The City Council is doing what any self-respecting elected official would do when people complain about paying a lot more for a basic service and about the mistakes made in billing for that service.
Inserting themselves into the middle of the matter, Council members are making big shoulders and demanding that the offending agency be held accountable. To get to the accountability bit, they say they should be the ones to hold the purse strings.
The Honolulu Board of Water Supply didn’t do itself any favors when it went from billing customers every month instead of every two months and began charging a higher fee — even though it had been delayed for a year — while using a different billing system. When a glitch in the system had some bills delivered on the dates that payments were due, the combination of seeming incompetence and higher customer costs combined to heighten discontent.
This has become an opportunity for Council members, not for wresting financial control by requiring the board to get their approval for its operational and improvement spending plans and its potential land use decisions, but by taking a larger role in oversight themselves.
Should problems continue, the Council will still have the option of revamping the board’s functions.
The agency, however, has its work cut out for it. Oahu water users need to better understand the complexity of getting water to flow when they turn on the tap. They also should gain a clearer picture of why sewage fees are part of the connection and how court decisions and federal regulations come into play.
The board should do a better job of explaining all of its work and why it is important that the agency be independent of political influence, particularly when some on the Council see the current situation as a way to raise their profiles as they seek higher office.
In the mid-1920s, the agency was set up in recognition that water was too valuable a resource to be placed at the whims of politics. And though board members are appointees of the mayor and confirmed by the Council, staff with important expertise in water management and distribution remain the core of the agency.
The Council’s grievance about accountability stumbled last week when its meeting on a resolution to put the change of board functions on the ballot fell short of the proper time allotment for public notice.
Councilman Ikaika Anderson, who introduced the resolution, acknowledged the mistake, but continued his contention that the board should be directly answerable to rate payers and voters.
He overlooks the fact that rates and budgets are subject to public hearings and that through attentive Council members, customers do have a say.
Pushing a charter amendment at this time is an overreaction.
