Posted on: Wednesday, October 24, 2001

Editorial
Emergency session offers small steps

The prewashed package of emergency economic legislation is working its way smoothly through the Legislature this week, but there is a lingering sense it is inadequate for the size of the task at hand.

Already, lawmakers are bickering over details. And they have responded to the stimulus package with a proposal that the governor cut all state department budgets by 5 percent.

This is hardly the big picture, forward-thinking, confidence-boosting action that Hawai'i's citizens yearn for.

Individual portions of the 17-bill package will bring modest relief and generate some economic stimulation.

For instance, extension of unemployment benefits and provision of temporary health insurance for those thrown out of work is an obvious and important need that will be met. These are changes that could not wait until January.

Funds for specially targeted tourism promotion and for improvements to airport security are additional quick fixes that must happen right away.

Elsewhere, there are useful, if somewhat limited, ideas that should do some good. These include a plan to temporarily hire the unemployed as emergency environmental workers and another to temporarily raise the dollar ceiling on state contracts that do not have to be put through the lengthy procurement process.

All of this will create a few, mostly temporary, jobs, offer some social relief and take a bit of the sting out of the economic punch.

But there is little on the table this week that builds in any kind of long-term economic security or in any way eases our reliance on tourism and public construction projects.

The closest to a big idea — and it is not a new one — is authorization for $150 million for a new University of Hawai'i health and wellness center centered around a new medical school and biomedical research institute.

The payoff here is not so much the jobs and taxes that the $150 million (to be matched with another $150 million in private donations) will produce. Rather, it is the fact that this is a substantial investment in our economic future. If the school actually becomes the seed of a vibrant new biomedical "industry" for Hawai'i, then the payoffs will be manyfold. But in this context, where are the investments for our crumbling public schools?

Perhaps this quickly summoned emergency session isn't the time or place for the development of big, bold ideas or breakthrough solutions to our economic paralysis. But if not now, when?

By the time the next regular session rolls around, we may be fortunate enough to be out of the crisis mode and back to the process of slow rebuilding. In the past, that kind of atmosphere has been the perfect medium for inaction.

It is possible this emergency session will wind up on a note of small economic gestures and temporary measures of social relief. If that is treated as a start — a mere first step toward dealing with the reality that Sept. 11 has shown us — then fine.

But if lawmakers think this is all that is needed, they are dead, dead wrong.