i L i n d . n e t

Watch that counter. It will pass 1.2 million later today.

You’re invited to a special evening at the Mandalay Restaurant this Thursday, May 22, to celebrate the re-launching of a Hawaii chapter of Common Cause! I was fortunate to be part of CC/H back some twenty-something years, and still have people stop me from time to time with “you’re that Common Cause guy, right?” So join the fun on Thursday and be a part of this much-needed addition to the “good government” landscape of the islands.

Bob Edgar, president of the Washington, D.C.-based citizens’ lobby, will be here for the event and provide an on-the-scene update on current Common Cause issues, ranging from the traditional ethics and accountability in government to media and democracy. Just $30 makes you part of the special crowd. Oh, and did I mention the heavy pupus? Don’t worry about the deadline–we’ll squeeze you in. Click here to reserve your spot.

Urban planners and reformers take note: Seattle has abandoned its experiment with automated public toilets like those in Europe. The City Council voted to remove the toilets, which opened in 2004. In the U.S., unlike in Europe, trash quickly jammed the automatic cleaning systems, forcing the city to assign staff to do the job. And the high tech potties apparently attracted illegal drug use and prostitution.

I was sorry to read about this because the issue of public toilet facilities is an important one.

Some farmers have a very different take than the Sierra Club and other environmentalists on the Important Agricultural Lands bill passed by the legislature this year (SB 2646).

Warren Watanabe, executive director of the Maui County Farm Bureau, wrote an op ed for the Maui News this week:

I was personally involved in the process to create SB 2646, for the sake of my small family farm, and for the sake of my fellow farmers and ranchers. The bill seeks to solve the huge challenges and holes in the current system. Fertilizer prices have doubled or tripled, shipping challenges have been a roller coaster ride, and changing food safety regulations make it more costly for farmers to get their product to market. It’s important to understand that having land designated for agriculture, by itself, is not enough to ensure successful agriculture. Look at how shocked people were when Aloha Airlines’ inter-island cargo stopped for a while. Bread had to be shipped from Oahu to the Mainland and back again in order to get to the Neighbor Islands. Sounds crazy, but that’s what it took, and it highlights the fact that agriculture needs thoughtful and proactive government policies.

The IAL bill is a comprehensive package of economic measures and incentives to build up agriculture and help farms continue or expand their operations, for the long-term. It does NOT allow landowners to “willy-nilly” designate their property to urban, or to bypass all of the land development requirements, or to arbitrarily pull their lands out of the IAL classification. It is not a “gift to landowners” and it does not blindly hand over millions of dollars in tax credits and loan guarantees. What the IAL bill does is provide real incentives for them to keep their land in productive agricultural use rather than letting it lie fallow or changing it to nonagricultural uses.

This is one of those complicated issues with diverse interests to appease, and I’m not prepared to dismiss the Farm Bureau’s perspective.

Admittedly, some of the headline grabbers thown out by environmentalists, like the statement that hundreds of thousands of acres could be urbanized under this bill, are overblown. That could only happen if every bit of ag land was designated important ag land under this bill’s provisions, virtually an impossible scenario. But their underlying concerns about development of ag land is not easily dismissed.

The underlying problem, of course, is that farmers aren’t the ones who own large tracts of agricultural land, and any attempt to protect ag lands means that you’ve got to bring the major landowners to the table. This bill apparently made enough compromises to succeed on that score.

One problem is that the deals were struck in the back rooms where neither environmentalists nor the public had an opportunity to understand the tradeoffs, to see who was getting what as revisions were made, or to comment meaningfully as the process unfolded. It’s a process that gave the strong appearance that hidden interests had taken control of the bill, and that inevitably raised red flags. Could an open process, with all interests at the table, have resulted in a bill that all could buy into? Maybe not. But choosing the closed, behind-the-scenes-deal approach pressed by legislative leaders guaranteed public distrust and opposition.

Yesterday was one of those days you would rather do without, but are unavoidable in the long run. A unwanted milestone of sorts. I was sitting in the black chair in a 15th floor office in the Ala Moana Building, waiting for the word from the guy with the Johns Hopkins degrees on the wall. Neurosensory hearing loss was the term, likely inherited from my mother. And the doc added that there’s no pill, no medicine, no operation that can cure it. You live with it, with some assistance of the electronic sort.

So to keep from missing any of those whispered secrets, I’ll have to join the ranks of the hearing assisted. Won’t that be a fun bit of shopping? I’d rather buy another camera.

It was low tide yesterday morning, with little wind and a thick layer of vog that mixed with low cloud cover to make up quite a stew.

But the overall impression was calm, which this photo certainly captures.