Gov. Linda Lingle‘s announcement Tuesday that Furlough Fridays have ended garnered applause and praise for a long-awaited compromise. But how much compromise was involved in the final resolution, really?

Lingle herself said during the press conference at the Hawaii State Capitol that the end of the furlough days would have been impossible without Hawaii’s banks stepping up to offer the state a $10 million line of interest-free credit. Indeed, the negotiating parties have been in a stalemate since January. Why couldn’t they have reached a resolution then, someone asked at the press conference. Lingle said the answer was simple:

“For those of you who have been involved in something very intensely and you’re seeing it from your point of view and everyone else is seeing it from their point of view — sometimes having someone see it from the outside, with a different point of view, raises something you just didn’t think of.”

She said the banks’ “creative and innovative solution” was the catalyst for an agreement. She praised them for recognizing the link between education and the economy, and First Hawaiian Bank CEO Don Horner, specifically, for taking seriously “our moral obligation to the children of Hawaii.”

She went on to state that the banks made it possible for her and the Hawaii State Board of Education to each maintain their conflicting stances on the furlough situation.

So what is the message here? We don’t even have to infer. Lingle herself says both of the disagreeing parties still believe their original stances were correct. Virtually no compromise has been reached; a third party just entered the picture to offer the negotiators a way to save face.

“This is a way to make both sides correct, or both sides able to stay with their position,” Lingle said. “And when the question was asked earlier about why couldn’t this have been done earlier? We both still believe our position is a correct one. I believed $57.2 million was needed, they believed $67 million was needed. So it was bridging that gap. If we never need it, ‘OK’, but if we do need it, it’s there and available. It allows me to carry out what I believed was right for the public, and it allows the BOE/DOE to do what they thought was right.”

It sounds like the banks served as mediators to settle an argument among warring parties. It’s disheartening that the entrenched officials couldn’t have found a way to compromise on their own, for the sake of the children.

Do you think the governor and board of education were as conscious as the banks seem to be of their “moral obligation” to Hawaii’s keiki? Discuss with other members in our Furlough Fridays conversation.