HONOLULU — Hawaii public schools are closed most Fridays, rats scurry across bananas in uninspected stores, and there might not be enough money to run the next election.
About the only parts of the state untouched by the foul economy are its sparkling beaches and world-class surfing.
Hawaii’s money troubles are creating a society more befitting a tropical backwater than a state celebrating its 50th anniversary and preparing to welcome President Barack Obama home for Christmas this week.
“There is community energy and outrage building up,” said James Koshiba, a co-founder of the activist organization and website Kanu Hawaii, speaking about cuts to education. “The people have to play a bigger role. Folks won’t forget how this unfolds come election time.”
• Hawaii now has the shortest school year in the U.S. after the state and teachers union agreed to shutter schools for 17 days a year, leaving 171,000 students without class on most Fridays. Negotiations to reopen them collapsed last week.
• Food establishments often go uninspected, a fact highlighted by an Internet video showing rats roaming freely across produce in a Honolulu Chinatown market. The state has just nine health inspectors on Oahu to handle nearly 6,000 markets and restaurants.
• The state Elections Office said it might not be able to afford a pending special election, which would leave half of the state’s population without representation in the U.S. House of Representatives until September.
• Homelessness is on the rise as mental-health, child-abuse, welfare and day-care programs run short on cash. And next year might be even worse because tax revenues continue to plunge with the economy.
The National Conference of State Legislatures listed Hawaii, despite having largely withstood the housing market collapse, as one of 13 states with a pessimistic budget outlook for the current fiscal year, and it’s projected to have the second-largest shortfall, percentage-wise, in the 2012 fiscal year, at 28.8 percent, behind only Arizona at 30 percent.
