Editorials
Thursday, July 16, 1998

Spending commission
zaps Lingle campaign

LINDA Lingle's reliance on public funding to mount a strong candidacy for governor has been cut in half by a cockeyed interpretation of state law by Hawaii's Campaign Spending Commission. The interpretation is a departure from the way the commission read the same law just four years ago. As such, the commission should admit its mistake, return to its 1994 interpretation and spare Maui's mayor the trouble of appealing a bad decision.

The law qualifies candidates for governor, lieutenant governor or mayor -- specifically those who abide by campaign spending limits -- to public funds amounting to as much as 20 percent of the spending limits for each campaign. Four years ago, the commission's spending limit for each candidate for governor was nearly $2.67 million, thus qualifying each candidate for $533,585. Ben Cayetano received $312,520 that year in his successful bid for governor.

This year's spending limit for those seeking public funds is $2.72 million, so one would conclude, as Lingle did, that funds available to each candidate would be 20 percent of that, or $544,916. That, however, is not the way the commission sees it.

According to Robert Watada, the commission's executive director, the spending limit needs to be halved, with 50 percent applied to the primary election and 50 percent to the general. Therefore, spending limits are being set at $1.36 million, with public funding of up to $136,229 for the primary election, and the same amounts for the general. Under that newly calculated formula, a candidate abiding by spending limits qualifies for 10 percent of the limits, or half of the maximum amount allowed by state law.

Watada said that legislators told him they wanted only 10 percent of the spending limit to be accessible for public funding. Is that so? If that is what legislators want, they should change the law. Until then, the Campaign Spending Commission should correct its arithmetic to conform with the law, as written.

Bones of contention

PROPER burial of Russia's last czar and his family at the former imperial capital of St. Petersburg was envisioned as an act of reconciliation. But tomorrow's interment of Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra and three of their children alongside the tombs of other Romanovs at Peter and Paul Fortress will not be a grand affair. The Russian Orthodox Church takes the position that the bones to be buried may not be the royal ones, nearly scaring President Boris Yeltsin away from the ceremony.

How can the bones recovered from a forest outside the Ural city of Yekaterinburg, where the family was executed 80 years ago, not be the Romanovs? Didn't DNA tests prove their identities beyond a reasonable doubt?

Boris Nemtsov, the deputy prime minister in charge of a government commission overseeing the case, said in January that he was "99 percent sure, with six more nines after the decimal point," that the bones were those of the Romanovs. So what's the problem?

The problem may have less to do with religious distrust of science than with political posturing within the church. The Romanovs already have been named "royal martyrs" by the Russian Orthodox Church Aboard, a hard-line anti-Soviet group of emigrants who broke from the Moscow Patriarchate in 1927 after the home-based church declared loyalty to the Soviet government. The Church Abroad canonized the Romanovs in 1981. It sticks to the belief that the Bolsheviks totally destroyed with acid the remains of the family members shortly after their executions.

The Church Abroad has made the Romanovs' canonization by the Moscow church a condition for its return to the fold. The Council of Bishops last year recommended that the family be revered, but as "passion bearers," for the humble way in which they died, instead of martyrs. The church hierarchy has yet to make a final decision. Its recognition of the bones' authenticity not only would have been seen as a swipe at the Church Abroad, but may have increased the pressure for it to decide the sainthood issue.

As a result, Russian Patriarch Alexei and other ranking church officials will be absent from the burial services, but Yeltsin, at the last minute, found enough courage to attend. Meanwhile, any uncertainty about the bones' authenticity and the lack of resolution about the level to which the Romanovs will be elevated can be ascribed to post-Soviet stress syndrome.

Airport homeless

THE state has finally found a way to effectively rid the Honolulu Airport of homeless people while getting them the assistance they may need and not violating anyone's civil rights. Starting last night, the airport began to implement a new after-hours policy of closing off portions of the commuter, interisland and overseas terminals, and baggage-claim areas.

The new rule will mean about 45 homeless people will be rerouted from the state facility to numerous shelters in the community, including Safe Haven, the Angel Network Charities and Women's Way in Manoa. Airport personnel will use their discretion in cases where passengers are stranded late at night at the airport due to canceled flights or extented layovers.

Since Hawaii does not have a loitering law, and the state could not allow travelers into the airport while turning away the homeless, administrators were initially stymied. While most of the homeless hanging out in baggage claim areas and in ticket lobbies caused little disturbance, their presence was a safety and sanitation concern. A few people with substance-abuse or mental illness problems also needed treatment.

Airport security guards went through three dry runs to make sure the new procedures were performed correctly. In general, the DOT has received praise for the meticulous and compassionate way it has readied for this sorely needed corrective action. The airport is for people who are just passing through.

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