EXPANSIONS VITAL TO NEIGHBORHOODS

Regarding July 30's front-page headline "Mormons seek to build 1,200-home community in Malaekahana, near La'ie," I find that the headline and subsequent article put quite a negative spin on the facts.

The “1,200 homes” include apartments, condominiums and townhouses, and they won’t be built all at once, but are planned over a 20- to 30-year period. The current Koçolauloa plan (adopted 10 years ago) already includes designations for 550 homes, but behind BYU-Hawaiçi and Polynesian Cultural Center, impacting their expansion possibilities. These expansions are vital to the sustainability of our Koçolauloa neighborhoods.

Ann Allred | Läçie

JUDICIAL SELECTIONS

CRITICISM CONTRADICTS HISTORICAL VIEWS

In David Shapiro’s July 22 column (“Stop tampering with state judicial selection”), he concludes his criticism of Chief Justice Ronald Moon and Senate President Colleen Hanabusa’s “scheming to prevent Gov. Linda Lingle from making appointments to the state’s…judicial positions…” with an anonymous quote from “an attorney who isn’t active in local politics.” To paraphrase, the American structure of governance of three branches each acting as a check and balance on the others “provides some measure of judicial independence from politics.”
This is contrary to the views of the state Judiciary and Hawaii State Bar Association of the past 40 years or so, which is that judicial independence from politics requires (in part) eliminating the scheme of checks and balances from judicial appointments. In both the 1968 and 1978 state constitutional conventions, judicial reform proponents proposed elimination of the scheme of gubernatorial appointment subject to Senate confirmation of state judges in favor of appointments by a (supposedly) politically “independent” judicial selection commission.
They succeeded in eliminating this check-and-balance scheme with respect to judicial reappointments, but failed with initial judicial appointments. They did, however, succeed in constraining the gubernatorial power of initial judicial appointments (the present role of the Judicial Selection Commission in the amended Hawaiçi Constitution).
The current actions Shapiro criticizes are more in line with than against this historical view, which is that judicial independence from politics calls for, in part, avoiding (rather than supporting) the gubernatorial power of judicial appointment.   

Edmund M.Y. Leong | Honolulu