 Yeah, welcome back to Think Tech on a given Thursday. I'm Jay Fidel, and this is Talking Tax with Tom Yamashika. Tom, today we're going to talk about the DOE. Don't you think that would be a good topic? And this is the subject of your commentary this week, so let's make it the subject of our show. Great. The DOE is critically important to us and our economy. It spends like one out of every eight dollars that is given to state government. So it's got a two billion dollar a year budget close to, like I said, close to an eighth of the entire state budget. So it's very, very important. Right now it has no leader, am I right? Well, it has an interim superintendent. So with Christine Kishimoto, I think it is her term expiring and they're still looking for another permanent superintendent. They have an interim superintendent right now. I think they're looking on the mainland. I always wonder about state organizations that feel obligated to do their recruiting on the mainland for senior jobs when the job obviously is defined by local considerations. What do you think? Oh, yeah. It'd be, I think, much better if we had somebody local, but that's not always possible. I mean, the last superintendent came from the mainland and I think that's a trend that's not going to go away anytime soon. What is happening there and how is the DOE flexing its two billion dollar muscle? Well, in recent weeks, it's been no secret that the HSTA has had some concerns about the teacher's working conditions. Schools are about to start up again within person instruction. And so that means teachers are going to be teaching a bunch of random kids, some of whom may be unvaccinated, we don't know, especially on the elementary levels. Vaccines only recently have been approved for early teens and still are not approved for kids under 12. So nobody's vaccinated in elementary school and it gets spotty but higher as you go to intermediate and high schools. What do you mean by random kids, Tom? Well, when you're a teacher, you don't get to choose which kids you teach. And you don't get to choose which kids might be a greater risk for you, me. That's right. You'd basically take what you're assigned. Right. And these days with Delta, you may be assigned a Delta case right there, even if you're vaccinated and then your risk is pretty good for a breakthrough. Right. So because of that, HSTA, which is the teacher's association, filed a class grievance which is basically a labor complaint and asked for some dialogue with the DOE about this. And here's what the DOE said. They said, the governor's emergency proclamation dated August 5th, 2021, which has since been updated but says the same thing. It says the proclamation suspended the following versions of law, including parts of the collective bargaining law. And it concluded with, as such, we're taking no further action on the matter. So in other words, talk to the hand. Yeah. Well, you and I have discussed this a number of times in the past year or so, not how these proclamations have been over the top, but now people are interpreting them over the top, don't you think? Yeah. I mean, the proclamation itself basically says, hey, we are suspending some laws to allow for the flexibility for the agency to adapt to the COVID emergency. And I suppose that's kind of where DOE said, all right, so we can do what the hell we want. And you guys just sit back and watch because we're going to do it. What's the solution to the problem about the random kids and the kids who might infect the teacher? That's a very good question. There are protocols that the CDC is promulgated, like lower class attendance or face shields or whatever. But I think the issue is the attitude of the DOE administrators. It's just blatantly, you have no say, get the hell out of here. How the heck is that a good way to foster labor relations? How can you have somebody working for you if you just tell them, this is the working condition. I don't care if you're concerned. I don't care about anything that you say, just get the heck out of my face and work. What kind of labor relations is that? It's not labor relations at all. I mentioned before the show began that there was a time when Linda Lingle and running for office back in 2002, I think that was the critical election for her. Her platform included a plank to divide up the DOE county by county. In most places in the country, really a huge majority of places in the country, education is handled by county. The county raises the money for education, and aside from federal contributions, and the county runs education. That's what her platform was. Of course there were transitional issues about that and practical problems and logistics about that, because the DOE at the state level is so big, but what do you think about that as a kind of solution to break DOE up into county organizations? Would it be redundant? Would it be effective? Well, there are arguments on both sides. Right now there's really a very strong argument that DOE is just too big. It has multiple layers of bureaucracy, especially on the administration side. It has lots of different places where you can hide money and thereby escape scrutiny of fraud or waste or abuse. It's just common sense. When you have a very big organization, it's easier to hide stuff. And the other side of the story as well, we really don't want an education system centered around one of the poorer counties because they may be pressured in one way, shape, or form to lower their standards and give people less for their money when it came to education. So one thing that a larger organization is good for is economies of scale, setting the statewide standards, and assuring uniform education for everybody in the state. Well, you know, that kind of worked, hasn't it? Yeah, well, it cuts both ways. Yeah, go ahead. It cuts both ways. What I've heard is, yeah, it's uniform education, but uniform media occur. There you go. So we like uniform, but we need it at a higher level. Yeah, and you know, we have great success stories of kids throughout the school system. We have like robotics, for example, we have the media center at I think Waipahu Robotics at McKinley. There are several instances where our state education system has distinguished itself. And I think, you know, the reason why the current interim superintendent is in his current position is because he did amazing things as a school principal. So, but you know, what's the management arrangement here? We have the DOE and we have, I get people on a board. I think they are. I remember there was a contention a few years ago about whether they should be elected or appointed. I'm not sure how that works right now. And then of course is, I guess, when you say DOE, you are saying that that is the state apparatus for running education. I mean, K-12 education. That's right. And then you have the committee chairs, okay, but there's really nothing in between DOE and the governor. I mean, there's no director of education in the state. The DOE is the next level. Well, there's the school board. There's the board of education. The board of education. Yeah, the one that we just talked about, right? That's the board of education. Well, no, there's the agency and then there's the board. Talk about it. Okay. DOE is the state agency. It's headed by a superintendent. The board of education is, you know, a few people separate from DOE management and they help set policy and whatever for the school system. And then, of course, the governor oversees the agency. But the agency is essentially independent. I mean, they do what they want to do, right? They're not really sitting at the cabinet level. Well, no, they are. I believe they are part of the cabinet. They're not an individual director of education, like you would have director, DLNR, that sort of thing. One person. Wait, I'm getting lost now. You have the superintendent. Is the superintendent at cabinet position? I believe it is. Okay. And the superintendent deals with this board. But is the board above or below or just advisory for the superintendent? I'm not sure. Yeah, that's kind of more in the weeds than I've gotten. Well, you know, the thing about it is that we need supervision here from what you say. And we probably need an audit too, you know, like a list condo audit, the state auditor, if there are problems about, you know, things that are happening and money that's being squandered potentially, then we need somebody to look into it. Is there anybody who looked into it? Oh, yes, the state auditor does look into DOE, but with anything else, audits have what we call a materiality threshold, which means they don't look at stuff below a certain dollar amount. And with the two billion dollar agency, the materiality threshold is supposed to be pretty high. I mean, I don't know what it is, but we would imagine it's going to be pretty high. But what are the politics that, you know, you have HSTA is a very strong organization because there are so many teachers. And you would expect they would have huge influence in the legislature and with the governor. Is that true? Or are they contending with an organization that may have greater influence? Well, I think the political dynamic is unstable right now because we do have an NRM superintendent. And we have a new head of the HSTA, Corey Rosenle, as you know, termed out. He's running for, I believe, State Senate. And another gentleman named Osa Tui has taken the helm of HSTA. And this, I believe, is either first or second legislative session in that position. Now, let me just wrap around all of that and edit. Is the existing management arrangement adequate to run an organization of this relative size and budget in the state of Hawaii? Well, I really don't know. Like I said, it's very easy to hide stuff because it's so big. Going back to your original question. And I think part of the problem may have been, and I've seen this in other state agencies, that people at the top, okay, who are not civil service, don't really feel beholden. I'm sorry, the people under them who are civil service don't feel beholden to the people at the top who are not because the people who are civil service are going to be there far longer than the people at the top are. The people at the top change one survey four or eight years when a new administration comes in. But the civil servants are there and they last for a very long time. So I think this is a problem that exists in many state agencies. I can remember one in which I sat on a board where there was a professional employee of this particular organization and she didn't feel that her job covered certain things. But the executive director felt they covered certain things and he asked her to do these things. And she said, I'm not going to do them. So there was a, what do you call it, a special committee, the kind of committee that's not subject to the Sunshine Law, to investigative committee that was organized at this particular agency to look into it. And when this woman came to us to explain her position, she said, I'm comfortable. She kept saying I'm comfortable. And the reason she was comfortable was that she was covered, even though she was an exempt employee, the union represented her. I thought that was very interesting. And she said, you know, they can't touch me. I've been here forever. I'm going to be here forever. I'm a long term civil servant. The executive director's common go. I have greater power than they do. And if I get into a disagreement, I'm comfortable. And indeed, when this committee came down on her, and because she was ignoring her boss, presto, some legislators got involved and defended her. And then the union, even though she was what do you call it, an exempt employee, the union came in and defended her as a matter of principle. And before you know it, she was vindicated and found right, even though she was obviously, you know, blowing off her boss. So I feel this is not limited to the DOE. This happens when you have people in long term career positions that can't be touched. Certainly. And I don't know if the particular grievance that we're talking about today is symptomatic of that, but it just shows an attitude of noncooperation, which I think is intolerable. Yeah. Okay, so let's take up on that strain. Why is it that we find ourselves in the land of aloha in a spirit of noncooperation where people don't want to cooperate at all? Now, I'll take it from what you said at the outset here, that the union was perfectly willing to cooperate, wanted to have sit down and discussion, work it out as reasonable people. I'm assuming that. But the DOE, the state agency, was not willing and they were not cooperative. But of course it takes two people to cooperate with each other. So what you're talking about is a culture point at the state departmental level, right? That's right. From the letter and the tone of it, it doesn't appear that HSTA was being unreasonable or anything. I mean, I think HSTA was saying, well, we have a class grievance. Let's talk about it. And DOE was just giving them the finger. That I think is a problem. It's troubling because I hate to make the reference to Nero and the fiddle, while Rome is burning. And although, as you said, there are bright spots in the curriculum, bright spots among the teachers, bright spots among the principals, in general, we could be offering a much higher level of education. And if we offer a higher level of education, our workforce will be better educated and more attractive to investment from outside, and thus more likely to stay here instead of leave. And I wonder what we can do. Yeah, there's I think a lot of dysfunctionality that really ought to be investigated and dealt with. What can you do about underlings who willfully disobey their superiors? Something about that has to change, too. Well, I'm afraid that's baked in into the Hawaii governmental arrangement. Well, if it's baked in, it can be unbaked. How do you unbake it? Well, that's what legislators are there for. No, that's what the state, could the state auditor look into this? Into the question of underlings not respecting their bosses and thus undermining the whole organization? Well, the auditor could look into it, but the auditor really has no power to do anything other than report. It's the people that the auditor reports to, the legislature and the public who are reading the auditor's reports that have to kind of clamor for action and at the state level, at the legislature level, get the action done. But the problem that you're talking about, the problem which led to all of this is COVID. So I put two things to you. One is, well, we live in special times and we're finding our way and sometimes we're making mistakes as every other state and every other municipality. On the one hand, on the other hand, in a time of COVID, the governor de facto seems to have more power. And the governor, despite the fact that legislature controls through its committees and well, through its legislative powers, controls education, the governor could step in and do a little, what do you want to call it, elbow bending and fix this overnight, couldn't he? I don't know if it'd be overnight, but he could certainly bend some arms. Yeah. And hopefully that would maybe change some attitudes, we would hope. But then if you're a longtime civil servant, you don't have to listen to the governor either. And he has, the governor has a special affinity for education. His wife was an educator. So he should be especially interested in making this work really swell. But after proclaiming those various proclamations over COVID and the suspension of laws, that's all he's done, suspended the laws that might help. Yeah. And I think part of that is questionable too because, yes, there is legislative legal authority to suspend laws in the case of an emergency. But you gotta really wonder if this is the kind of thing that the legislature was thinking of when it passed the law. Not only do we have an emergency that has kind of extended past the 60 days that it seems to be written for into basically a year and a half, but also we have like entire chapters of the Hawaii revised statutes being ripped up because of this proclamation. And at least in some instances, the justification for ripping up those laws was questionable at best. I mean, how the heck is distribution of TAT to the counties, for example, related to the COVID emergency? There's a layering effect here. The number one, you start out with bad culture points around management and response in this huge organization which may need more supervision or maybe even some breakup. And then on top of that, you get COVID, which creates all kinds of consternation and worry for people, parents, children, teachers alike. So it makes it more complicated. And then on top of that, you get these proclamations that throw everything in kind of a state of confusion and they go on longer than they should. And on top of that, you get no action by the people who could take action and resolve this. And at the end of the day, I'm afraid the state suffers and the education of the children suffers. So that's why I want to make you a legislator. I want to make you a legislator in the Hawaii State Legislature and give you the power to fix this somehow. So my question is what one of those bills say that would correct these various things on a long-term basis? How do we restructure? Well, I think one of the things that we need to look at is restricting or curbing the governor's use of emergency powers. I mean, that's kind of where we get away from democracy and get into demagoguery. So we have to have some checks and balances on that. If there were any, they haven't been working because they really haven't been tested in court. As regards the DOE itself, I mean, I think we have heard over several decades the complaint that it's just too big and there are management levels upon management levels that are just too huge. So I mean, maybe breaking up the beast, but under the same Board of Education might be a reasonable thing to do. It sounds like this is a chore that's been kicked down the road. I mean, you say generations or decades rather. And over time, I think we've all recognized there's a need to do something, but it's one of those things sort of like infrastructure where it's not high on the priority list. You let it go. You don't really reform it. You don't take some steps to examine and evaluate and fix it. Yeah. And then it self-destructs over time. Well, it destructs into the education of our students and thus workforce. We have to take every step possible to avoid being a backwater. And as we know, watching the mainland, for example, and the political crisis there, education means a lot. And when you talk about what's happening on the mainland politically, everybody says, no, we have to educate the kids better. Well, so they'll understand there are three branches of government, for example, which they don't necessarily understand now. And so it takes generations to educate a population of citizens. And it would take us generations to make the schools better, to make the graduates better, to give them a better handle in life. And how do you do that? You throw money at them? What do you do? That's a very, very good question. I mean, I don't pretend that I know all the answers for a problem that's been bedeviling our state for many, many decades. Well, here it pops its head out, and we see that the DOE is not even going to talk to the HSTA, which is too bad. Aside from the fact that you're writing it up as a commentary, is there anybody talking about it? Is it reaching a level of media concentration and awareness? The next logical step would be for the HST to demand arbitration, which they did. What happens in arbitration is not public, so the media can't really get to it. But that's where we're at. Well, what could happen? Lots of things could happen. In the arbitration, in the mediation, whatever. Arbitration. Arbitration. I mean, what are you going to say? All right. You want to have an examination of how this works with COVID and teachers and students and the like and not have random risks the way you described it. So what's the arbitrated answer? What could the arbitrators say to fix this? I don't know. I don't know what the arbitrator can do. The arbitrator could on the one hand say, all right, teachers go away and get to work. On the other hand, they could say, all right, DOE, you have to at least sit down with them, hear them out, and respond meaningfully to their concerns. Okay, fair enough. And if they respond by saying, okay, we'll implement this protocol or that protocol, the arbitrator can say, okay, well, that's fine, that's enough. Yeah, or the arbitrator can say, I'm going to ride herd on this. You get back to me in a couple of weeks about how it's going. And I want to hear better and more. But the thing is, they got to start talking. And if they haven't already done so. I suggested that, hey, we're in Hawaii, let's use ho'oponopono. That's what it is. That's worked for the ancient Hawaiians. Why can't it work for us? Yeah, always relevant, always a good choice to follow here. Yeah, more listening, less posturing. Yes. Well, I think my reaction to your report on these things today is that COVID has affected our lives in a very profound way, every corner of our life. That's why I think that is so interested in looking at these effects because we know that our society is being threatened and remade. It's being reorganized for us whether we like it or not. And that also means that we're finding out problems, we're finding things are being revealed to us because of COVID, problems that maybe that we weren't focused on before being revealed to us now. And this is an opportunity, if you will, to recognize those problems and address those problems and find the tools, mechanisms, procedures to deal with those problems. So I think we have to look at it in a positive way and not let it get away from us and not let it just sink back to the bottom of the priorities. Absolutely. Thank you, Tom. Tom Yamachika, the Hawaii Tax Foundation, and we'll be back to you in two weeks with more. I try to find a better way here on Talking Tax with Tom. Aloha.