Session favored the people
| • | Bills that passed, or failed, at the Legislature |
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Capitol Bureau Chief
When they harpooned the health insurance, oil, pharmaceutical, beverage, grocery and tobacco companies this year, state lawmakers managed to injure just about every special interest that lobbies them.
After years of treading cautiously around Hawai'i's business interests, the bills that passed this year represent an abrupt turn to the political left and a gamble for the Democrats.
It is also the kind of action Gov. Ben Cayetano has urged members of his party to adopt since well before the session began in January, and may be a key to the Democrats' strategy for keeping control of the state House in the fall elections.
In the final flurry of voting last week, most Republicans opposed the bills that passed to cap gasoline prices, regulate health insurance rates and pressure drug companies to sell medicine at lower prices.
Most Democrats supported them, which sets up an opportunity for the majority party to pound home a time-tested campaign message: The Democrats stick up for the little guys, and the Republicans are on the side of "big business."
"I think they clearly showed the distinction there on those measures," said House Majority Leader Marcus Oshiro, D-40th (Wahiawa, Whitmore). "The Republicans on the consumer protection side, they obviously went the other way to protect the big businesses there. Their general rule is laissez-faire, and ours is to have some oversight. When you have a broken market place, the government needs to intervene and level the playing field, and that's what we did."
Republican Party Chairman Micah Kane said there are certainly differences between the Republican and Democratic approach to making life better for state residents.
"Regulating a smaller pie does not make life better for the people of Hawai'i," he said. "Unless we make the pie bigger, we are in the same situation we are now ... Republicans believe in making the pie a lot bigger. (the Democrats') belief is to regulate a smaller pie."
Kane said the Democrats "did nothing to make Hawai'i a better place to invest your money."
Republicans spent much of the past two years at the Legislature trying to draw other distinctions in the voters' minds. In an effort to paint the Democrats as free-spending and tax-happy, the GOP forced floor votes on proposals such as a measure to reduce the general excise tax or provide tax credits to offset the tax, and a bill to refund the money in the Hawai'i Hurricane Relief Fund to homeowners with mortgages.
With 19 votes in the 51-member House, the GOP had enough votes to force debate and voting on the bills but not enough clout to actually pass them. But the process allowed Republicans to focus public attention on issues they said the Democrats were neglecting or dodging.
When, in the final days of the session, the Democrats passed what appears to be some crowd-pleasing consumer legislation, the Republicans were placed more on the defensive than they had been all year.
During floor debate Tuesday on a bill to provide low-cost prescription drugs to consumers, Rep. Joe Gomes scolded the Democrats for working in an "ivory tower" and cooking up impractical regulatory fixes to complex problems.
Gomes, R-51st (Lanikai, Waimanalo), argued that the Democrats' consumer bills will not work and will make things worse.
Others such as Rep. Chris Halford, R-11th (S. Maui, Keokea, Kihei) acknowledged that he wants to help control the rising cost of healthcare and health insurance, "but I just cannot go with a government pricing system."
The Democrats selected issues where the public appears to want action. Accusations of price gouging in the gasoline and prescription drug markets are national consumer issues, and in Hawai'i, "people have felt ripped off about gas ever since the refineries went in there, I guess," said Don Clegg, a pollster and political analyst.
The consumer bills may also fit with a certain political culture in Hawai'i, said Dick Pratt, director of the public administration program at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. Hawai'i residents are accustomed to an activist government that identifies social and other problems and at least attempts to fix them, he said.
That may be why the most stinging insult that can be aimed at the Legislature is that it had a "do-nothing session." The voters here demand more.
As lawmakers prepared for this year's session, Cayetano remarked that the Democrats and Republicans had both been practicing "low-grade, small-time politics," and it was time for the Democrats to remind the voters that they are on the side of the "working people and the disadvantaged."
The gas cap and a bill to regulate health insurance rates were just what Cayetano had in mind, and the governor is expected to sign them into law. But even some Democrats such as Rep. Joe Souki questioned whether the Legislature went too far. Souki, D-8th (Waiehu, Ma'alaea, Napili) said the Legislature may have set a record for passing the most sweeping new regulatory bills this year.
However, while the public may clamor for action, many of the business interests that lobby the Legislature and are close to leading lawmakers are happy to stop bills from passing: They don't want new regulations, don't want new requirements imposed on employers, and most certainly don't want new taxes.
This contributes to an odd dynamic, and is partly why the Legislature often goes through a peculiar dance of debating issues at length and then deferring them for further study, which hasn't helped lawmakers' public image. For years the public has held a low opinion of the Democrat-dominated state Legislature as an institution, Clegg said.
"There is that big sense of an in-group, a club that they have, and the public is not a part of it," said Clegg, who has polled Hawai'i residents for years on their attitudes about the Legislature. "The voters are not a part of that club, and (lawmakers) do things for their own agenda and not the public's agenda."
Again, the consumer bills that passed this year may help, but it was painful. The Democrats were split, with heated debates in closed-door caucuses. The gasoline price caps very nearly died on the last day because many Democrats didn't want to support the measure, lawmakers said.
Oshiro said the Democrats hope to gain seven seats in the House in the elections this year, and Clegg acknowledged the gas cap, health insurance rate regulations and pharmaceutical bills may help in that effort. But there may also be a price to pay.
"Sure it works, but what message does that send for a pharmaceutical company or somebody else that wants to start a big business here?" Clegg said. "It says, don't do it."
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070.
