SUPERFERRY MODEL RUNS AGROUND
If a single situation could be held up as a model to discourage enterprise and investment in the state, it is that of the Hawai`i Superferry.
The Lingle administration and an equally culpable state Legislature did no one -- not taxpayers, the visitor industry, businesses or public or environmental interests -- any favors in their bungling of the ferry issue.
Had officials simply adhered to legal requirements from the get-go, the harm imposed and that could yet be brought to the ferry company and others, and the community divisiveness their mistakes have generated would not have occurred.
A report by the state auditor criticizing special legislation tailored to benefit the ferry company served as a prelude this week to arguments before the Supreme Court on constitutional challenges of the law.
The audit concluded that the legislation -- known as Act 2, passed after the court ruled that the state should not have exempted the ferry from environmental reviews -- "compromised" the law and "set a precedent for future government intervention that puts the interests of a single business before the state's environmental, fiduciary and public safety responsibilities."
