1X
Business journalist Bill Wood discusses Hawaii's $2.5 billion airport expansion with Roth, arguing that the project's underlying tourism projections — made in the late 1980s when global prosperity was high — are worthless given the worldwide recession of the early 1990s. Wood says no meaningful cost-benefit analysis was done, and describes how a single contract grew from $150,000 to $52.6 million without rebidding, a pattern he links to the politically motivated spending also evident in the Ken Kiba scandal at Aloha Stadium. Wood calls Hawaii's media "mediocre at best" at holding politicians accountable and notes the state ranks last in voter turnout. He predicts a 1994 gubernatorial race between Pat Saiki for the Republicans and Ben Cayetano for the Democrats, and says even if Saiki loses, a competitive race could shake the one-party system enough to spur reform. Wood supports building a convention center and argues that Hawaii's tourism industry is at the peak of a bell curve — the state can avoid decline only through sustained improvement and a genuine government-private sector partnership. The recording begins mid-sentence, catching the conversation already in progress.
Transcript
Read or download the full transcript (.txt). Speaker labels were assigned automatically and may contain errors.