• Traditional ways need fixing now • Watch some old westerns, then you’ll understand Traditional ways need fixing now “Conservative” spending success or “patronage” planning failure? Which “conservative” ideology includes dysfunctional budget, finance, and accounting systems designed to create a
• Traditional ways need fixing now •
Watch some old westerns, then you’ll
understand
Traditional ways need fixing now
“Conservative” spending success or “patronage” planning failure?
Which “conservative” ideology includes dysfunctional budget, finance, and accounting systems designed to create a random surplus funded by having high County tax rates? We are very fortunate to have Chairman Furfaro’s expertise in accounting and finance, and Mr. Rapozo’s reality expertise to bring about much needed budget process change. It is not “conservative”, it’s the patronage system gone wild, when the several new executive managers, such as the IT or Loss Prevention managers, or $300,000 in salaries for four mayoral assistants, have large lists of responsibilities and larger salaries, and no discernible or actual authority to make the changes we are paying them to discern and oversee.
The excesses in the Mayor’s original proposed budget defines the reason for creating an independent fiduciary officer through Charter amendment. Had the Council approved the Mayor’s original surplus busting budget, we would soon be starting next years budget talks regarding how to fund County payroll and services with little or no surplus. The Public and the Charter would have been better served if the executive branch had performed it’s civics’ duties and brought forth the revised budget as their first submittal, allowing the Council to properly perform their funding debates. The Council’s civics checks and balances duty, called “due process”, is approving or modifying expenditures for the Mayor’s proposed balanced budget, not creating a balanced budget as they currently do. The difficulties in estimating future accounting and finance balances lies in continuing to use out-dated and flawed accounting and finance processes that insure the inefficient use of the Public’s money.
Nothing illustrates these flaws in the system better than the recent Personnel Department budget testimony. Despite the County’s recent HR civil rights violations and settlements, apparently no legal HR function is actually being created, funded, and adopted, nor were any HR creation funds requested in this budget. HR is still being “studied”. Is the executive incapable of determining what changes to the Charter are required to create the personnel resource management functions legally required? Will it take more law suits? The various several hundred thousands of dollars earmarked for new “technocrat” positions defines their planning, design, and systems management responsibilities, but not a word is mentioned of their authority to enact and enforce the changes in traditions or procedures they are responsible for changing. Responsibility with out authority is not conservative, it is a recipe for failure. When will the mayor choose to create the modern accounting and finance systems, not to mention a legal HR function, based on the modern best practices that his attorneys, some department heads, and his economic planning leaders discuss in testimony?
Developing, executing, and auditing a detailed County wide written modernization master plan that re-defines responsibility and grants authority would be conservative executive leadership. County auditing of personnel productivity and department cost control outcomes is conservative leadership. Adopting and executing best practices in all areas is conservative leadership. Intentionally inaccurate budget forecasts are not conservative. The traditional “conservative” budget process and other traditional operational failures to meet modern government service standards are unacceptable, and need fixing now.
Lonnie Sykos, Kapa‘a
Watch some old westerns, then you’ll understand
There was a rebuttal (“Thinly veiled comparison,” Letters, May 16) to my letter (“Full face veils are not a right,” Letters, May 13) on banning full face veils in France, and the lame politically correct response to this from The New York Times.
The letter-writer seems to think that I am prejudice against women wearing burqas. No, I am against full face veils that hide identity. If you want to hide your identity, you may be planning something illegal, like a terrorist attack.
I am not saying, and have never said all or most Muslims are terrorists. It is a tiny percentage, like the 19 that attacked us on 9/11.
The letter-writer said he wasn’t aware of a rash of crimes committed by women wearing burqas. I am not worried about that, but maybe it won’t be women under those burqas hiding their faces.
Then again, we weren’t aware of a small number of Muslim men high jacking airliners with box cutters either.
The letter-writer then changes the subject to say he is more concerned with the proliferation of guns, gang violence, and people walking around college campuses carrying weapons. If the professor at Virginia Tech (an Israeli) had a weapon on that terrible day, he could have shot the domestic terrorist before he killed 32 people.
I suggest the letter-writer turns on the TV and watches the old westerns, where the bandits pull their scarves up over their nose to hide their identity before they try to rob a bank, and then he may get it.
Mike Lyman, Lihu‘e
