[ OUR OPINION ]
Weight of indecision,
petty politics sink CouncilANYONE trying to make sense of the City Council's actions of late must conclude that it has become thoroughly dysfunctional. Caught between an insatiable appetite for blackening Mayor Harris' reputation and the strain of holding together a brittle cartel of allies, the Council has degenerated into a group that bumps into itself at almost every turn.
THE ISSUE
At their last meeting, Honolulu City Council members put off voting on a number of crucial measures.
During the year-end break, the nine members should take some time to reassess their goals and, more important, their duties because they are serving the public poorly with their inability to make the hard decisions necessary to keep city government on course.
The Council's hems and haws during its last meeting before a holiday recess are illustrative of its failures.
Having approved pay increases for police officers last month, the Council this week balked at raising the motor vehicle weight tax that would provide the necessary revenue. The Council also put off a vote on a permit for a plant to convert sewage to fertilizer, a decision it has deferred several times, even as the city is under pressure from the federal government to improve waste disposal. In a stutter step, members cleared a plan to place a cap on city spending and debt, an ill-advised measure that Harris likely will veto.
In refusing to pass the vehicle tax increase, the Council placed the arbitrated contract in limbo, risking legal action by the police union and prompting a sharp rebuke from the police chief (see his letter to the editor). Budget Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi now proposes that funds from the sale of a city parking lot be used for the raises, a choice the Council considered and rejected last month when the administration said that money already had been pegged to balance the city's operating budget.
The trouble is that Council members are afraid of the political fall-out from raising taxes. So they pulled the pin on the fiscal grenade and lobbed it toward the mayor, who may have to lay off hundreds of city employees and cut services to scrape up the funds to pay police officers, positioning him as the bad guy while distancing themselves from the resulting wreckage.
This game of political chicken abandons sound fiscal management. Unless Council members give up a few days of their holiday recess to reconvene and resolve the issue, the police raises will go unfunded since the law requires the tax increase be approved by Jan. 1. Even then, revenue from the vehicle tax will fall short of the estimated $67 million cost of the four-year police contract.
Budget cuts would certainly please East Oahu Councilman Charles Djou, who seems single-minded in his crusade to reduce government spending. And while taxpayers would agree in theory, not having a police substation in their district, trash collected at their parks or elaborate signs to mark their neighborhoods are different matters. But to keep their shaky majority together, Council members handed Djou his pet spending-debt cap bill, knowing that with a 5-4 vote it would not sustain Harris' veto.
Bowing to NIMBY pressure and, again, to keep its members from bolting the pack, the Council put a hold on a permit for the fertilizer plant it was poised to approve a few months back. The public has had ample time to weigh in on the plant and the Council should be able to say yes or no. But members remain stuck in a morass of indecision, hobbled by self-serving political considerations when they should be serving constituents. Shame on them.
