Local misgovernment

For many years, whenever anybody asked me about the local elections, I had the same answer: if we don't fix water, it won't matter whether we fix anything else (housing, Kihei high school, invasive species, you name it). And we haven't. Shaft 33 has been replaced, which was the most critical issue concerning water, but otherwise nothing significant has been done with the other deficiencies of the system.

However, another of my political maxims (which also works in business, and anywhere else) is that if you ignore a problem long enough, it can be manged into a crisis. So it is with the hospital. If that isn't fixed, there will soon b no more tourists and after that no more people on Maui. That's how things were before 1960.

Therefore, you might be interested in this:

Hospitals health emergency meeting, UH Maui Campus, Ike Le'a Science Auditorium, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Monday.

 This will be a joint informational meeting held by the State Senate committees on Health, Judiciary, and Ways & Means to examine the state of the Maui hospitals health care emergency resulting from delay in transferring management operations to Kaiser.

All the main players are expected to speak except, apparently, any union reps. No public testimony will be taken.

I am not sure what the significance of this meeting will be for the senators (I'm lookin' at you, Roz Baker), because they have shown no concern up till now and they -- along with the House -- created the problem by inventing the Hawaii Health Systems Corp.  Nevertheless, becase there has been zero transparency so far, I am planning to go myself.

Some background here in "How to destroy a hospital."