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A proposed 3% pay raise to $116,712 for City Council members has provoked public outrage and Council embarrassment in a state where that level of pay is barely sufficient to own a condo. Meanwhile, a Hawaii Senate bill for publicly funded elections failed to pass. That juxtaposition is truly crazy because privately funded elections and underpaid politicians are the recipe for both legal and illegal corruption.
Illegal corruption in Hawaii regularly makes the news, but the much greater legal corruption is the invisible influence of privately funded elections.
Economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research have repeatedly found that prosperity, as measured by gross domestic product per person, depends most strongly on social infrastructure, but how can we expect good government when we pay elected officials poorly and indenture them to private interests?
Neil Frazer
Kailua
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