By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

I hope they're scared. I hope they're quaking in their sensible shoes down there at City Hall, at the Capitol, and in government offices around the state. I hope there are nervous questions and furtive whispers in the hallways and file rooms. I hope they've had a hard time sleeping at night.

But most of all, I hope most of them have been sleeping soundly, knowing they have nothing to worry about.

The arrest last week of a city official suspected (but not yet formally charged) of doing campaign work on city time brought to light the generally held but rarely spoken belief in political circles: What's the big deal? That sort of thing is done all the time.

The big deal is that it's against the law. The big deal is that it lets do-nothing incumbents keep their jobs (so they can do nothing but keep their jobs). The big deal is that, both within the law enforcement and judicial systems and among the collective consciousness of our community, people are saying, "No more. Not any more," and that kind of intolerance of bad behavior is indicative of a healthy, proactive society.

It's not that there's some sort of clean-house witch-hunt going on. It's more that things have been so loosey-goosey for so long. It starts when one politician gets his or her staff to lick envelopes the last half-hour of their shift, and it grows like mold in a poorly ventilated building. The politician across the halls sees this and goes, "eh, if that one can do it, I can too. What's the harm?" Worse, it starts to seem like the only way to compete, like if you play it straight, you can't keep pace with the person across the hall who isn't.

The harm is that suddenly taxpayers are paying all over the place for politicians to keep their jobs, not for them to do their jobs. The harm is that there's so much work we need our elected officials to do, especially now.

Gov. Ben Cayetano's public comments on the issue this week underlined, highlighted and red-starred the problem. "It would seem to me that you deal with those things either through a reprimand or you fire the person or you take some disciplinary action," Cayetano was quoted as saying. "It seems to be that filing criminal charges against an employee for those reasons are rather draconian."

Cayetano makes it sound like we're talking about an employee surfing the net for bikini pictures or ordering from LandsEnd.com on company time.

It's not the same. It's not even close.

Is it too harsh to face criminal charges for sliding a couple hours here and there to help out your fave politico? It may seem so if many have been getting away with a lot of it for a long time. But the law provides for such punishment for a reason, because it is essentially theft of public resources by a political campaign. The protection from this kind of "draconian" punishment is simple: don't do it.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.