Editorial: Embattled agency must prove worth

The city Office of Economic Revitalization (OER) was created — or reorganized from the erstwhile Office of Economic Development — through a City Council resolution in 2020 and tasked with the high-minded goal of building a resilient economy post-COVID-19. Aside from programs funded through dwindling federal money — OER’s most lucrative source of funds, by far — progress on mandates to “guide long-term strategy and economic development,” among other difficult-to-quantify objectives, has been largely unimpressive. As it moves into its seventh fiscal year, the agency, imagined as the entity to wean Honolulu off tourism and onto more diverse revenue streams, is at risk of becoming a drag on the economy it was built to bolster.

See the original article at: Honolulu Star-Advertiser