Posted on: Sunday, August 29, 2004

Lame-duck incumbent easy target

By Jerry Burris
Advertiser Editorial Editor

There's a lot of unhappy muttering around Honolulu Hale these days as the campaign to select a new mayor rumbles toward the finish.

Front-runners Mufi Hannemann and Duke Bainum have taken fairly tough shots at each other, but mostly in the form of advertisements and direct-mail brochures.

When they are on a stage together, they keep themselves polite, on point and on message. You'd have to be fairly familiar with the deeper workings of the campaigns to detect when one is quietly and obliquely criticizing the other.

In many ways, the two candidates are running less against each other than against incumbent Jeremy Harris, or at least against his reputation. And that's where the muttering comes in.

Both Bainum and Hannemann have not-so-subtly declared that the days of "glamour" projects — parks, fountains, brunches and the rest — are over, at least for the time being.

It is time, the two say solemnly, to get back to basics including roads, sewers, public safety and the like. By implication, these are areas that the current administration has neglected.

Since they are not part of the campaign, the current occupants of City Hall have little avenue to respond to all this. From their point of view, they haven't been ignoring the basics.

Road resurfacing is well under way, they say, even as a flurry of emergency pothole repairs following recent heavy rains has subsided.

On public safety, the Harris administration consistently argues that the police are one of the few departments within the city that have seen budget growth over the past several years.

On sewers, city officials are deeply involved in upgrading our major treatment plants and are on schedule on a 20-year, billion-dollar program to repair, replace and modernize our aging sewage-collection system.

The candidates would point out that much of this activity is being pushed by Uncle Sam, who has told the city that if it doesn't get its act together on sewer repairs, handicapped access on curbs and the like, it could be in serious trouble.

Still, the effort to put distance between the current administration and themselves probably makes sense to Bainum and Hannemann.

Outside of a somewhat artificial spat over taxation of agricultural land, they have few substantial differences.

Both are skeptical about the current bus rapid transit project; both say they will not go for a county sales tax, both agree it is probably unfeasible to restore the Natatorium pool, both want to see development impact fees plowed back into the projects that pay them, both agree the city should not be in the business of developing housing, and so forth.

So, since these two City Hall veterans see municipal problems largely through the same lens, they are forced to turn elsewhere.

Target No. 1: Jeremy Harris.

Jerry Burris is editorial page editor of The Advertiser. Reach him at letters@honoluluadvertiser.com.