Police, courts and corrections are the major components of the criminal justice system. As Mayor Harris has pointed out, although the police continuously arrest the same offenders, the courts are unable to process them effectively because of the lack of adequate prison space.

Harris correctly concludes that the immediate priority for spending should be for increased capacity to hold these dangerous individuals.

Morgado and Fasi sound like broken records - repeatedly calling for more officers when even the police will tell you that the most critical and immediate problem is the lack of prison space.

Harris' ability to effectively deal with complex issues is one of the reasons he received the Outstanding Public Administrator of the Year Award from the American Society for Public Administration two years in a row. Frank Fasi wasn't even nominated.

Gary Helfand
Past President
American Society
for Public Administration

Bill Clinton says you are deserving of tax relief only if you have children under 13 years of age or in college, and earn under $75,000.

Therefore, the following are deemed undeserving by the Democrats:

Single taxpayers.

Married taxpayers without children.

Taxpayers with children ages 13-18.

Taxpayers with children over 18 if they are not in college or vocational training.

Taxpayers who earn more than $75,000.

Martin Jordan
Kailua

Luckily, Patsy Mink, Neil Abercrombie, Dan Akaka and Dan Inouye stopped him and restored the funding. Gingrich didn't even have the courtesy to fly over to Kalaupapa to apologize. Instead, he toured Haleakala - where he has tried to cut park funding! The man has no shame.

Here is a guy who has tried for years to destroy the labor movement, and who this year fought Mink and Abercrombie (and lost) over raising the minimum wage. He now has the nerve to give a Labor Day weekend speech in a hotel that is notorious for its complaints from labor over management activities.

In that speech, he endorsed Orson Swindle as a close ally. That tells us all we have to know. I'm voting for Abercrombie, who stands for decency and fairness.

Bob Stauffer
Kaaawa

It has never been the bus company's intent to compete with the many excellent visitor-oriented private transportation systems. These systems add diversity to the Waikiki area and broaden the travel choice of tourists.

The pass was introduced as a convenience to the many visitors who already account for about 25,000-30,000 daily bus trips (about 10-12 percent of TheBus's daily ridership).

A focus group study undertaken by the Hawaii Visitors Bureau in July 1993 stated "there was a wealth of suggestions to make the fare system convenient for visitors ranging from a token system to special one-week or one-day passes." Our four-day pass is designed to address this desire and is modeled after successful programs in other visitor-oriented cities.

It is true that TheBus is heavily subsidized by the public. However, if TheBus only provided services in areas where it's not possible to make a profit, then the cost to the public would be even higher.

These points were discussed in an extensive series of meetings with various visitor industry leaders while in the planning stage for a visitor pass. We received strong encouragement from individuals who felt that a good public transit system - which might appeal to the budget traveler seeking high value - would add another dimension to Waikiki.

James E. Cowen
President and General Manager
Oahu Transit Services