By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Capitol Bureau Chief
The plan to build a hotel and casino on West O‘ahu will be "a very, very difficult proposition" to sell to the Legislature, and probably won’t pass, Gov. Ben Cayetano said yesterday.
"The odds are very long," Cayetano said, when asked whether Sun International Hotels Ltd. is likely to win approval to put a 1,500-room hotel and casino at Ko ‘Olina.
House Republicans announced yesterday that they oppose the casino plan, and complained that it "looks suspiciously like the fix was in for this particular bet."
But Cayetano said he warned Sun International executives he would not try to get the gambling measure passed because he has other, more pressing issues to pursue at the Legislature.
Cayetano met with Sun International executives in December when he traveled to Sun’s Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. He traveled with Jim Boersma, a public relations executive who represents Sun, and with Caye-
tano’s longtime friend Charles Toguchi. Toguchi was later hired as a lobbyist for the gambling proposal.
Cayetano said the advocates for Sun project wanted to show him how gambling blended with the resort operation.
Cayetano told reporters he was willing to take a look because the Sun proposal would use state tax collections from the Hawai‘i casino to raise millions of dollars for college scholarships. But, he said, he didn’t make the trip to see the casino.
"My purpose was to go and see the largest aquarium in the world" which is part of the Atlantis Resort, he said.
Cayetano pointed out that he offered his own plan for raising college scholarship money — a plan that does not involve gambling — in his State of the State address last week.
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