Gathering Place
By Fred Hemmings
Democrats just won’t
stop playing petty politicsThe spirit of bipartisanship at the state Legislature was looming at the onset of the 2003 legislative session. Most legislators began the session with open minds and appeared willing and able to find new solutions to old problems. Dealing with the local economy, education, the war in Iraq and the long-term care tax issue seemed to be our priorities, not our political labels. However, being bipartisan is a two-way street, and bipartisan cooperation fell by the wayside in several instances this past session. Petty politics in the House, in my estimation, caused the recent problems regarding the allocations of Capital Improvement Program funds, especially the failure of the Legislature to enact high-technology tax credit reform.
Recent reports verify what our Senate Minority Research Office documented in one of the first drafts of the CIP legislation. Senate Minority Research found that the allocation of CIP funds was highly politicized, with an excess of "pork" going to Democratic districts. These CIP projects were appropriations mostly for education and transportation/highway initiatives.
I will be in contact with Governor Lingle to urge her to release only CIP projects that were identified as high priority by the Department of Education, Department of General Services and the Department of Transportation. It also would be prudent for the governor not to release funds that were not requested by the DOE and DAGS. Senate Republicans will ask fair-minded legislators to correct this situation next legislative session. The Legislature should allocate CIP funds by need, not by back-room pork barrel politics.
The failure of House Democrats to amend Act 221 to eliminate tax credit abuses is extremely suspect. During the legislative session, an e-mail from the executive director of the Hawaii Technology Trade Association directly asked its members to buy $100 tickets to the House Democratic Political Action Committee fund-raiser. The e-mail directly solicited HTTA members to support Democrats who were inclined to leave Act 221 unchanged. It may be for reasons like this that House Democrats raised an estimated $40,000 during a mid-session fund-raising event. This is as blatant as it gets.
Democratic House members consistently turned back the Senate's bipartisan efforts to eliminate the abuses in the high-tech tax credit law. These are many of the same Democrats who did not allow campaign and ethics reform to pass. The Senate and the governor's aim was to eliminate the abuses in order to keep revenue in Hawaii, to balance the budget and to provide genuine assistance to the truly qualified. House Democrats said that they "get it" on the opening day of the Legislature. It seems they do not, and want to play the petty politics, as if the Democratic Party still had a monopoly on state government.
I am proud that the Senate did implement adequate funding of the Governor's Office and reform of Act 221, and cooperated with the executive branch of government on many issues.
Come on, House Democrats. Stop playing petty politics and get with the program!
Hawaii state Sen. Fred Hemmings represents District 25 (Lanikai-Waimanalo).