Online readers are able to respond immediately to Star-Bulletin stories through our Web forum, which can be accessed at the end of stories, editorials and columns at starbulletin.com. Below is a selection of forum comments that appeared last week. Most forum contributors use pseudonyms; their “;names”; have been omitted here.

  ”;Hawaii legislators to get 36% pay raise,”; Star-Bulletin, Oct. 12: Our public school systems is taking a $40million-plus budget cut and the salary commission is giving out raises? Hello, Gov. Lingle ... why don't you give another interview and say ... we have to make these cuts just as you did when you demanded budget cuts for education. We are fools to continue to allow our government to give away our (tax dollars) to FAT CATS! ENOUGH ALREADY!

36 percent sounds like a lot but at $35K, they get paid less than teachers and most other state employees.

And these are people making the laws that affect all of us?

I'd like their pay bumped to 100K. That way we'd attract more highly qualified people to run and hold office.

With all the waste in state government, legislators' pay isn't one of them. Plus if they get paid a decent amount, the less likely they'd be to accept special interest money.

The pay raise is justified and the rationale was sound when it was granted by the salary commission. Unfortunately, times are hard and the economy sucks. Lingle is out traveling all over while people back home are losing their jobs. The decent thing that legislators can do is to suspend the pay raise and wait until the tourist industry gets an up-tick and the economy returns to normal.

It is outrageous that legislator's are getting a 36 percent pay raise ... that's higher than the rising cost of health care in the nation! Taxpayers who are just getting by should not be paying taxes to help others live in luxury.

This is one of the reasons we need a Con Con. Where in Hawaii can you get a 36 percent raise for working from January to May? Politicians are part-time positions and should not be paid for full-time work.

I work 12 months and I don't make $48K. The heck with this nonsense.

Let's all run for office, run ads to convince the public to vote no for Con Con, and get a free ride on the backs of the poor schmucks who pay taxes.

  ”;$2.5B estimate for Kobayashi's mass-transit plan,”; Star-Bulletin, Oct. 15: Finally we have a transit plan that will work; it will reduce traffic congestion and cost far less than Mufi's plan. It will also ensure that the jobs and contracts are awarded to local entities instead of the army of imported workers and consultants required to build the train to nowhere. It will not require us to evict numerous homeowners from their current residences and businesses from the present locations along Mufi's planned route. We will not have a three-story elevated eyesore that will transform our beautiful island into a clone of the urban wastelands Mufi visited using our money for his political junket. We all need to vote no on the steel-on-steel ballot question and vote for Ann Kobayashi as mayor so we can get Honolulu on the right track.

The primary problem with Ann Kobayashi's plan is financing. Her plan does not qualify for the transit funds generated through the half-percent county surcharge. Local funds are needed in order for the federal government to consider financing part of the project. Somebody should have reminded Ann about this earlier, either she is not getting good advice or she isn't listening.

Durn, isn't anyone reading either of the newspapers? The city's own hired experts have stated that this heavy fixed-rail “;will do little, if anything, to reduce our traffic congestion.”; Of course, I can't blame the readers for this oversight, as the Hannemann administration keeps touting that traffic congestion will be reduced with heavy fixed-rail. Sounds like they're not reading the papers or listening to their million-dollar experts either.

The problem with the $7 billion rail is that the rail can carry only 6,000 commuters (4,000 standees, 2,000 seated) per hour. Yet the demand is 15,000 commuters per hour, which obviously cannot fit into a 6,000-per-hour rail.

Ann Kobayashi's EZway can accommodate more than the 15,000 commuters per hour projected in the year 2030 per the city AA report. Plus travel would be nonstop, 55 mph from each community to downtown, with exit ramps to major work areas—Pearl Harbor, H-2 to Kaneohe, airport, Kalihi, etc., reversible commute on the same EZway in the p.m.

Ann Kobayashi's plan is as effective as moving chairs around the deck of the Titanic. Honolulu's surface traffic is running in excess of capacity for most of 24 hours. Adding road capacity to get in and out does nothing for what happens after you get there.