When Jeremy Harris left the office of mayor of Honolulu, years of work aimed at bringing the city budget under control and remaking the physical face of the city were lost in a cloud of last-minute dust. There were charges of campaign spending violations, budget battles with the City Council and a final flap over public money used to produce a glossy book on the Harris years.

At one level, you could say that life is tough in the big leagues, and when you are the mayor of a major American city, you're in for a fair share of grief. But at another level, it is a shame that the positive work Harris accomplished on moving Honolulu into the forefront of the "sustainable" movement kind of got lost in the shuffle.

Right now there is a new project, sponsored by the state Legislature and a number of private groups including the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs, that is looking at creating a sustainability plan that will guide state decisionmakers over the next four decades. This is yet another in a series of "anticipatory democracy" movements that have sprung up here over the years.

The best known was the 1970 Hawaii 2000 conference spearheaded by the late George Chaplin, then editor-in-chief at The Advertiser. Subsequent efforts included former Gov. George Ariyoshi's push in the mid-1970s for a forward-looking state plan and detailed functional plans. A number of additional efforts followed, some using the imaginations of futurists and others built around the dreams and hopes of Hawai'i's young people.

But when it came to directly talking about sustainability, in physical, social and financial terms, Harris was at the forefront.

The former environmental scientist took up the cause of sustainability and pushed it every chance he got. Some critics argued he was most interested in sustaining his own political career, but there's no doubt that his efforts put Honolulu front-and-center in the global conversation about sustainability.

While Harris has been remarkably quiet locally since leaving office, he continues to make speeches and presentations on Honolulu's experience.

One of the latest was a talk Harris gave as the keynote speaker at a Smart Growth conference in Lafayette, La.

According to news reports, Harris praised civic leaders in Lafayette for the strides they have made in "smart growth" (which is not quite the same thing as sustainability; it is more specifically focused on urban planning). The news report said Harris stepped into leadership of Honolulu at a time when growth and development were bringing the city "to a point of no return and risking its tourism industry forever."

That's a stretch. But the push to improve the waterfront, open new parks, revitalize Waikiki and landscape barren thoroughfares throughout the city did have a big impact. Harris may not be the messiah of sustainability some of his listeners think he is, but during his years at City Hall, he did walk the walk of his sustainability talk.

Reach Jerry Burris at jburris@honoluluadvertiser.com.