Remove ImagesMaui County
The Maui 10
Who’s the county’s most powerful player?
August 23, 2007
RANK PREVIOUS COMPANY
1 1 Monsanto Hawai`i
2 2 Dowling Co.
3 3 Alexander & Baldwin
4 4 Tesoro Hawai`i
5 7 Maui Land & Pineapple Co.
6 5 Weinberg Foundation
7 6 Goodfellow Brothers
8 9 Hawaiian Telcom
9 8 Maui Electric Co.
10 10 Wailuku Water Co.
HT MADE MONEY?!
It seems shocking, but three separate publications (Honolulu Advertiser, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Pacific Business News) all reported on Aug. 15 that Carlyle Group-owned Hawaiian Telecom brought in—we're talking profit, people—$21.4 million during the second quarter of this year. Now the reason—again, published in all three papers—is simply that the company benefited from a "one-time $52.5 million tax benefit" reaped from the proposed (not even finalized!) unloading of its phone book publishing house. Tax break or no tax break, this is a big deal, but given that HT lost $70.8 million in all of 2006, they only rise one notch this week.
AFFORDABLE, SHMORDABLE
On the lighter side, the Maui Land & Pineapple Company managed to dump 16 of the 58 proposed affordable housing units the land developing giant wants to build in Kapalua for its own employees, and still earned an easy pass from the Maui Planning Commission, according to the Aug. 15 Maui News. Residents of the luxurious Kapalua Golf Villas—also a ML&P project, of course—had objected to drawings showing that some of the proposed apartments might conceivably interfere with their current views. Just two commissioners voted no—one, Joan Pawsat, because she thought the whole of idea of the immensely wealthy Maui Land & Pineapple Company offering to house its own employees in affordable housing instead of simply boosting their salaries was "illogical." Since when has power and wealth on Maui been logical? MTW