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Many of the state and various county government buildings across Hawaii were constructed decades ago and are starting to show their age. Talk to anyone about how local government buildings are, and most likely you’ll hear complaints about them being leaky, having various infestation problems, smelling terrible and, in some cases, not even having air conditioning.

As a point in case, a Civil Beat report last year about a key state nerve center, the Kalanimoku Data Center, even characterized it as being in decay and disarray at the time with decor dating to the 1970s.

This is prevalent in everything from government administrative buildings to court facilities and even our public schools. And if you ever have the desire or need to use the bathroom in a Hawaii government facility, I must warn you with my best President Joe Biden impression, “Don’t.”

In all fairness, this is a problem that all levels of the government, even the federal government, have been facing. If you’re an administrator of an agency and are there for a very short time in the sun, if you have to choose between funding operations or infrastructure, you choose operations every time. 

“We don’t have the money” is not an exclusive Hawaii local government excuse. Members of the U.S. military serving both at home and abroad  that have collapsed ceilings, rotting floors, mold growing out of control and unsympathetic commanders, even as almost a trillion dollars is spent annually on defense.

It’s also politically prickly to ask for money for government buildings. There are always special interests that will take a contrarian, zero-sum approach to every proposed appropriation of tax dollars. Perhaps you’ve heard it before? “Do you know how many (insert all of my favorite things here) we could buy if we weren’t buying (all of your favorite things here)?”

One of the graduate courses I’m taking has me and fellow students applying what is called “the $20 test” to analyze stakeholder opinions in policymaking. Essentially, we imagine a hypothetical scenario where we see a $20 bill on the ground and ask ourselves, “What is that? A $20 bill? It can’t be. If it were, someone would have picked it up already. Why haven’t they?”

In like manner, we’re supposed to ask ourselves if a proposed policy were so great, it would have, like the $20 bill, been picked up and seized upon already. If no one has done it, then there must be some good reason for it.

My personal theory is that success in government depends on continuous innovation, initiative and audacity rather than passive permission-seeking and constant collaborative task force testimony-seeking or Post-It note conference-mapping.

Sometimes people just overlook things and no one notices, and in government, many things get overlooked daily. In fact, the more things you overlook today, the more things you’ll overlook tomorrow, stacked on top of what you’re already missing. When no one takes initiative, everyone falls behind.

If you find a $20 bill laying on the ground in the middle of a parking lot, I give you permission to pick it up without saying anything. Please do not call attention to it and ask the people around you, “Hey everyone! I just found a $20 bill laying on the ground; do I have permission to pick it up?” They’ll all tell you “no,” and then you’ll be calling 911 in short order to stop a fight between everyone there, which reminds me of how every single proposal in Hawaii lately has become a street fight over issues that are otherwise common sense.

Hawaii government is going to have to face the fact that it needs to modernize and build new buildings. Few people will like that, but it is what it is.

But once we do build new buildings, this government will be able to move forward with greater capacity and serve the public in a more efficient way, which, in the strategic perspective, is a win for everyone.

Behold, The Former NAS Barbers Point 

Since the mid-1980s, states and cities have been taking over military bases  and turning them into various civil development projects.

The former NAS Barbers Point, , and run by the state airports division, is one such example, but we haven’t really done much with it. It’s time for some innovation, initiative and audacity.

If you ask me, the state and county are missing an incredible opportunity to make good use of that former facility. If there was ever an opportunity to act, it should be in using Kalaeloa and turning it into an advanced hub for local government operations and services. 

The first advantage of doing this is that unlike other places on Oahu, the majority of Kalaeloa is former military facilities and buildings, which means there is minimal private downside to replacing these structures with brand new, advanced state and county government buildings. 

There is also a large, active runway at Kalaeloa, which can be used by big fixed-wing aircraft. That means the state could easily fly personnel, cargo and anything else directly to administrative or operational facilities built on that former base. 

Say, for example, we want to send social workers to Maui. If the Department of Human Services had a headquarters there, they could walk from their office over to the runway, get on an aircraft and fly to Maui and then come back. (I personally think the state should invest in , but I’ll write about that another day.)

Barbers Point was previously a military base, which means it wouldn’t take much to reconstruct a fence or wall around it and erect entry control points for security. Instead of having security guards and sheriffs having to patrol downtown Honolulu or other dispersed properties all around Oahu 24/7, one facility that houses most of the government buildings could be easily protected. 

By moving the headquarters of multiple government agencies out of downtown and putting them at Kalaeloa, we could reduce traffic downtown, turn many of the former existing locations into parks or even residential structures, and give the government a dedicated, self-sufficient operations hub at the former Barbers Point.

We could even create medical facilities with quarantine capacity for pandemics, build dormitory facilities to house workers and even put all the vertical parking garages we need to allow every person who wants to drive there to park.

“But Danny, how will people walk over to the Capitol and City Council to testify at hearings?” My response to that is stop thinking the old way and start making use of remote technology.

If Vice President Kamala Harris can remotely call into the Presidential Emergency Operations Center and still get work done, then surely testifying on a bill about creating an official state flavor of shaved ice can (and should) be done remotely, too. If that doesn’t work, a regular shuttle bus service could go from there to the Capitol District.

Think about how many jobs it would create to build an ultramodern “State of Hawaii Joint Operations Hub” at the former Barbers Point, and how much capacity we could add to both state and county government. I envision a future where we can have a one-stop place for government services, and where traffic downtown is once again manageable for private citizens.

The state should make full use of the former Barbers Point, and not let it go into disuse and neglect. We can revolutionize Oahu, and our state, by using that land to modernize government and make better facilities for serving the public.