EDITORIAL
Asset sales no way to balance a budget

It's fire-sale time once again at Honolulu Hale. There is no reasonable way to balance the budget, council members are saying, unless the city sells its interest in the Queen's Court and Harbor Court downtown properties.

That promises another field day for lowball speculators.

Mayor Jeremy Harris' proposed annual city budget, reports staff writer Johnny Brannon, assumes the sales would generate $34 million. Several council members said they fear the properties won't earn that much.

That's what happened with the city's controversial sale to an automobile dealer of Block J, tied by Beretania Street to St. Andrew's Cathedral, Washington Place and the State Capitol.

The sale price of this strategic real estate was not only $4.5 million less than the city budget assumed, but it was much, much less than its true value in terms of prescient and prudent urban planning.

That's bad fiscal policy, writes former Gov. George Ariyoshi in this month's Hawaii Business magazine, "which leads to bad planning. A future area of enhancement of the urban core of Honolulu has been auctioned off for virtually nothing."

Selling Queen's Court and Harbor Court raise somewhat different issues, such as whether the city was wise to be involved in such projects in the first place.

But it's another instance of bad fiscal policy creating a bad climate for planning. "Under no circumstances," Ari-yoshi wrote, "should government be financing itself in the short term by selling assets that can enhance the quality of life in the long term."