To Rail or Not?
That is the Ballot Question. The biggest ballot question in the Sept. 20 primary isn’t for mayor, but the rail plan pushed by Mayor Hannemann. MidWeek asks him and leading mayoral candidates Panos Prevedouros and Ann Kobayashi about the various transit plans they favor. Mayor Mufi Hannemann’s bid for a second term should have been easy.
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By Dan Boylan
Mayor Mufi Hannemann’s bid for a second term should have been easy.
Although his 2004 victory over then City Councilman Duke Bainum was razor thin - by 1,354 votes out of 294,544 cast - Hannemann has enjoyed good reviews during his first four years in office. People like Councilman Gary Okino, who campaigned hard for Bainum, has become a Hannemann supporter, and early skeptics of the nation’s first Samoan mayor speak of being “pleasantly surprised” by his performance in office.
More important, so do his constituents. Polls taken in mid-July showed that 80 percent of Oahu’s people approved Hannemann’s handling of his job. Eighty percent: That’s an approval rating that spells ecstasy for a politician. Add to Hannemann’s re-election year good fortune a staggering sum of money in his campaign treasury: $2.5 million and counting. With those numbers, Hannemann should have walked into a second term.
He still may - maybe in the primary - but he will not do so unopposed. Hannemann’s proposed 20-mile, elevated steel rail commuter line from East Kapolei to Ala Moana has provoked a storm of opposition, splintered the City Council and brought out nine people who want his job - two of whom, Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi and University of Hawaii professor Panos Prevedouros, should cause Hannemann some concern.
The mayor says he was not surprised: “I always expected some kind of race. Mayor Fasi, Jeremy Harris - however popular they might have been - always had someone with name recognition running against them. I told my people long ago to expect an opponent. I’m prepared.”
Neither is he surprised that his rail transit proposal is what brought them out. “I’ve been very active in the National Conference of Mayors, and they all warned me that the first person out of the box with a transit proposal would be hit the hardest.
“I didn’t have transit on my radar screen to do in the first or second year of my administration,” he says. According to Hannemann, Linda Lingle made him do it. “In her state-of-state address she proposed it. We agreed to work together; we formed a committee. We talked with Senate president Bobby Bunda, and we passed out an increase in the state excise tax in one legislative session.”
Lingle faced pressure from fellow Republicans to veto the excise tax increase, but Hannemann claims the votes were there in the Legislature to override, so she let it pass without her signature. “The congressional delegation was all for it,” Hannemann says, “but they told us not to embarrass them by pulling back at the last moment. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta encouraged us.
“The council supported it by a 7-2 vote. The experts told us there was no better alternative to rail, and people were facing gridlock every day, seven days a week. Momentum was building; that’s why we moved so quickly.”
But the council wavered, holding a series of votes about the technology to be used, the route to be followed. Then along came Stop Rail Now and its petition d r i v e .
Should a sufficient number of the petitions’ signatures be certified by the City Clerk’s office, rail transit will be voted up or down in November.
The council’s wavering support bothers Hannemann: “I am disappointed when it appears that government is wishy-washy. We do studies. We hold public meetings all over the island. We’re open to new ideas. Then we take a position, and the council changes its mind.”
He’s also troubled by Stop Rail Now’s assertion that the people should vote on transit because of the cost and magnitude of the project.
“That raises a larger question,” Hannemann says. “Should every major issue be on the ballot? Whether the state should purchase Turtle Bay Resort. Whether the Superferry must do an EIS before it sails.
“I’m worried that this will set a precedent for other projects. And ballot initiatives often turn complex questions into oversimplifications.”
Hannemann feels that the Stop Rail Now petition may very well be defeated. More than 60 percent of those polled in the newspapers’ mid-July surveys said that they favored building rail transit. Other factors will be in play as well. “The University of
Hawaii will be back in session; traffic will be even worse. Gas prices are likely to remain high.
“Rail offers at least a solution, not the solution, and one that is funded and effective. But we’re going to need bus, boat, bike, train and footmobile as well, so that people aren’t required to drive their car to work.”
Rail transit also promises jobs. “Hawaii’s economy is starting to go south fast,” says Hannemann. “The rising cost of jet fuel is emptying hotels and restaurants. With Honolulu’s good bond rating, we can bring an infusion of money into the state for the next 10 to 15 years. Rail transit is a quality of life issue, but it’s also a jobs issue.”
At least one mayoral opponent has demanded that Hannemann commit to serving a full four-year term. Hannemann’s interest in Washington is well-known. He began his political career as a Presidential Fellow, working in then vice president George H.W. Bush’s office. Before turning to setting his sights on Honolulu Hale, he ran twice - unsuccessfully - for Congress.
Then there’s that suite of offices on the fifth floor of the Capitol that Linda Lingle will vacate two years from now.
“I’m leaving the door open in 2010,” says Hannemann. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Right now I’m running for mayor with the intention of serving a four-year term. I own a house in Aiea, and I still own one in Falls Church, Va. So - beyond this job - I’ll have two options: Washington or Washington Place. It’s too early to say.”
Editor’s note:
While Honolulu voters will be voting for mayor in the primary election Sept. 20, that’s not the biggest city race. Not by a long shot. That would be a citizen-generated referendum on whether or not we want to spend several billion dollars on a fixed steel-wheels-on-steel-tracks train system - the plan to which incumbent Mayor Mufi Hannemann has inextricably tied himself.
But trains are not the only mass transit plans available or being championed outside of the mayor’s office. On July 22, UH engineering professor Panos Prevedouros filed to run against Hannemann. A guy who studies this stuff for a living, Prevedouros says steel-on-steel will bankrupt the city, and he argues for high-occupancy toll lanes above current freeways.
Then on the last filing day, throwing local politics for a loop, City Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi filed to run for mayor. She prefers a rubber-on-concrete transit system.
In the interest of helping MidWeek readers decide which transit proposal, if any, they prefer - and to make an informed choice in the voting booth in two-and-a-half weeks, we asked three veteran writers to profile these three leading candidates and ask them to explain their vision for Honolulu’s transit future. They’re three very different candidates, and their ideas are equally disparate.
Now let the people speak, let the voters decide.
And hopefully choose wisely.
-Don Chapman
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