VOLCANIC ASH

By David Shapiro

The state Senate concluded a lackluster legislative session with a rancorous power struggle that had more to do with political vanity than matters of concern to the voting public.

Senate turf warriors thumped their chests into an uneasy adjournment, leaving Robert Bunda to fight an off-session challenge to his presidency by Sens. Colleen Hanabusa, Donna Mercado Kim and Clayton Hee.

It's tough to summon much rooting interest in who eventually wins.

Bunda deftly navigated the Senate's factional wars to rise to power, but has never used his influence to advance a real agenda for a better Hawai'i.

His challengers are power-trippers from the same mold, eager for dominance but talking little about policy goals.

The ambitious Hanabusa has floated her name for president at every opportunity since she was elected in 1998.

Kim, more of a backroom brawler than an out-front leader, appears to be battling Bunda out of the persistent personal pique that guides so many of her actions.

Hee is the lightning rod of the group, too impatient to wait even one full session after his election before grabbing for power.

Senate Republican leader Fred Hemmings worried that a victory by the renegades would result in a Senate run as chaotically as the Office of Hawaiian Affairs was during Hee's tenure there.

Hee responded with a racially charged harangue against Hemmings' Punahou schooling, displaying exactly the foul temper and immaturity his critics fear.

Hawaiians who worked with Hee at OHA have said a lot worse things about his stewardship than Hemmings did.

Hee was alternately an imperious chairman who disregarded the views of other trustees, or when ousted from the chair, a petulant dissident bent on disrupting his successor.

He would berate OHA staff in public and insult Hawaiians who came before the trustees with angry outbursts.

OHA was regarded as a model of dysfunction during the Hee years, to the dismay of Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians alike.

The more dignified leadership of Haunani Apoliona is just beginning to undo the damage to OHA's mission and reputation that Hee left behind.

Hee has displayed the same volatility in the Legislature this year, especially with his rude browbeating of nominees for the University of Hawai'i Board of Regents.

Hee's staff solicited political contributions from two nominees while they were under consideration by his Higher Education Committee.

In what Hee dismisses as an unfortunate coincidence, the nominee who gave a donation was approved by the Senate, and the one who threw away the fund-raising tickets was rejected.

But in the end, does it really matter who ends up Senate president?

Senators showed their true priorities in the last week of the session when they stopped fighting long enough to give away one of the state's few remaining management rights to unionized public workers, whose support they all crave for re-election.

Overriding a January Supreme Court decision that upheld the right of the state and counties to transfer workers where public services are needed, lawmakers required a new layer of negotiations on transfers, reassignments and layoffs with unions such as the Hawaii Government Employees Association and the United Public Workers.

The back-door maneuver — under the cover of a bill relating to bone marrow transplants — was engineered by Sen. Brian Kanno, a Bunda ally and nephew of UPW attorney Herbert Takahashi, and was supported 20-0 by Senate Democrats from all factions.

Which is why one wonders how much difference it really makes who emerges as Senate president.

It seems the only practical consequence is whose number HGEA boss Russell Okata puts on his speed dial to issue his marching orders.

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