Letters to the Editor
OHA trustee Hee didn't grab my arm
The report about the OHA meeting by The Advertiser that concentrated on the debate and disagreement over the proper procedure for selection of the OHA administrator between trustee Clayton Hee and me was inaccurate and unfair.
Your reporter stated that Hee "grabbed Broder's arm." Hee did not "grab" my arm. Hee touched my arm in the process of talking to me.
I have had the honor and privilege of working with Hee for over 10 years, and for seven of those years, he was the chairman of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Hee is intelligent, creative and courageous. He has always concentrated on achieving excellence and getting the job done right. He has always believed that we should agree to disagree, and in that debate and disagreement, the best solution will be found.
When he was the OHA chairman, we debated many issues and I disagreed with him on occasion. Now that he is in the minority at OHA, I believe he has the same right to debate and disagree. After all, controversy and the freedom to speak are among the most important principles of democracy.
Sherry P. Broder
OHA attorney
BWS worker wasn't driving a luxury car
We wish to respond to letter-writer Randy Lum's June 18 letter headlined, "Why was BWS worker driving a luxury car?"
Lum wrote to complain that he noted from a photograph in your June 7 issue that the Board of Water Supply vehicle appeared to have what he called "luxury" features. He seemed concerned that ratepayers' money may have been spent on a vehicle that was outfitted with more conveniences than is necessary for government vehicles.
The photograph in question was of employee Scott Yoshida, who was demonstrating our new automated device he uses to read water meters around the island. The vehicle he drives is a 1987 Dodge Aries four-door sedan, which has logged nearly 145,000 miles in the 14 years since it was purchased. The interior is vinyl, not leather. The interior and exterior are clean because the driver is conscientious about keeping up the car. As for extra comfort features, there are no power locks, no power seats and no power windows.
For vehicles used by meter readers, current BWS bid specifications are for subcompact sedans or four-wheel-drive Jeeps, depending on route location or passengers carried. It is BWS policy that our meter readers use a department vehicle for transportation as well as identification.
If Lum would like to see the vehicle — and others used by our meter readers — close up, we invite him to join Scott for a few hours while he reads meters in the Salt Lake area.
I guess we might attribute the "luxury" appearance of the vehicle to the excellent photographic skills of Advertiser photographer Bruce Asato.
Aletta Asano (for)
Clifford S. Jamile, Manager and Chief Engineer
Are you feeling guilty? Change your attitude
About hate crimes and in reference to several recent letters: Hate crimes may not be created in the voting booth, but the homophobic attitude behind them is surely shared and expressed in different ways, both by those who voted for the "traditional marriage" amendment and by the demented drunken teenagers who attacked the gay campers at Polihale.
If you're feeling guilty or bad for voting against gay and lesbian civil rights, and therefore what you have in common with those who yelled "The Bible tells me to kill all faggots," then look inside yourself for who's to blame. I probably wouldn't be feeling too good about myself if I were in your shoes either.
If you don't like the company you're keeping, or the guilt for being passively complicit in these crimes (remember Nazi Germany and all the "good Germans"?), then you always have the option of changing those attitudes.
Liz Randol
Kaua'i
DOE's rules apply to all the students
In the June 5 editorial "School gay rules must include understanding," the author seems to be erroneously implying that the Department of Education's Chapter 19 rules apply only to gay and lesbian students. Actually, the Chapter 19 policy is set up to protect all students from harassment, not just this one group.
By printing this editorial, The Advertiser is showing us it is 100 percent behind the pro-homosexual agenda. Your paper is also admitting how this policy is not really aimed at prohibiting harassment, but is designed to single out so-called gay students for special treatment.
The reason many people were against the recent changes to Chapter 19 was that they knew gay activists would use this as a way of getting pro-homosexual programs and curricula into the schools.
Taylor Harvey
High-surf advisories should be adjusted
It is pointless to issue a high-surf advisory when the waves are barely head high.
If this becomes habit, a potential unsafe situation is possible because those whom we are trying to protect will eventually ignore all high-surf advisories because they no longer reference only high surf.
To create a safer environment, high-surf advisories should be adjusted in proportion to the new wave heights. That means the minimum for an advisory should be about 10 feet, or a little less than double over the head.
Tom Cavill
Reform legislation means fewer benefits
Congratulations, Budget and Finance Director Neal Miyahira, for your carefully worded and conveniently-left-out June 14 information response rebutting Earl Arakaki's May 29 letter. Miyahira, as well as Sen. Colleen Hanabusa in an earlier letter, glibly skirts his concern.
Arakaki's basic point is he will have less coverage and fewer benefits under the reform legislation than he has today. Miyahira and Hanabusa can be as glib as they wish, but Arakaki is correct.
Current health benefit plans are defined benefit plans; after June 30, 2002, plans are defined contribution — coverage and benefits determined by how much money is available. Miyahira and Hanabusa fail to mention that the new state budget under-funds the Health Fund by $16 million in 2002, or that the reform legislation says employees and retirees will be offered health benefit plans without specifying which ones.
The old law specifies that medical, drug, vision and dental plans would be offered. The current board and new board will determine the plans offered based on funds available to them. To deal with the 2002 shortfall, the current board is considering the elimination of adult dental and vision coverage, and a significant reduction in the life insurance benefit.
George Butterfield
Same old diatribes on hate-crimes law
Predictably, Fred Hemmings and the right-wing Republican establishment, abetted by fundamentalist "Christians," have denounced the recently enacted hate-crimes law as unnecessary and an infringement of First Amendment rights.
The arguments against such a law are the same worn-out, specious diatribes that held back equal voting rights for women, the advancement of racial minorities and now, most explosively, the fair treatment of gays and lesbians.
It's not because the new law applies to crimes of hatefueled by racial or religious bigotry that these champions of "equal justice" are complaining. It's precisely because it applies to those of a minority sexual orientation. No one in their company would dare to crusade for the repeal of civil rights laws protecting racial or religious minorities, but when it comes to gays and lesbians, all is fair game.
The Aloha State has yet to enact equal protections for its homosexual citizens in credit, accommodations or housing, and you can bet that when these issues are brought before the Legislature for redress, the same caterwauling and the same discredited jeremiads will be heard from exactly the same opponents of the hate-crimes law.
Paul C. Weidig
Kane'ohe
McVeigh execution coverage balanced
Your well-balanced coverage of the McVeigh matter and especially the political cartoon concerning the ashes are appreciated.
They did much to counter the perception by many in the community that your writers and cartoonists are members of the "police can do no right" and "the criminals can do no wrong" school of journalism.
Thank you.
Frank D. Slocum
Wai'anae
Make nature a priority over new power line
I agree wholeheartedly with the three-fourths of the residents of Honolulu who wish that HECO would not put lines on Wa'ahila Ridge.
An energy plan developed 30 years ago is obsolete with today's fast-growing technology. Our children and grandchildren deserve clean air, forests to hike in and lineless mountain views.
Fossil fuels and overhead lines are old technology; let's step into the future and make nature our priority on this beautiful island state.
Beth McLachlin
OHA interview at club wrong
The decision of OHA Chairwoman Haunani Apoliona to hold interviews to select the next OHA administrator at the Pacific Club was a grave mistake and an embarrassment to Hawaiian people.
By its own admission, the OHA leadership of Apoliona and Oswald Stender has indicated that the interview meetings at the Pacific Club are intended to "protect the finalists from public disclosure." I do not quarrel with their intentions to protect the confidentiality of the finalists; but why at the Pacific Club?
This was the seventh OHA administrator interview zin the 20-year history of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and the first-ever to be held at a location where one is not permitted to enter unless he is a member. OHA is a public state agency not unlike every other state agency.
Moreover, OHA's own attorney, Sherry Broder, as a delegate to the Judicial Conference, once authored a resolution to consider the Pacific Club membership to be unethical based on gender discrimination. But for Broder (and others like former state House of Representatives member Kate Stanley and UH law school faculty member Carol Mon Lee), women might still not be members of the Pacific Club today. In point of fact, up until 1984, women were not allowed to be members of the Pacific Club and even after that, the Pacific Club Card Room continued to be "for men only."
Imagine that.
I remember the day not too long ago when my own father, a pure-blooded local-born Chinese, once remarked to me, "Son, there was once a time when our kind were not allowed to go to the Pacific Club." I had no idea then what my father meant. Little did I understand that at the time, Orientals were not allowed to join the Pacific Club. Little did I understand that women were also not allowed to be members there, too.
Imagine that in the land of aloha.
And to think today the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a state agency answerable and accountable to the public, held secret interviews for its next administrator at the very same club where once Hawaiians were not allowed unless they were servant employees. OHA, through trustee Stender's exclusive membership, is conducting its OHA administrator interviews specifically for that very reason, because, unless you are a member or a guest of a member, you are not allowed on its grounds.
Imagine that.
Each and every time OHA has hired a new administrator, it has done so at its own public offices. It was done that way because the public is entitled to enter and OHA's lawyer, Broder, said that is the way the hiring should be done. OHA has never conducted its interviews and meetings where the general public, especially the Hawaiian community, was refused uninhibited and unrestricted access.
What on earth could Apoliona, Stender and certain other OHA trustees be thinking by holding interviews where only members and guests of members can enter an exclusive club that has a history of racial and gender discrimination, to hire its next administrator to perform the job of leading a public state agency?
One can only imagine.
Clayton Hee
Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee
