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It’s the price we pay for electing a U.S. president who grew up in Hawaii: $341,216 in overtime for Honolulu police officers who worked during the first family’s two-week visit over the holidays.
The total in Honolulu Police Department OT from Dec. 19 to Jan. 3 increased from President Barack Obama’s previous visits, which was $277,585 last year and $293,731.99 the time before that. It’s not a small chunk of change — and HPD won’t get reimbursed.
Will Obama return to Oahu in the waning days of office this coming holiday season? Beyond that, HPD probably won’t need to include that expense in its budget next year.
Connector had hard time connecting with reality
News flash: Things at the Hawaii Health Connector weren’t going so well. Everybody knew about the problems of the web portal for the online health insurance marketplace. Now Hawaii has a clearer sense that even their enrollment figures were to be taken with a huge grain of salt.
Gov. David Ige’s staff last week revealed that the count of 40,000 people signing up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act was off, way off; it cited 16,803 as the actual 2015 enrollment.
The often-cited tally “just is not a real number,” said Laurel Johnson, Ige’s deputy chief of staff.
Now, if the mission could be recast as fiction-writing, it would be another story.
