Party's Over: PUC Ends Solar NEM Effective Immediately
DLNR: Camping on Mauna Kea Continues to be Prohibited
State to Dopers: Follow the Rules or the Police Will Get You
Starting with Kealoha, Feds expand inquiry to Department-wide police corruption
HNN: The Honolulu Police Commission is trying to figure if it has the legal authority to put Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha on paid leave while he's under federal investigation.
Police officers who asked not to be identified told Hawaii News Now on Tuesday that the commission needs to put Kealoha on leave with pay while the FBI and a federal grand jury investigate him and his wife.
Officers said that's only fair. Officers are routinely placed on paid leave with their arrest powers, badge and gun removed while under investigation.
A special federal prosecutor has been brought in from the mainland to oversee the case into whether Kealoha and his wife Katherine -- a top city prosecutor -- conspired to frame her uncle in the theft of a mailbox from their home.
But sources said the federal criminal probe has widened to look into corruption at the Honolulu Police Department.
The police commission will discuss Kealoha's status in executive session next Wednesday.
read ... Police commission chair unclear if panel can place embattled police chief on leave
Broken Trustee Jervis’ law license suspended only 6 months for Looting Trust
SA: The court said that Jervis postdated a retainer agreement with a client in a workers’ compensation claim after the client signed the document. When the agreement expired, Jervis failed to notify any of the parties, including the client, failed to tell the client of a settlement offer and failed to attend a hearing on the claim. Jervis was also derelict in his representation of the client’s civil rights discrimination claim, according to the suspension order.
In the other case, Jervis was one of two lawyers who represented a woman who as trustee had gained control of some land on Maui that was part of her parents’ trust estates. According to a lawsuit filed by the woman’s brothers, Jervis and the other lawyer were to be paid an interest in the property after it had been developed.
When the development began to fail, Jervis and the other lawyer changed their retention and fee agreement, converting a $100,000 loan Jervis received from the trust as payment for service rendered up to that point and establishing a new fee schedule, the lawsuit says.... (Same game, but with one less zero.)
Some of the factors the high court said it considered in handing down the suspension were Jervis’ false statements during the disciplinary investigation and his one prior discipline.
Jervis resigned from the board of trustees of the multibillion-dollar Bishop Estate in 1999, five months after security guards at the Hawaii Prince Hotel found him and a female trust lawyer in a compromising situation in a stall of a men’s restroom. The morning after the two were thrown out of the hotel, the woman, who was married, was found in the garage of her Kaneohe home, dead of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Best Comment: "Attention, Hawaiians. The Na'i Aupuni electorate will have the counsel of the new law firm of Olds, Jervis & Kobayashi. Electorates may also access self-determination advice from the management consulting firm of Hee, Hee, Kihune, Lindsay, Peters, Wong & Stone."
2nd Best Comment: "This guy still had a license?????"
Answer: Yes. And in six months, he will have a license again.
read ... Busted Again
UH Maintenance Backlog Caused by Raids on Maintenance Funds
ILind: ...funds that could be used to address the backlog have been periodically raided by the UH administration to fund construction and operation of new buildings, dealing blows to the already inadequate attempts to catch up with the existing unmet needs....
read ... Artificial Crisis
Two More Days to Haul Trash out of Kakaako
KITV: If you take a walk down Ohe Street, you will see that much of the encampments have been removed from the sweeps on Thursday and Friday – but there was still so much trash, crews needed to come back to remove what was left after several phases of sweeps.
Crews enforcing the sweeps along portions of Olomehani Street, Ahui Street, and Ilalo Street last Thrusday and Friday removed 26.84 tons of trash, 52 cubic yards of metals, 9 shopping carts, and much more. Statistics for previous enforcements in Kaka’ako can be found here
After Friday’s sweep, some of the homeless continued to refuse shelter and instead relocated to the perimeter of Kaka’ako Gateway Park where the first phase of the sweeps took place.
Outreach workers were present to connect people seeking assistance with the appropriate help. A city bus was also onsite to provide free transportation to shelters for all people seeking assistance.
City officials say clearing Ohe Street will likely take two to three days.
read ... City crews resume Kaka’ako sweep, final phase
Micronesians Looking for Medical Care end up in Homeless Camp
CB: She can’t be more than 6 or 7 years old, but she shows no hesitation when a reporter and photographer approach her outside her family’s tent in a homeless camp in the Kakaako area of Honolulu.
“Do you have propane or diapers?” she asks, making it clear that she will accept either — or cash.
She says her name is Emichan, and she has lived on the streets for much of her family’s two-year stay in Hawaii. They are from Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia, and Chuukese, Marshallese and other Micronesians have steadily been joining the ranks of Oahu’s homeless population.
Emichan’s family — her little sister Mymy, her mother Lusia Pulusou and aunt Ketely Josua — are homeless in Honolulu because they left Chuuk to get medical help for the family patriarch, Litang Pulusou.
Pulusou suffers from diabetes and regularly visits Kalihi-Palama Health Center. He removes one of his shoes to show that his health woes recently led to the amputation of a toe....
(Great Idea: Lets move them into a shelter.)
read ... An Untold Story of American Immigration
Half of uninsured in state can get Medicaid
SA: A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that half of Hawaii’s uninsured population is eligible for Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income residents.
The report pegs the state’s uninsured at 70,000 and says that roughly 11 percent qualify for federal tax credits to lower the cost of medical coverage under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
read ... But don't Apply
UPW Upset because CCA Horning in on its Prison Business
SA: As Hawaii prepares to rebuild its prisons, the state seeks public-private partnerships. Since 2013, CCA has spent over $230,000 employing at least 10 Hawaii lobbyists, mostly lawyers. Their efforts have paid off. Legislation passed for new prison construction and public-private partnerships....
Gov. David Ige recently said 248 incarcerated people at Halawa prison must be imprisoned with CCA in Arizona while Halawa is renovated. (Thus reducing the need for more UPW prison guards and reducing the UPW's dues money cashflow.)
read ... UPW Inc vs CCA Inc
Maui Planning Commission Rejects Latest Anti-Cane Burning Scheme
MN: The Maui Planning Commission today rejected a request for the inclusion of sugar cane smoke as a factor when granting special management area use permits....
The request was filed on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2015, by resident Christopher Profio who asserts that smoke and ash from cane burning on Maui creates a hazard for people and the ecosystem, and should be considered when granting SMAs.
The request comes on the heels of a lawsuit filed in August by the Stop Cane Burning group, seeking injunctive relief to invalidate the 2015 Burn Permit issued to Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company and ban parent company A&B from conducting agricultural burning operations on Maui.
The same group filed a separate lawsuit in June against the state Department of Health demanding a stop to cane burning.
HC&S executives have maintained their stance that harvesting techniques have been carefully regulated and are essential to HC&S’ continued operations.
read ... Burned
Study says LNG use helps cut air pollution
MB: Replacing just one 500 megawatt coal-fired power plant with LNG fueled power generation for one year would equate to taking 557,000 cars off the roads....
last June, FortisBC struck a conditional deal to deliver LNG to Hawaii. Hawaiian Electric has conditionally contracted for an average of 700,000 tons per year for 15 years at a liquefaction cost of $2.70 per giga-joule.
read ... Anti-Fracking Activists Cause Pollution
FBI investigating yet another Maui mortgage scam
HNN: Anthony Williams, who heads an entity known as Mortgage Enterprises.
Williams is a member of the sovereign citizens movement on the Mainland and calls himself a private attorney general for the Common Law Office of America.
According to the state, he and Malinay told homeowners that they the could reduce mortgage payments by attaching what's known as Uniform Commercial Code statement to their mortgages in the state's Bureau of Conveyances.
"Filing these UCC statements are just frankly nonsense. It's not going to stop the foreclosure," Levins said.
More details on the FBI investigation weren't immediately available.
See the federal bankruptcy judgment against Malinay here.
read ... Duckburg
Democrats could kill Obamacare by repealing ‘Cadillac tax’
HTH: ...It’s unusual when Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are on the same page. It’s even more unusual when labor unions and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are singing the same song.
But the Affordable Care Act’s so-called “Cadillac tax” is bringing these and many more disparate political bedfellows into unison. And people complain President Barack Obama’s policies are divisive.
Ordinarily, a coalition this diverse might be on to something. If so many people from so many perspectives hate this tax on high-cost, high-benefit health plans, the policy must be misguided. Right?
Not really. Not if facts matter more than politics. Health care economists and policy experts think the tax is one of the most important pieces of the Affordable Care Act....
read ... Repeal
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