6 Months On The Road

Midway through his first year as mayor, Mufi Hannemann gives his team an A for effort, an A-minus for accomplishment

Hannemann finally found electoral success on the city level. In 1994 he won a City Council seat from the Eighth District which includes Aiea and Pearl City. He easily won re-election in 1998, but in 2000 he chose to challenge incumbent Mayor Jeremy Harris.

Harris beat him handily.

As Harris prepared for a gubernatorial race in 2002, Hannemann did the same for the special Honolulu mayoral race to fill the rest of Harris’s term. Scandal forced Harris to withdraw from the gubernatorial contest and serve out the rest of his term. Hannemann, in turn, had to sit out the 2002 electoral season.

Today Hannemann contends that his early interest in Washington, national affairs and Hawaii’s place in the world serves him well in Honolulu Hale. “I’m a mayor who understands Hawaii’s role in the global context,” he says. “I can help the state achieve its international objectives.

“Honolulu is the 12th largest city in the country. We represent 75 percent of the state’s tax base, 75 percent of its population. To use a basketball analogy, Honolulu’s the Shaquille O’Neal of Hawaii. If we play well, the state does well. I intend to make good use of my Washington and business connections.”

Hannemann acknowledges that his first six months in office have been comparatively quiet ones. “There’s not been a lot of ground-breaking, not a lot of ribbon-cutting as with the previous administration,” he says. “But I’m taking care of business.We’re doing the repair and maintenance; we’re doing what needs to be done. And I don’t think voters have ever seen a governor and Honolulu mayor working together better that Gov. Lingle and myself.”

Certainly one reason for the quiet at Honolulu Hale is the good relationship Hannemann has established between himself and members of the City Council.

“He’s doing well,” says Council Finance Chair Ann Kobayashi. “He laid everything on the table, showed us that the city was in trouble financially and that we would have to raise sewer fees.

“That was refreshing. The whole budget cycle this year was so much easier. We’d ask Hannemann’s directors questions, and we’d get answers back in a week. With the previous administration it would take weeks, months, years.”

Last fall, Gary Okino, the former city planner who succeeded Hannemann as Eighth District councilman, worked hard for Hannemann’s opponent, Duke Bainum. But now he’s a convert.

“I’m pleasantly surprised,” says Okino. “Mayor Hannemann’s doing very well. I supported Duke because I thought he would do the right thing as mayor, without consideration for his personal ambitions or someone else’s agenda.

“And Hannemann is trying to do the right things. Instead of hiding the city’s problems, he looking at issues objectively and doing what must be done.

“I’m impressed by a number of things. His appointees, for example. They’re wellqualified for the jobs they have. The mayor himself is willing to look at things objectively and make hard decisions about raising taxes and fees. I liked the way he looked at the sewer situation, acknowledged that we had to fix them, and proposed the fee increases to do it. We had deferred that sewer work for years.”

Okino credits Hannemann for a lean capital improvement budget: “It was really prudent. Unglamorous, but we have to be. Harris incurred a lot of debt on glamorous things, and a lot of necessary things were deferred. Sewer and roadways were deferred for new parks and beautifying roadways. We’ve got a bigger bill now just to catch up.”

Even Fourth District Councilman Charles Djou, the lone Republican on the nonpartisan Council and the only member to vote against the mayor’s budget, thinks highly of Hannemann. “By and large, I think he’s doing a good job. It’s much easier to talk to Hannemann and his staff than it was to his predecessor, and I’m very happy about that. In my mind, he hasn’t made any missteps thus far.”

Djou acknowledges that Hannemann’s administration hasn’t put forth any “bold policy initiatives, but it’s tough to be a bold mayor when you don’t have any money.” As a believer in small government, Djou admits a certain fear that Hannemann may just be “riding out the storm until there’s enough money” to initiate some big spending projects.

“I also disagree with his decision to immediately reach for the lever of increasing taxes and fees,”adds Djou. But in the next breath he calls Hannemann’s cabinet appointments “exceptional, capable people.”

To what does Hannemann attribute his good relations with the City Council?

“I was there once,” he says. “And I’m just treating the members of the Council the way I wanted to be treated when I was there. I regard them as co-leaders of the city, and I want to run a very open, transparent administration.

“If there are disagreements between us, I’m going to give them advance notice of where I disagree. We’re not going to fight it out in the press. The public’s tired of that.”

If Hannemann faces a problem with the Council, it’s that “some of them still think we’re acting the way the previous mayor did, that we’re not sharing information — that the same thing is happening. No, it’s not. And it won’t.”

Hannemann seems determined to succeed. “I’ve wanted this job for a long time,” he admits. “And I’m finally in a position where I can make things happen. As a councilmember you have to wait. But as mayor, I’m able to make important decisions.”

The job has its downside. Hannemann and his wife, Gail, endured a spate of publicity when Gail received a speeding ticket and Hannemann called Chief of Police Boisse Correa to talk about the incident.

“Gail’s very akamai politically,” says Hannemann. “She knows we live our lives in a fishbowl, that everything we do is magnified. And she’s very career-oriented herself. She’s the CEO of the Girl Scout Council of Hawaii and active in the Hawaii Alliance of Arts Organizations.”

Certainly the most difficult issue currently facing the city is traffic, and Hannemann has come out strongly in support of raising the excise tax a half-percent to fund mass transit. “I put in a lot of work to position that bill to get it through the Legislature,” he says. “And I’ve listened to the critics of a rail system, but I’m not convinced that there’s an alternative to rail. I favor a multimodal approach: bus, rail, a ferry system, reversing the traffic flow. There’s got to be choices. I’ve never argued everyone would get out of their cars and get into a train.”

It remains unclear whether Gov. Linda Lingle will sign the excise tax increase. Says Hannemann: “No one wants to raise taxes, but I think it would be a huge mistake if she vetoes it.”

At six months, Mufi Hannemann himself hasn’t made any huge mistakes — not even any little ones of note. If there’s a criticism of his performance out there, it’s that — in the words of one Honolulu Hale observer — “he dumps every ounce of blame on somebody else, usually former Mayor Jeremy Harris.”

But the same critic notes that Hannemann’s “politically adroit. He’s really, really good at the politics of words — right up there with Frank Fasi. He hasn’t done much yet, but there is a sense that he’s grabbed the reins of government and that he’s doing fine.”

Honolulu’s press, at this point, certainly likes Hannemann. In part, he owes his success with them to his predecessor — and to the present governor. Jeremy Harris attempted to manage the press as closely as he did every other aspect of life at Honolulu Hale. Access to the mayor and department heads was often difficult — and Harris was loath ever to admit an error.

Over at the state Capitol, Gov. Lingle relies heavily on communications director Lenny Klompus. Working reporters in both the print and electronic media frequently complain of the state administration’s attempts to spin every story to its own advantage.

Hannemann exercises no such control over press access. Want to talk to a department head? Call him, her — them. The mayor may grumble at what his subordinate says on the nightly news, but — to at least this point — he’s not restraining members of his administration.

And Hannemann himself?

At six months, he’s a hugger — not a spinner.

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