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Saturday, October 11, 2014
October 11, 2014 News Read
By Andrew Walden @ 5:38 PM :: 4563 Views

Ige Defensive over Tax Hikes, Broken Promises

Where Does Hawaii Rank in Rich States, Poor States?

Mark Takai Flip-Flops on Military Cuts

Council Hikes Fines for Illegal Dumping

Abercrombie Appoints Two Oahu Circuit Court Judges

Post Chancellorship Gravy Train Pays $300K/year to Former UH Administrators

KL: Recently dismissed University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Chancellor Tom Apple joins a list of past presidents and chancellors to take up lower-level positions in the UH system.

The list of former high-level administrators includes Apple, past UH President David McClain and former UH Mānoa Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw.

Apple was named chancellor in May 2012 and served approximately two years of a five-year contract before being terminated this July. Upon termination, he was offered a professorship in the campus’s chemistry department for roughly $300,000 a year, according to a Hawai‘i News Now article.

Hinshaw was named UH Mānoa chancellor in July 2007 and served a five-year term. Hinshaw stepped down in July 2012 and after a 10-month sabbatical began teaching at the John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM). Earlier this year, Hinshaw was given the position of advisor to the director of the UH Cancer Center for roughly $300,000 a year, according to a Pacific Business News article.

McClain was declared interim president of UH in August of 2004 to later be named UH president in 2006 for a three-year term. After a one-year sabbatical he joined the Shidler College of Business on the UH Mānoa campus, according a Pacific Business News article.

AP: UH-Manoa facing $31 million shortfall; hiring freeze on table

MN: UH’s Hokoana poised to succeed Sakamoto

read ... Gravy

UH Fails to Pay Copier Contract for 18 Months

ILInd: Do any of your departments participate in the leasing program with Xerox for your office copy machines? It’s a very good deal: new machines every few years, free toner, maintenance contract, etc. Departments pay for this out of their budgets, with UH taking the money and paying Xerox. However, Xerox is now refusing to honor the maintenance contract–meaning that copy machines that die are not being fixed. Why? Because UH hasn’t paid its bill to Xerox for more than 18 months!

read ... Did UH lose copier lease deal due to nonpayment?

GE Tax Revenue Up 8%, Hotel Tax Down 8.7%

SA: General-excise and use tax collections, the largest single source of state revenue, are up 8 percent, according to the department. Hotel-room tax collections are up 8.7 percent. Individual income tax collections are down 0.2 percent.

read ... Tax Numbers

What’s the real trend in Hawaii tourism?

ILind: Hawaii may congratulate itself on the 7.6 percent annualized growth in total visitor days that it experienced from 1990-2010, but the entire increase was caused by displacement of international tourists by lower-spending, longer- staying domestic tourists. Visitor arrivals have not changed materially in the last twenty years, rising only slightly from just below to just above 7 million annually. Most importantly, adjusted for inflation total visitor expenditure-the only really important measure of export performance-declined from more than $15 billion (in 2010 dollars) during the late-1980s to barely $11 billion in 2008 and 2010, also in constant dollars, ignoring recession receipts from 2009.

read ... What’s the real trend in Hawaii tourism?

Hawaii Has 33% More Potheads

KHON: The medical testing lab says synthetic urine use rose 50 percent in the past year....

The company says marijuana use is also up by 33 percent since last year.

read ... Dopers Still Looking

Homeless Loophole: BLNR Transfers Ft De Russy Beach to City for 1 Year 

KITV: The state Land Board voted Friday to transfer control of the sandy area at Ft. DeRussy to the city for one year. The move closes a legal loophole that allowed the homeless to sleep on the beach overnight at Ft. DeRussy without fear of being cited....

The city did not reply to a KITV4 request Friday asking for clarification as to how many hours Ft. DeRussy beach will be closed every night. However, it's likely that signage will have to first be erected before police can begin issuing citations.

read ... Loophole closed: Next?

Maui Anti-GMO Initiative Doomed in Court

MN: If the majority of voters check the "Yes" box, the issue might land back in court before the moratorium goes into effect. Remember Kauai? A similar thing happened when Kauai County tried to label GMOs. A federal judge ruled the ordinance unlawful this summer.

read ... Doomed to Failure

Latest Anti-GMO Trick: Water Grab on Kauai

KE: ...Except in this case, it's about giving the state complete management control over water use in the Lihue-Hanamaulu area.

Now let's get this straight. The state, which supposedly was doing such a lousy job managing pesticides on the westside that the county had to intervene with Bill 2491, is now being asked to assume more control over eastside water resources because the county is supposedly doing such a lousy job managing them.

This bit of twisted logic is the work of Councilmen Tim Bynum and Gary Hooser, the same two men who sponsored Bill 2491. Now they're pushing a petition to have the state designate south Puna, which includes the south fork of the Wailua River and the Huleia River, as a special Ground-Surface Water Management Area.

This designation would require all water users in the area to seek permits from the state Commission on Water Resource Management (CWRM) — a process that UH law school professor Kapua Sproat admitted “can be very time-consuming, labor intensive and require the use of legal council.” In other words, small farmers dependent on the East Kauai Water Users Cooperative would be screwed, while the big guys like Grove Farm could still play.

read ... Musings: Water Logged

State Completes $19.8M Bailout of ML&P Pension Fund

SA: Maui Land & Pineapple Co. completed a deal Thursday to shore up its underfunded employee pension plan by selling the state 244 acres zoned for agriculture fronting Honolua Bay for $19.8 million.

The sale was prompted by a bill passed by the state Legislature and signed by Gov. Neil Abercrombie last year at the urging of Maui Land, and resolves what the company called one of its most significant legacy commitments and long-term financial obligations.

The scenic stretch of coastal land commonly referred to as Lipoa Point had been pledged via a mortgage to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a federal agency, as security for Maui Land's pension obligations, which are underfunded by about $20 million. Proceeds from the sale will benefit the pension plan, Maui Land said.

read ... Bailout

Puna to Get Ultra-Narrow 'Two-Lane' Evacuation Route

SA: Cindy Orlando, superintendent of Hawaiian Volcanoes National Park, said the park originally received approval for an 18-foot-wide road and that deciding to make it a single lane was never intended to hinder access. "With all this new information, when we looked at some of the design issues, we realized that a wider road, 22 feet, that would accommodate two-way traffic regularly would have less impact than our initial proposal," she said.

read ... Finally

Ex-guard, inmate convicted in Hawaii prison gang trial

AP: The trial also exposed weaknesses in Hawaii's prison system. At Halawa, inmate calls were unmonitored, searches of staff were cursory and log books went largely ignored, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Brady said in his closing statement.

"These guilty verdicts are a result of our concerted effort to root out contraband and corruption and strengthen procedures," state Department of Public Safety Director Ted Sakai said in a statement. "Our hard-working, dedicated employees as well as the public expect us to weed out these types of illegal, unsafe activities, and we are continuing to do that through on-going investigations."

read ... Prison Gang

HPD officers under investigation for alleged beating during Chinatown Gambling raid

KHON: Sources tell KHON2 that the beating was captured on videotape because there were security cameras inside, and the officer accused of the beating is part of the Crime Reduction Unit assigned to the Chinatown area....

Sources tell us that that the police department and the FBI are investigating the incident.

It happened three weeks ago inside an establishment that has now been shuttered.

read ... Beating

Massive gambling indictment dropped, defense attorneys call for investigation

KHON: A judge has dropped all charges in a 400-plus-count illegal gambling indictment.

This latest development has the defendants’ attorneys furious and calling for a federal investigation. One is even pushing for city prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro to lose his job.

Late Thursday afternoon, a deputy prosecutor filed a six-page document to drop hundreds of counts of illegal gambling and money laundering charges against nine Oahu residents, who were arrested after police raided a number of “game rooms” across the island....

“They acknowledge that they presented false information to the grand jury, and essentially they just want another chance to go back and do it correctly,” said attorney Thomas Otake.

In the filed court document, Deputy Prosecutor Jacob Delaplane said, “I have identified potential deficiencies that, in the interest of justice, should be cured by seeking a new indictment.”...

Next, the attorneys will return to the courtroom in front of Judge Lee next Tuesday to ask for “prosecutorial misconduct,” Otake said. “They presented false information to the grand jury. They presented, in our opinion, perjured information to the grand jury.”

One of the defendant’s attorneys told KHON2 the only way to fix this problem is to take a drastic step.

“I can’t even begin to estimate the amount of time and money wasted in this investigation, only so it can end up being dismissed without prejudice so they can fix this problem,” said attorney Myles Breiner. “You fix this problem frankly by getting rid of Mr. Kaneshiro.”

Breiner went even further, asking for federal authorities to step in.

“Frankly, this case should be referred to the U.S. Attorney’s office and the Department of Justice for investigation of systematic prosecutorial misconduct,” he said. “We don’t believe there is a single agency in this city, or in this state, that is qualified to investigate the investigator, to investigate the prosecution.”

read ... Gambling

Angry Residents Protest Cesspool Ban

WHT: Frustrations boiled to the surface, with people firing questions and not being satisfied with the answers they received from a state Department of Health official leading an informational meeting at the West Hawaii Civic Center.

Under the 115-page draft water quality plan, new cesspool construction would be banned and the island’s 50,000 existing cesspools would have to be replaced with septic systems within 180 days after the sale of a property.

None of the 60 people attending the meeting had good things to say about the plan.

Mark and Joyce Lintner of Kilohana said the proposed rules would leave them without recourse.

“We are on a gang cesspool. We can’t put in a septic system,” Mark Lintner said. “Every house in our neighborhood is in this situation.”

read ... Less Affordable Housing

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