Jerome Williams back on the mound, for mom

Waipahu’s Jerome Williams is back in the major leagues’ pitching start rotation, and came through for the Los Angeles Angels with a stellar win to celebrate Mother’s Day weekend.

In his second starting performance for the Angels this month, Williams went 62⁄3 innings, yielding two runs on seven hits and only one walk in a 3-2 win on Saturday over the Chicago White Sox. Williams continues to wear a hot-pink glove in honor of his mother, who died in 2001 from breast cancer.

"This is a day for her, and she’s not here to celebrate," he said prior to the Sunday game at Chicago. Williams was a regular starter for the San Francisco Giants in 2003 and 2004 but bounced among the Chicago Cubs, Washington Nationals and various minor league teams before returning to the bigs bullpen with the Angels two years ago.

Sometimes government needs to just give up

The state this week unveiled a plan for its Hawaii island affordable rental project, Kama‘aina Hale, to be handed over to University of the Nations. That’s a missionary training center affiliated with the nonprofit Youth with a Mission. Its faculty will rent there, but in the deal, two-thirds of the 128-unit project will have to remain affordable to tenants earning no more than 80 percent of the island’s median income.

That was probably the best deal the state could get, officials said.

Most of us have heard — and accept — the argument that government needs to get most of its housing projects off its books, that these things are best developed and managed by the private sector. And we’re happy to see that exit from the landlord business well underway.

Nothing makes the case for privatization more plainly than the fact that giving away property is the best outcome the state could hope to achieve.