VOLCANIC ASH

By David Shapiro

Mayor Mufi Hannemann has played it smart and quiet in his first month and a half in office, doing more listening than talking as he gets a feel for the job.

He's been active in appointing a Cabinet, commissioning a no-nonsense audit of city finances and undoing Harris administration initiatives that didn't meet his favor.

But he's kept the volume down, enabling him to avoid serious public furor over the embarrassing early departures of a couple of key Cabinet appointees — including his first choice for managing director — and adverse reaction to his termination of Royal Hawaiian Band director Aaron Mahi.

The pitch goes up tomorrow, along with public expectations, when Hannemann officially comes out as Honolulu's new leader with his first State of the City address.

Much attention will rightly focus on money after the new mayor released his grim audit intended to prepare the public for the possibility of higher taxes and reduced services as the city struggles to balance its books.

But O'ahu residents will be looking for more than just an accounting lesson as Hannemann makes his first major policy statement.

They'll want to know what he believes our city can become under his leadership, beyond the sewers and roads he promises to repair.

They'll want him to get more specific about the generalities he campaigned on — bringing local values to city government, supporting "need-to-have" projects over the "nice-to-have," bringing people together.

And they'll want assurances that he's focused on governing in 2005, not in showing voters the error of their way in re-electing Jeremy Harris over Hannemann's challenge in 2000.

Last year's election between Hannemann and Duke Bainum was mainly about restoring the city's financial health and repairing its decaying infrastructure, and these certainly will have to be the first orders of business.

But in the end, residents expect local government to competently handle sewers and roads as a matter of course, and this can't be the main topic of conversation for long.

The more important issue is what kind of community Hannemann and his City Council allies plan to build on top of their infrastructure.

Hannemann's audit showed the city's debt service has reached an alarming 25 percent of the operating budget — more than is spent on public safety.

But the picture is not quite as grim as it might seem: Honolulu's overall economy is booming, the public is prepared for an increase in sewer fees, and city coffers are due for a healthy boost from real property assessments that are up 26 percent.

One sign that the mayor thinks he has some maneuvering room is his promise to fund pay raises for the public employee unions that strongly backed his campaign.

It would be unwise to ask the general public to accept major sacrifices without asking the same of public workers.

The biggest key to Hannemann's success or failure will be delivering on his promise to bring people together to work for the common good.

His campaign truly did unite divergent interests who saw him as a guy they could deal with, while fearing opponent Bainum's outsider status and unyielding independent streak.

Hannemann had the backing of establishment Democrats and Republicans, businesses and labor unions, professionals and farmers, a variety of ethnic organizations.

His advantage is that he starts out with the good will of a lot of powerful people who have a strong rooting interest in his success.

The potential downside is that he owes political debts to a lot of powerful people whose interests often collide.

The trick is holding them together when Hannemann must inevitably choose sides in making tough decisions.

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