What EXACTLY Can Only Be Achieved Through A Constitutional Convention?

[Rick M.]

We're hearing lots of vague ideas but very few actual proposals. Leaving aside, for the moment, that we can amend the State Constitution any time we want without the need of a Constitutional Convention, let's look at the actual changes we want to see if we get a ConCon.

So rather than "Improve Education" say something specific like:

"Insert paragraph giving each family a school voucher for each child which can be used at the school of their choice (public or private). Each child's voucher shall be equal to the amount of the DOE yearly budget divided by the number of school-age students in the state."

Let's not discuss the pros and cons - let's just list the things we ABSOLUTELY NEED a constitutional convention for:

I'll start it off:

1. Delete Article XII Hawaiian Affairs

2. Rewrite ARTICLE XI Section 7 Water Resources to give water ownership to the landowner and to remove the governmental interference in how the water is used.

3. Delete ARTICLE XI Section 8 Nuclear Energy (ban)

4. Add a section to Article XIII (Collective Bargaining) saying, "No employee shall be required to pay dues to a union as a condition of employment"

5. Delete the second paragraph of Article XIII (Collective Bargaining) to eliminate the right of government employees to unionize.

[Crystal]

First off bravo for bringing this question and your suggestions to the forefront. Will admit I haven't taken time to read the state constitution..yet but am using this as an opportunity to do so. I do know right off the bat I agree with #s 1, 4, and 5 and want modifications dealing with DOE. My main concern is voters will feel they must reject the results becasue needed changes will be bundled and lumped together with ones they don't like and don't want to approve. Then the concon will have been a large fiasco.

[Curtis Muraoka]

What EXACTLY Can Only Be Achieved Through A Constitutional Convention?
To be perfectly blunt, at least two of your proposals will be utter failures: The ones that threaten cultures.
An anti-OHA idea threatens Hawaiian culture (and by the way, I question your motives and rationale).
Any anti-Union idea will threaten a deep-seated culture as well, and be met with tremendous pressure from the largest consortium of voters ever assembled in Hawaii. You do realize that any threat to government employees' Unions will also be perceived as a threat to AFL-CIO, IBEW, AFSCME and every other union presence in the state. The only group who may begin singing secret hallelujahs upon hearing your view would be the Hawaii Federation of Teachers (who lost power after the teacher strike in the early 70s).
You might know about the constitution, but should also research Hawaiian culture, and unionism in Hawaii. Both are unique, and worthy of at least a modicum of respect. Any purposeful erosion of culture requires shedding of blood or finesse. Since bloodshed is probably illegal, finesse appears to be the only reasonable avenue.
So, to answer the original question, what can only be addressed by a Con Con is reasonable and incremental change effected by the citizenry's active participation. What can be changed are those elements NOT destined to be addressed by entrenched politicos, but which represent commonly held values--changing the BOE/DOE for example. What EXACTLY can be changed is whatever wisdom and will can bring. However, OHA and Unions are exactly what cannot be changed.

[Rick M.]

Again - you make no specific recommendation. Do you guys even know what you want?

[Curtis Muraoka]

My specific recommendation to ALL is that citizens should take into account the existing cultures (social and governmental) this type of rule-making affects.
My specific recommendation is that everyone consider carefully the ramifications of taking out existing structures "whole cheese" style, without considering whether stakeholders will have enough buy in to maintain changes in a positive manner.
My specific recommendation from your list is to stick with changing the BOE/DOE, and to reconfigure the current dysfunctional body by creating a Governor appointed full time BOE with smaller elected District BOEs statewide.

Your view, "break the hold the unions have on us, get rid of the environmental roadblocks to progress, and eliminate special privileges for Hawaiians", will not have broad support.

What do you have against Hawaiians anyway? Why are environmental roadblocks to progress necessarily a bad thing in your view? It's your turn. I'd like to hear some specifics from you now.

And, no, I'd say most of us DON'T know what we want yet. That's why most of us are here--to listen and learn with an open mind and a sincere heart. This is America, man. Democracy is messy.

By the way, I agree with your union stance, but again, I urge you to research unions in Hawaii as to why that is probably not a reasonably expected outcome of the Con Con.

[Rick M.]

How can you say that getting rid of environmental roadblocks to progress doesn't have wide support. Lingle has totally supported us on this and gets elected again and again.

If you look at the replies here, most people are in favor of the things I'm suggesting. And if it is packaged right (throw in local education boards, voter initiatives and term limits) enough people will like enough of the package that we will also get eliminating government unions and removing environmental roadblocks.

You tell me after the ConCon, if I wasn't right.

[Curtis Muraoka]

Don't forget cutting off Hawaiians...
I'll tell you BEFORE the Con Con, you "wasn't right".
The unions will kill your "package". The Sierra Club alone could kill it off, but a guy can dream...

"This ain't the Washite River, General, and them ain't helpless women and children waiting for you."
--Jack Crabb

[Kaunaloa]

"the replies here, most people are in favor of the things I'm suggesting"

yes rick, but that's out of 100+ folks, who are tech- AND politically-savvy enough to sign up for a "social networking forum" [grab 10 random people at, say, ala moana and see how many of them could even give a good definition of what that is!] for a **single item** on the november ballot!

curtis does have a point, there are some SERIOUSLY entrenched interests that 1. don't want a concon and 2. will work to derail/diminish any outcomes of one should it come to pass. this is one of my few remaining reservations re: a concon -- the risk involved in essentially "mobilizing" entitlement-minded individuals that wish to maintain the staus quo, or, even worse, want to put in even MORE statist provisions ...

[Crystal]

I understand reservation-but I always come back to this : If things stay as mucked up as they are with what I see as the SERIOUSLY entrenched interests in power and there isn't a ConCon- Just what will I tell my kids when they ask me (and they sure will someday) why I did not do any thing to change things or attempt to change things. So I feel a personal responsibility and social one as well to at least try and make it known I wanted a ConCon and I saw probs in Hawaii and I tried to do my best to get it back on track for a better future. My hope is I will sleep better no matter the outcome :-)

[Dan L.]

Rick, you are living in cloud-cuckoo-land if you think there are millions of illegal immigrants who vote. That's just silly.

[Dan L.]

Well, we elect the Legislature, the Congress, and the President, but none of them always act as a majority of the people (at least as expressed in opinion polls) want them to.

Second, a Superintendent cannot change the constitution, which vests school governance in a state-wide school board. And the reason that all the power is concentrated on O‘ahu is that 85% of the people in the state live on O‘ahu. Pretty simple!

And not everyone agrees that local control is a good idea. I've talked to many people who fear that local control will somehow reduce resources or mean unequal education. There is also a misunderstanding about funding: some people (including some legislators) seem to believe that if you have local control, you must also have local funding -- which of course is not true.

A ConCon would hash these issues out and come up with a solution agreeable to a majority of the ConCon delegates -- and then go out and try to sell it to the electorate for ratification.

[Dan L.]

Rick, you are advocating a manipulative and dishonest procedure, not a democratic approach. Furthermore, such a plan is doomed to failure, in my experience. Rather than the favored groups banding together to pass the whole thing, the objectors will instead band together to defeat it all. You may call it tossing the baby with the bathwater, but most people will not be sold on any such scheme as you suggest.

For example, suppose you have in your package the following: installing the initiative process, setting up local school districts, and eliminating all Hawai‘ian programs. People who like Hawai‘ian programs (and it's far more than just native Hawai‘ians!) will vote against the package even if they want local school boards and an initiative process. The same would be true of the other items.

The only way to make changes is to let people decide on each package of changes separately. For example, a revamped education system would be a package, even if it required several measures to put the thing together. I have seen this done in other jurisdictions, and the total packages almost invariably fail.

[Rick M.]

Crystal - you are doing what most are doing here. You don't like the way things are but you aren't putting forth one single REAL CHANGE TO THE CONSTITUTION.

Be specific. What EXACTLY do you want to change.

I think you are being really naive if you think you can change the way things are run without specific changes.

What are your SPECIFIC changes and how will they make "things better"?

Or are you just going to let other people make the changes and hope they get it right?