Tax breaks for cops
an arresting idea

The way to stop the Blue Flew is not to grant police officers special tax exemptions that will be resented by other professionals who put their lives on the line every day: firefighters, crosswalk guards, sporting girls and newspaper humor columnists.

So the plan by some state legislators to allow police officers not to pay state income taxes, while maybe heartfelt, is not the answer to the cop hop.

It's essential that people in certain jobs be paid enough money to keep them from going to the dark side: judges, police, football coaches and newspaper columnists. So far, the only guy in those categories getting paid more than he's worth is University of Hawaii football coach June Jones.

Perhaps the police union should have Jones negotiate its next contract. (We'll have no snide comments about newspaper columnists being paid more than they're worth. For the record, I get paid by the pound, and my doctor is none to happy about it.)

THERE'S SO MUCH talk about raising taxes for everything from sewer repair to mass transit, I'm surprised nobody has reached for our wallets to pay police more. I can't keep track of all the taxes being raised these days: cigarette taxes, sales taxes, bottle taxes, ice cube taxes, little packet of ketchup taxes, gulps of air taxes ... It seems kind of silly when in the throes of raising taxes on everything that moves that we suddenly would consider letting police off the hook on income taxes.

Hawaii has a finely evolved tax structure in which the only people who get a break from paying taxes are rich guys from Hollywood who come here to make movies and television shows, and take the profits back to the mainland in shipping containers.

You want to raise some money to pay the police? How about stop giving tax breaks to nonresident filmmakers?

We lost $28 million in tax revenue by subsidizing three TV shows last year, two of which were insanely allowed to go head to head on air, resulting in the death of one. Instead of financing patrol cars, guns, badges and pay raises in Hawaii, that $28 mil went to build swimming pools in L.A.