Two of Gov. David Ige’s most decisive moments are not winning legislative praise and both may be in trouble.
Last month ended with Ige appointing Tom Gorak to the Public Utilities Commission, replacing Michael Champley, whose term expired last week.
The governor also said he might veto a bill giving Maui Memorial Hospital employees special retirement or separation benefits when the state transfers the hospital to the private Kaiser Permanente system.
While Ige claims he was moving Gorak in and Champley out because Gorak, the PUC’s chief counsel, is more attuned to Ige’s ideas on renewable energy, others speculate that Ige was actually juicing the PUC vote on the sale of Hawaiian Electric to NextEra Energy.
NextEra supporters have been saying, off the record, that the vote was two in favor and one opposed to the merger and that by switching out Champley, Ige would get what he wanted: a PUC rejection of the sale.
But meanwhile, state senators are saying Ige’s action amounts to disrespecting the Senate because Gorak is now sitting on the PUC without Senate confirmation.
So the Senate is thinking about taking the case to court to find out if what Ige did was legal.
Such a move also speaks to a major lack of communication between Ige and his former colleagues in the Senate.
A not-exactly-uninterested bystander, House Speaker Joe Souki recalls that while he has seen interim appointments made by past governors, this one is particularly clumsy.
“As far as the timing I have some concerns, but it is a call of the governor. I would have advised him differently,” Souki said in an interview last week.
Of more concern to Souki is the threatened Maui hospital veto. Knitting together the agreement to take the state hospital private has been a sustained effort by the long-serving Maui Democrat.
Souki said he and other legislative leaders had a meeting with Ige last week because of his objections to the bill.
Ige is concerned because critics of SB 2077 say the bill would provide severance payments or extra pension bonuses that add more than $40 million to the cost of transferring the hospitals to Kaiser.
Legislators also appreciate that the extra money is a big deal to the politically powerful public worker unions, which adds extra urgency to lawmakers hauling themselves into special session on July 12 to override Ige’s possible veto.
But, the plot insists on thickening. Besides just overriding a veto, the state Constitution says lawmakers can amend the bill “to meet the governor’s objections” and shoot it back to the governor.
This becomes one of those “bills of many moving parts,” Souki said, because the bill would have to be a compromise between Ige, Democrats in the Legislature and one way or another, the public worker unions.
Such a deal on a vetoed bill has never been accomplished, according to Souki: “In my time I don’t believe we have done that, but there is always a first time.”
At least one senator, however, who asked to be anonymous, said “the timing is too complicated for us to do.”
Still, if it comes together, a compromise gives Ige a chance to tilt the balance back in his favor after a string of stumbles.
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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
