"This Side of Paradise"


The Wall Street Journal this morning (9/1/2007) ran a story by Malia
Zimmerman on its editorial page ( column 3, page A6) on the Hawaii
Supreme
Court ruling regarding the property tax issue in Kauai. The gist of the
story appears as per:

http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?1484caf5-1f05-4199-974a-
f62ab3731d81

(sorry, can't locate the Journal article itself online)

I chuckled over several passages from the Journal article -

"The mayor of Kauai, Republican Bryan Baptiste, and Democratic council
members, /sic/ immediately opposed the amendment and campaigned
against it.
They lost. Two out of every three voters on the island voted for the
amendment."

"Kauai officials responded by trying to kill the amendment, spending
$250,000 in tax dollars to hire a lawyer from the main island and
suing to
have the election overturned. And here, they won starting in 2005 when
state Judge George Masuoko ruled in *Country of Kauai ex ret.
Nakazawa v.
Baptiste*, that the amendment was actually a ballot initiative that
repealed
a tax, something not permitted by the County Charter."

"Honolulu attorney Gary Slovin, for the county, countered that allowing
people to vote on taxes would create 'chaos.' A few members of the
County
County Council publicly agreed. The Hawaii Government Employees
Association, fearing government jobs held by union members might be cut,
issued a statement to say that giving residents power over taxes was an
'absurd proposition.' "

"To support his 70-page majority decision, Chief Justice Ronald Moon
argued
that property taxpayers have no right to determine how much they are
taxed."

hmmm...sounds to me very much just another example of those elected
by the
voters deciding that they know better than those voters what is good for
those voters. Shades of California's Prop 13! The initiative
process - as
exemplified in California - is not perfect by any means...but the
government
officials here are not so arrogant as to supercede the will of the
people...as per Prop 13. I wonder why the Kauai folks don't start a
recall
campaign against those Kauai county officials.

And another chuckle:

"Hawaii's last constitutional convention was held in 1978, a landmark
event
which laid the groundwork for today's modern Hawaiian state. There was
almost another in 1998, when voters approved holding a convention
only to be
overruled by - you guessed it - the state Supreme Court. It decided
that
ballots left 'blank' on the question of a constitutional convention
should
be counted as 'no.' "

Sounds to me very prescient as per Florida's hanging chad and dimpled
chad
of the 2000 presidential election!

.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: "This Side of Paradise"
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