 J. Fidel, it's the two o'clock block here on Community Matters, and we're talking about trying to make sense of this year's legislative session, and the official title of the show is Drama in the Statehouse. Colin Moore is an associate professor of political science at UH Minoa. He's been on the show before. We really appreciate him coming down because he can offer some answers to some very difficult questions about this session. Welcome to the show, Colin. Pleasure to be here, Jay. So, you know, what do you think? I mean, this has been, A, unusual, but B, not unpredictable. What do you think? No, not unpredictable. I mean, although I've heard people describe this as Game of Thrones, Hawaii-style. Just in case folks don't know, Jill Takuta, the very powerful chairwoman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, and Joe Suki, who's sort of a legend in Hawaii politics, about 85 years old, and he was unceremoniously forced to resign his position as Speaker of the House. I mean, all these things are somewhat unexpected. We are a one-party state. I mean, Democrats in Hawaii don't tend to like these internal battles to spill over into the public, and a lot of this was driven by the fact they had to make this very difficult decision on rail, and the two houses disagreed. They're both in horrible fights with the mayor and city and county of Honolulu, and they ended the session this time without even singing. They just banged the gavel and went home. I don't think that's ever been done in the history of this state. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. That's really, that hurts. They are genuinely mad at each other. Yeah. But the problem is, you know, I mean, I have my distraction theory, and I say, you know, well, we're going to go and do this, but then we get distracted every day. And fighting in the legislature is a huge distraction, because how can you concentrate on policy? How can you actually talk to your constituents? You know, Congress is not dissimilar. How can you talk to your constituents and get the right message so you can make the right analysis if you're mad at everybody and fighting with everybody? And can you imagine all the meetings and conversations and email that went through disposing all these people? I'm sure they were spending their time on that rather than policy. Oh, and the public knows this. I mean, this does nothing to increase trust in government. But when you have an issue like this, like rail that sucks up all the oxygen in the room, I mean, all of these other very worthy bills, and we had a lot of them this session, there's just no time to consider them. We don't have a full-time legislature. They only meet for a very short period of time. And so everything else is deferred or it just doesn't make it through committee. And so there's a lot of really potentially helpful pieces of policy that don't get heard because they're too busy fighting with each other. And you know, the other thing I'll add to that is a lot of these fights aren't so much over policy or ideology. A lot of the, I mean, why, for example, Takuta and Suki lost their seats? I mean, some of this just has to do with the fact that people felt like they violated the norms of the legislature. They weren't being appropriately deferential to their colleagues and they needed to be punished as a result. Punishment. It happens. Yeah. There's so many ways you can punish somebody in the legislature and it happens all the time. And again, that's a distraction from good policy. You know, I think so. And, you know, Jill Takuta, I mean, I've heard her criticized by legislators who say that, you know, she didn't consult them enough. And you know, I think what finally, what finally, I think, convinced some legislators that she needed to go was to this agreement with Sylvia Luke to use the hotel tax instead of the extension of the GET. And the reason the senators were so angry about it is not so much the policy, although there's reasons to debate both sides. It's that they were caught off guard and that is an unforgivable sin. They want to be consulted well in advance. They want to have enough time to hear out their constituents, hear out major industries like the tourism industry. And for them, you know, that was it. The fact that they saw her as betraying the Senate for the House and not giving them enough advanced warning. Well, there are some sea changes going on and I'm irresistibly drawn to the parallel between what happened in the healthcare bill, the Trump healthcare bill a couple of days ago. I mean, they didn't even, they didn't have to text. Yeah. They didn't have to text. How could they pass a bill without having to text? And they didn't have any hearings. They got no information, no testimony. They don't have a score from the Congressional Budget Office, which normally would have been essential for a bill like this. And the public is going to react. I mean, it's not just the New York Times, you know, chumming the waters and they will. But it's, you know, the public in general is going to be excited when this gets to the Senate and we'll see what they can do about it, if anything. But I think there's a parallel running, don't you, federal and state, where A, there are people who try to not disclose, not consult, not give information, not get information and people who don't like that. And that tension seems to be coming up now, now in this session, this administration, and now in the, well, we'll see in the Hawaii State Legislature as well. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's not as extreme here as, as Congress, but you're right. I mean, this, this is a shift to a permanent campaign, right? Where the only thing that matters are the optics, how it will play politically, how it will affect the next election. And that means that the ability to create good public policy is almost gone. I mean, look, the healthcare bill, almost everyone agrees that it's frankly a piece of junk. I mean, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's not going to solve many problems. But in the Republican's case, they just couldn't go back to their constituents and say, you know that bill we've been complaining about for seven years? We're going to let Obamacare stay. It was unacceptable. And on the state level, right, the people are, I mean, people in Hawaii feel like they already pay too many taxes and legislators know that they're going to hear about it. So most of the time they spend blame shift, you know, it's hard. It's the city council. It's the mayor. It's the Senate. It's the house. But someone's got to pay for this project at the end of the day. And someone's got to take responsibility. And that means all sides probably should take some lumps. But we've got to come up with a financing package that makes sense. Yeah, well, and that and that's still that in itself is still the top of the iceberg, because we have like $40 billion of unfunded liabilities coming down the pike. We have sea change coming down the pike and climate change. We have all kinds of expenses we're going to have to get involved in. And some of them we know some of them we don't know. We're not in good financial shape in general, rail or no rail. Yeah. And so who's watching the store on that? Was it Sylvia Luke and Takuta? Or maybe nobody? Well, I mean, so you raise an interesting point. I mean, rail rail is just a small part of the picture. And I think, I mean, Takuta and Luke were were able to work together really effectively. That that was important. And you know, I don't want us to do this whole show and think of it, the entire 2017 session as a negative, because one example of where Luke and Takuta were able to work together was on tax reform. Actually, they they passed a very nice tax reform bill that reinstates the top tax brackets, but then gives the earned income tax credit to some of the state's lowest earners. That's really into effect next year. Yeah, that's a good piece of public policy. And that was something they succeeded on the press hasn't covered that much. But you know, but that was that was a help. But but there are other bigger issues that you suggest, right? All of the unfunded liabilities, the massively unfunded state of public employees, retirement system, the state public employees, health care system, affordable care. I mean, there's not really been a serious I mean, not affordable care, rather affordable housing, there hasn't been a serious effort to address that, which is always the number one issue people care about. Yeah. And I mean, I suppose it's not hard to make the conclusion that one of these days, these things are going to surface, and there'll be a brick wall out there. And the question is how will the legislature deal with them going forward? I think we've seen a sea change over the past few years, as I say, this is not unpredictable, that this sort of process is sort of the argument thing and failure to look at the big picture thing, failure to plan has been happening in a while. And it sort of erupted more than before this year. But where does that put us on the long term continuum? Are we going to have this again? Have we changed our culture and legislature so it's permanently dysfunctional? I hope not. I mean, this was a particularly ugly session. But but there does seem to be an indication that they're just incapable of dealing with these bigger problems that the answer always is, Well, we'll consider it next year, we'll consider it two years from now. You know, don't don't come to me with these difficult problems where I'll might have to make somebody angry. And you know, I thought at this time, I mean, because they had to come up with the money to continue to fund rail, that the urgency of it would force them into a compromise, the fact that they adjourned in this, this chaotic ending, really with with nothing, it doesn't give you much faith that they'll be able to deal with even harder problems. What do they do when they face a crisis in the public employee pension system? That's even more expensive. It is coming. It's absolutely coming. So if they can't solve this problem, doesn't give you much faith that they're going to be able to solve problems in the future. And this is even more discouraging because one thing you think you might gain with a essentially single party state right where they're very unwilling to do things out in public, right? Joe Suki sort of notoriously suggested this last session that, you know, we don't we don't like to air our dirty laundering public. The party keeps everything inside and we aren't our problems together. Well, you think that would be one advantage of having a one party state, but all Democrats, I mean, there's not a single Republican in the state Senate. They still couldn't come up with a bill to fix rail. Well, you suggested before the show is that maybe they'd be better off if they had a two party system. Well, I think that's right. I think that's absolutely right. How do you get there from where we are? This is a, this is a great PhD thesis, isn't it? Right. How do you get there from where we are? What steps do you take? It's very, very difficult. I mean, you know, one option would be that the Republican Party here is reinvigorated. I think that's extremely unlikely. I mean, they're they're always going through their own internal wars, you know, between the hard right and the Hawaii Republican Assembly. And you see this with Andrea Tupolo running for for state chair. Yeah. And I mean, really, the Hawaii Republicans problem is that they're dragged down by the deeply conservative mainland party. I mean, they might be able to kind of position themselves as a bit more libertarian, offer an alternative to what a lot of people think is a, you know, entitled and corrupt Democratic Party here. But it's tough for them to do that because I sort of call it the southern accent problem. I mean, people are deeply suspicious of the mainland party because, you know, they think it's full of southern racists. That may not be fair, but it drags it down. Yeah, exactly. You know, the alternative is you could get some sort of more public split in our local Democratic Party. You saw a bit of that with the Hillary Sanders divide in the nomination, maybe a third party like the Green Party, although that's very unlikely. So we're a little bit stuck. It's hard to imagine how you how you get out of this. Yeah, it doesn't seem like there's any easy solution. And so that factor, which has to be a factor that led to this inability that we have been talking about, is not going to be changed, probably. Right. And so that we won't we won't have a solution there. Is there any other solution? Is there any other way? I mean, for example, suppose I give you a really strong, articulate, ambitious, well educated, thoughtful leader, and he says, follow me buys and girls. Let's do it this way. And here's some policy things you you know, and if you're off the page, I'll tell you, would this help? Potentially. I mean, I mean, people have been wondering where Governor E. Gay has been in all of this. And I think he probably, rightfully, at least politically, was a smart move to stay to stay out of it. But I mean, Abercrombie tried maybe a more charismatic forceful style. That didn't end very well for him. People have legitimate concerns about some of his decisions. But you know, you could imagine a younger legislator. But again, in Hawaii politics, look, I mean, I'll take the Republicans as an example, right, they essentially kicked out two of their more articulate younger members, or at least forced them to resign and change to dance. In the nasty way, am I right? Look at Beth Fukumoto. I mean, she's smart, a talented legislator. She didn't really want to leave the Republican Party, I think, unlike Erin Johansson. So she was, but she was bullied until she finally left. It does not reflect well on them. You can't eat your young if you want to succeed as a party. Because all the young are not going to come around. Yeah. No, well, that's it. That's the lesson you get. It's that if you're a young, ambitious, smart politician, even if you have conservative leanings, the answer would be, well, don't join the Republicans because there's just clearly the message. Yeah. And even Linda Lingle, who was able to, you know, make it more centrist, make it more appealing for the local voter for a short time. She essentially abandoned party building when she got in office. Yeah. So the result was what she had built in the campaign fell apart. Yeah. Right after, right after she left. That's right. That's right. So, you know, you mentioned David Igay and, you know, he hasn't really gotten involved in this and query, you know, maybe he would get it. Maybe he'll have a special session on the rail issue. That'll be interesting to watch. But do you think he will? Do you think he will? Well, the legislature could call it themselves, which I don't know if that's ever happened, but that may be what he forces them to do. I think two-thirds can call their own special session, but I suspect that he's going to have to. I mean, he will look like he is completely absent if he doesn't take some leadership. And that may be what's needed right now. I think the governor might need to knock some heads together and say, look, you've got to stop this squabbling. This has become an embarrassment. We might be in risk of losing federal funding. And, you know, that, I doubt that'll happen, but it's not, you know, it's not a non-trivial matter. I think you'll recall a few weeks ago, right? Ben Cayetano, former governor, wrote, took out this huge Washington Post app encouraging the Trump administration to take a second look at rail. It's unlikely, but hey, Hawaii has been no friend of the Trump administration. So he might not take much. He doesn't wake up at the middle of the night, write checks to us. He sends tweets to us. Yeah, exactly. But what about, what about David Eagle? I mean, you know, event after event, he's been missing. You know, issue after issue, he's been missing. And the only thing he can say is he's made some deals with the union, so we'll support him next time around. But, you know, where does this leave him? Whether he calls a special session or not. I mean, it's hard to deny that he isn't, he isn't there. And he hasn't helped it. So query, what does he look like right now as a potential for the next term? Well, I mean, so I'll say that Igay is more or less governing the way he always said he was going to govern, which was that he thinks these decisions would be left to the legislature to work out the details, and he's been, he's been hands-off. I mean, sometimes people want a more charismatic, involved governor, and then when they become more involved, everyone says, oh no, we didn't, we didn't really mean that. We want to work this out ourselves. But for his reelection, I mean, the truth of the matter is there's no one to run against him, or no competitive candidate really has, has arisen to challenge him. I think that would actually be good, it'd be healthy, it might force him to take a little more active role in some of this, because that's the only way to hold him accountable. I mean, I don't think he's done a terrible job, but yeah, I don't also don't think he's done a fantastic job. So, but there's really no one to run against him. He seems to have pleased the unions. Certainly the teachers got a pretty good deal, looks like the cops and the firefighters got a pretty good deal. And if you want to succeed in Hawaii politics, you know, staying out of battles and making sure everyone gets paid is a pretty successful strategy, doesn't lead to good public policy that might bankrupt the state, but it does help you get re-elected. You keep doing that though, you end up being an outback, backwater. Let's take a short break and then we'll come back and we'll talk about how this affects the public, how much they're engaged, and how the media is covering it. We'll be right back with Colin Moore. I usually drink but won't be drinking today because I'm the designated driver and that's okay. It's nice to be the guy that keeps his friends in line, keeps them from drinking too much so we can have a great time. A little responsibility can go a long way because it's all about having fun on game day. Match day is no ordinary day. The pitch, hallowed ground for players and supporters alike. Excitement builds. Game plans are made with responsibility in mind. Celebrations are underway. Ready for kickoff. MLS clubs and our supporters rise to the challenge. We make responsible decisions while we cheer on our heroes and toast their success. Elevate your match day experience. If you drink, never drive. Okay, we're back with Colin Moore and Community Matters. We're talking about drama in the state house and trying to make sense of this year in this year's session. So, you know, I think one of the things that I would like to know discuss with you is how the public reacts to this because we have a certain amount of pervasive apathy even in drama. Even with drama we have pervasive apathy. Why is that? What are the roots of that? How does that affect what they did or didn't do? And how does what they did or didn't do affect the public the view of it? All right, so kind of a three-part question here. How do all these things interrelate? I mean it feeds on itself, right? I mean the public doesn't pay a lot of attention to politics. Well, first because frankly I think it accords because a lot of the public doesn't even know anything about it. I mean you have to kind of have a basic vocabulary to follow this stuff. I mean you can't watch a sports game if you don't know the rules. And at this point I think our civics education has become so bad that a lot of younger people simply have no idea how any of this even works. So that's what we're not alone in that. Yeah, well we're not sweeping the country. Exactly, exactly. You know the second thing is that I don't think they think that what they feel really matters. I mean that the legislature will decide one thing or another that special interests have too much power, whether or not that's true or not is an empirical question. But you know that's that's the perception. I mean part of that perception is fed by the fact that you know really pretty much every incumbent gets reelected every year. There's not that many tight races, not that many competitive races. And the reason you need that stuff, it's not just so folks like me who love politics can follow it. It's because a competitive two party system, competitive elections mean that you get serious debates. You end up really talking about what matters. You end up being forced to make difficult decisions. You end up being responsive. I always say that you know a scared politician is a is a responsive politician, right? You want him to be scared. But they're they don't really feel like they have to deliver and I don't think the public feels like they're delivering for them. I think they feel like they deliver for certain core constituencies. I feel like they think they probably deliver for some public employees here in Hawaii. But they don't deliver for everybody and I think why would you pay attention to something when you know it doesn't seem like anyone much cares what you think. You know what what is the public in Hawaii care about? I mean the number one issue really is affordable housing. Every single pole that's what they care about. You know people have decided that the rail needs to be built because it's halfway built but what they care about is finding a way for them and their families to stay here and the ledge kind of works around the edges does a few marginal shifts but the truth of the matter is you know giving folks a tax break on their grocery bill or building you know a few more units of workforce housing that's really not going to address the problem. And so I don't think they they don't feel perceived that the legislature has the same sense of urgency that that they do about some of these issues. In all of that I mean it sounds like and maybe this is a sea change all around the country but it sounds like people are interested in in self-interest and businesses are interested in self-interest even nonprofits are interested in self-interest and you know who is watching the vision that we are to aspire to. I'm going to say in the energy you know field we've had a couple of bills with targets and 100% renewable whether we actually make progress and that is a big issue to me. But I think mostly we don't have a plan we don't have a self-image as a state. If we had a self-image of a state we'd have more than one airline we'd have we'd have ferries back and forth. You know we'd have we'd have better energy right now. We don't do that and we've lost touch with that somehow. That's that's exactly right I mean was it was a George H.W. Bush who called or Bill Clinton who called it the vision thing. I mean we the state doesn't have a vision anymore it seems willing to simply make sure everything sort of runs together. We'll do the basics and we'll kick the can down the road for these more difficult issues. And you know the interesting thing about that or the sad thing to me is that this state was really born as an innovative place for public policy. I mean it prided itself on the 30 or so years maybe 25 years after statehood of being a leader for the nation. You don't hear any of that anymore. I mean a lot of what you hear is excuses a lot of what you hear is well we can't do that it's too complicated. You know that's a sort of policy issue we don't want to engage with. And maybe a little bit around energy you've got this but clearly as you suggested there's not really the the sense that we need to go to the distance that that we can do radical things we can really be a leader in public policy. We can be excellent. We can be excellent that's right this sense that we should be excellent is gone. The sense is that maybe it would be good if we were in the top half. I think that's that's sort of what it's been replaced with. Yeah exactly exactly it's like it's like you know we become we went from being a you know an honor student to a to a B minus student we're not terrible but that's about all you can say. So how does that happen in a given place and if you don't mind my multiple compound questions if you if we understand how it happens is it reversible can we change it and if we can how. Well I hope we can and you know one thing I'll say is there's a lot of younger talented legislators you know I'm thinking of people like Chris Lee of like Della Bellotti who really do need to be given a chance to really care about public policy they're really smart they're not afraid to take some risks and those are the people we need to have in charge I mean the truth of the matter is and I hate to say this because you know Joe Suki served the state for a long time but there's a lot of the old guard that needs to realize that they should retire or that they should find ways to mentor some of the younger politicians and give them leadership positions. I think that's so important and it's not limited to government it's in business too. Absolutely. You know all these guys sit around like until they're way octogenarian. It happens at the university. Yeah it does. I mean I think that's one of the most difficult questions that people don't always spend enough time thinking about how do you how do you plan for succession and you want to do it strategically you want to do it so you get the right sorts of people in these positions and I think that's I mean if there's an action individuals can take I think that's that if you're sort of of retirement age then you really should be thinking about how to shepherd young talented people into these positions of leadership. Well but it's dangerous to run for office. Yes it's dangerous because whatever happened in your life is going to be turned up against you and even if nothing happened in your life it's going to be turned up against you. They'll find something. They'll find something they'll make it up you know and you're embarrassed and humiliated and you know you're you're in shame already and a lot of people you know they won't touch it and I know people are totally qualified who would run but that stops them from running and I don't know how you change that maybe that's the press thing or maybe it's a public attitude about hey he's running he's a good guy he wants to help us he's not just doing it for self interest how do we change that way of looking at it? I wish I knew the answer I mean clearly there was a time here would that those movements were embraced I mean if you think of the younger people you know like Neil Abercrombie like Ben Cayetano like Joe Suki I mean people who were elected in a much earlier era they they were young they were the ones who were here to change things and and folks gave him a chance and that's what we need to do again. Give a chance you know respect the respect the essence of what he's doing Mr. Smith goes was it Smith? Yeah. Mr. Smith goes to Washington. He's got an idealistic approach if you find idealism the rest will follow. Yeah I mean you need to combine idealism with some older folks who understand how how you know how how the sausage is made I mean that makes the best organization but when you just have a bunch of old cynics you're not going to you're not going to accomplish anything. We have to let let the young people in. Yeah. Embrace them and encourage them and empower them. So question though what's going to happen next year because we've seen now the sea change we're not happy with it we're not sure we have a solution to it. All things equal what's going to happen next year we those bills going to come back it's an election year you know people are a little timid in election years are we going to have a resolution of these issues or it's just going to be like you know off the side never to come back. Well there's going to be I have to be some resolution to rail so I expect there's going to be a special session I expect probably the G.E.T. extension is what's going to happen and so that issue may finally be dealt with for good and that can be taken off the agenda and leave some room for other things so I mean for sure you're going to see Airbnb come back that's a really emotional tough issue that wasn't dealt with this session some of the environmental bills which were good bills like the the sunscreen oxybenzone band that'll probably come back maybe styrofoam I know a lot of the younger legislators are really frustrated that some of those environmental bills weren't looked at seriously this session what about the positions help medical help and dying that's an interesting bill well you know that's that's a really important bill I think everyone thought that was going to happen this session including me and the truth of the matter is I don't I don't think it's going to come back next session that's an election year too it was going to pass it all it would have been this one the problem is that bill is the exact sort of thing our local legislators don't like to touch because there's really no room to compromise at the end of the day it really is a philosophical question and and someone is going to feel like you've done the wrong thing and it's a very emotional issue but but this is their job I mean they're either whatever side you are on this is the sort of decision they're elected to make and they need to make a decision just saying we're going to consider it again is not a decision no kidding you down the road doesn't work that's you know that takes me back to next era next era lasted 18 months while it was going on it was casting a shadow over everything everybody was afraid to move one way or the other way and then I said look decide one way or the other decide just be done with it get it get it behind us so we can do other issues otherwise the distraction will be total and I mean I worry about that happening next year too you're right though if we resolve it in you know quickly uh then we'll have time for better policy elsewhere well so what I wanted to ask your advice if you don't mind looking at camera one they're out there the media is out there okay yes and am I you know you do these you know these visits with the media on a regular basis you know to your credit you come down from the university and give us your thoughts and your analysis it's very valuable for the public to have that but query and you deal with the media what should the media be doing as as a member of this whole establishment that takes us forward that takes public opinion forward how should they be looking at it how should they look at this session how should they look at the legislature in general to give us a better result this camera one well I think for the most part given our limited media outlets in Hawaii they don't do a terrible job but one thing I would suggest is that they do focus more on policy on the sorts of things that people care about and less on the horse race I mean that the takuta ouster suit the suki ouster that got a tremendous amount of attention and other important policy issues really weren't covered so I think it requires a certain amount of discipline from media outlets to say that we're not going to play the legislators legislatures game because those are the kind of distraction issues that that they would like to have focused on and not the issues that I think matter more to the public it's harder to tell those stories but they're more important stories to tell so yeah it's a conversation yeah it's an ongoing conversation you have to be honest you have to tell your views you have to be open to the other guy's views the media the public the government everybody involved and the university and you and me it's a conversation absolutely thank you so much for this conversation always nice to see you calling I take care all right