Posted on: Thursday, December 5, 2002

EDITORIAL
Prevention, investment a wise spending policy

In his inaugural remarks earlier this week, Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona made a point that should become a guiding principle for both the new administration and the Legislature as they set state policy.

Aiona was talking about the importance of healthy families, obviously a prime concern for him. But his point applies far more generally.

Prevention and early intervention are almost always cheaper and more effective than dealing with problems once they are full-blown, Aiona said.

But far too often in government, decisions are made in a reactive, crisis-oriented mode. That is, problems or issues are allowed to fester until they force themselves upon us. At that point, solutions become either enormously expensive or impossible.

The sorry history of the state's dealing with special-needs students (now known generically as "Felix" children) is a classic case in point. Years of neglecting to deal with these youngsters on a moderate, calm and forward-looking basis left the state in a place where it had to meet its obligations on a crisis, high-cost basis.

The same analysis can be applied to everything from maintaining physical infrastructure and supporting basic education needs to drug treatment and a whole host of environmental issues.

The point is that money spent on prevention or intervention when a problem is small avoids having to spend far more money once the problem becomes intractable.

If this seems obvious, why doesn't it happen more? One answer is the short policy horizon of most legislators and even elected administrators. By nature, they cannot bring themselves to think much past the next election. That means there is a natural tendency to spend money and attention on problems that are highly visible and in need of action now.

Spending money, "investing" if you will, on avoiding problems that might be six, eight or 20 years out offers little immediate political payback.

We trust this new administration will find a way to avoid falling into this trap. And we don't mean the administration should make the automatic assumption that it will be around after its four-year term. Rather, that the problems will be around in the out years and it makes sense to begin focusing on solutions today.