Here we go again, another two-year construction delay, as if the last two years was not enough.
The problem lies in lack of leadership.
Gov. David Ige is passing the buck. He does not want to go against the protesters and he doesn’t know what to do. Instead, by putting this off for two more years, he can pass it on to the next governor.
Hopefully, our next governor will be a true leader.
All that Ige is interested in is getting transient accomodations tax money from all of the islands for his pet Oahu beautification project, the light rail. Ige would not even sign the bill to have Airbnb take taxes from vacation rentals. He took the easy path by just collecting the transient accomodations taxes from the honest people who pay them.
Lt. Gov. Josh Green campaigned that he was going to take care of the homeless people. So far, nothing there, but he went up the mountain to pal around with the protesters. Basically, he did nothing there, either.
Even celebrities want to come here and get in on the action. They don’t even live here, but they heard about the TMT and thought that it had something to do with TMZ and wanted to make sure that they were included. Well, after all, TMT sounds like TMZ and most celebrities have trouble spelling TMZ.
Now, Ige has let Mayor Harry Kim off the hook for the next two years also. This, too, will be passed on to someone else. Hopefully, a real leader. Kim got no where with the protest. What has Kim been doing for our county?
I’ll tell you, he has given out big raises and threatened us with decreases in services if his taxes did not go through.
By the way, even though he got his tax increases, services were still decreased. Just look at how the transfer stations are not always open, yet he is increasing county government personnel.
Why was it when we had Billy Kenoi as mayor, taxes were lower and we did not lose services with fewer people in government? And, we were able to pay for Billy’s bar tab in Oahu to boot.
Jill Faust is a resident of Kailua-Kona
