Political change of HART fails at Council

The City Council’s action on rail this week was a head-scratcher.

The bill would have asked Oahu residents to vote, again, on the City Charter provision for the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, essentially to dismantle what they just authorized in 2010.

What’s ironic is that a big part of the rationale for creating HART as the project’s governing body was to have it run by professionals, largely insulated from politics. And here you see why: Left to their own devices, City Council members can hardly resist sticking their fingers up in the air to see which way the political wind is blowing, and then gumming up the works.

If it had succeeded — and, with a 5-4 vote, it very nearly reached the six votes needed — the result would have been a ballot question that might have led to dismissal of the actual experts out in the field, leaving the Council in charge.

Actually, mere head-scratching won’t provide much relief from such shenanigans. Anyone have a mega-aspirin?

Good job, Hawaii, on workplace rights

Hawaii gets high marks for providing protections to new parents for leaves from work and workplace rights, joining Washington and Oregon with the grade of B.

California and Connecticut received the highest grades with A- in an analysis by the National Partnership for Women & Families, a Washington-based lobby. It cites Hawaii’s benefits of paid medical leave, job-protected family leave and job-protected leave for pregnancy disability and flexible use of sick leave from both private and public sectors.

"The birth of a child should be a joyous event for new mothers and fathers, not the cause of financial hardship or devastation," the group says.

After recent hits in national rankings about a dismal business climate, it’s refreshing that Hawaii is getting good marks in other areas of governance.