What’s Wrong With This Picture?
Give Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie credit.
And give the Hawaii Senate Judiciary and Labor Committee a failing grade.
It takes guts for a sitting governor to come before a legislative committee the way Abercrombie did Friday to deliver news nobody wants to hear — news that you know based on his history it’s painful for him to deliver.
“You cannot have people in the canoe with their arms folded watching everybody else paddle,” Abercrombie told the committee in pushing for financial reforms. “Everybody has to do their share.”
“The plain fact of the matter is we have to decide if we can pay anybody anything at all. We’re talking about the very stability of the state, our capacity to pay pensions at all, to pay medical premiums at all.”
As our reporter Nanea Kalani reported, when Abercrombie finished his testimony supporting eliminating state-funded Medicare Part B for government retirees and ending the use of overtime in calculating government employee pensions, two audience members were heard saying, “You’re full of shit,” and “What a jerk.”
Then, when the head of the largest public employees union was called to testify, he was greeted with hearty claps and cheers.
There’s something called decorum. It matters at a Legislature.
The chair of a committee is responsible for maintaining it. Sen. Clayton Hee allowed union supporters to behave in a way that’s not appropriate at a legislative hearing.
Even if he didn’t hear the derisive remarks about the governor, he had to hear the cheering for Randy Perreira, executive director of the Hawaii Government Employees Association.
Cheering and jeering don’t have a place in serious deliberations. Hee should have made that clear.
Perreira didn’t show the courage of the governor.
It’s one to thing to say no to taking something away from retirees. That’s understandable from a union leader. It’s his job. Opponents may very well be right that such a move wouldn’t hold up in court.
But it’s another to come to the table prepared to acknowledge that things have to change.
Abercrombie has clearly crossed that divide. He’s looking for solutions that go beyond just raising taxes.
When will public employee union leaders make clear to their members that they have to do the same?
And when will Democratic lawmakers like Hee make clear that just because a proposal may be unpopular, that doesn’t mean its proponents should be treated disrespectfully?
If that governor is allowed to be treated that way, think of the message it sends to citizens who might think they have something to offer.
