• Lingle and Legislature Lingle and Legislature Democrats in the Legislature, both in the House and Senate, have taken the bull by the horns, and are proposing significant legislation during their current session. They have been adverse to the plans
• Lingle and Legislature
Lingle and Legislature
Democrats in the Legislature, both in the House and Senate, have taken the bull by the horns, and are proposing significant legislation during their current session.
They have been adverse to the plans of Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican, on issues ranging from creating local school boards in each county to the state budget.
While the governor continues to on the surface seem to be overridden, her shadow falls across much of the legislation being proposed. Without political opposition in the executive offices at the state capitol, much of the action going on wouldn’t be happening, at least not to the degree it is without the direction of and influence from Lingle.
The results of this counter-play are that school reform to some degree is on the way, and the purse-strings of state government have been drawn a bit tighter.
What is missing in this session is clear-cut help for small business. Overall business is doing well in Hawai‘i, as reflected in the rapidly growing rate of state tax revenues. However, these glowing numbers mask the problems still being faced by small business in Hawai‘i, a state that still retains a reputation as one of the most business unfriendly in the United States.
Small-business owners and organizations are looking closely at one bill that would force employers to pay for drug rehabilitation for employees. Moving the cost of resolving an individual’s drug- abuse problems from their own bank accounts to that of their employers is wrong; this looks like a transfer of this cost from the state to the private sector due to the state’s overall failure in both addressing and solving this social problem.
Discussion on raising the excise tax of the various counties is an idea that’s swept under the rug with elections coming up this fall. No one running for office wants to be tagged with this, though a bill boosting our excise-tax rates for Kaua‘i is a likely to show up in the 2005 session of the Legislature.
The 2004 session is scheduled to end on May 6. There may still be some surprises between now and then, surprises that may cost both the average taxpayer and small business. Hopefully, changes to our current public-education system will make it past the finish line, most importantly a reshuffling of existing funding away from the state bureaucracy and towards the students in the classroom.
