Honolulu Weekly

1. What was your biggest accomplishment this session?
“In 2007, the legislature overrode Governor Lingle’s veto of SB2878 to establish the Keiki First Steps program. Initially, the law established an Early Learning Council (ELC) to govern the state’s early learning system.

This session, although it was a modest accomplishment, we managed to preserve funding for the ELC so that it can continue the critical work to establish the state’s universal preschool system, the Keiki First Steps program. (The governor’s budget zeroed out the ELC’s budget.) Why is setting up a preschool system important?

Contemporary research all indicate that the most critical brain development occurs in the first five years of a child’s life. It is also the period that sets the foundation in which children form their behavioral, emotional, social, and decision-making skills, values, self-esteem, and lifelong learning ability. In short, this period paves the way for a child’s healthy, successful development.

Furthermore, research proves that there are positive socioeconomic impacts that are directly correlated with early childhood education. One of the most famous longitudinal studies was done on the Perry Preschool located in Ypsilanti, Michigan where students were tracked for over thirty years. The outcomes were impressive:

• Less delinquency, including less contact with juvenile justice officials, fewer arrests at age 19, and less involvement in serious fights, gang fights, causing injuries, and police contact.
• Less antisocial behavior and misconduct during elementary school and at age 15.
• Fewer lifetime arrests through age 40 (36 percent vs. 55 percent with 5 or more arrests); fewer arrests for violent crimes (32 percent vs. 48 percent), property crimes (36 percent vs. 58 percent), and drug crimes (14 percent vs. 34 percent).
• Higher academic achievement, including higher scores on standardized tests of intellectual ability and higher high school grades.
• Fewer school dropouts at age 19 (33 percent vs. 51 percent), and higher rates of high school graduation (67 percent to 45 percent).
• Greater commitment to school and more favorable attitudes about high school.
• More employed at age 27 (69 percent vs. 56 percent) and age 40 (76 percent vs. 62 percent); higher median annual earnings at 27 ($12,000 vs. $10,000) and 40 ($20,800 vs. $15,300).
• Greater economic independence and less reliance on public assistance, including welfare.
• Fewer pregnancies and births for women at age 19.
• (See: http://www.highscope.org/Content.asp?ContentId=232
• and http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/blueprints/promising/programs/BPP11.html Other studies worth reading are the Abecedarian Project (http://www.fpg.unc.edu/~abc/) and the Chicago Child-Parent Center Program (http://www.waisman.wisc.edu/cls/cbaexecsum4.html) All these studies reached similar conclusions about the effectiveness of preschool.)

Aggregating savings from lower prison costs, lower public assistance costs, etc., and it’s easy to see why economists assert that for every dollar invested in early learning results in seven dollars of return.

Art Rolnick, Executive Vice-President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, after studying the Perry Preschool Program, concluded that the average, annual real (adjusted for inflation) rate of return on investment at four percent for the student and 12 percent for the public. If we invested in the stock market for that same time period, the annual rate of return only averaged seven percent. Or put another way, for the cost of one year in prison, we can provide preschool for four children. And more than a return in purely economic terms, Keiki First Steps is an investment in our children who are our future.

Currently, thirty-six states offer some type of publicly funded preschool program. Two states, Oklahoma and Georgia, offer universal preschool programs for all four-year-olds statewide, and New York, Florida, and Illinois are in the process of establishing similar systems.

Hawaii is now one of the last states in the nation to being the process to design and implement an early learning system. However, it is not too late for Hawaii to join the forward movement; the state can only benefit from the lessons learned and best practices developed across the rest of the country.

This is why I believe that providing the resources for the ELC to continue its work was crucial despite our current fiscal situation.”

2. With which piece of 2009 legislation are you most proud to be affiliated and why?
“As chair of the House education committee, I was fortunate to play a role in the above effort. We also made significant changes to the charter school law that, hopefully, will enable the charter schools to operate more efficiently and effectively.”

3. What was the biggest disappointment of the session and how might a similar disappointment be prevented in the future?
“From a macro standpoint, I would say that we failed in providing hope and a vision for the future. Okay, let’s not sugarcoat our situation. There’s no doubt that at all levels – international, national, state and local—no one is immune from the meltdown in the financial market and the resultant ripple effects. You only need to peruse the media headlines to know that we are in an environment that is challenging, to put it mildly. On the federal level, nearly two million jobs disappeared in the past four months, the federal deficit is a record $1.2 trillion and growing, and the national debt is a mind-boggling $10.6 trillion (or $34,888.54 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.)

Consumer confidence is at its lowest point in 22 years; indeed, consumer spending which accounts for 70 percent of the economy has declined for the six consecutive months. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 46 states (including Hawaii) face budget shortfalls for the next two years. Through 2011, these deficits will total more than $350 billion. The Center projects that there will be nine million more Americans in poverty (including three million children) by the end of 2009.

That said, it is critical to keep in mind that we have been through this before. During the last recession from 2002-05, total state budget deficits across the country amounted to $240 billion but states were able to weather the storm. This economic cycle is no different. It is how we meet the challenges facing us that will determine our short- and long-term economic health.

Like the Obama Administration, we face similar challenges (although clearly different in scale) such as in housing, energy, and education. Of course, the federal government has advantages that we, as a state, do not. We cannot run a deficit (granted, we can float bonds) unlike the federal government which can and will.

But at the same time, we also have the opportunity to lay the groundwork to enable us to grow the economy while responding to the growing unmet (or underfunded) needs of our community. We can also (like President Obama at the federal level) redefine the role of state government in ways that may not have been possible (or politically palatable) previously.

However, in our zeal to do something, it is critical we don’t succumb to quick and easy fixes. We must focus on need and not speed when making decisions. (Another way to put it is it’s not about funding projects that are “shovel-ready” but are also “shovel-worthy.”) I would suggest that over the next few years, we focus on the following criteria:

1. Demanding accountability. Look at the $700 billion bailout of the financial industry. Already after extending corporate welfare benefits to the tune of $350 billion, we find out that there has been little accountability on the part of government and even less responsibility on the part of the corporations. Indeed, even Treasury Secretary Geithner acknowledges that the appropriately titled Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) needs serious overhauling. (An example of this is the reluctance of Citigroup to divulge how it spent the $45 billion in government bailout funds it received. Eyebrows raised when reports of the company plan to purchase a $50 million private jet and its $400 million deal to name the New York Mets stadium came to light.)
2. Being focused. Look at Louisiana where the pork-laden budget of the Army Corps of Engineers was spent on suspect navigation projects and not on fortifying the levees. And then came Hurricane Katrina. Let me put it another way. Do we believe that every program, project and service provided by government is equally critical and necessary? The answer, of course, is no.
3. Being strategic. Even if some initiatives are counter-cyclical or have up front costs, we will save at the back end. For example, it makes sense for the federal government to focus on energy efficiency despite the tens of billions that will be spent now.
4. Being prudent. In this environment, every one plays the role of the poor souls who ask if you have any spare change to buy a meal. (An example of this is the effort by the American Apparel and Footwear Association to eliminate import tariffs on shoes, a commodity almost exclusively manufactured overseas. One shoe company executive explained that “not having a new pair of shoes . . . that does not create good self-esteem.” Let’s hear it for stimulating the economy by feeling good about our footwear.)

We must stand for something or we will fall for anything. Let us not fall for the easy out, the quick fix, the short-term solution. Let us stand for deliberate, thoughtful and well-grounded approaches. Easier said than done.”

4. Debating which issue turned out to be the biggest distraction from your priorities?
“It’s not any one issue. After all, bills that deal with banning fireworks or pit bulls or resolutions recognizing Islam Day gets far more media coverage than the actual legislative time spent on them.

The dilemma is that there are 76 legislators who represent districts all across the state. And everyone brings specific district concerns as well as specific interests into the process. Unlike the governor who is a single messenger with a single message, we have 76 messengers with 500 messages (hey, we’re Democrats for the most part). So inherent and inescapable is the inability to focus that I’ve elaborated upon in question #3. In a way, it’s like telling a cannibal he has bad table manners. We tend to miss the main point, no?”

5. What’s one thing you wish voters better understood about you or the political process as a whole?
“Confessing what I want people to understand about me is a bit too touchy-feely so I will pass on that question. As far as the political process, there is the external and the internal. Externally, I think there is an unrealistic expectation that legislators as a group of people have the collective wisdom to resolve all the problems we face. And that all one has to do is to vote every two years and then stand back and do very little.

We don’t do this in other aspects of our lives. We don’t send our children to school and think that it’s solely the school’s responsibility to teach our kids. No, we are active partners in that whole process. Wasn’t it Plato who said, ‘The penalty good people pay for not being involved in politics is being governed by people worse than themselves’?

Internally, sometimes it is unnecessarily adversarial and partisan. And there’s too much showmanship and oneupmanship. It evolves into a crude partisan Darwinism; survival of the glibbest.

The community should also realize that it’s important to look at the long-view as well. I’ll give one example. Every legislative session there are attempts to introduce a wide variety of bills under the category of ‘tax relief.’ If only the state gave out tax credits to developers, there would be more jobs and therefore more income generated in our state. If only the state was more ‘business friendly’ there would be more growth and prosperity. If only . . .

Yet we fail to see the best investment we can make that ensures the greatest potential for economic well-being and attract new businesses. And that investment is in public education. Unless Hawaii’s students receive a high-quality education, we cannot guarantee potential investors and developers that we have the workforce they need to locate their jobs in this state.

To have Hawaii grow, we must be able to assure potential investors that our public schools build every child into a real economic asset rather than a welfare liability. Study and study reveal that a major factor for companies to move into a state is the quality of their educational system; far more important than the tax structure of that state. Indeed, states that are considered ‘business friendly’ do not grow, on average, any faster than states tagged as having the ‘least friendly’ business environment.”