VOLCANIC ASH

By David Shapiro

Sen. Brian Kanno's charmed political life will be tested like never before by accusations that he grossly abused his power — and the Legislature's — by trying to bully a cruise ship company into rehiring a fired employee he favored.

Leon Rouse was dismissed by Norwegian Cruise Line as a steward last year after being accused of sexual harassment while still under probation.

Kanno, D-19th (Kapolei, Makakilo, Waikele), chairman of the Labor Committee, took the highly unusual step of meeting with NCL officials to pressure them to give Rouse his job back.

When Norwegian balked, Kanno and fellow Sens. Brian Taniguchi, Carol Fukunaga, Rosalyn Baker, Suzanne Chun Oakland, and Reps. Eric Hamakawa, Kenneth Hiraki and Roy Takumi — all powerful committee chairs — signed a letter to Norwegian demanding restitution for Rouse.

When that failed, Fukunaga and Rep. Rida Cabanilla, D-42nd (Waipahu), who had hired Rouse as her office manager on Kanno's recommendation, this year introduced Senate and House resolutions threatening to impose the state's hotel room tax on cruise lines. The measures never advanced after cruise industry representatives met with Senate leaders to complain about the blatant intimidation.

"I've never really seen something like that in the past," said Senate Vice President Donna Mercado Kim.

(Some Senate Republicans have asked the state Ethics Commission to look into the matter.)

The controversy took a bizarre final twist when Rouse resigned from Cabanilla's staff after word got out that he had spent several years in a Philippine prison on a sex-abuse conviction involving a teenage boy.

Kanno has been in the hot seat before, but escaped politically unscathed.

He has been an exceptionally compliant go-to guy for organized labor — especially public workers — and the unions have taken care of him in his elections and Senate organizational battles throughout his 13-year Senate career.

His Labor Committee of the late 1990s was a graveyard for civil service reforms opposed by unions. He often refused to even hold hearings on measures passed by the House.

Kanno admitted he regularly consulted his uncle, prominent labor attorney Herbert Takahashi, on bills in which Takahashi's unions had an interest.

Kanno conceded that he voted to remove Margery Bronster as attorney general — for which he later apologized to his constituents — after seeking the counsel of Russell Okata of the Hawaii Government Employees Association.Ê

While voting to oust Bronster in the middle of her historic investigation of Bishop Estate trustees, Kanno unsuccessfully pushed the appointment of convicted felon and former legislator Clifford Uwaine, then a division director for the United Public Workers, as a trustee of the Hawaii Public Employees Health Fund.Ê

Kanno's blind loyalty to public workers became enough of a liability that his colleagues dumped him as labor chairman, and he was barely re-elected in 2000 by 79 votes over Republican Hank Makini.

But with the strong support of labor, he emerged from a Senate reorganization that year as chairman of the powerful Judiciary Committee.

Two years later, he was back as chairman of the Labor Committee, where among other nods to unions, he continues to bottle up workers' compensation reforms he has sat on since he first chaired the panel in 1996.

Powerful lawmakers who arrogantly thumb their noses at the public interest sometimes get stains on them that won't wash out no matter how hard their special-interest backers scrub.

Examples include Milton Holt, Terrance Tom, Marshall Ige and Cal Kawamoto.

The Rouse affair could well be the misstep that puts Brian Kanno in their company.

He's ripe for the taking if a credible opponent rises up and uses Kanno's self-interested supporters against him — the same grass-roots strategy that Clarence Nishihara pioneered last year to unseat Kawamoto.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net.