September 20, 2009 News Read > Hawaii Free Press

Hawaii Daily News Read

Sunday, September 20, 2009

September 20, 2009 News Read
By Andrew Walden @ 11:54 AM :: 11823 Views

Parents and teachers unhappy with proposed furloughs

Alice Yip started tightening her family's budget earlier this year because she expected pay cuts for her and her husband, who both work for the Department of Education. "It was inevitable," said Yip, a public school teacher for 14 years.

But Terada said she expected to sacrifice to help make up for the budget deficit.

"The teachers, we just want to help out where we can," she said.

Fifth-grade teacher Kalele Blaisdell said: "At least we still have a job."

(Will the DoE's choice to put the 17 furlough days on instructional days be enough to get the HSTA membership to reject the contract? Not if the teachers quoted in this article are representative.)

241 removed from furlough list

Originally the governor's office was looking to furlough 900 administration employees, but it turned out some of the non-union workers were part-timers who will not be furloughed, according to Russell Pang, Gov. Linda Lingle's chief of media relations.

So the number of affected workers has dropped to 659, which reduces the amount of money to be saved from an initial estimate of $7 million to $10 million to about $6 million a year, Pang said.

The non-union furloughs started Wednesday.

The cuts come after Lingle imposed two-days-a-month furloughs on herself, Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona, state department directors and their deputies.

SB: Legislature's Jobless fund inaction puzzling

Hawaii legislators took two years before agreeing in 2007 to Gov. Linda Lingle's request for a sharp reduction in what employers pay into a fund used for unemployment compensation. They should have realized in this year's session that the fund was on the way to being exhausted because of the severe increase in the jobless rate.

(Yup)

U.S. Senate OKs $30M for Oahu rail

The rail money would be used for the preliminary engineering and design of the initial phase of the $5.29 billion project. (Just enough money to make it look like Mufi's folly is real--until Election Day.)

Kauai: OHA blocks bike path along highway

Kai Markell, director of Native Rights, Land and Culture for OHA, explained in a phone interview Friday that a period of rediscovery and reawakening within the Hawaiian community and increased connectivity between its people and its treasured sites led to OHA’s new stance.

The new position, which advocates for a mauka route near the existing cane haul road and behind the currently derelict Coco Palms resort, is a reversal of OHA’s 2004 stance upon which planners had relied when devising the path’s future. (The path is parallel to Kuhio Highway, yet is supposed to be "sacred"? East side Kauai beaches have been adding sand for centuries so it is not likely that there will be any Hawaiian burials along the new shore.)

www.kauaipath.org

(This is OHA's latest scam to assert its control over other people's property. How may cyclists and pedestrians will be killed along Kuhio Hwy thanks to OHA?)

N Kona: New development in the works

Hu-Ko-Pa LLC, based in Huntington Beach, Calif., brought state land use classification and zoning change requests to the Leeward Planning Commission Friday morning at King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel. The commission voted unanimously to send the requests to the County Council with favorable recommendations, though not before commissioners raised concerns about the 53-lot development's connectivity with Hualalai Road.

(53 lots is not big enough to shake down so this project will be killed. The only question is how much money the California developer will fork out to local attorneys before he realizes he is doomed.)

Child-molester's friend Joe Bertram an advocate for what makes an individual

Bertram's apparent naivete of political correctness got him in trouble last year with Hawaii Republicans, who aired TV and radio ads attacking his in-court defense of a friend convicted of using the Internet to entice a 14-year-old girl into having sex.

Bertram told the judge that the undercover police sting created an ''imaginary crime'' that penalizes people for potential rather than actual behavior.

''His feeling toward being soft on crime and on his friend's behavior is obviously disturbing to us who love the children,'' said Hawaii Republican Party Chairman Jonah Kaauwai. ''The Democrat Party . . . what they believe is becoming more and more apparent, and Bertram is bringing that to the surface.''

After Bertram graduated from Baldwin High School in 1975, he traveled across the rest of the country for years before returning to the islands for good in 1989.

During that time, he learned he had HIV when he was trying to give blood. It was also when he met his partner, Albert Morairty, and they were unofficially married in 1985 by a pagan witch in a hot spring in the middle of a snowy field in Breitenbush, Ore.

He unsuccessfully ran for the Maui County Council three times before finally getting elected to the state Legislature in 2006 after Republican Rep. Chris Halford retired. Then he won re-election last year, despite the Republican Party's attack ads.

''Sometimes I don't think even Joe knows how he got elected,'' said Rep. Tom Brower, D-Waikiki-Ala Moana. ''In many ways he's not calculated, which is very enjoyable, especially for a lot of seasoned legislators. And he can be frustrating at times because maybe he speaks before he thinks.''

Burglary is top crime problem at UH

Dope, booze down, theft up at UHM.

SB: Rising health costs outpace isle workers' pay, report says

Family health insurance premiums for Hawaii's working families increased 94.2 percent in the past decade -- 3.7 times more than median earnings, says Families USA. (More Obamacare agit-prop)

Antidote: Health Care Reform: A Better Plan

Hawaii convention center falls far short of economic goals

In 1995, taxpayers in Hawai'i were told a planned $350 million convention center in Waikiki would attract up to 430,000 new visitors and as much as $1.9 billion in spending by the year 2008.

The Hawai'i Convention Center attracted 71,523 out-of-state exhibitors and delegates last year and generated $368 million in direct visitor expenditures, said center operator SMG.

HA: It's time to get Office of Elections in order

Dire warnings about a lack of adequate funding and complaints that the director of the office, Kevin Cronin, is mishandling the preparations have rightly raised fears that the upcoming elections are going to be a mess.

That can't be allowed to happen. The 2010 election is a critical one for Hawai'i. Key seats are up for grabs: the governor's seat, a congressional spot, lieutenant governor, and, more than likely, the mayor's seat. The entire state House of Representatives and half the state Senate will also be elected.

All this at a time when the state's economic fortunes remain fragile.

We need to ensure that this election runs smoothly and that as many eligible voters as possible make it to the polls next year. And so far, the Office of Elections appears to be hardly up to the task.