Part of legislating in a democracy is that with the trial, sometimes there is the error.
The 2013 Legislature opened with a promise, not to do something, but a vow to undo the unpopular Public Land Development Corp.
Last year’s election shows that while voters weren’t of a mind to punish the creators of the PLDC, they were more likely to reward politicians who argued for tossing out the idea.
Supporters such as Wahiawa Democratic Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz easily won re-election last year even after including his work on the PLDC in his campaign brochures.
"I’m not afraid of it. I am interested in the concept, not a particular bill," Dela Cruz said in an interview.
He said state funds are so limited that some sort of public-private partnership must be devised to pay for needed development.
Meanwhile, Windward Democratic Sen. Laura Thielen carved out a nice niche for herself in her first winning Senate campaign by opposing the PLDC.
The Legislature is now lumbering toward a repeal of Act 55, which allows commercial development of state lands without many of the checks and balances of state environmental and county zoning laws.
Passed two years ago and the subject of heated and sometimes angry public meetings on all islands, the law suffered further with Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s bellicose defense.
This, of course, is not the first time the state Legislature so stumbled that it had to either beg the governor to get them out of a jam or pass a second law to stop the offending law.
In 2002, the Legislature was forced to repeal the van- cam law allowing police to issue tickets to speeders caught by a special traffic camera.
Like the PLDC, this was an idea that was supposed to get more money for the state. Reports at the time said that the van cams started with a $5 million loan from the state highway fund. The money would be repaid with speeding ticket money.
Public opposition led then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Sen. Colleen Hanabusa to steer the repeal bill through the Legislature.
Back in 1975, it was public outrage that forced the governor to act.
In the Legislature’s 1975 closing late-night moves, lawmakers voted themselves a 150 percent pension increase.
As then-Star-Bulletin political reporter Doug Boswell noted: "The pension proposal had never received a public hearing and had never been considered by any of the standing committees in either house."
A furious public descended on then-Gov. George Ariyoshi’s office demanding a veto. Within six days, Ariyoshi acted to save the Legislature from itself.
In his veto message, Ariyoshi took note of the protest, saying, "This concern has been expressed to members of the Legislature, since I am now in receipt of communications from certain legislators requesting that I veto HB 1779."
Perhaps the biggest legislative mistake also involving the sitting governor was back in 1969, when the Legislature again had one of its "midnight at the sausage factory" moments and slipped in something extra.
The something special was a resolution hurriedly passed as midnight approached. The resolution would have allowed the Dillingham Corp., thanks to a non-bid developer’s law, the right to build a wall of condominiums on the reclaimed peninsula now called Magic Island.
Although then-Gov. John A. Burns, the politically powerful ILWU and the Republican-influenced Dillingham Corp. all had lobbied for it, the public again rose up in protest.
Burns, as historian and former Star-Bulletin reporter Tom Coffman wrote in "Catch a Wave," was forced to do a rollback and proclaim the area as park land.
"Burns’ political stock seemed to have hit rock bottom. His marginal political allies talked privately of abandoning him," Coffman wrote.
Burns recovered and went on to win reelection, but legislators were to learn the first of many lessons that when the public finds its voice, it can speak with great power.
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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
