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The question at the center of this June 1998 episode was whether Governor Cayetano should sign Senate Bill 2204, legislation that would require government agencies to automatically approve development permit applications if they failed to act within self-imposed deadlines. Dan Davidson, executive director of the Land Use Research Foundation, argued that Hawaii's permitting system was too slow, too costly, and economically damaging, and that SB 2204 would restore predictability by holding agencies accountable. Rick Egged, state director of planning, said the Cayetano administration had supported the bill as part of an economic revitalization package, believing automatic approval would change the culture of government inaction. Maile Bay, a land use consultant, countered that existing rules already required timely agency action and that automatic approval risked bypassing public participation; she cited a case in which a power-plant permit was approved by default despite a board vote against it. Bill Tam, an attorney specializing in natural resources law, agreed that the goal of streamlining was sound but argued that automatic approval was inherently dangerous, stripping decision-makers of any discretion once a deadline passed regardless of a project's merits.
Transcript
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Companion newspaper commentaries
Commentaries by the guests, published in The Honolulu Advertiser around the broadcast.
