Posted on: Monday, March 15, 2004

Letters to the Editor

Binding arbitration is 'fair, peaceful' for labor

Gov. Lingle stepped into the strike by several hundred concrete workers because of her concern for the strike's impact on thousands of families and also on those connected to the building industry. Can you imagine how concerned she would be if HGEA's 23,000 public employees went on strike and stopped critical government services throughout the state?

Even more than concrete workers, HGEA's striking building inspectors, building permit processors and mortgage recordation personnel would cripple the construction, banking and real estate industries. There would be picket lines around every airport and harbor that would slow down the importation of building supplies and equipment.

Beyond those industries, a public employee strike would hurt tourism, retail, service, transportation and every other industry in Hawai'i. No one would be untouched by this strike. It really doesn't make sense for the governor to force HGEA to give up binding arbitration and revert to striking. We can see that arbitration is better than striking because it is fair for the employers, employees and especially the public. There would be no interruption of vital services while the arbitration is being negotiated.

If the governor is truly concerned for Hawai'i's hundreds of thousands of families, she will keep binding arbitration as the only fair and peaceful way to settle with the public employees.

Hotel conversions also are quick moneymakers

Your article describing the reduction in the inventory of hotel rooms as a result of conversion to time-share or condominium status ("O'ahu sees drop in hotel rooms," March 10) did not consider that a great many of the converted units are not owner-occupied and in fact continue to be part of the transient accommodations inventory under contract to the management of the property.

The Ilikai is the oldest example of this arrangement, but today there are dozens of properties that operate this way.

The property owners and developers use conversions and time-share to get their investment back and their profits quickly, rather than the years it may take otherwise.

Taxpayers carry cost of tobacco's ill effects

In response to Donna Kaneshiro (Letters, March 10), there is a very good reason why the Senate is seeking to prohibit the purchase of tobacco products via telephone, mail order, Internet and other online sources.

Tobacco is unlike jewelry, clothing or computers. It's the only product on the market that when used as directed, kills the consumer. Most other companies, especially after the first 435,000 dead, would pull a product like this off the market. But not tobacco companies.

Tobacco companies' possession of an addictive and deadly product on the market has profound economic implications for the rest of us. The state and federal government are responsible in the sense that they have to answer to the public — not necessarily to try to recover lost revenues, but to pay what the Centers for Disease Control estimates at $157 billion per year to treat tobacco-related illness. This is in ambulance costs, hospitalizations, Medicare/Medicaid, etc. Other products on the market just don't engender those kinds of costs.

Ultimately, the cost is carried down to us taxpayers, and in Hawai'i that is a cost of roughly $520 in taxes per household, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. If anything, SB 2840 attempts to seek parity for taxpayers, but will still likely fall short of the true cost of tobacco.

Police must improve Chinatown watch

I do realize and concede that pedestrians must also obey the law and keep an eye out for themselves.

For several months I have noticed that many cars turn from Nu'uanu Avenue onto Hotel Street, which is a no-no. Most of the population of Chinatown are certainly aware that buses pass frequently and keep a look out for them but they certainly do not expect a car to come out of nowhere. These motorists are not tourists, but locals.

Also there is an increasing number of bicycles also coming down Hotel Street and they do not obey the walk sign but just ride through.

It appears to me that Chinatown policemen could certainly be more observant in this particular area and issue citations to these motorists and cyclists as many elderly people live in Chinatown and do not expect cars and bicyclists coming at them in crosswalks.

Budget cut will cripple hospital's services

As a nurse, I am deeply concerned regarding the decrease in funding for our hospital, Maui Memorial Medical Center. The House of Representatives passed HB 1800 on Thursday with an $11.2 million cut from the $31.2 million proposed by Gov. Lingle.

Maui Memorial Medical Center, the only hospital in Maui County, provides acute care for all residents and visitors. This budget cut will severely impact the quality of healthcare available in our county.

Without adequate funding, essential healthcare services will be lost. It will also result in staff reductions with limited staff available to provide healthcare services. Maui Memorial Medical Center as a "healthcare safety net" facility provides care to all in need, regardless of ability to pay.

Several million dollars in charitable care is given every year to the needy in our community. What will happen when these essential healthcare services are no longer available?

All Maui County residents and visitors will be impacted by the reduction in available healthcare.

The mission at Maui Memorial Medical Center is to provide quality healthcare for our residents and visitors. This cannot occur without adequate funding.

I urge all concerned citizens in our community to speak out and let our legislators know that we care about healthcare. Full funding of HB 1800 is needed for our community.

Lives depend upon it!

GPS chips in all cars could monitor speeding

If Hawai'i's politicians were really serious about curtailing the racing on Hawai'i's highways, all they would have to do is equip all of Hawai'i's vehicles with the same GPS chips that Matson uses to track their containers as they move about the docks every day in "real time."

Every vehicle would receive a GPS (Global Positioning System) "chip" when they apply for their annual safety inspection decal.

All of those vehicles with the chips could be monitored by computers, and violators would receive citations in the mail.

One too many citations and your chip is automatically deactivated.

GPS "readers" would be installed at every gas station and if your GPS chip has been deactivated or tampered with, your gas pump wouldn't work.

This could work with uninsured motorists, too.

This is not rocket science. This is elementary stuff.

Police could easily alert radio stations

I was driving down the road on O'ahu a couple of days ago. The person on the radio said that there was a traffic stall on H-1.

He proceeded to say he knew this because someone way in the back of the stall called to see what was going on.

The announcer then told everybody who was listening to call in if they were in the front of the line so he could tell everyone.

In this day of technology, would it not be easier for the police to e-mail all radio and TV stations a report at the same time by the push of one button (send) and save those poor people at 911 and the rest of us a lot of time and gas?

Hawai'i needs to have separate highway patrol

I grew up in Michigan, and in Michigan there are two types of law enforcement. We had local police and state police and they made patrols, set up speed traps, made house calls and wrote tickets. Why doesn't Hawai'i have such a thing?

All I ever see is HPD while the sheriffs transport prisoners and stand in on court proceedings. Why not get the sheriffs patrolling the towns and cities so HPD can patrol the highways more often?

Handcuffing the elderly

Thank you for your editorial about the handcuffing of the elderly lady. This a really bad example of no common sense. It could have been handled so much easier.

Instead HPD embarrasses the poor woman in Longs Drug Store in front of her friends. And the handcuffs — unreal.

I'm sure she wasn't built like Arnold S., "The Terminator."

If this happened to my elderly mother, I would go straight down to HPD with a lawyer. HPD should have checked with the Secret Service first.

That poor lady should sue HPD.

There's no aloha in assisted-suicide shibai

Assisted-suicide proponent Roland Halpern would have you believe that "the law is working well" in Oregon. Yet he goes on to correctly say that the major reason for choosing suicide is loss of autonomy and that pain is one of the least significant concerns.

If "working well" means devaluing life with a disabling condition, then I guess he's right.

Disability advocates have been saying all along that assisted suicide is about the stigma that life with disabilities is not worth living.

Millions of people with disabilities have lost their autonomy and live with pain, but they want to live.

A society that accepts assisted suicide and Roland Halpern's shibai will never fully support progressive laws and adequate funding for services to live a normal life. That's not aloha.

No time for another strike by UH faculty

The possibility of a strike by the UH faculty along with the ongoing strike of the concrete workers is really getting me nervous about how union leaders decide when to hold a strike.

The economy is not yet back on its feet in Hawai'i and yet these leaders decide to have their members vote on striking, again crippling the economy.

Ramifications both short- and long-term will prevail. Currently, the construction industry is almost to a halt because of the concrete workers' strike. If the UH faculty go on strike, students looking forward to graduating on time will be disappointed.

Union members also need to realize that you have financial obligations. While on strike, think about who's getting paid. It's certainly not you.

For now — and I know it's hard but you've been managing so far — wait till the economy gets back on its feet, then negotiate.

Don't scrape the bottom of the bucket when the bottom is already empty.

Pedestrians contribute to their highway peril

I was very interested to read your article regarding auto and pedestrian traffic on O'ahu ("Many walkers view streets with fear," March 6). While I can agree that there is some mutual responsibility to combat the large numbers of pedestrian deaths, I have been witness to countless cases where pedestrians intentionally put themselves in harm's way, caring little for the consequences of their actions.

In the past two weeks alone, I have had people literally "pop" out of 6-foot-high bushes on Vineyard's median; witnessed a woman and her child slowly sauntering across six lanes of King Street traffic outside of any crosswalk; and most curiously, driven past a man literally standing in the middle of Kailua Road at 11 p.m., seemingly crouched over to pick something up.

These are not simply casual occurrences. These are people making conscious decisions to put themselves and others in danger and presume that a driver should be able to see them and react.

If my driving suffers, it is because I am constantly having to beware of random pedestrians and trying to predict what they might do next.

We should all be more vigilant and pay attention to our surroundings. This includes motorists who create dangerous conditions when they allow people not in the right-of-way to cross traffic.

I know well enough what it is like to be a pedestrian in a car's world, but that also means I know not to gamble with my life or the lives of others.

What's been done in the past 20 years?

Aloha from snowy Colorado,

I was a resident in the great state of Hawai'i from 1984 to 1999. Like many, I left the state to pursue a career on the Mainland. I read the Hawai'i papers at least once a week to keep up with what is going on at home.

What amazes me is the same problems Hawai'i faced in 1984 are still no closer to being solved.

Traffic. It has been bad for 20 years or more.

Crime. It has been bad for 20 years.

Meth has been a problem for 15 years.

My question is, what has the government done about these problems for the past 20 years?

Where does Shapiro get his facts?

David Shapiro dishonors his position as an editorial columnist whenever he bases his writing on thoughtless assumptions, as demonstrated in his Feb. 25 column. To keep this letter short, I will limit my comments to two points.

One, he accuses HGEA of orchestrating the Legislature's 2003 special session. Where did he get this fact? Did he make it up? Is he rehashing gossip?

How could he say it when The Advertiser itself reported that the key reason for the session was to override vetoes involving millions of dollars for critical community programs?

In The Advertiser's own words (July 9, 2003), the "key override" was Gov. Lingle's cutting of $3.6 million for 20 different programs, including $300,000 for the Waipahu Community Adult Day Health Center, $200,000 for the Na Keiki Law Center and $500,000 for Kalihi youth service centers.

Other overrides included Lingle's veto of $1 million for an air ambulance helicopter for Maui County and her veto of $30,000 for the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Korean War Commission.

Two, Shapiro writes that strikes are "more fair to taxpayers" than binding arbitration. Again, where did he get this fact? Lingle said the same thing to justify her bills, but that is an opinion, not a fact. It is inexcusable for an editorial columnist to assume someone else's opinion is factual and then repeat it as a fact. Shapiro should read the arbitration law and the factors mandated by the civil service reform of 2001. He will learn that an arbitration award must be what the employer can afford to pay. That clearly is fair for taxpayers.

It takes a little work, but Shapiro should try harder to live up to the honor of his position.