Posted on: Thursday, January 20, 2005

LEGISLATURE 2005

By Galen Fox
House Minority Leader

Just two weeks ago, we were thrilled by Mayor (Mufi) Hannemann's powerful call for this island community to bury petty differences and work to solve the real problems we face. Why not? The aloha spirit means sharing to make life better, especially for those who most need help.

It's good that Hawai'i's economy is growing, creating jobs and lowering unemployment. A strong economy helps with our problems, including crime and drugs, poor secondary schools, rising homelessness and families without health insurance.

The biggest problem may be crime, drugs, ice. It's time we put prevention first, treatment second. We have to act. The latest annual statistics show Hawai'i has the second-highest property crime rate in the nation, and is first in larceny.

Drugs — ice — are responsible. HPD found that 45 percent of males arrested here are on ice, the nation's highest rate.

Prevention is more than after-school programs; prevention must include helping police intercept drugs before they reach young people.

Let's get more serious about fighting drugs. Let's support voluntary, confidential drug testing in school to help families, as families, fight drugs.

Hawai'i's public secondary schools are not doing well. Our public school seniors, once again in 2004, had the nation's lowest combined verbal/math SAT scores. Hawai'i's eighth-graders, according to Education Week's just-published "Quality Counts 2005," did only slightly better, finishing second worst in the nation on reading, math and writing combined — outscoring only Mississippi.

The "Quality Counts" survey contained other bad news. Classroom behavior is a major problem in 56 percent of Hawai'i's eighth grades, the highest percentage for any state.

We must act against crime in the wider society, and against school-based violence. We should give the principal and teachers at each school real power to act — real power backed by their controlling 90 percent of the total educational budget.

To attack homelessness, we can build housing on cheap or free land, linked by public transit to jobs, and better help the mentally ill stay on medication.

And let's bring health coverage to children and families who qualify for existing programs, but have yet to be enrolled.

We also must fix the bottle bill — our worst piece of legislation since the infamous "van cam" bill five years ago.

Another nightmare is just around the corner: government-set gas prices, creating the same shortages and lines Hawai'i saw in the 1970s, the last time government ran the service stations.

We can pass good bills and stop bad stuff if all 51 of us work together. I propose that both caucuses meet jointly once a month to find good bills and kill bad ones. We'll host the first gathering — in the spirit of aloha.