State of Hawaii vs. County of Kauaʻi

Following close on the heels of the legal suit over Kauaiʻs Ordinance 960 (formerly Bill 2491), two bills have been introduced at the state level - House Bill 2506 and Senate Bill 3058 - that would have that “No law, ordinance, or resolution of any unit of local government shall be enacted that abridges the right of farmers and ranchers to employ agricultural technology, modern livestock production, and ranching practices ..."

Update: This very same language is in another piece of legislation as Senate Bill 110 and not adopted in committee (4 Feb 2014).

They might as well just have stated clearly: we don't trust counties to have the sense to have a say about how farms and ranches operate on their own islands.

Local law is already very much subject to override by state which is in turn subordinate to federal law (as I wrote about previously including the less well known legal principle called Dillonʻs rule which further limits the purvey local government to only those subjects they are explicitly empowered to legislate). That some state legislators feel compelled to specifically forbid local ordinances in the realm of agriculture can only be interpreted as a simple lack of trust.

According to a recent editorial in The Garden Island - and it may be a first for the latest Oahu-controlled incarnation of that periodical that I agree with this one - two local Kauai representatives in the state legislature are the ones introducing this legislation: Rep. Dee Morikawa (D-Koloa-Niihau) and Rep. James Tokioka (D-Koloa-Wailua). They seem to see their vital role at the state level as being about blocking our county council from bothering to get involved with things agricultural on the island.

The hubris of disempowering local government in perpetuity is astounding in itself, much less on the heels of the dramatic events on Kauai over the past several months that if anything clearly demonstrate how vital these issues are for so many folks here. Since the state level status quo - understaffed, minimal regulation and a voluntary program concocted in the eleventh hour ahead of Kauai 960 (2491) - is quite favorable to the big corporations, one has to assume that in writing off the anti-GMO crowd these representatives owe a heavy allegiance to the other side.

However, I donʻt want to underestimate the subtlety of the issues nor the intricacies of the power plays. Over at Kauai Eclectic, Joan raises some good questions about how fit Kauai is to self-govern. I would agree that the debate here - 2491 being just one prominent example - was less than statesman-like and that rational, well reasoned opinion was in very short supply.

So I would say that yes, Kauai has a lot of room for improvement, but then I would also say that at the state and federal levels - even at the UN - government could do a much better job as well. Be that as it may, local government certainly has a vital role to play here and I would need a lot better argument than “It’s a right to farm bill,” before we irrevocably disempower the counties. In the end inclusive government that respects locale must be the best system: suppressing local control always amounts to suppression of the weaker county by the more powerful state, and that just isnʻt democratic, or even moral.

I have seen it reported that these bills are not expected to get very far and the threat of passing appears small now, but that Kauai's own representatives are doing these maneuvers in the first place is unsettling, and of course, predicting the future of legislation is hardly reliable.