ISLAND VOICES
Don't veto the hurricane bill

Gerald Peters is legislative coordinator for the Hurricane Risk Mitigation Task Force and president of Hurricane Protection Services Inc.

The hurricane season is upon us and the good news is that lawmakers have just unanimously passed an unprecedented bipartisan, pre-disaster action plan bill.

It tells the administration to pay attention to lurking peril. It says create a formal disaster mitigation plan and lay out the framework of a long-percolating pilot program to help home and condo owners pay for protecting family homes against tropical storms and hurricanes.

But the bad news is that Gov. Linda Lingle is probably going to veto it as "fiscally imprudent," telling us that the state "can't afford" disaster preparation.

So, unless you start complaining fast, you will likely get aced out of ever seeing a nickel or an ounce of help or preparation from the some $650 million that has flowed into the hurricane fund since 1993. This would be the fourth veto year in a row. Plenty of excuses by two different administrations to use the hurricane money for unrelated uses.

How can public safety legislation be vetoed on any rational basis? This bill doesn't mandate a single penny to be spent until the pilot program is ready — it's all in the administration's control. A veto simply says that "we don't care about disaster preparation."

This legislation went through a wrenching process and change over four years, with over 600 yes votes, 40 no votes and three vetoes, to reach this year's version that gives the insurance commissioner all the cards with which he must fulfill the consumer protection mandate of his office. It doesn't force him to spend one penny of the authorized "$300,000 or so much thereof which may be necessary." It forces him, however, to tell Hawai'i what is the disaster mitigation plan, if any, and what are the insurers doing to help.

Lingle advisers should think about how they have blasted the Democrats and the Cayetano administration during and since their election campaign of the summer and fall of 2002 regarding the Cayetano view of the hurricane fund. Yet they have done the same thing with the fund money after they got elected.

They, like Cayetano, have been blatantly ignoring lawmakers and the Hurricane Fund Transfer Act 179 of 2002. This act capped the fund at $191 million and provided for future Legislatures and administrations to take about $80 million through the 2010 fiscal year and spend 12 percent on mitigation to make up for this transfer.

So why make a big huhu about this? Because hurricanes are a fact of life in the Islands, and we are overdue.

What else is there to know or stir the pot about? Insurers are raising hurricane rates, but that's life. Don't worry, be happy, right?

No. Wrong. Dangerously wrong! Misleadingly wrong. Why?

Because keeping the hurricane fund intact as a stand-alone policy does not mitigate the public safety, property damage loss, and economic and insurance market risk.

The Lingle administration needs to wake up to the scary prospect of the tropical storm and hurricane peril. The fund is intact, all right, but it's just $191 million now. It should still be nearly $240 million, and about $275 million by the end of the decade. So what's happening to that money if none of it is related to hurricane preparation? Ask them!

It has been seven years of tragic irony that this subject and our volunteer lobbying efforts have been seen by the Cayetano and Lingle consumer protectors and policy analysts as a nuisance, not a necessity.

This pilot funding authorization at long last can lay out the mechanics to begin a long-term, sustained program to strengthen island roofs, protect windows and stabilize our insurance markets for old and new single-family houses and condos.

Another 'Iniki will hit us eventually. We must be prepared.