Needed: Candidates to defend the public

I caught up with my man in the street just as he was saying that the voters of

Kaua’i County need a good old-fashioned formal debate.

“Why do you say

that?” I asked.

He replied, “Well, campaign promotions and public

information forums have their place, but they reveal only that the candidates

are nice and decent people who work hard, have the best of intentions and can

claim certain laudable achievements. As important and praiseworthy as these

factors are, they do not reveal much about a person’s willingness or ability to

make the difficult and sometimes unpleasant decisions that the office

requires.”

“So you believe that a formal debate would give the voters a

different kind of information. What exactly do you have in mind?” I

asked.

“Listen carefully,” he answered. “Since most of the incumbent

councilmen will hold their seats if the primary results stand up, and since the

council failed to hold the administration accountable in its spending practices

to the extent of having to raise taxes, and since it took weeks of sustained

opposition from the public to persuade the council to perform a mercy killing

on a salary ordinance that should have been dead on arrival (as Councilman

Hooser said from the beginning) – for these reasons, an apt debate topic would

be this: Resolved, that the county of Kaua’i cannot afford another two years of

leadership by the incumbent council.

“Let informed members of the public

take the affirmative. Let any incumbent councilman who chooses take the

negative; that is, defend the council’s record. Then the voters will have the

best information available on a key issue affecting their voting choices and

their pocketbooks.”

I had to admit that he presented a convincing case, and

I started wondering if there are other candidates who would better defend the

public’s interests.

HORACE STOESSEL

Kapa’a