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Water Ways Ray Pendleton |
Dock disrepair solved
by fees, privatizationA recent article by Grassroot Institute of Hawaii analyst Stuart Hayashi has been the subject of some debate in Hawaii's boating community lately.
Hayashi wrote that Gov. Lingle's administration should add our state-run small boat harbors to its list of government services that would be better managed by the private sector.
He noted that by charging about two-thirds less than private marinas for its boat slips, the state's Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation has not only been unable to adequately maintain them, but it has allowed certain boaters to "buy up more of the commodity (slips) than they would otherwise."
If the state's marinas were privatized, Hayashi said, management's profit motive would cause them to take on the superior quality of private marinas, while free market competition would largely control slip fee charges.
One of the first to argue against such privatization was Waianae Harbor Master William Aila, Jr. From Aila's point of view, the problem wasn't the low slip fees charged by DBOR, but the fact that the state was not sharing some "$70 million annually in general excise taxes that are generated by all of the fishermen, tourists and other harbor users."
He also said that in the last two state auditor reports, general funds were recommended to be used for harbor repairs and replacements because the general public also has access to harbor facilities such as the bathrooms, grounds and water.
In fact, of the past three auditor reports (1993, 1998 and 2001), the recommendation to tap the state's general funds was only in the most recent.
"Immediately, the boating division should seek and secure general fund appropriations from the legislature to address its most pressing ... maintenance problems ... as it would reflect the much larger population who benefit from the program," it advised.
Three years and four legislative sessions have gone by since that report was submitted and there have been no such appropriations.
Another boater for the status quo was Greg Prindle, who apparently holds a conspiracy theory regarding the question of privatization.
"W might wonder if the neglect and poor maintenance is just part of the plan for some Halliburton-type corporation to come in and 'save' our docks," Prindle said. "Anyway, what's better, a government monopoly, or a private one at twice the price?"
To quickly answer his own questions, Prindle might like to, first, look at the state-run boating facilities in the Ala Wai harbor and, then, check out those at the Waikiki Yacht Club.
In this comparison, he would see how the government monopoly has continued to undercharge for its slips -- even those that have been recently rebuilt -- while allowing the facilities to generally deteriorate.
However at the WYC's private monopoly (which had charged the same rates as the state), all of its docks have been replaced. And, although it now charges twice as much, there is still a waiting list for its world-class slips.
Perhaps the 2001 auditor's report sums it up the best: "We found that little had changed (from previous audits) in the poor conditions. The program's mismanagement and neglect have deteriorated facilities to the point where their continued use threatens public safety."
Can you imagine a for-profit company allowing this to happen? Neither can I.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Ray Pendleton is a free-lance writer based in Honolulu.
His column runs Saturdays in the Star-Bulletin.
He can be reached by e-mail at raypendleton@mac.com.