Brookings: New Evidence Raises Doubts on Abercrombie’s Preschool for All
HI health exchange violates federal law, League of Women Voters say
Hawaii earns ‘D’ for judicial financial disclosure
University of Hawaii honors Wounded Warriors and US service members
State of Hawaii Sued for Short-Changing Foster Parents and Children
HCDA, BoE, HHC, LUC: Abercrombie Announces Appointments
Oahu bus vendors selected for 2014-15 school year
DPS Names Ruth Coller Forbes New Kulani Warden
Caldwell Admin will now Advise Itself on Ethics
CB: Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration continues to flout the city Ethics Commission, this time with a not-so-subtle memo that went to all municipal agencies.
On Dec. 2, Corporation Counsel Donna Leong said her department will now begin providing ethics advice to all city employees, particularly as it relates to standards of conduct, conflicts of interest and fair treatment
Leong said the reason for the memo was to clear up any confusion related to the Ethics Commission and the rules it governs under the city charter.
read ... Talking to itself
Pushing for Tax Hikes, Caldwell Suggests Bus Ads
SA: Allowing paid advertising on the sides and backs of city buses is the latest money-raising plan being proposed by Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell.
Caldwell, who forwarded Bill 69 to the City Council late Tuesday, said the plan could bring in as much as $8 million annually and that all of the money would go to bus operations.
The idea of raising revenues by allowing advertising on the exterior of TheBus was last brought up in 2003 by former City Councilman Donovan Dela Cruz. That bill was shelved, however, after stiff opposition from the Outdoor Circle and former Mayor Jeremy Harris.
Current Outdoor Circle Executive Director Marti Townsend met with Caldwell on Tuesday morning and told the mayor that members will again oppose the proposal.
NOTE: This is not an alternative to tax hikes. This is Caldwell pretending to have exhausted every other option so he will be able to sell tax hikes.
read ... Exterior ads could earn $8M
Kauai Seed Growers to Announce Spraying Times so Luddites can Coordinate Mass Hysteria
KGI: Sunday marked the beginning of the Hawaii Department of Agriculture’s “Good Neighbor Program” on Kauai.
And each large agricultural company — the same five mentioned in controversial Article 22 (formerly Bill 2491) — has expressed its willingness to comply.
“I have confirmed that all five of the companies distinguished in the bill have agreed to participate in the voluntary program,” HDOA Public Information Officer Janelle Saneishi said Tuesday. “It’s not in writing … it is a voluntary program, but they all have agreed.”
Those companies include DuPont Pioneer, BASF, Dow AgroSciences, Syngenta and Kauai Coffee.
Laurie Yoshida, communications manager at Pioneer, said her company — as well as others — believe Article 22 related to pesticides and genetically modified organisms is legally flawed, and that regulation and oversight of the industry should remain at the state level.
As a result, companies have expressed support for the GNP.
Pioneer has begun reaching out to schools, medical facilities and hospitals, in an effort to ensure they register to receive pre-application notifications of restricted use pesticides, according to Yoshida. So far, the company has identified two charter schools and one elementary school in Kekaha, as well as Wilcox Memorial Hospital in Lihue, that fall within the 1,000-foot notification zone outlined in the state program.....
Some companies have voiced that their participation should not suggest they believe in all aspects of the state program.
In a written statement, Dow said it questions the utility of pre-application notifications.
“Singling out certain activities for disclosure under the convenient notion of ‘right to know’ suggests the public should be worried about those activities,” the company wrote in a statement, adding that RUPs, when applied according to their label, meet the same health and safety standards as other pesticides.
Yoshida said the state program’s buffer zones — while smaller than those in Article 22 — are “arbitrary” and “not based on science.” She also pointed out that the same five companies are targeted by Article 22 and the GNP.
“There are some things in it that we don’t necessarily agree with,” she said Tuesday. “But our intent is to comply.”...
Suggestion: Companies should announce spraying and then not spray in order to expose the phony claims of sickness which are guaranteed to emerge when the first spraying is done under this rule.
read ... Good Neighbors
Hawaii Business BOSS Survey - Optimism Fades
HB: Smaller firms are the most likely to signal more cost cutting in the coming year. Among companies with three to nine employees, 37 percent predict cost cutting; among companies with 100 or more employees, only 17 percent expect to cut costs.
read ... BOSS Survey
Young Bros. increases its shipping rates by 5.5 percent
SA: Young Bros. has raised its shipping rate for interisland cargo by 5.5 percent under a new rate-making process that allows the company to make automatic adjustments between general rate cases filed with the Public Utilities Commission.
The rate increase, the first in nearly two years for Young Bros., went into effect Friday. It follows a 16.6 percent increase in Young Bros.' shipping rates in 2011.
The PUC cleared the way for the latest increase in October when it approved Young Bros.' request to implement an "annual freight rate adjustment pilot program."
read ... Pilot Program
Obamacare Growth Industry: Bay Clinic Opens Clinic to Reach 3400 Patients in Kau
HTH: The new facility will expand access to comprehensive health care for the residents in the district, offering primary care, dental care and mental health services.
“Our new site is equipped to provide greater services to all in Ka‘u,” said Harold Wallace, chief executive officer at Bay Clinic. “It has the infrastructure to care for an additional 3,400 patients and we are expecting to encounter 8,500 visits per year in the district of Ka‘u.”
read ... Free Clinic in Your Future
Product Banning Billionaire Bloomberg to Raise funds for Schatz at Home of Developer MacNaughton
HP: After more than a decade as New York City's mayor, it looks like Michael Bloomberg has decided which sunset he'll ride off into when his third and final term is over on the first of the year.
Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, who is up for re-election in 2014, has landed the venerable mayor to headline a fundraising reception in Honolulu on Jan. 2.
A ticket for the event, to be held at the Kahala home of developer Duncan MacNaughton, is $1,000. It is being presented by "The MacNaughton Family" and "The Kobayashi Family."
A Schatz campaign spokesman confirmed the Bloomberg appearance Tuesday but would not comment further.
read ... Bloomberg to Raise funds for Schatz
Kakaako Development: Workforce Housing or Get Rich Quick Scheme?
CB: Mark Twain once said there were lies, damned lies, and statistics. As an engineer by training I prefer the truth of mathematics. Math doesn't lie.
That is, except when it’s falsely applied to market the 801 South Street Tower B development in Kakaako. The developer (Downtown Capital LLC) and Hawaii Community Development Authority (HCDA) have triumphantly heralded the affordability of this mega Tower project as the fulfillment of the “workforce housing” needs in Kakaako.
We desperately need real affordable housing in this community. However, double checking the math of HCDA’s affordability claims unveils why 801 South Street Tower B is not the solution.
One need go no further than the sticker price. According to the HCDA the maximum affordable cost for a one-bedroom unit is $655,000 and $715,000 for a two-bedroom unit in this development.
read ... Ariel Salinas
Clayton Hee's Shark Fishing Restrictions Behind Increase in Shark Attacks
HNN: Some people want the state to kill tiger sharks. The strategy was tried decades ago.
"That's something that continues to be discussed. We have to weigh that with the reasonable likelihood of being able to catch the shark that is involved in this incident," said William Aila Jr. of the Department of Land and Natural Resources.
"Even though those culling programs removed thousands of sharks overall and hundreds of tiger sharks, people were still bitten both during and immediately after the shark control programs," said researcher Carl Meyer of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.
Another theory is that Hawaii's shark fin ban has caused some changes....
After several fatal attacks in the early 1990's, Maui lawmaker Rep. Joe Souki introduced a bill to fund a state-sponsored hunt. He no longer favors the tactic. Instead, he believes that protecting Hawaii's green sea turtles may be causing more shark encounters.
"What we need to do is to lift the ban on turtles as a protected species, and maybe it could start with the Native Hawaiians as they do in Alaska where they allow the natives to go and hunt the whales during the whale season," said Souki.
read ... Clayton Hee to blame for Increase in Sharks
Relativity behind Rusty Boar: Tax Credit Crowd Tangles with DLNR
ILind: Just as Hawaii Five-O doesn’t reflect actual police procedures, Forsythe said, American Jungle is “just a show.”
He said it is considered a “reality show” because the cast is not made up of professional actors and “they are not reading from a script.” Apart from that, however, “reality” is apparently little more than a word.
The controversial series is a production of Relativity Media LLC and TIJAT, a Hollywood-based new media production company, in association with Forsythe’s RustyBoar.com.
Does Hollywood-based Relativity Media ring a bell? This is the same company that made news a couple of years ago when it wined and dined legislators while lobbying for increases in tax credits for media production.
The bill backed by Relativity would have at least doubled the film production tax credit, increasing the rate for Oahu productions from 15 to 35 percent of production costs, and from 20 to 45 percent in the rest of the state. It would also have removed a cap on the total amount the state makes available for film tax credits each year. In addition, the bill would have waived the hotel room tax for certain film projects, and also given additional credits for a film studio Relativity proposed building on Maui. One legislative estimate was that the bill would have cost the state over $40 million in the first year alone.
At the time, the company justified its request for increased public funding by saying it intended to significantly increase its productions in Hawaii. Relativity representatives said they aimed to be “doing 10 movies a year with budgets over $50 million, at least two network series and as many as 30 cable TV series each year,” according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter.
But the company’s aggressive lobbying ran afoul of state ethics laws. In January 2012, the State Ethics Commission charged Relativity with failing to disclose expenditures made for the purpose of lobbying during the 2011 legislative session, including amounts spent for entertainment, lobbying materials, as well as the fair market value of expensive DVD sets given as gifts to legislators and legislative staff while the company’s tax credit legislation was pending....
Its tax credit bill did not pass. However, this year the legislature did increase the film production tax credits from 15 percent to 20 percent for Oahu, and from 20 to 25 percent elsewhere in the state....
read ... Tax Credits
Tax Credits: 'Tech' Companies Love Honolulu
PBN: “My business has definitely benefitted by being in Honolulu,” says Patrick Sullivan, chairman and founder of Oceanit, a science and engineering company. Sullivan launched his firm in 1985, armed with a new doctorate in engineering from the University of Hawaii and just $100. The company got its start by accepting the odd engineering projects that bigger firms did not want to bother with.
The new kid on the block morphed into a powerhouse. Today, Oceanit has more than 160 employees, including an arsenal of elite scientific and engineering Ph.D.s from around the globe. It has raised more than $250 million in funding and spawned several successful spinoffs. The company has branch offices in Houston and Washington, D.C., as about 70 percent of its clients are based outside of Hawaii. Yet Sullivan would not dream of relocating, not to Silicon Valley or to anyplace else, because the conditions found in Hawaii are difficult to replicate.
“The environment in Hawaii – its community and culture – lends itself very nicely to innovative thinking,” he says. “We have many groups of diverse people that live together and work together and appreciate each other, which is critical because innovation comes from differences, not sameness.”
This dynamic plays a powerful role in creativity, he explains, while giving a tour of the company’s technology petting zoo. On display are cool inventions, such as paint that heals after being scratched or damaged. “It is like Wolverine,” says an enthusiastic Sullivan, referencing the Marvel Comics hero.
There are many other entrepreneurs like Sullivan who are willing to double down their bets on Hawaii. The state has one of the highest business startup rates in the country, according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity 2012. Hawaii’s rate was 400 per 100,000 adults, placing it eighth highest in the nation.
read ... Pitch for more of your tax money
Star-Adv: Stop back-billing water users
SA: To blame persistent billing errors that affected nearly 80 percent of Oahu's water customers on a "technical glitch" defies imagination, but that is essentially what Honolulu's Board of Water Supply has done.
The semiautonomous agency has largely solved its billing debacle on the backs of its customers, and must be held to a higher standard should these problems recur.
If the agency does generate widespread billing errors in the future — whether due to new computer software, dead water-meter batteries or the full moon — customers should not be left holding the bag, as they were this time.
The agency's seven-member board of directors must inject accountability into an agency that clearly lost control of its billing system for a time, gave evolving, unsatisfactory explanations as to the cause, and failed to offer the level of customer service necessary to stem a basic loss of trust in the agency that manages Oahu's municipal water supply — an essential natural resource.
read ... Stop back-billing water users
The DOE Is Saving Thousands With New School Bus Plan
CB: At least for now, the plan finally put in place by the DOE — which is still in its early stages — is producing results.
According to Raymond L’Heureux, the DOE’s assistant superintendent for school facilities and support services, the “Get on Board” project has already reduced costs by more than $73,000 between August and October in the Central Oahu pilot area. That is a drop from $383,000 to $310,000.
In those three months, the department cut the fleet serving those neighborhoods from 57 buses down to 52. It simultaneously increased afternoon service from around 1,500 children to about 2,700 kids. (There was similar improvement in the morning, when fewer students take the bus.) All in all, savings in the pilot project area could total as much as $390,000 by the end of the school year, a DOE spokeswoman said.
DoE: Oahu bus vendors selected for 2014-15 school year
read ... Saving Thousands
Campaign Tactic: Rivere Suit vs Turtle Bay Timed with Upcoming Elections
SA: The community group Keep the North Shore Country says the plan to deal with environmental impacts caused by the expansion of Turtle Bay Resort is deficient and that the city Department of Planning and Permitting should not have accepted it from the resort owners.
"DPP should have stood up and said, ‘No, go back and do it again,'" said Gil Riviere, KNSC president.
The group is suing the city to require it to send the planned expansion's supplemental environmental impact statement back to the resort owners to address what the group has identified as deficiencies.
KNSC filed its lawsuit against the city and Turtle Bay Resort LLC in state Circuit Court on Monday.
read ... Campaign Tactic
Omidyar vs Anonymous
CB: This week, 14 people charged by the Department of Justice in connection with a coordinated denial of service attack on PayPal's services in 2010 will appear in federal court. The "PayPal 14," as they have been dubbed, are charged with participating in an attack orchestrated by Anonymous to retaliate against PayPal's suspension of its relationship with WikiLeaks. Their case as well as PayPal's actions in 2010 raise important questions about press freedoms and the nature of online protests.
As Chairman of eBay Inc., PayPal's parent company, and as a philanthropist and soon-to-be publisher deeply committed to government transparency, press freedoms and free expression, these issues hit close to home....
Totally Related: The Extraordinary Pierre Omidyar
read ... Omidyar
State Supreme Court dismisses lawsuit seeking to limit scope of OHA
SA: The Hawaii Supreme Court upheld today the dismissal of a lawsuit contending that the Office of Hawaiian Affairs should spend trust funds only for individuals with at least 50 percent Hawaiian blood.
OHA, which was created by a 1978 state constitutional amendment, has been helping individuals with at least some Hawaiian blood.
In the 49-page unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald, the high court affirmed the 2011 dismissal of the suit by Samuel L. Kealoha Jr. and three others....
read ... OHA Suit
Bill to Propose Hawaii Voting Age 16
CB: Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland intends to introduce a bill at the Legislature next session that would trigger a ballot initiative to let the people decide on whether the minimum age for voting should be on par with the minimum age for driving solo.
Chun Oakland, who helps oversee the state’s Keiki Caucus, says she’s introducing the bill to kickstart a dialogue about the state of youth civic engagement in Hawaii....
Chun Oakland drafted the bill at the request of Frank De Giacomo, a community activist.
De Giacomo, who has run unsuccessfully for public office in the past, says the time is ripe to expand suffrage to young people, which he describes as a pressing social justice issue....
read ... Underage Voters?
FCC ruling Finally halts regulation of Hawaii isle's cable rates
SA: The Federal Communications Commission has ordered the deregulation of basic cable rates on Hawaii island, ruling in favor of Oceanic Time Warner Cable and against the state of Hawaii.
The cable company applied with the FCC for "effective competition (status) for Oahu and Hawaii island in 2011," said Oceanic President Bob Barlow. "Hawaii is one of the very few places in the country that still regulates rates."
The finding that the cable company had effective competition from another multichannel video programming distributor, in this case satellite TV services DISH Network and DirecTV, released Oceanic from regulation of the rates it charges for its basic tier of service on Hawaii island. The state had argued the direct broadcast satellite companies did not represent effective competition to the cable company.
Barlow expects the FCC to issue a similar ruling on its Oahu filing.
LINK: FCC RULING
read ... FCC ruling halts regulation of Hawaii isle's cable rates
QUICK HITS: