Lingle and Hannemann exchange words over Superferry and the Rail

STATEMENT BY GOVERNOR LINDA LINGLE ON MAYOR HANNEMANN’S SUPERFERRY COMMENT

Governor Linda Lingle issued the following statement recently:

“In his campaign for higher office, Mufi Hannemann is trying to rewrite history. His inaccurate comments regarding the Hawai‘i Superferry situation are both misinformed and patently false.

“It seems as if the Mayor was absent during the herculean efforts put forth by both the Legislature and my Administration to bring the Superferry to Hawai‘i. In a historic Special Session of the Legislature, Senate President Hanabusa and House Speaker Say worked hand-in-hand with me and my team, as well as their colleagues in both houses, to ensure Hawai‘i residents had the benefit of a new mode of interisland transportation.

“With O‘ahu residents being the greatest beneficiaries of the Superferry, it is curious that Mayor Hannemann was noticeably absent from the discussion at the time. Yet now, as is his nature, he wants to blame others.

“The fact is that the decision to stop the Superferry was the result of a Supreme Court ruling which was a far-reaching interpretation that heretofore had never been applied to any new maritime operation in the state.”

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Can't frickin' believe we have to keep repeating these things!

From: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20100118/BREAKING01/100118067/Governor+says+city+needs+to+revise+its+financial+plan+for+rail+project

"Governor says city needs to revise its financial plan for rail project"
Updated at 4:02 p.m., Monday, January 18, 2010

...GOVERNOR LINDA LINGLE OPENING REMARKS

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS – HONOLULU CHAPTER

PRESENTATION ON HONOLULU RAIL TRANSIT

Monday, January 18, 2010...

Re: "The Superferry did not use one dollar of public funding. We had reimbursable general obligation bonds that were paid for, and will be paid for, by the people who use the harbors. There's not one dollar of direct tax funding that ever went to Superferry or was pledged to Superferry or will be used for Superferry in the future."

WRONG! The Superferry DID use public funding beyond the general obligation bonds. Beyond the bonded money there was all of the money spent to fix the barge at Kahului harbor. There was all of the money spent on the tug boat service daily to hold the barge to the Kahului pier when the ferry came in. There was all of the money spent for extra DLNR security when the ferry first started operating and then continuing for inspections. There was all of the money spent to pay for the Act 2 Special Session. There was all of the legal fees of the Attorney General in this case. There are all of the legal fees of the continuing bankruptcy proceedings.

Re: "In addition, there was never a requirement for an EIS for the Superferry until it was challenged and went to the State Supreme Court and then the Supreme Court made the ruling. The Superferry was treated the way every other ocean-related project was treated whether it was Matson, NCL, Young Brothers or anyone else using our oceans. It was treated the same way, our Administration made the same decision, it's just that the Supreme Court changed the law with their decision."

WRONG AGAIN! You are one hard-headed, obstinate politician! The EIS requirement existed all along, before the Supreme Court even made their first ruling on this. The Superferry was not treated the same as the other harbor users. Those harbor users have had to do EIS's for similar projects. The Supreme Court never changed the law. In fact, it was your Attorney General who wrote the flawed new law Act 2 and your Administration who lobbied the new law through the Legislature. The underlying HEPA law never changed. The Supreme Court never changed the law.

Constant missteps such as these...

Still got the webbots going, waiting for news on the bankruptcy, and this came in:

From: http://volcanicash.honadvblogs.com/2009/12/07/let-the-competence-begin/

"...Constant missteps such as these — not to mention grand-scale blunders like the Hawaii Superferry — are shaping up as a sad legacy for an administration that started out with such high hopes of effecting historic change." Tags: economy, Linda Lingle

Their current blunder gaining steam is unnecessarily building a bike path ON Wailua Beach, that State DOT Director Brennon Morioka is apparently adamantly in favor of.

PBN: Callin' It Like It WAS

From: http://pacific.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2009/09/21/editorial3.html?b=1253505600^2125731&s=industry&i=economic_snapshot

Economic Snapshot
Friday, September 18, 2009
"Wobbly support wasn’t Superferry’s biggest problem"
Pacific Business News (Honolulu)

...We long have believed that the Superferry was operating with flawed business assumptions. Putting aside state officials’ blunder in reasoning that the Superferry didn’t need an environmental assessment, we are not convinced that there was enough passenger, vehicle and freight revenue to cover the cost of running two big ships.

In its brief time in service, the ferry showed it was unreliable and that the trip to Maui produced a nightmare of seasickness. Small businesses found it still made more sense to put their goods on a barge than to commit a driver and truck to an all-day run to or from Oahu.

Marching and marauding politicians and businesspeople can’t overcome a bad business plan or flawed legal advice. Lingle’s shots were off the mark and unrealistic.

Maui News Editorial Board/Publisher's Zinger on This

From: http://www.mauinews.com/page/content.detail/id/523473.html?nav=9

September 10, 2009

"...Frankly, we are tired of politicians who will not admit they made a mistake. Fess up, governor, your administration blew it. The Superferry may not have made it even with an EIS, but without one, it was doomed. And your administration is the one that let it sail without one.

So governor, the next time you are looking for someone to blame for the failure of the ferry, try looking in the mirror. Without that personal admission, everything else is just sour grapes."

Freudian Slip: Lingle's Recent Rantings on Superferry

From: http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2009/09/07/daily13.html

Tuesday, September 8, 2009
"Lingle: Politicians' role in Superferry 'pathetic'"
Pacific Business News (Honolulu)

Gov. Linda Lingle told a group of Native Hawaiian business leaders on Maui that the lack of support by the business community and “pathetic” political leadership contributed to the demise of the Hawaii Superferry.

“I think there are few episodes that have been as pathetic in the lack of political leadership as there were in that Superferry situation,” Lingle told the Maui Native Hawaiian Chamber of Commerce meeting on Friday.

“I know that in my opinion, the majority of people support the Superferry – certainly the business community did – but they weren’t very clear about it. They weren’t very vocal about it. They didn’t really put too much effort. They certainly didn’t put much effort as those who were against.”

Facing a series of adverse court rulings that curtailed and then halted its operation between Oahu and Maui, the Hawaii Superferry stopped sailing in March and later declared bankruptcy. Various courts found that the Lingle administration and the Legislature had circumvented a state law requiring an extensive environmental review before the Superferry was allowed to operate.

In a 35-minute speech to the Maui group, the Republican governor didn’t dwell on the Superferry but used it as an example of how groups tend to coalesce around efforts to oppose projects or initiatives, but rarely offer alternatives.

“The Superferry decision and the lack of support that we received from the business community and the political leaders of Maui had consequences. Everybody knew what they were against. Everybody was quick to talk about the process that wasn’t followed, and that we should have followed a different process, in their opinion. They drafted laws to tie our hands, and to make it difficult for the Superferry to survive

“There were consequences for the political leadership here not stepping up and coming out strong and saying, ‘We need this. If there were steps that weren’t followed, let’s get that handled; but we’re for this alternative for our people.’ ”

With projects like a proposed telescope for Haleakala, an undersea cable to bring power to Oahu from Molokai and Lanai and various windfarms and wave-energy plans for Maui, Lingle urged business leaders and citizens to consider the long-term consequences of opposition...

A video of Lingle’s speech can be found at www.hawaii.gov/gov

Comments:

Brad Parsons wrote: September 9, 2009 11:02AM

This is not merely a matter for public opinion. As a matter of simple logistics, Superferry left before they were forced to, voluntarily, and declared bankruptcy because they lost money all but one or two months of the entire time they operated here in Hawaii. They lost money because the operating expenses (i.e. fuel consumption) of the size of vessel that they were operating on the distance of the routes they were operating (over 100 miles each way) was almost guaranteed to lose money from the start.

Public opinion doesn't really mean anything on that unless the public and their government want to pay for the ships and run the whole operation at a subsidized loss. There are places in the world where the local government does do that, like Trinidad and Tobago, but that is because they don't have a good interisland airline industry. An interisland ferry never has and never will do well here, 1.) because we have a very competitive interisland airline industry, and 2.) because the interisland distances means that from a cost effective fuel consumption standpoint, the one way transit speed would take about 5 hours. The 3 hours that HSF did was fuel cost ineffective. People just don't have the patience for that when they can do it in 30 minutes on a plane.

In the end this was all one big lesson on Linda Lingle's and JFL's fallen political ambitions and personal obstinance, something that Linda Lingle continues to exhibit to this day as conveyed by this story.

R. G. September 8, 2009 7:57PM EST

"there are few episodes that have been as pathetic in the lack of political leadership as there were in that Superferry situation" - did she refer to herself and her administration?

STILL! correcting the record...

From: Downturn offers opportunity, Lingle says
Honolulu Advertiser - By CHRIS HAMILTON The Maui News September 5, 2009
...Luncheon emcee Ron Vaught asked Lingle about the status of Superferry...

Re: "...The two completed ferries now sit at a shipyard in Maryland. Lingle said she's been in recent contact with the ferries' builder, Austal, which is considering military contracts for the high-speed vehicle transports. In the meantime, the state will "carry on" and work to complete the required environmental impact statement. Superferry was good for business, and the majority of people wanted it, she said."

My comment:

9/5/09 -- Last reported the ferries were in Virginia, not Maryland. Austal has no interest in the ferries anymore. It makes no sense that Lingle would be talking with Austal about the Superferries. MARAD is the one considering military use for the vessels. Regardless, a Chapter 343 EIS has to be completed and accepted before any large high speed vessel can operate in Hawaiian waters, regardless of its owner or user. About being good for business, that is a good question for all of the unsecured creditors (small businesses in Hawaii) and common stockholders of the bankrupt entity.

9/7/09 -- Thought of one reason for the State to talk with Austal, to try to find a buyer for the ramp barges.

Who's to Blame?

From Save Kahului Harbor: http://savekahuluiharbor.blogspot.com/2009/03/who-to-blame.html

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Who to Blame?

Who got us into this mess? According to memos released to the Honolulu Advertiser under FOI, Hawai'i DOT was telling both Gov Lingle and the Superferry company they must do an EIS.

But then Gov. Lingle stepped in and directed DOT to find a way around environmental law.

That's when DOT came up with the poorly conceived, unworkable, expensive, Chinese-made barge. That barge cost us $38 million dollars of tax-payer money. I was in the room when the pilots told DOT administrators that it physically wouldn't work. But Lingle forced DOT to go ahead anyway, thinking this would circumvent the law.

Since them we've spent almost another $Million repairing the dock and paying for tugs to hold it still. Another half a million dollars is slated to be spent on another probably fruitless attempt to anchor the barge so it doesn't dash itself into Pier 2 during high surf conditions.

Meanwhile the Superferry has been operating at about 25% capacity -- only half of what they need to break even. Had they done the EIS, it would have shown these things:

1. The ship they chose was too big for the passenger loads reasonably expected
2. The ship they chose used too much fuel to be economical
3. The ship they chose was the wrong design to sail comfortably in the extreme conditions of our interisland channels.
4. They should have included onboard ramps (as their second ship has) so as not to need any barges thus saving us about $41,000,000 that Lingle has wasted.

But Superferry feared an EIS. We can only speculate that they were set on the current ship design for reasons that have little to do with their ferry business. Investigating the many tangled relationships, we find that the major shareholder, Lehman, is involved in ship building for the military and the Superferry was perhaps the "proof of design" prototype for a very lucrative Joint Highspeed Vessel contract the military was going to award.

So what got us into this mess? Lingle deliberately flouting the law to do favors for a very highly placed neocon, Lehman (slated to be McCain's chief of staff had McCain been elected) and a greedy company with ulterior motives not in the best interests of the people of Hawai'i.

Many supporters of the ferry are crying out against the Supreme Court decision, little realizing that because the EIS was not done, we got a plan that was doomed to failure. Too big, too fuel-hungry, wrong design for comfort. As we pointed out for the last 4 years - the business plan simply didn't add up to a profit.

The Court decision may have hastened the end of the Superferry but its days were numbered anyway.

Mayor Tavares of Maui said it the best:

Maui County Spokesperson Mahina Martin released this statement about the Supreme Court Decision.

"The ruling is not unexpected. If an Environmental Impact Statement was first done as required by laws that exist to protect our environment, then DOT and the Superferry owners would have been able to assess the impacts and take necessary steps years ago to address any concerns.

"Early compliance would have benefited both the environment and today's small businesses that utilize the Superferry. Having a variety of transportation options is important. It is equally important to follow laws meant to safeguard our communities."

Act 2 Loose Ends...EIS needs to be redone

I see the spinmeisters are trying to put the word out that the EIS could be completed in "2 to 3 months." Actually, that is an Act 2 pseudo-EIS (which no longer has any legal foundation) with limited focus and no more public involvement from here on out. On a Chapter 343 EIS the public has continued involvement even on the final draft and that can be challenged. Also, a real Chapter 343 EIS on this should not be prepared by the DOT. That is a conflict of interest.

Also, Lingle says when they started drafting Act 2 they were doing the legally correct thing. Wrong. Lingle says there are a lot of small businesses dependent upon HSF, then she should list them. There are only a handful of businesses, most are not small, and they have options and are not totally dependent upon HSF. Lingle also says HSF is lower cost than it's competitors. Wrong. The airlines are now lower cost than HSF and Young Brothers is lower cost than HSF at moving cargo. So that is wrong, wrong, and wrong on Lingle's points. One of the other people in an e-mail group on this says Lingle is in a "state of denial."

One last thing. I was misquoted in the following:

Brad Parsons, a Superferry critic who splits his time between Maui and Kaua'i, said the ruling gives him "a sense of great relief and inspiration, that the Supreme Court justices did the right thing, with good reason and well-thought-out logic. ... It's like a big weight off my shoulders that there is somebody at the state that did the right thing, finally."

The quote is correct until that last sentence. I never said that last sentence. I would not view it as a weight on my shoulders only, and in addition to the State Supreme Court Justices there were a few people in the Legislature who did try to do the right thing.

Aloha, Brad

P.S. In reply to Tim Dick's comments on his Use Half blog, questioning my carbon use, I last visited Maui for a couple of days in Sept. 2008, to attend the OTF committee hearing, prior to that I was last on Maui in May 2008. I haven't been back to Maui since. Personally, I view casual interisland travel as a waste of resources and money. Rather than "using half," I have cut that back to almost nothing, something that much of HSF's expected market appears to have also done in the past 6 months or more.

The Nation: "Surfers vs. the Superferry"

From: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090316/mander_paik
"Surfers vs. the Superferry"
by Jerry Mander & Koohan Paik
February 25, 2009

We don't ordinarily seek inspirational models of grassroots uprisings--especially against global corporate-military boondoggles--from surfer beaches on luscious tropical islands. So it surprises colleagues on the left when we tell them they might check out some surprising events on the small "outer" islands in Hawaii that may have an impact on grand US aspirations for military domination of the Pacific basin. Few mainlanders have heard about it, but Hawaii is up in arms.

It all started in 2001 as a purportedly modest "local" effort to offer inter-island ferry service to "help local people more easily visit their relatives on other islands, and carry their farm produce to market." Most locals liked the idea but soon found that this ferry, the gigantic Hawaii Superferry, was an environmental nightmare. It uses far more fuel (in total and per person) than jet planes. It races at high speed (40-45 miles per hour) through zones teeming with endangered humpback whales, dolphins and rare sea turtles. It could transport dangerous invasive species to pristine islands. And it carries hundreds of cars to tiny places already choking on traffic.

Environmentalists demanded an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and its Hawaii equivalent (HEPA). But the Hawaii Superferry Company, with strong support from Governor Linda Lingle, the ambitious right-wing Republican lately famous for introducing Sarah Palin at the Republican convention, refused.

By 2004 the lead investor (nearly $90 million) and new chair of the board for this "local" ferry project was New York City military financier John Lehman, Ronald Reagan's secretary of the Navy, a leading neocon with a famously aggressive military vision. (The Washington Post quoted him in 1984 as advocating first-strike nuclear strategies.) Lehman is a member of the Project for the New American Century and a 9/11 commissioner, but his great passion has been pushing for a vastly expanded, 600-ship Navy and a stronger US military presence in the Pacific to assuage mounting concerns about China as a future military superpower. After his company, J.F. Lehman, took over the Superferry project, Lehman appointed a new board with a majority of former top military brass. He later hired Adm. Thomas Fargo as CEO. Only four years ago Fargo was the commander of US military operations in the Pacific, answering directly to George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. So the question is this: why on earth would anyone need a board that qualifies as a mini-Pentagon to run a friendly transport for families and papayas between islands?

A key moment in this saga came in August 2007, on the small island of Kauai, called the Garden Island by tourist agencies for its folded green cliffs, cascading waterfalls and aloha spirit. But on this occasion about 1,500 locals--including a high percentage of Native Hawaiians, joined by people of Japanese and Filipino descent and a contingent of New Age haoles (recent white settlers seeking Shangri-La)--showed up at Nawiliwili Harbor to protest the Superferry's maiden voyage from Honolulu to Kauai. Several dozen surfers also played a catalytic role.

When the protesters saw the oncoming speeding colossus on the horizon--bigger than a football field, four stories high and capable of carrying as many as 866 people and 282 cars--the outrage grew. The anger had been magnified a few days earlier when Governor Lingle and Lehman's Superferry company indicated they would disregard a 5-0 Hawaii Supreme Court ruling demanding the boat suspend operations until it completed an EIS. As it approached, dozens of surfers and swimmers leaped into the water. Ignoring strident Coast Guard threats, they headed out under the Superferry's terrifying catamaran blades, stopping the ship dead in the water. It created a sort of Tiananmen Square standoff in the waters of Kauai.

It was a dangerous business, but next day when the Superferry returned, the crowd of protesters had grown, and the surfers and beach brigades had too. In the ensuing eighteen months, the boat has never returned to Kauai and now has only one daily run, from Honolulu to Maui. The "spirit of Nawiliwili" has become the stuff of legend in Hawaii.

On the island of Maui, similar outrage led to a series of large if less spectacular protests. But the Maui resistance settled on legal actions from groups like the Sierra Club, Maui Tomorrow and the Kahului Harbor Coalition. It was these groups that had won the unanimous Hawaii Supreme Court ruling demanding the EIS. Everyone thought that decision would settle matters. Instead, it stimulated Lingle to demonstrate her Machiavellian chops by coercing the State Legislature (many of whose members had received Superferry largesse, as had Lingle) to pass a law theoretically circumventing the court ruling and permitting the boat to operate. It was an in-your-face move worthy of Bush/Cheney at their peak. Lingle's new law, Act Two, invented an EIS process with few features from NEPA or HEPA. The new law, for example, has no power to stop the Superferry from operating, no matter what the environmental findings. It's a fake EIS.

The Maui groups have gone back to court to charge that Act Two is unconstitutional--violating separation of powers and directly favoring a single company, among other problems. The final decision is expected any day.

Three weeks after Nawiliwili, another huge throng filled the 1,500 seats of Kauai's War Memorial Convention Hall, with many more outside, for a "public meeting" called by Governor Lingle. Imperiously she warned that she would not discuss whether there would be a Superferry--that had been decided. Her purpose was to instruct people that if they repeated their protests, they would be charged under new anti-terrorism laws that carry prison terms up to five years and/or a $10,000 fine.

Her statements were met with hoots and laughter and then a series of eloquent testimonies about protection of sacred lands (aina in Hawaiian) and sea creatures and the rights of local communities to protect themselves from invasive species and invasive corporations with militaristic intentions. Many indicated they were not opposed to a ferry if it would operate within community and environmental standards rather than those of an absentee owner with profit motives and military intentions. Others denounced Lingle's embrace of the project and its owner, suggesting she'd abandoned Hawaii for personal ambition.

Lingle's goals surely go beyond providing a useful local ferry. They certainly seemed to have far more to do with getting closer to powerful Republican Party figures--notably Lehman, slated, as the New York Times reported, to have been John McCain's chief of staff, had he won.

Throughout all this, the governor and the Superferry company denied the ferry's long-range military implications, despite earlier statements by Lehman and other executives about transporting Stryker tanks and other military services along with similar statements from the US Maritime Administration, which had issued a loan guarantee. Pacific Business News reported in March 2005 that Timothy Dick, Hawaii Superferry's original chair, confirmed that "Hawaii Superferry provided the Army with a cost analysis and expects to negotiate a long-term contract." The article also noted that "with Lehman's expertise, the Superferry plans to...carry military equipment and ferry vehicles from Oahu to the Big Island on a daily basis" and quoted Lehman saying that "the Superferry is strong enough to take Stryker vehicles."

Then in November the Superferry's manufacturer, Austal USA of Mobile, Alabama, was awarded a $1.6 billion Pentagon contract to build ten high-speed catamarans under the Navy's Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV) program in preparation for possible future conflicts with China. The model that Austal submitted for that contract competition was almost identical to the Hawaii Superferry's large-scale, aluminum-hulled high-speed catamaran design, except for military fittings and accommodations. The fact that the Superferry was already in the water, proving its seaworthiness while the JHSV contract was being considered, suggests that it may have always been intended as a prototype or demo model for the larger deal. It also explains the consistent refusals to do an EIS, which might have delayed getting the boat operational and visible.

Two years earlier, Lehman had also purchased a shipyard, Atlantic Marine, adjacent to Austal in Mobile. It's not yet clear if Lehman's company, or Superferry, stands to gain from the Austal award, possibly by subcontracting aspects of that huge construction project, but speculation in Hawaii runs wild.

All parties await the next ruling from the Hawaii Supreme Court on the Maui appeal. A new diverse grassroots community of activists on Kauai is warily assessing whether it will again need to respond. Will the company try to send the boat back to Kauai? Or will the Superferry quit Hawaii altogether as too much trouble, selling the boat for military uses, or to someplace with no activist surfers? As for Lingle's future, it's not bright. While touring with Palin during the presidential campaign, Lingle was quoted saying that Barack Obama's "claim" to be from Hawaii is "disingenuous." That enraged the Hawaiian public more than the Superferry. She may no longer be politically viable.