A quote from the Baltimore Sun's famous curmudgeon, H.L. Mencken, is taped to a post in our newsroom: ''For every complex problem there's a solution that's simple -- and wrong.'' Difficult, but
simple, answersMaui Mayor Linda Crockett Lingle, a former journalist herself, came to Honolulu this week to announce: ''There are simple answers to the problems facing Hawaii today -- they just aren't easy answers.''
One simple answer is to ask government employees to produce results. On Maui, she found many workers couldn't quite explain what benefits they provided to taxpayers. ''Let me put it to you this way,'' she asks. ''Would we miss you if you were gone?''
Another simple answer, Lingle said, is to forget about expanding the University of Hawaii at the expense of maintaining the existing campuses. ''UH isn't just an employment center or a big capital investment project. Manoa is the flagship of the university system and we must stop stripping it down.''
Lingle is also against legislative micro-management of UH and the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau. The Legislature needs to stop trying to run HVCB -- ''they have no expertise.''
She hangs her campaign for governor on this premise: ''The problems that exist in Hawaii today won't be solved by the people who created them.''
If you buy that, then she's ready to be your governor.