Lawmakers head back to work
HONOLULU — Kaua’i legislators will head back to work Jan. 19 when the state
Legislature opens its 2000 session.
Right now, they’re busily researching
dozens of bills they plan to introduce, ranging from renewable energy programs
to creating a state drug czar and reviving an effort to build a state prison on
Kaua’i.
Legislators agree that civil service reform looks to be one of the
biggest issues facing them as a body this session.
Dozens of proposed
civil service reform measures failed to get off the ground last session, but
there is hope among legislators that this year House and Senate members can
work together to do better this time around.
SENATE BEHIND THE
CURVE
This is particularly true in the senate where the failure to
reconfirm Attorney General Margery Bronster last spring triggered major splits
among the 23 Democrats in the 25-member body.
“My understanding right now
is that most of the coalitions have agreed to set aside any differences and
focus on the goal of working together as a team through the session,” said
Senate Vice President Avery B. Chumbley (D, East Maui-North Kaua’i). Any
reorganization issues, he added, will be put aside until after the
election.
“I’m optimistic that there will be a difference (this session),”
he said. “Based on what I’ve heard, I believe people are serious about it
because we really do want to move forward and get some work done.”
Sen.
Jonathan Chun (D, South Kaua’i-Ni’ihau), who says he has been going around and
talking to different factions in the Senate, would agree.
“I am a bit
hopeful that the discussions will turn out at least on the bigger issues of
civil service, so we can get together and decide where to go.”
Still, the
coalition infighting has put the Senate behind for this session in terms of
studying the issues.
“We haven’t really as a membership group worked
together throughout the interim on the issues that are at the forefront of the
legislative debate like the House has,” Chumbley said. “So we are going to be a
little bit behind the curve at this point I would say.”
Rep. Ezra Kanoho
(D, Lihu’e-Puhi-Waipouli) said he has been working collectively with other
house members in special taskforces on whole packages of bills over the last
year.
“So many of the bills and issues that I have been working on will be
submitted as part of the taskforce committee working on a specific issue or as
a majority package measure,” he said.
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM
Kanoho said
that he will wait to see what Gov. Ben Cayetano and Human Resources Director
Mike McCartney come up with in terms of a civil service reform package for this
legislative session.
“We’ve been kind of waiting for them to see what their
approach will be rather than taking a position now and finding out that we’re
in conflict and we don’t want to come out and take adversarial positions on
some of these very sticky issues,” Kanoho said.
He did say that one
particularly controversial issue within civil service reform would be the
matter of pay raises for governmental employees.
If an agreement over pay
cannot be reached between the state administration and collective bargaining
units, then an arbitrator is called in to negotiate. Kanoho said that the
administration will be coming out with a proposal considering deleting binding
arbitration since the arbitrator may or may not recognize the effect of salary
increases on the tax-paying public.
“I am still trying to think this one
through,” he says, “what is best not only for state workers but also the public
and what is the fair process.”
Rep. Bertha Kawakami (D,
Koloa-Waimea-Ni’ihau) said she would like some change to civil service
reform.
“The system has been cumbersome in some cases for those managing
personnel,” she said.
Chumbley, who sits on the Labor Committee, said he
would be a very active participant in the discussions of civil service reform.
He said that government needs more flexibility to manage its public
employees.
“Currently, under the civil service system, there’s a multitude,
I believe 1,200 positions that are called classifications and they are so
specific … you can’t move people around on an efficient basis,” Chumbley
said.
A process called broad-banding would eliminate some of the
classifications and allow individuals to be crosstrained.
“(Broad-banding)
would allow the County of Kaua’i greater flexibility in moving its people
around and then create efficiency in operations,” he said. “In other words, it
would start to eliminate the process where people say, ‘Well, that’s not my
job, I won’t do it.'”
Chun said civil service reform is an important step
in the right direction, but doesn’t go far enough to make meaningful changes in
government.
“Civil service reform accounts for only at best a 5 percent
improvement. I hope that the Governor is not going to stop at that; I hope he
really means government reform and will start attacking everything that is
making government inefficient,” Chun said.
This upcoming session, Chun and
others are calling for a review of the current way government is organized to
see if its acceptable.
He would like to see smaller more generalized work
groups rather than a large group of specialists in departments that don’t share
information.
He said an outgrowth of that is the fact when developers want
to build any project, even one as seemingly unimpacting as a chainlink fence,
they have to go to four separate state departments to get four different
permits.
“What I’m looking for is seeing if we can organize ourselves into
more flexible work teams or departments as organized more around functions than
specialties.”
He said that his ideal would be to arrange these work groups
in geographical locations. Chun admitted that that the idea may not work, “but
that’s the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that we have got to start
exploring.”
He said he hopes to get the idea punted this session to start
discussion.
“Civil service is a small part. Don’t let us pat ourselves on
the back if we get that done and say, ‘Good boy, you’ve done well.’ I’m going
to be reminding people that there’s more and more to get done.”
Legislators
also listed a possible fireworks ban, the prison question, handgun control,
and funding of state hospitals as items that will likely be addressed in the
20th Legislature.
FIREWORKS
Kawakami said she is not in favor of a
complete ban, but she would consider stiffer penalties for shippers bringing in
illegal fireworks and those people who use aerials. She would leave counties to
decide the use of fireworks for cultural and religious events.
Kanoho, who
was in the Wailua Homesteads New Year’s Eve, said there was a persistence of
smoke after the fireworks were all used up.
“My position is that I’ve
always supported a total ban giving counties the opportunity to permit
community fireworks displays, such as the one at Po’ipu,” he said.
Chun
said that he hopes the fireworks debate doesn’t distract the Legislature from
the bigger issue of reforming government.
“In the greater scope of life
that is not number one in my mind,” Chun said of a fireworks ban. But he did
say that because the population of Hawai’i has grown to such a large size,
something now needs to be done.
“I feel that each county should be able to
decide on its own and for its own population whether it wants to regulate it,”
he said.
Chumbley said since he chairs the Judiciary Committee in which the
issue lies, he is in a difficult spot to take a position before testimony has
been given.
“I need to keep an open mind at this point,” he said.
He
did add, however, that last year he attempted to put a policy into place
allowing fireworks but strictly limiting their availability. Chumbley also said
that he would have serious concerns about giving jurisdiction of fireworks to
the individual counties.
“Not that I’m opposed to home rule, but that there
would be too many inconsistencies across the state,” he said.
He added that
if fireworks were banned only in certain counties, the illegal trafficking
would occur through the airlines.
“That could result in a serious
catastrophic accident,” he said.
Rep. Mina Morita (D, East Maui-North
Kaua’i) reported that she spent an awfully quiet New Year’s Eve on the North
Shore and wasn’t aware of how bad the smoke and noise pollution from fireworks
had been until talking to people on O’ahu.
“On non-aerials, I’m leaning
towards allowing the counties to regulate if they ought to have it,” she
said.
Kaua’i’s legislators, while gearing up for debates on the big issues,
have also been focusing on particular bills or issues that they hope to sell to
their colleagues and the public. The deadline for bill filing is this
weekend.
Chun is focusing on the issue of government reform.
Kawakami
has been working on legislation that would clarify state policy on agricultural
land leases, specifically whether or not the state should also be emphasizing
certain types of crops rather than solely looking for the highest bidder.
She is also working to see that technology is integrated throughout the
educational curriculum.
As Chair of the House Energy and Environmental
Protection Committee, Morita is looking to introduce an energy package,
involving a renewables portfolio standard.
“What that is, is it’s a
market-based approach to encourage renewable energy requiring utilities
companies to diversify their energy resources to include renewables,” she
said.
This is good planning, she said, because most scientists agree that
50 years out, oil production will be in decline and due to many developing
countries making advances, the demand for oil will increase.
“Hawai’i is
very vulnerable because we import 92 percent of energy needs,” she said. “If we
move to more renewable energy at least there will be price stability — the
upfront cost might be a little bit higher, but it offers us stability in the
future.”
Chumbley said he will continue working on domestic violence
issues. “With the increase of violence that we’ve seen at our schools through
the children, I think that that needs to be at the forefront of
discussion.”
He said that violence is directly tied to the need for drug
and substance treatment programs.
Chumbley said he would like to create a
drug czar in the state of Hawai’i so that all the different monies coming in
for treatment and programs would go to one central location.
“It’s a very
fractured disjointed process right now and there needs to be a more integrated
delivery of service,” he said.
Kanoho, who said education has always been a
number one priority, especially for Native Hawaiians, said he would like to see
Kamehameha Schools provide counselors in the public schools to work with
Hawaiian youth.
BRINGING HOME THE BACON
As far as bringing pork barrels
back to Kaua’i in the form of Capital Improvement Projects, legislators say
that this session —the second year of the biennium —will be a challenge.
“It has been difficult to obtain release of funds for many
Legislature-approved projects in recent years,” said Kawakami.
CIP projects
were put in place last year, but Cayetano did not release the funds for some of
the projects.
“The Legislature can appropriate all the CIP programs it
wants but if the governor doesn’t release the money, it’s gone without any
action,” Chumbley said.
Kanoho said he and the other legislators are
looking to make sure a good part of the funding they were able to appropriate
gets released, such as money for the Kikiaola Boat Harbor expansion and the
High Tech facility in Waimea.
But Kanoho said the big CIP project he would
like to bring home would be a prison on Kaua’i.
“If we are going to build
something and use taxpayers dollars, I would rather see it spent on Kaua’i than
on the Mainland and I’m convinced that it can be done in such a way that it
would not deter from the beauty or security of our island,” he said.
He
quickly added that there would have to be discussion with and a thumbs up from
the Kaua’i people before moving on with any serious consideration of such a
plan.
Kanoho said a prison here would offer tremendous benefits,
especially economic benefits, that would far exceed any detrimental effect on
the island.
