I found it fascinating that much of the complaint the Hawaii State Teachers Association filed with the Labor Relations Board over the Abercrombie administration imposing its “last, best and final offer” centered on hurt feelings over the tone of negotiations. The Star-Advertiser story caught the gist of it in this passage: HSTA’s complaint details eight [...]
Posted tagged ‘Neil Abercrombie’
Teachers talks got lost in sour tone
July 12, 2011Challenges lie ahead for Hawaiian recognition
July 8, 2011I’d like to feel good about the native Hawaiian recognition act signed into law by Gov. Neil Abercrombie, but it’s getting difficult to muster optimism as thorny issues of Hawaiian rights drag out. The measure forms a commission to establish a roll of qualified Hawaiians, with the hope of eventually leading Hawai‘i’s indigenous people to [...]
Abercrombie’s budget strategy is on target
June 24, 2011Gov. Neil Abercrombie is on the right track in ordering state departments to cover the remaining $50 million budget shortfall for 2012 by finding entire programs that can be eliminated instead of making across-the-board cuts. Slashing across the board is a poor management practice that sidesteps any setting of priorities and bleeds every program equally [...]
Fix system for appointing UH regents
June 21, 2011The discussion following yesterday’s post on Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s requests for the resignations of board and commission members took a turn to the selection process for University of Hawai’i regents, so let’s stick with that for another day. The governor used to appoint regents of his or her choosing, subject to confirmation by the Senate [...]
Abercrombie stirs the political pot with resignation demands
June 20, 2011Give Gov. Neil Abercrombie credit for audacity in his attempt to get resignations from former Gov. Linda Lingle’s appointees to the Public Utilities Commission, Land Use Commission, Public Housing Authority, Board of Land and Natural Resources and Stadium Authority. If they comply and allow Abercrombie to name his own people, it’ll vastly increase his control [...]
Enough Abercrombie-the-hippie digs already
June 15, 2011I got an e-mail yesterday from a fellow going off on Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s college days as “an unkempt, stinky, long-haired bearded hippie.” I get at least one of these a week and can’t tell you how tired of them I am. Criticizing Abercrombie’s current performance is fair game — I certainly do in my [...]
Govern your mouth, Mr. Governor
June 9, 2011Geez, we we’re just talking about Gov. Neil Abercrombie blathering semi-coherently about homelessness and now he’s at it again — this time with a barely articulate rant against the state paying $4 million to the NFL’s wealthy owners and players to bring the Pro Bowl here. Among his statements reported by the Star-Advertiser: • “This [...]
Abercrombie needs to get past the bombast on homelessness
June 9, 2011Returning to our lively discussion on homelessness from the other day, I thought the dedication of the Weinberg Foundation project in Waianae with 30 long-term townhouses and 20 transitional studios for low-income residents pointed up the challenge. This is a good project. Lack of affordable housing is the root problem for most of Hawai‘i’s homeless, [...]
Homeless plan or security sweep?
June 7, 2011Stories in the local media about Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s 90-day homeless plan have mentioned the timing in relation to the November APEC conference, but have allowed for the possibility of loftier goals than removing the homeless from the view plane of Barack Obama and other world leaders. Not so most of the stories circulating in [...]
A hurricane of politics
June 2, 2011It appears that a decade of drama over the Hurricane Relief Fund may be over. Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed a bill allowing him to take $42 million from the $117 million hurricane fund to help erase the budget deficit for this fiscal year — and to drain the fund entirely if more is needed. The [...]
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