i L i n d . n e t

The Advertiser is reporting this morning that Sen. Ron Menor was arrested for DUI shortly after midnight. Menor is chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Environment.

Many of the last minute conference committee decisions came too late to meet Friday night’s 11:30 p.m. deadline for decking completed committee reports, so House Speaker Calvin Say and Senate President Colleen Hanabusa agreed to waive the deadline for certain measures. A letter was circulated to all legislative offices dated 1 a.m. Saturday morning. It explained that the 11:30 p.m. deadline had been part of an internal legislative agreement on the timetable.

However, several measures were being negotiated throughout the evening on April 25th. Several Conference Committees, even though they had reached agreement on the substance of these measures, did not have the time to prepare and adequately review the reports and the final form of the Conference Drafts prior to the filing deadline.

Therefore, the President and I are exercising our powers under Rule 13 of the Conference Committee Guidelines, to make an exception to this deadline for the bills that were agreed to and voted upon in Conference Room 309. A list of these measures is available in the House Clerk’s Office.

The President and I granted this exception to provide the Conference members with an opportunity to ensure that the Conference Committee reports and the Conference drafts reflect the agreements reached on Friday evening.

It all made for a wild ride.

This was the scene about 10:30 p.m. Friday night when conference agreement was reached on one pending bill. As you can see, at this point it becomes a well attended spectator sport. Someone suggested to me that a reality show featuring the legislature might give the public a better understanding and appreciation for the process of lawmaking than offered by our general approach to news reporting.

Thanks to Hunter Bishop for his response to an editorial opposing the “card check” bill that died last week when the House declined to override Gov. Lingle’s veto.

Looks like tough times for Hawaiian Telcom. Rick Daysog reports that its bonds have lost 65 % of their value since the beginning of the year. Aaron Stene’s Kona Blog caught another company caper earlier this month as HawTel applied to get in on the federal universal service fund.

Hawaiian Telcom’s move, which apparently relied heavily on the claim that rural service in Hawaii is a key part of national defense, drew a long comment in The Technology Liberation Front blog (”The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.”)

A recent Wall Street Journal story says the situation at Hawaiian Telcom has “industry-wide implications”.

Because major phone companies are reducing their exposure to the shrinking landline phone business, phone services in a growing number of U.S. states are being taken over by private-equity firms like Carlyle or by tiny telecom companies.

Verizon, for instance, has agreed to spin off its landline business in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire to a small phone company, FairPoint Communications Inc. Alltel Corp., which services the Midwest, was recently taken private by private-equity firms TPG Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners.

Many of these deals are raising concern among local regulators and consumer advocates, who are worried about the telecom savvy of the new buyers. “Why would a company one-10th the size and not nearly as deep of pockets as Verizon be able to make a success where Verizon hasn’t,” asks Rand Wilson, a spokesman for Verizon’s unionized workers, speaking of the Verizon-FairPoint deal, which is expected to close next week. A FairPoint spokeswoman says the company has plenty of experience taking over landlines in less dense regions of the U.S. and plans to offer new technologies and services to New England customers.

And looking around this morning, I ran into this photo of the back door that Hawaiian Telcom employees were led out through after being summarily dismissed earlier this year.