State Sen. Russell Kokubun had five words to sum up the 4,700-word report his Water, Land, Agriculture and Hawaiian Affairs Committee used to recommend Peter Young's ouster as director of the Department of Land and Natural Resources: "He didn't do his job."

Unfortunately, Kokubun had it backwards; the voluminous report simply didn't support a blanket charge of mismanagement against Young, and it was his committee that didn't do its job.

The result was more black eyes for senators as they rejected Young 15 to 8 yesterday, claiming another scalp in a year in which they've twisted their responsibility to advise and consent on executive appointments into a license to mug nominees.

Their drawn-out hearings, extended committee report and long-winded speeches produced no solid case against Young, but, rather, a pretext to rationalize a hit by Democratic lawmakers on a Republican nominee, which everybody saw coming before the first witness was heard.

It was a virtual replay of the earlier ouster of Iwalani White as Gov. Linda Lingle's public safety chief and the botched attempt to reject Glenn Kim for Circuit Court judge. Lillian Koller was allowed to keep her job as director of human services, but only after being made to grovel before power-drunk senators.

Few of us knew or cared much about Young, White, Koller or Kim before the Senate took the whip to them, but the serial bullying has left a bad taste in many mouths, and local voters have a history of showing the door to elected officials perceived as too big for their britches.

There certainly were problems with Young's tenure worth exploring, but the committee built its case around a disjointed collection of disgruntled public workers, Hawaiian burial activists, fishermen, boaters and self-interested litigants who were concerned with issues mostly on the edges of the sprawling department.

The panel misused subpoenas to inflate the importance of these witnesses against a far larger and more diverse group that vouched for Young on DLNR's core mission of protecting state lands and Hawai'i's environment.

More than 70 organizations and 479 individuals testified in Young's support, and 1,000 more petitioned on his behalf, representing a broad spectrum of government agencies, environmentalists, developers, Hawaiian leaders, farmers, scientists and some of the same interests that opposed Young.

By contrast, only 11 groups and 33 individual witnesses testified against Young, and senators provided no logical rationale for giving their views so much weight while discounting Young's supporters.

Critics believe the only witness that mattered was the first name on the list of opponents: the Hawai'i Government Employees Association. It is the state's biggest union and holds fee-simple ownership of Democratic legislators the union works so hard to elect.

Apparently, Young upset some of his employees, and HGEA wanted to send a message to all state managers that making change-resistant public workers happy is Job No. 1.

The process lost any claim to credibility when Kokubun denied Lingle's request to testify in response to the criticism of Young on the flimsy excuse that she missed a deadline.

I've covered Congress, state legislatures and county councils for nearly 40 years, and can't recall another instance when a legislative body refused the chief executive the courtesy of being heard.

Democrats brush off charges of partisanship by noting that the Senate also rejected former Democratic Gov. Ben Cayetano's reappointments of Attorney General Margery Bronster and Budget Director Earl Anzai, but senators forget that voters didn't like the arrogant tactics and trumped-up charges in those cases, either.

They should think about this: Of the 14 senators who voted against Bronster, only three remain in office, while seven of the 11 who voted for her are still around.