To a casual observer, the Hawai'i Legislature — well, any legislative body — must appear as a rather formless mass:

People in nice clothes make speeches, give out press releases, argue passionately about things that no one can understand, and ultimately pass a bunch of proposed laws, which the governor will dispose of, one way or another.

Hawai'i, as the youngest state in the union, still tends to look to the Legislature as the solution to all problems. That's largely a legacy of the day when the Legislature was the game of last and first resort. If things were to happen, they would start and end at the Legislature.

This is a matter of some amusement to folks from other states where the state legislature has slipped into a state of permanent semi-irrelevancy. Other than tinkering around the edges of things, there is little substantive work for a legislature to do.

That's not the case yet in Hawai'i, and may never be so given our incredibly centralized political system where all political roads lead through the state Capitol. Imagine, it wasn't that long ago when the four counties could not even make their own property-tax decisions without going through the state Legislature.

So, the Legislature still matters. But it is interesting that in many ways the Legislature matters more to itself than it does to anyone outside the Capitol, including voters and constituents. In some ways it is like a political Las Vegas: "What happens at the Capitol stays at the Capitol."

Case in point is the huge emphasis, both real and symbolic, placed on the matter of "crossover." In today's paper you can read a huge graphic that details what ideas and bills are moving and what bills are languishing. This is important stuff, and the full-page listing will give you a strong idea of what is real at the Legislature this year.

But the reality of the moment is largely a product of perception by the 76 men and women who serve there.

If a bill does not "cross over" from the House to the Senate, or vice-versa, by a certain date, it is considered likely dead for the year. That's because internal rules make it so.

But shouldn't good ideas survive on their merits and bad ideas die of their own lack of quality? A good example — and here we make no judgment about whether the idea in point is good or bad — has to do with the move to force the Department of Transportation to do an environmental impact statement assessment of state harbors with a particular focus on the impact of the planned Superferry.

The Senate, pressed primarily by Neighbor Island senators, is firmly in favor of such an EIS. The House is much more doubtful. In fact, Transportation Chairman Joe Souki says he is inclined to not even hold a hearing on the matter, which kills it deader than the proverbial doornail.

What we have, then, is power plays between the two sides of the Capitol, with little serious reference to what is happening beyond the walls of the building. That's kind of inevitable in legislative politics, but it leads to the day when the still-vibrant Hawai'i Legislature might slip into that state so many of its Mainland cousins find themselves in: semi-irrelevancy.

Reach Jerry Burris at jburris@honoluluadvertiser.com. Read his daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.