Lingle issues detailed governor campaign agenda

By Kevin Dayton and Lynda Arakawa
Advertiser Capitol Bureau

In a marked departure from her 1998 gubernatorial campaign, Republican Linda Lingle came out early with a long list of specific proposals she plans to pursue as governor, covering issues ranging from public education to energy conservation.

Linda Lingle had 25,000 copies printed of her campaign agenda. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

"It's an exciting time. I'm very optimistic about the future, but there are some very specific steps that we're going to need to take in order to make sure that we live up to our potential, that we reach our destiny," Lingle said.

In her plan, Lingle promises to distribute land within five years to all Native Hawaiians entitled to Hawaiian homelands leases, and to cut spending on the state education bureaucracy by half. The money saved would be spent on classroom instruction, she said.

Lingle also proposed allowing parents of special-education students to use vouchers to help pay for the cost of private school if the public school is not meeting its obligation, although she said she opposes the use of vouchers for other public school students.

She also said she would press the Legislature to divide the public school system into seven parts, with locally elected school boards overseeing each district.

Lingle said her campaign would print 25,000 copies of the plan to start, and she launched her first television and Internet advertisements yesterday to encourage voters to call her campaign headquarters for copies.

Lingle, who lost her bid for governor in 1998 by a margin of about 5,000 votes, faces opposition from former state Sen. John Carroll in the Republican primary.

The three most prominent candidates in the Democratic primary are former city managing director D.G. "Andy" Anderson, state Rep. Ed Case and Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono.

Lingle was vague about some details, including the total cost of her plans, but the depth of information contained in the blueprint released yesterday was clearly developed to show she would not repeat the mistake of 1998, when she was criticized for talking in generalities far too late into the campaign, and failing to state clearly what she would do if elected.

Lingle said yesterday she believed she had a good plan in 1998, but didn't "formally" package it, as she did this year. She is also releasing her plan a month earlier than in 1998.

One disadvantage to her approach may be that it will give her opponents ample time to pick holes in her proposals and challenge her on the details. That may be easy to do, given the specifics she set out yesterday.

Lingle said she didn't include many "high falutin' ideas" that would be forgotten after the election, as other politicians have done. "I wanted everything that was included to be something I would begin immediately to bring about because it's something I believe in very strongly," she said.

Her tax proposals include a plan to eliminate the 4 percent excise tax on medical services and products, and to restore tax credits to partially offset the 4 percent excise tax on food.

Linda Lingle announces her election campaign plans in a talk to reporters. The Republican gubernatorial candidate has issued a 28-page booklet that outlines proposals for her administration. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

Her plan to reinstate the food tax credit is a new twist on an old issue. Republicans have long urged the Legislature to eliminate the tax on food, but Lingle would instead use a tax credit to refund some of the money to taxpayers. That would still allow the state to collect the tax on food bought by tourists, while easing the burden on Hawai'i residents.

To finance her tax cutting and other costs, Lingle reached into a familiar bag of GOP proposals. She said she would cut government waste, end duplication of services between state and county governments, and expand the state economy so state tax collections would increase — strategies criticized by the Democrats as more difficult in practice than in theory.

Lingle said she wants to bring the school system closer to parents and the community by creating seven locally elected school boards throughout the state. Traditionally a favorite Republican proposal, the idea made some headway in the House last session but died in conference committee after meeting resistance from the Senate.

"I am very confident that I would be able to work with whoever gets elected to get this fundamental change made," Lingle said. "I'm also confident that without this fundamental and important change we will not be able to improve our schools, because if we could have, why haven't we? The answer is the system doesn't work in its current form."

State schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto could not be reached for comment yesterday, but during the decentralization debate at the Legislature she has questioned whether changing the structure of the public education system would improve student achievement. She has also expressed concerns that different boards might result in different standards across the system.

The Hawaii State Teachers Association did not want to comment on Lingle's proposals. But HSTA president Karen Ginoza has said that private school vouchers in general would siphon money and energy from a public school system that is already suffering.

Some of Lingle's proposals might be surprising to those who would expect her to shrink the size and reach of government. In addition to advocating separate school boards, she proposed a new cabinet-level position to attend to the needs of the tourism industry, and proposed creating a new Department of State Law Enforcement separate from the state prison system.

Lingle said the department would be made up of pieces of the existing Department of Public Safety, and would not amount to growth in government. And she said creating separate schools boards is "critical" to improving the public school system.

Lingle also said she wants to increase alternative energy resources and aim for 20 percent renewable energy use by 2020. She said she favors providing incentives to customers with their own small generating systems to sell power back to the utilities. Electric companies currently draw about 7.2 percent of their electricity from renewable energy.

Lingle also said the state should use tax or market incentives to help create markets for recyclable products.

Jeff Mikulina, director of Sierra Club Hawai'i, said Lingle's proposals were "encouraging to hear, especially addressing this issue which affects so much of Hawai'i, not only environmentally but also economically."

"But we'll obviously reserve judgment until we've heard the whole story on the other issues," Mikulina said, adding that Lingle had opposed a bottle recycling bill that was signed into law this year.

Lingle had said the measure, which establishes a 5-cent deposit for beverage containers starting in 2005, was anti-competitive and did nothing to create a market for recyclable products.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070.