Public Safety's deputy director, says he expects ADB protesters to "come out with new techniques. They train, we train. It'll come down to who is more proactive."

Those words sound confrontational. Instead, officials should understand that democracy is not always neat and orderly.

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Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.

Don Kendall, President

John Flanagan, publisher and editor in chief 529-4748; jflanagan@starbulletin.com
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