Posted on: Wednesday, July 31, 2002

EDITORIAL
State should review all campaign plans

Gov. Ben Cayetano has been around politics long enough to know precisely what kind of reaction he would get when his office put out a critical "analysis" of Republican gubernatorial candidate Linda Lingle's "A New Beginning" program.

And he got it. Lingle howled foul, accused the governor of using state resources for political purposes and her party chairman filed a complaint with the Ethics Commission.

Let's try to sort this out. Yes, Cayetano was trying to give the Lingle campaign a poke in the eye. Much of Lingle's campaign rhetoric has focused on the failings, real or perceived, of Cayetano and other Democratic administrations.

It was understandable he'd want to charge back, particularly when he came to the conclusion that the plan had fiscal holes in it.

And it was equally understandable Lingle would complain. After all, this brought the full weight of the state to bear on a campaign that is simply trying to inject some ideas into the political fight.

But as steward of the state's finances and author of the budget that the next governor will inherit, Cayetano certainly has a right to point out what — from his perspective — will work and what won't; what fits with current budget realities and what does not.

And face it, anyone looking for numbers and facts to analyze Lingle's plan would go to the same place Cayetano went: The state Tax Department.

Presumably, some of the research that Lingle's office did to prepare her plan had to come out of those same state records and files.

Part of Lingle's irritation might be that Cayetano's analysis was anything but a dispassionate running of the numbers. It was uniformly critical: "Overall, the plan proposes little which is new, resurrects old, discarded ideas and leaves many unanswered questions," Cayetano said.

Those are hardly the words of a neutral observer.

At the end of the day, however, it would serve everyone well if we got beyond the he-said, she-said spat and focused on the real issue at hand: How good are the plans put forth by Lingle (and the other candidates) and what impact would they have on the state?

Toward that end, all voices are needed, including those of the officials who now run the show. If Cayetano's analysis is wrong, Lingle's campaign should be the first to say so with specifics on how her plan will work.

Meanwhile, Cayetano has put himself in a bit of a box that should benefit all voters as this campaign unwinds. Since he couldn't profess to be interested only in hacking down Lingle's proposal, he had to promise a similar cost analysis for all candidates.

We'll be interested to see how the plans and ideas of others, including Republican John Carroll, Democrats Andy Anderson and Ed Case and Mazie Hirono, stack up under the governor's scrutiny.