So our senior senator, Dan Inouye, is engaged to be married.

Because he is a public figure, the news came from Inouye in the form of a statement, not unlike what might come when Inouye has something to say about appropriations headed to Hawaii or maybe his reaction to a presidential speech.

But this one was markedly more personal for the notoriously private Inouye. He announced he is engaged to Irene Hirano, currently president and chief executive officer of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Inouye has long been a strong supporter of the museum and is listed as chair of its board of governors.

Hirano has a long list of accomplishments, serving on any number of boards and civic organizations. She has been active politically, contributing money for everyone from Sen. Diane Feinstein and Mazie Hirono to her future husband.

This is happy news for the senator, who suffered the loss of his best friend, Henry Giugni in 2005 and then his wife of 57 years, Maggie, in 2006.

Just another example that at 83, Inouye is more interested in looking forward than looking back. Maybe news reports about him will give up that “octogenarian” stuff and instead use the adjective “newlywed.”

As expected, that proposed between Gov. Linda Lingle and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs over ceded land claims has generated a big old mess of confusion and concern at the Legislature, which has the obligation to approve, disapprove or amend the proposal.

As Gordon Pang reports, some think the offer is too rich, others think it is not enough and others think it has to be tied to some kind of permanent, for evermore bar against any future lawsuits by OHA against the state on this matter.

These are all fair points. But in working this out, it is instructive to go back to the admissions act which gave control of ceded lands to the state and, in the same law, told the state what it could do with those lands and revenue from them.

The Act offers five potential uses for income from ceded lands, including schools, agriculture, the betterment of Hawaiians and other generally public purposes. But it does not say that each of the five potential uses must be funded, nor is there anything about a proportional division of the money.

In fact, the idea of giving OHA 20 percent of the income (five uses equals 20 percent for each) was a somewhat arbitrary compromise decision by the Legislature.

The actual federal law says the state can use any or all of the income from those lands “for one or more” of the five purposes, not necessarily all of them. Until OHA came along, that was generally education.

So, as this debate goes forward, its important to keep clear what the underlying legal groundwork is.

There are many good reasons to work toward the “betterment” of Hawaiians as the law says, but its important to maintain clarity of where all this comes from.

No question most of the attention paid to Gov. Lingle’s State-of-the-State speech was on her challenging proposal to buy the Turtle Bay resort to save it from further development.

But there are a lot of other ideas on Lingle’s plate this year that will stir up controversy, debate and serious soul-searching by the majority Democrats in the House and Senate.

Take, for instance, a pair of education proposals that would radically reshape the way our public school system looks today.

The first was a familiar one. After keeping the idea on the back burner for a while, Lingle has returned full force with her local school boards plan, in the form of a proposed Constitutional amendment that would let each county decide if it should have a local school board.

Democrats have rejected that idea in the past and are likely to do so again. They have their own plan which shifts greater autonomy to local school managers in a different way.

But Lingle is likely to say she is back to her original idea because the Democratic plan simply hasn’t worked as touted. That criticism may be a stretch, but watch for another robust debate over how our schools will be run,

And even if this idea goes nowhere, another proposal, if passed, would alter our public schools dramatically in a different way.

This is the proposal to grant autonomy and power to the Charter School Panel, thus taking it out of the jurisdictional shadow of the Department of Education which has not been wildly enthusiastic about charter schools.

The other part of the plan would take off the legal limit on the number of charter schools allowed, along with the funding necessary to get any and all of these new schools launched. One scenario would see the state’s public education system reshaped from within as dozens and dozens of new charters emerge, leaving the regular system with less to work with and more headaches to solve.

Is this what we want?

What is it about the North Shore that turns our governors into big-spending preservationists?

Our current governor, Linda Lingle, made big headlines this week with word in her State of the State speech that she would like to purchase the 880-acre Turtle Bay resort on the North Shore to protect it from development.

We’re talking half-a-billion bucks here, so this is not an idea that will go down easily at the Legislature where there are a million demands for that kind of money.

Still, this is precisely the bold kind of “legacy” move that Lingle admirers have been looking for.

If she wants advice about how this might go down, Lingle could do worse than chat with her predecessor, George Ariyoshi. Ariyoshi made big headlines of his own in 1977 when he decided to spend $600 million (and a dollar was worth something in those days!) to buy Waiahole and Waikane valleys to save them from development.

Over time, Ariyoshi has come to consider that decision to be a gem of his three-term administration. It stopped development, but it also became a cornerstone of the drive to preserve the Windward coast by “keeping the country country.”

Legacy, indeed.

Lawmakers have an obligation to look at this proposal carefully. It’s the public’s money, after all. But it would be a shame if the idea dies simply because it is likely to end up being a big moment in the history of the Lingle administration.

Bright green banners are hanging over the railings at the State Capitol, signaling in no uncertain terms the love our lawmakers feel for their hometown school, the University of Hawaii.

It’s quite a vivid demonstration of the promises legislators have been making this week about placing long-overdue repair and maintenance work for the UH at the very top of their agenda this year.

Good thinking. And long overdue. But why now? Certainly the rundown state of the UH, particularly the Manoa campus, should be old news to legislators by now. True, they have been focusing their energies and dollars on the backlog in the public school system. But make no mistake, UH administrators have been knocking on doors for years, begging for the cash needed to repair leaky roofs, upgrade the infrastructure and generally make things right on campus.

It’s obvious the banners and excitement and promises are primarily the result of one thing: The departure of winning coach June Jones, who left complaining that his athletic facilities, in particularly, were in a lousy state.

“Sorry about that, June,” lawmakers seem to be saying. “We’ll get to that right away and - by the way - we’ll try to take care of the upper campus at the same time.”

The result, at the end of the day, may be just fine. But this adds up to another example of crisis management by the political system, which seems to respond better to big headlines and public outcry than it does to the obvious, but less temporarily heated, needs of the state.