Honolulu Hale could be a magnificent Italian villa. The heavy bronze doors open onto an almost medieval courtyard and then a grand double stairway.
There is even a third-floor pulpit worthy of staging a Romeo and Juliet balcony scene.
From the King Street front doors, it is a gorgeous public building — but then turn toward the mountains and the back door is not too much of anything.
I think that is because Honolulu’s City Hall has its back door not in architecture but in municipal code. Honolulu city government is absolutely designed around having a back door to every problem.
The person now benefiting the most from that edifice’s back door is the current top occupant, Mayor Kirk Caldwell.
Compared to mayors and city leaders across the country, Caldwell’s job is just barely there. If the mayorship were a brew, it would be light beer with the carbs cut in half.
Big cities are big jobs. Honolulu is neither.
Caldwell runs no schools. Rahm Emanuel, Chicago’s mayor, is defined by how he handles relations with the city’s 652 public schools, the 400,000 students and the 36,000 teachers and employees. Emanuel also runs two major airports, a harbor and also deals with a major epidemic of murder and violence, plus five months of snow.
Of course, even that is made small by the job of running New York City, the nation’s largest city. According to its web page, New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio runs public education, correctional institutions, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply and welfare services.
Back in Honolulu, even what little the mayor has to do is coated with responsibility cut-outs.
For instance, two of Honolulu’s latest city flashpoints are the departments of police and fire. HPD is dealing with a chief of police who is the subject of a major federal investigation, and Caldwell has absolutely reveled in the escape clause of a police commission stuck in the middle, so he is not really able to tell Chief Louis Kealoha he needs to get his house in order right now.
“I’ve actually told the chief, perception becomes reality,” Caldwell told Hawaii News Now last year. “I’ve encouraged him from time to time to step out and say more. That’s about as much as I can do as mayor.”
Then the recent shocking video of a Honolulu firefighter being slammed against a utility pole while dangling from a city rescue helicopter is another case. A mayor unburdened by a filtering fire commission could not only demand action and answers, but stand up and get something changed.
Back door indeed.
The same can be said with Honolulu’s biggest financial disaster: the rail transit system that is both late and over budget.
Caldwell at first said he was trusting the rail’s board to run it. Only after the
Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation worked to push to make rail’s potential flaws and cost overruns public, did Caldwell get involved.
As it turns out, taking credit and taking blame are two different animals. Right now Caldwell is holding one and running from the other.
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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com
