Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.
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JUNE 16, 1978
Governors of six western states yesterday applauded Gov. George R. Ariyoshi’s controversial growth management legislative plan while underscoring their own failures in fashioning similar statewide plans.
The chief executives are here for the annual meeting of the Western Governors Conference, held for the first time in Honolulu.
Ariyoshi yesterday outlined his policies for controlled growth, stressing that his policies are not an economic “no growth” policy as his critics have charged. He also noted with pleasure that a third of the bills and resolutions he sent to lawmakers this year were approved.
His policies were praised by a panel of governors from Arizona, Idaho, Utah, Montana and Nevada and by a representative of Oregon Gov. Robert Straub.
“You’ve answered the challenge (for controlled planning) better than most of us,” said Nevada Gov. Mike O’Callaghan.
But the chief executives joined conference vice chairman John Evans of Idaho in saying there’s “no way that we could ever adopt as comprehensive a plan as Gov. Ariyoshi has.”
Evans said Idaho once sought development of a comprehensive state plan similar to that adopted this year by Hawaii, the first state to lay down a statewide comprehensive plan for growth. The effort “met with great resistance,” Evans said.
The statewide coordination Evans says is exhibited by Hawaii’s adoption of a state plan is “lacking completely in Idaho’s case,” he said.
Attempts by Arizona and Nevada to make land use planning a state function have met similar roadblocks, their chief executives said.
“A land use plan would never be tolerated or advocated by legislators” in Arizona, said Gov. Bruce Babbitt.
Nevada’s O’Callaghan said that while city and county government planners in Nevada have so far blocked all efforts to extend planning functions to the state, he is confident that a tradeoff between state and local governments is in the offing.
The state will have more leverage in demanding expanded planning responsibilities as local governments’ requests for state funds grow, O’Callaghan said.
