In the charged politics over the Hawaii Superferry, several state legislators are calling for an investigation of how the Lingle administration precipitated this legal muddle by allowing the ferry to sail without an environmental assessment.

There are many questions that need to be answered, and accountability must eventually be served, but now is one of those times when leadership means worrying about fixing the problem before fixing the blame.

The first duty of lawmakers is to see if they can find a workable solution to a conflict that potentially exposes the state to massive liability. Getting sidetracked by finger-pointing does little to achieve that end.

And when the time comes for pointing fingers, any investigation of the administration by legislators will have no credibility unless lawmakers are also willing to point fingers at themselves.

They share a fair amount of responsibility along with the governor for having to consider a special session to allow the Superferry to operate while a court-ordered environmental review is done.

Negotiations are under way between Gov. Linda Lingle, the Legislature and Superferry executives to explore a compromise that would allow the Superferry to sail with a reasonable chance to achieve its business plan while addressing environmental concerns expressed by the courts and community protesters.

The administration has already offered a substantial concession by proposing that legislation to save the Superferry require a full environmental impact statement instead of the lesser environmental review required by the Supreme Court.

But swing legislators want more — primarily interim measures to mitigate the danger to whales, the threat of invasive species being transported from island to island and congestion at the ports.

These are reasonable concerns, but it becomes a question of whether restrictions can be devised that satisfy environmental worries while allowing the Superferry to operate with a fair chance of economic return.

Significantly restricting the Superferry's high speed to protect the whales, for instance, could turn away potential passengers by making the interisland passage unduly long and leave it difficult for the ferry to meet a tight schedule of daily trips to Maui and Kaua'i.

If the cuffs are too tight, the Superferry — which has already had to furlough most of its workers — might decide that its best chance of recovering losses would be it lease its ships into service elsewhere and sue the state for changing the rules at the last minute after $300 million in investments were made in good faith and contracts to use state harbors were signed.

In hindsight, it's obvious that errors of judgment were made in pushing ahead without an environmental review, and Lingle can't skate away by declaring that her administration did nothing wrong without a thorough and public review of exactly what was done and why.

But neither can self-righteous legislators get away with laying all of the blame on the administration.

Many lawmakers who are now criticizing Lingle signed a resolution in 2004 urging expedited permitting for the ferry and approved $40 million in harbor improvements while specifically rejecting calls for an environmental review.

There was nothing stopping legislators then from asking then the questions they have now, and there's no escaping accountability for failing to do so.

For Hawai'i lawmakers to say they were just following the administration instead of using their considerable resources to make their own assessments sounds like members of Congress who tried to shrug off their votes for the Iraq war by claiming they were misled by the president.

The only way Lingle or the Legislature can avoid being seriously singed in the coming blame game is to find a way to work this out now.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.