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Thursday, March 17, 2016
March 17, 2016 News Read
By Andrew Walden @ 4:33 PM :: 3225 Views

Na’i Aupuni Cancels Ratification Vote

Anti-Gun Bills Deferred

Plan to renovate or rebuild Aloha Stadium could become a taxpayer boondoggle

Oahu Windfarm Proposed for Live Explosives Dumping Area

2016 County Health Rankings Hawaii

Honolulu Drivers Waste 49 Hours in Traffic

Hawaii House budget Boosts Spending by $2B

HNN: Gov. David Ige proposed spending about $2 billion more over the biennium than the Legislature approved last year. The House Wednesday kept the overall spending level about the same but reduced the governor's operating budget request by about $47 million for 2017.

Rep. Gene Ward is voting against the budget, saying the state should be giving more money to the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.

Ige's proposal to spend $30 million to build an additional classroom facility at overcrowded Campbell High School was cut in half. But House Finance Chairwoman Sylvia Luke says the project can still proceed.

read … Hawaii House passes $30.7B two-year budget, sends to Senate

House Budget Bill—$60M to be Wasted on Aloha Stadium

CB: The Hawaii House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday for the operating expenses of the executive branch for the supplemental fiscal year that begins July 1.

House Bill 1700 now goes to the state Senate for its tinkering. Differences will be worked out in conference committee in late April before it is sent back to Gov. David Ige for his consideration.

Among highlights, HB 1700 includes $6.33 billion for capital improvement costs, known as CIP. Here’s a few:

  • $60 million to address health and safety conditions at Aloha Stadium
  • $10 million for plans, acquisition and design for agricultural land on Oahu
  • $30.2 million for new combined support maintenance shop complex at Keaukaha Military Reservation for Hawaii Army National Guard
  • $37.5 million to Kihei High School (Maui) for construction of phase II

HB 1700 also puts some figures with dollar signs on efforts to help the homeless and create more affordable housing:

  • $25 million to the Rental Housing Revolving Fund for affordable rental housing statewide
  • $12.5 million to the Dwelling Unit Revolving Fund for affordable housing statewide
  • $4.2 million to provide low-income housing tax credit loans
  • $4.1 million for public housing development, improvements and renovations statewide

Prisons are also a priority of the Legislature:

  • $200.7 million for new Maui Community Correctional Center
  • $54 million for plans, design and ground work for a new facility at Oahu Community Correctional Center
  • $15 million for new housing and offices at Kauai Community Correctional Center
  • $15 million for new support building for Hawaii Community Correctional Center
  • $8 million for new housing offices at Women’s Community Correctional Center
  • $163,965 for expanded electronic monitoring as part of the prison furlough program

HNN: Hawaii Tourism Authority fights to keep $3 million that state wants for UH athletics travel expenses

HB1700: Text, Status

read … Budget

House budgets $200M for new Maui jail, Undercuts OCCC, Halawa Plan

SA: The state House of Representatives has inserted $200 million in capital improvement funds into the 2017 fiscal year budget for a new Maui jail — a project that dates back to 2004.

Meanwhile, lawmakers appropriated about $60 million for the design and construction of a new Oahu Community Correctional Center, a fraction of the $489.3 million in funding that Gov. David Ige is seeking….

The $200 million appropriation for the Maui jail was a surprise to the Department of Public Safety, which had only requested $15 million to make upgrades at the current facility in Wailuku….

Ige sponsored legislation that would appropriate $489.3 million in general obligation bonds to relocate the jail to the grounds of the existing Halawa Correctional Facility. The overall cost to the state, with interest, was pegged at $780 million. Ige had also hoped to exempt the project from Hawaii’s environmental review law, an idea lawmakers quickly killed.

Luke said that House members remain worried about the cost of the OCCC project.

“We are not comfortable with it right now,” she said, noting that the proposal is still in the “discussion phase.”

read … House budgets $200M for new Maui jail

Two Sheriffs Involved in HPD Stolen Car Scheme

SA: …Former Honolulu police officer Roddy Tsunezumi testified in U.S. District Court on Wednesday that he and officer Landon K. Rudolfo negotiated the sale of a stolen SUV while they were on the job at the Honolulu Police Department’s main headquarters.

Both men were assigned to HPD’s Traffic Division at the time.

He also said he and Rudolfo arranged the phony theft of another vehicle as part of an insurance fraud scheme.

Rudolfo is on trial for allegedly trafficking stolen vehicles, for allegedly knowingly purchasing a stolen SUV and for allegedly arranging the theft of his friends’ vehicle.

Tsunezumi is testifying as a government witness against Rudolfo. He pleaded guilty to, and is serving a 33-month prison sentence for, extortion in an unrelated case.

Tsunezumi says he sold Rudolfo the stolen SUV and that Rudolfo handed him the keys to the other vehicle. He testified that Rudolfo told him the owners of the second vehicle wanted to get rid of the car so that they could make a false insurance claim.

The prosecution said the owners of the second vehicle are husband-and-wife state sheriff deputies. The state Department of Public Safety confirms the husband and wife are employees and that the department is monitoring the situation. Neither has been charged with a crime….

read … Officers had conspired at police HQ, court told

81% Chance of Sanders Win in Hawaii

SP: In the upcoming states the situation looks much better for Sanders with FiveThirtyEight suggesting a Sanders win probability – based on the previous primary elections – of 40% in Arizona, 75% in Idaho, 82% in Utah (March 22), 91% in Alaska, 81% in Hawaii and 85% in Washington (March 26), 61% in Wisconsin (April 5), 80% in Wyoming (April 9) etc.

read … 81%

Telescope: Selection of Hearing Officer ‘In Progress’

HTH: Selection of a hearings officer to oversee the next contested case for the Thirty Meter Telescope’s land use permit will not be brought before the state’s Land Board.

Instead, Suzanne Case, who leads the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, will make the decision based on the recommendations of a screening committee, according to Dan Dennison, DLNR spokesman.

Dennison told the Tribune-Herald last month that qualified applicants would be sent to the Board, which Case chairs, for consideration.

But on Tuesday, he said in an email that the previous board delegated then-Chairman William Aila that authority when the first contested case hearings process was under consideration in 2011.

“That delegation was never rescinded and is still in effect,” he said.

Dennison said the current board “re-affirmed” that authority.

Asked when a hearings officer might be selected, Josh Wisch, spokesman for the state Attorney General’s Office, said in another email shortly before 5 p.m. Wednesday that the “selection is in progress” and “there is no specific deadline.”….

S: Robot-Built Landing Pad Could Pave the Way for Construction on Mars

read … In Progress?

SB2562: State Squad to Apply Pressure to Homeless Who Continue to Refuse Shelter

HNN: Under a proposal before lawmakers, the state would create a team of 12 deputy sheriffs responsible for evicting homeless from state land.

The cost just to hire, equip and train the deputies in this task force is estimated at more than $2 million, according to the state Department of Public Safety.

But proponents say if it's done right, it's well worth the money.

The team would be charged with enforcing park rules, and keeping trespassers from under bridges and off other state land.

Like the city, a crew would also remove any trash left behind….

read … Sweep

Will Utah Housing First Leader Direct Honolulu Homeless Effort?

SA: Lloyd Pendleton, known for his no-nonsense efficiency in addressing homelessness in Utah, is in talks with Mayor Kirk Caldwell about a move to Oahu to help reduce the highest per capita homeless rate in the country.

Pendleton and Caldwell met for the first time Friday when Pendleton outlined his ideas to get more people off the streets of Honolulu. Caldwell then told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, “I love the guy. I wanted to keep him here with us or clone him. He lived up to all of the expectations I had. He gets it.”

Pendleton — who describes his age as “75 and a half” — has officially retired as Utah’s homeless coordinator. But he constantly welcomes visitors to Salt Lake City — when he’s not touring the country speaking about how it became the second city in America, behind Phoenix, to eliminate “chronic homeless veterans” and reduced overall chronic homelessness by 72 percent in 10 years.

Pendleton’s work as a homeless coordinator followed careers with Ford Motor Co. and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, where Pendleton was in charge of humanitarian relief for Europe and Africa.

He talks about how social service agencies and Republican officials in Utah — “the reddest of red states,” as he calls it — were able to persuade conservative, business-oriented landlords to rent their units to homeless people who may have mental health issues or be addicted to alcohol or drugs through a program known as Housing First….

Related:

read … Housing First

Kauai Utility CEO: Renewable Energy Goal Not Cheap Or Easy To Meet

CB: “The sheer infrastructure and scope that would be required to go to 100 percent on Oahu is really impossible under today’s technology,” Kauai Island Utility Cooperative CEO David Bissell said Wednesday at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center.

“There’s just not enough land there,” he said. “It’s got to come from biofuel or other technology or from other islands.”

That’s Oahu, home to nearly 1 million people and a city full of neon lights. Kauai, a rural island of 65,000 residents, could reach the state’s goal within the next 30 years and is already 40 percent of the way there, Bissell said.

But closing that gap could come at a significant cost even on Kauai, he said.

Bissell estimated that it would take 5,000 acres and a $1 billion investment, with debt-service payments of up to $70 million, for Kauai to be 100 percent renewable under today’s technologies. KIUC has roughly 35,000 member customers.

He said a recent modeling exercise was “a real eye-opener” to him. To make it pencil out, he assumed more than three times as many rooftop solar systems, battery storage infrastructure and agricultural land for utility-scale photovoltaics and biomass crops.

“We wouldn’t be subject to as much volatility, but it really wouldn’t have a downward pressure on rates,” he said.

read … Rates to Stay High Thanks to Enviros

Honolulu Police Commission’s job review of HPD Chief Louis Kealoha is an embarrassing whitewash

CB: By any objective standard, Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha has racked up a troubling record: He’s under FBI investigation. He was rebuked by the mayor recently for trying to promote an officer with a record of domestic violence. Under his watch, the city has paid out millions to settle cases in which out-of-control officers have used excessive force, mistreated and endangered colleagues by racist, sexist actions, and otherwise behaved badly.

One might think that, in his annual job review, Kealoha should have feared getting a well-deserved pink slip. One would be wrong.

Just as it did last year, when Kealoha was coming off a very rough 2014, the Honolulu Police Commission last week praised the chief in his annual performance evaluation as  “exceeding expectations.”

read … Whitewash

Hawaii TSA had 'record number' of violations, discrepancies

HNN: …Heather Callahan Chuck, who was in charge of TSA operations in Honolulu, and Sharlene Mata, who oversaw TSA on the neighbor islands, said they found 15 types of security vulnerabilities and administrative deficiencies at Hawaii airports when they took over in early 2014.

One big problem: They said front-line TSA officers in Hawaii were not receiving intelligence briefings….

read … Record Violations

Prosecutors: Gay Prostitute Killed Woman in Honolulu—Faces Kiddie Porn Charges

HNN: …Sgt. Michael Walker has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in civilian court in the death of Catherine Walker, who was found stabbed to death in 2014 in the Honolulu military housing home the couple shared.

New allegations surfaced during a military judicial hearing Wednesday. An Army prosecutor says Michael Walker is accused of possessing and viewing child pornography and receiving money in exchange for sex with men….

read … Gay Prostitute

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