TAX HIKES

NO RAISE FOR MAYOR, CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS

Comments by city Salary Commission Chairman Guy Tajiri in The Advertiser on April 21 are a classic example of what's wrong in Hawai'i. Tajiri wants to give the mayor and the City Council members a raise based not on what they've done, but because it's fair.

He says: "There are civil-service employees making more than their bosses."

Hey, Guy, maybe the civil-service folks make too much. The mayor and City Council have raised every tax and user fee they can get their hands on. With no vision, accountability or creativity, they have collectively made certain that our tax burden is as tough as it can be.

But hey, let's give them more money, and maybe this time it will be different. Yeah, right. Just look at education. Wake up, Hawai'i.

RE-EXAMINATION

TURTLE BAY ISN'T ONLY DEVELOPMENT PLANNED

Loren Moreno stated that the audience at the April 14 Ko'olauloa Neighborhood Board meeting was evenly split on the Turtle Bay Resort Development issue. I assessed the audience to be 75 percent against the development.

What I find rather significant is the fact that many grass-roots citizens took time to attend. They came out of passionate concern about the impact such a development would have on rural O'ahu.

The Turtle Bay Resort expansion is not the only development out here. Hawaii Reserves Inc. is developing a new $30 million hotel in La'ie. The 665-acre Malaekahana Planned Community is also in the works. The Campbell Estate is also selling thousands of agricultural acres to eager developers in Kahuku. The municipal Kahuku Golf Course's lease expires at the end of this year; a developer was eyeing that.

We feel outgunned and outspent by deep-pocket developers.

It is imperative that there be a rigorous re-examination of the 20-year old Turtle Bay Resort expansion due to the passage of time and changed conditions on the North Shore and on O'ahu. We want to discuss the public safety and economic and social impacts on our communities. Why sing the tune of jobs when Oaktree is having a hard time filling its present positions? What about traffic? Exactly how many units are we talking about? How many time shares versus full-service rooms? How many condos? The list of questions grows bigger.

The Senate and the House are asking for a rigorous re-examination of this expansion. At this critical point, we call on Mayor Hannemann and the City Council to listen to the voice of the people and provide us this due process.

BAD ROADS

ENOUGH, ALREADY

How long will we have to drive on Third World roads on O'ahu?

TRADE MISSIONS

THERE IS NO LOOPHOLE IN PROCUREMENT CODE

Regarding your April 21 editorial "Procurement loophole must be quickly shut": There is no loophole. There are procedures in the state procurement code that can cover these types of voluntary participatory relationships.

Much of what my department has done has been creative, and we are all learning how to apply these procedures to new types of relationships.

On behalf of the administration, I have repeatedly publicly testified before the House and Senate that we have taken measures to implement procurement processes for proposed "voluntary partnerships" to co-organize future trade missions. This is despite these voluntary participatory relationships not being required to be competitively bid.

These measures are the result of many cooperative and collaborative discussions my department has had with the state Procurement Office and the state Attorney General's Office over the past several months.

We look forward to ensuring that the state and Hawai'i's taxpayers continue to be treated fairly, receive top value and obtain solid results from the state's marketing initiatives.

REP. CASE

IMMIGRATION STANCE CONFLICTS WITH VOTE

In his April 9 commentary Rep. Ed Case noted that "our immigration laws need fixing." He argued that any reform needs to include effective enforcement, some path to earned legal residence/naturalization for some undocumented immigrants, accelerated legal immigration to unite families, and expanded legal immigration or temporary residence for workers in areas of labor shortages — an integrated solution to a complex problem.

The balanced approach that Rep. Case says he supports is not reflected in his actions. In December 2005, he broke with the majority of his Democratic congressional colleagues to vote in favor of HR 4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005.

HR 4437 is an enforcement-only bill that fails to provide for a comprehensive and realistic plan to enforce border security, support economic growth and worker rights, or any means to bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows and onto the path to legal status.

Most important, HR 4437 does not do anything to address the issue of unfairness to those who wait for legal immigrant visas in the Philippines, Mexico and India. The backlog for Hawai'i's Filipino families waiting to be reunited with their adult children is 13 to 14 years, and 23 years for siblings.

Rep. Case's support for HR 4437 is misplaced — it does not fix our immigration system. His vision is not ours. Here in Hawai'i, where so many of us have an immigrant background, we should insist on immigration law reform that is humane, comprehensive and just.

DECLINED SUPPORT

REP. CASE HYPOCRITICAL ON IMMIGRATION LAWS

Regarding Rep. Case's April 9 commentary entitled "Our immigration laws need fixing":

Bravo to Rep. Case for recognizing that our immigration laws need fixing and for acknowledging that "only a comprehensive, integrated solution" is necessary.

Bravo to him for recognizing one couple who overstayed on their visas and who are now facing deportation but who became contributing community members.

Bravo to him for recognizing that universal deportation for current illegal immigrants will not work and that "we should not criminalize humanitarian assistance of illegal immigrants by good-faith providers."

However, what Rep. Case does not admit in his commentary is that not only did he decline to sign on to a letter sent to the House majority leader in support of these principles, but he voted in support of House Bill H.R. 4437, which focused only on enforcement provisions — including that young couple he described — to criminalize anyone who assists an illegal immigrant (including those who offer humanitarian assistance) and which was not in any way a "comprehensive solution" to our immigration problem.

When will Rep. Case match his action to words?

BE HUMANE

KILLING FERAL PIGS WRONG ANSWER

Several months ago, over 800 American buffalo in Yellowstone Park were slaughtered because park officials thought they needed to "thin the herd." This barbaric slaughter occurred despite an offer by the Lakota people to save these magnificent animals. It was a case of "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality taken to the extreme.

We have a similar issue in Hawai'i with increasing concern that our feral pigs are frightening residents when they appear in backyards and may be causing some erosion damage due to their rooting. Some have even argued that the pigs are an "invasive species."

Question is, are there too many pigs or are there too many people?

Pigs arrived with the first Hawaiians, and their species has been in Hawai'i since the beginnings of civilization here. All the rest of us are squatters on Hawaiian land and the lands of the pigs. The pigs of Manoa and Tantalus, as Pamela Burns of the Hawaiian Humane Society said at a recent town meeting to discuss the "pig problem" (Advertiser, April 14), are just being pigs. Indeed some scientists argue that pigs are third in intelligence of non-human species, behind only apes and dolphins.

How, then, can we consider any solution that does not embody the attempt to use non-lethal means to address the problem? Even "humane trapping" and then killing the trapped pigs diminishes our humanity and smacks of desperation; it is not the result of seriously thinking about the problem of feral pigs.

Virtually all of the suggested solutions discussed in two resolutions alive in the Legislature and expressed at the town meeting are violent — kill the pigs!

Slaughtering innocent animals, which are only doing what God and nature gave them the tools to do, smacks of "species-ism," the belief by humans that other species are inferior to them, leading humans to treat other species with such contempt that murder seems a reasonable solution to even otherwise-compassionate people.

However, this is not to say that feral pigs are not presenting a problem in some places throughout Hawai'i nei. Therefore, I ask that legislators and the Department of Land and Natural Resources develop a planning process that prioritizes humane, non-lethal solutions to damage due to feral pigs. These solutions could include measures such as transportation of pigs to safe zones, unpopulated by humans, and catching breeding animals, spaying them and releasing them into the population.

I ask that the people of our state use our powers wisely to demonstrate our compassion, not our insensitivity to life. Let's not make killing a first response to any problem.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

KUKUI GARDENS OPPONENTS CAN REACH A COMPROMISE

We are leaders of the Kukui Gardens Residents Association and Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE). We are writing to thank The Honolulu Advertiser for its support to our struggle to keep the owners of Kukui Gardens and their purchaser from destroying our community.

Although each of Gordon Y.K. Pang's stories have been insightful, accurate, informative and entertaining, his feature story on Sunday, April 2, "Apartment home of last resort," was especially noteworthy. His portrait of the day-to-day Hawaiians at risk if the plans of the owners go forward read like a Hemingway short story or a poignant poem.

We are working to preserve this Hawaiian natural treasure, Kukui Gardens, as affordable. No less than Diamond Head and our beautiful beaches, our island's diversity of ethnicities and incomes is what makes Hawai'i so special. We want to preserve our homes. We believe that we — the owners and the community — are unnecessarily on a collision course of their choosing.

We do not oppose the sale of Kukui Gardens. We do not begrudge these institutions their stated desire to "recapitalize" the Clarence Ching Foundation, providing tens of millions of dollars for the three beneficiaries of the sale, which hold a majority of the owning board: Chaminade University, St. Francis Medical Center and St. Louis School. We want to see Kukui Gardens preserved as affordable for its current and future residents. We do not see a contradiction between their goals and ours.

Simply put, we believe that, if given the time and more cooperative relationship, together we could accomplish a sale of Kukui Gardens that generates significant income for the Catholic beneficiaries and keeps it affordable.