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Hawaii House and Senate Turn Up Noses at $100 Billion in Assets for Oahu

Hawaii house and senate overwhelmingly pass resolution strongly opposing Army's proposed troop reduction

The House and Senate voted this past Thursday, just the second day of the 2015 session, on SCR 3 and HCR 3, strongly opposing the Army's proposed downsizing on Oahu. SCR 3 passed the senate with nary a dissenting vote.

It passed the house as HCR 3 with all except one voting in favor. Representatives San Buenaventura, Keohokalole, Jordan voted aye with reservations. Representative Ing, the lone exception, voted no. Representatives Cachola, Carroll, Kobayashi, Luke, Nakashima, Ohno, Thielen were excused. "Excused" means either the representative wasn't present or that they were excused from voting.

Rep. Kaniela Ing (D)

Lone 'no' vote: Rep. Kaniela Ing (D, Maui)

Representative Kaniela Ing, who cast the lone "no" vote among the state's 76 legislators, represents House District 11 (Kihei, Wailea, Makena [Maui]). At age 24 he is the youngest of our legislators.

Here's his official bio from the House website:

Representative Kaniela Ing was born and raised on Maui and was elected to serve the 11th House District (South Maui: Kihei, Wailea, Makena) in 2012. At 24 years old, Rep. Ing is the youngest member of the State Legislature and intently looks to the future of Hawaii in his policy-making. Rep. Ing believes that long-term planning must be emphasized more often in government with specific focus on education, sustainable and renewable practices, and economic diversification.

Rep. Andria Tupola compares Schofield and Wheeler to Barbers Point

AL Frenzel, a retired Army colonel who taught at the U.S. Army War College, specializing in force restructuring and logistics, is now a Waianae resident and head of the Oahu Council for Army Downsizing, the chief organization supporting the Army's proposal to downsize on Oahu. AL (yes, spelled with both letters capitalized) wrote in an email this morning, "Rep. Andria Tupola [R, Ewa, Maili] testifies in full support of the House's resolution against Army downsizing on Oahu beginning at the 7 minute 30 second point in the video below. She cites Barbers Point as the reason not to accept the billions of dollars of resources that could come to the state if Schofield and Wheeler downsize. Regarding Barbers Point, she cites that after 16 years 'the roads are not developed' and 'the city cannot absorb them.' She says the 'regulations are not up to par.' She's been receiving my emails on my downsizing advocacy regularly since July - at no time did she contact me with her concerns about the Barbers Point transition. I could have explained to her why that transition was bungled by the State, HCDA, Hunt Corporation and many of Hawaii's politicians who made stupid business decisions regarding the transfer. But the most stupid action was that of the state in accepting Barbers Point in an 'as is' condition — the state should not have accepted the property in the condition it was left in and should not have inherited any financial burden from accepting the base — all deficiencies should have been corrected by the Navy before the transfer. The state should not have turned its back on the transition and outsourced the issue to HCDA, Hunt and others. The state created this fiasco by being lazy and asleep at the wheel.

"Now Ms. Tupola cites the 'state and city don't have the funds to absorb it [Schofield and Barbers Point].' In other words the state and city can't afford to absorb billions in resources, including an already built second access road (Kolekole pass and road) worth a billion dollars in itself that would have directly benefited Ms. Tupola's constituents. This is very sad. Basically her logic is the equivalent of telling the Publishers' Clearing House that you refuse to accept the Millions in prize money because you don't want to have to pay the income taxes on the winnings. And just to be fair, Jo Jordan doesn't get a pass for voting in support of the same resolution, although "with reservations." What a bold step to take by agreeing to the status quo, 'with reservations.' Very sad, indeed."

Politicians need your guidance and input!

AL continues, "Most of the time, politicians take uninformed positions like this because of guidance given to them by their parties, their handlers and the Hawaii political machine without asking or listening to what their constituents want — this is why you have to communicate to your elected officials. They cannot guess what you're thinking and you cannot guess or hope they know what you want them to do. Call them: this issue is too important to turn over to the Hawaii political machine."


Links:

Oahu Council for Army Downsizing website

Petition to downsize Army on Oahu

AttachmentSize
SCR3_.pdf57.87 KB
HCR3_.pdf122.3 KB