On-Line Chat with Governor Recalls Slugger McGwire’s Testimony: Let’s Talk About Future, Not the Past; i.e., We Won’t Hold the Meetings

Former baseball hero Mark McGwire famously dodged questions two years ago at a congressional hearing into alleged steroid use in his sport by answering: “I'm not here to talk about the past. I'm here to be positive about this subject." When pressed with more questions, McGwire answered, "Like I said earlier, I'm not going to go into the past and talk about my past."

That pretty much sums up Governor Linda Lingle’s response to a question posed by CHORE during the Honolulu Advertiser’s “Hot Seat” chat room today. Here’s our question to Hawaii’s Chief Executive:

“Governor, don't you think it would be a good idea for State Civil Defense to conduct confidence-building public meetings on each island to discuss the problems it experienced on Earthquake Sunday and measures taken since then to improve emergency communications to the public? SCD is resisting holding these meetings. What do you think?”

And this is the Governor’s response:

“I think it important both to review past experiences and focus on the future. We have done an extensive review of what happened on October 15, 2006, the day the earthquake hit and have published a report on how to improve our response in the future. We are now focused on a statewide education program to better prepare for the future.”

Since Advertiser editorial page editor Jeanne Mariani-Belding discouraged follow-up questions from chat room visitors, we were unable to take issue with the State’s review and its major flaw: The public was excluded from any participation, a point we first wrote about here on October 18th.

Given the opportunity, we politely would have raised the conflict-of-interest issue – the review of a State agency’s performance (Civil Defense) by a committee selected by the executive ultimately responsible for that performance, chaired by one of her senior advisors, co-chaired by the director of the agency in question, etc. (You can review who was on the committee by going to this Governor's Office press release and clicking on the PDF document at the bottom.)

Where’s the Independence?

The Governor’s review was just that – her review – and was far from the independent assessment advocated shortly after the earthquakes by a Honolulu Star-Bulletin editorial, “Independent panel should review earthquake response.” By excluding the public from the committee and holding no meetings to receive public comment and questions about the substandard emergency communications response on October 15th, the government avoids the embarrassment of having to own up to those deficiencies in an open forum.

As we noted here Monday, it may take intervention by State legislators to convene their own open forums on each island to which State Civil Defense and the public would be invited. This would seem to be the only way the Administration will meet the public to discuss the public safety issues that were revealed on October 15th.

It shouldn’t have to be that way, but that’s the way it is.