List Fraud Makes Kanaiolowalu Roll 'Too Hot to Handle'
HECO Denies Solar Contractors' Blockade Claim
HB321 Marijuana Dispensaries: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
HB1482: “Hawaii Invests Local Act” Supports Crowdfunding
Forced on to Obamacare: State Places 7,700 Lives at Risk to Save $20M
SA: On March 1, as a cost-saving measure, Medicaid benefits will be cut for a group of more than 7,700 Hawaii residents. The group will be transferred onto insurance plans through the federally subsidized Hawaii Health Connector -- plans with copays for medications and other medical care that are so beyond what a low-income person can afford that they will effectively be uninsured.
Additionally, many will suffer from interruptions in their care from having to switch doctors. As a result of these changes, many will suffer serious consequences to their health. Some will die.
It does not have to be this way. If done correctly, the state could save about $20 million while still ensuring that those terminated from Medicaid have access to necessary medical care.
For this particular group of lawfully present immigrants, the state under Medicaid currently pays 100 percent of the costs of the program, which ensures that low-income people have access to medically necessary care at no cost.
By transferring them to a Connector plan, much of the state's cost will shift to the federal government, which provides significant insurance subsidies for people near the poverty line.
However, even with those subsidies, an individual will still have to pay up to $2,250 in copays and co-insurance in a single year -- an impossible amount for someone working 40 hours a week at minimum wage and earning only $1,343 a month. At these income levels, seemingly insignificant copays can prevent people from getting the medications and treatment they need.
read ... Forcible Obamacare
Caldwell, Legislators Caught Lying About Portion of GE Tax Paid by Tourists
HNN: The head of a taxpayer advocacy group said Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell is over estimating the amount of money tourists are paying to help fund the city's rail transit project, but state tax officials backed up Caldwell's assertions Wednesday.
During his state of the city address Tuesday and as he's lobbied state lawmakers, Caldwell said tourists pay about one third of the general excise tax, so that's a way to export part of the cost of the city's nearly $6 billion rail project.
"Why would I as mayor want to give the visitors a break and make all of us pay everything? Let's make the visitors pay one third," Caldwell said in his speech Tuesday.
But Tom Yamachika, president of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii, has a different take.
"While that may have been true in better times, we've done the numbers with more up-to-date data, that's not exactly true anymore," Yamachika said.
He recently crunched the tax numbers and calculated that tourists have paid an average of 17 percent of the general excise tax during the last seven years that it's been hiked on Oahu to pay for rail.
"Whereas we originally thought that they'd be paying a third, reality shows that they're actually paying between a fifth and a sixth, so it's quite a bit less than what we thought originally," Yamachika said.
A city spokesman said Caldwell stands by his numbers, which are based on a study released eight years ago by the State Tax Review Commission, which was chaired by State Rep. Isaac Choy. (Translation: Caldwell's guessing.)
"You get about a third (of the excise tax revenue from tourists). That's maybe a little bit high, but I don't think it's that high," Choy told Hawaii News Now. (Translation: I'm guessing.)
Choy is the only state lawmaker who is a certified public accountant can count beyond 26.
Asked if Caldwell is in the ball park when he estimates that one third of the excise tax is paid by tourists, Choy said, “Yeah, I think all of us who do revenue projection. We use that particular figure."
A spokeswoman for the state tax department said even though the most recent study of state taxes is eight years old, the mayor's estimate that tourists pay roughly a third of the excise tax is still "in the ballpark" today. (Translation: I'm guessing.)
Background: Our Best Export – Our Taxes!
read ... Are mayor's claims about tourists' share of rail costs true?
Calvin Say Residency Decision Friday
Hawaii hospitals face steep losses as reimbursements, state funds erode
HCFN: Hawaii’s safety net hospitals are facing a wave of red ink, as lower reimbursements, higher labor and infrastructure costs and trimmed financial assistance from state legislators erodes their profits.
For example, Maui Memorial Medical Center will be short about $38 million for the 2016 fiscal year, which starts July 1, from what it was expecting in appropriations from the state.
"We are faced with some unprecedented deficits coming in 2016,” said Wes Lo, Hawaii Health Systems Corp.’s CEO for the Maui Region. Maui Memorial is the largest of the region’s three facilities.
Maui Memorial parent Hawaii Health Systems Corp. is facing a $117 million shortfall in 2016, too. HHSC operates 12 hospitals and medical centers across the archipelago is the only acute care provider on Maui and Lanai.
In addition to reducing its safety net hospital financial assistance for the next fiscal year, the legislature also increased hospital employee pay and the fringe benefit rate, Lo said. Work rules and pay raises are negotiated with the governor and other signatories....
Another issue for safety net hospitals is reforms. The Affordable Care Act is moving healthcare toward a delivery system geared to keeping people out of hospitals. “Unless you change the hospital itself to become part of a healthcare delivery system, you are kind of going in the wrong direction,” Lo said.
Maui and other neighbor islands also lack enough primary care and general specialists, such as cardiologists and orthopedists. “I’m down to one urologist that is non-Kaiser that covers the whole island,” he said....
Feb 27 3PM: House FIN Ctte. Hearing on HS 1075, HHSC Partnership
read ... Hawaii hospitals face steep losses as reimbursements, state funds erode
Garden Isle: Jones Act is costly for Hawaii
KGI: It’s time for Hawaii to receive an exemption from the Jones Act. There’s no doubt it’s unnecessarily driving up costs for islanders and it no longer makes sense. The arguments in support of it don’t hold water.
As Sen. Sam Slom said, the Jones Act was originally meant to protect the shipping industry and maritime trade, but almost a century has gone by and it’s easy to see that the law does not serve its original purpose. Its effect today is that people in isolated areas who depend on shipping pay more than the rest of the country for basic items....
Hawaii Shippers Council President Mike Hansen said a U.S.-build exemption would allow U.S. ship owners to acquire foreign built ships, register them under the U.S.-flag and operate them in the domestic noncontiguous trades.
The advantage of this reform is new ships built in South Korea and Japan are a fifth of the cost of comparable ships built in the U.S., and that dramatically lower capital cost will lead to greater competition and moderate freight costs.
According to the Capital Research Center, “Particularly hard-hit by the Jones Act are noncontiguous U.S. territories and states, such as Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam. With few alternate means of transporting goods, the impact in those areas on the cost of living and the cost of doing business is significant.”
A series of studies from the General Accounting Office during the great Jones Act debates of the 1980s and ‘90s found that the Act costs residents of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Alaska between $2.8 billion and $9.8 billion a year over what the freight rates would be without the Jones Act.
read ... Jones Act is costly for Hawaii
After a Decade, Legislators Finally Getting Around to Repealing Costly Ethanol Mandate
SA: On Tuesday, the Senate Consumer Protection Committee unanimously approved Senate Bill 717, which would repeal the requirement that ethanol be blended with gasoline sold in Hawaii. The measure must now win approval from the full Senate before advancing to the House for consideration.
"The truth is, it doesn't make any sense to keep it in place on a number of fronts," Senate Energy and Environment Committee Chairman Mike Gabbard (D, Kapolei-Makakilo) said of the ethanol mandate. "It is highly unlikely that we're ever going to see any locally produced ethanol, and it's not good from a sustainability perspective to keep importing it."
Under a state mandate imposed on April 1, 2006, almost all gasoline sold in Hawaii must be composed of 10 percent ethanol, an alcohol-based fuel that can be made from sugar or corn. The state also offered generous tax credits to encourage development of an ethanol production facility in Hawaii that was supposed to be supplied with local feedstock.
The hope was that Hawaii ethanol production would attract more than $100 million in investment in ethanol production plants, and generate 700 jobs.
As the price of ethanol increased, a half-dozen companies announced plans to develop ethanol facilities in Hawaii, but most shelved those projects when the world price of ethanol later declined.
None of the proposed ethanol producing facilities was ever built, and by 2009 the state was importing 45 million gallons of ethanol a year.
read ... Decade of Idiocy
Solar Systems Cost Non-Solar Ratepayers $53M/Year
SA: For years, HECO cited safety and reliability risks as it resisted approving rooftop systems in Oahu neighborhoods where it said solar power had reached 120 percent of grid capacity. However, in January, HECO announced that it was now safe to go to 250 percent of capacity, and promised to expedite solar hookups.
HECO insists it is fair to roughly halve what it pays per kilowatt-hour for power generated back to the grid by solar customers because as it stands now, the vast majority of ratepayers (who don't have solar power) are subsidizing service for those who do.
Nonsolar customers paid an additional $53 million in operation and maintenance costs to compensate for the solar customer's low electric bills in 2014, according to HECO.
It is important to craft a rate system that encourages the adoption of renewable energy without crushing conventional ratepayers. HECO's graceless attempt to force the issue furthers neither of those goals.
read ... Another $53M/year
Obama Pushes Tax Hike on Air Travel
KGI: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Sen. Mazie Hirono said the proposal to raise the September 11 Security Fee, also known as the passenger security fee, to raise $195 million in additional revenue for deficit reduction would unduly impact local residents who rely on air travel to commute from one island to another.
“The growth of the fee would have a devastating impact upon the residents who work and live in Hawaii,” Gabbard told fellow lawmakers during a House committee meeting on Wednesday in Washington, D.C....
The proposal to raise this fee, which is charged by air carriers on airline tickets for itineraries starting at U.S. destinations, was included in President Barack Obama’s recommended budget for the 2016 fiscal year and submitted earlier this month for congressional review.
How much more will be charged per passenger, however, has not been determined yet.
The Transportation Security Administration-mandated passenger security fee, which is set at $5.60 per one-way trip, or a capped $11.20 per roundtrip, dates back to 2003 when federal lawmakers created it to help offset the government’s cost for providing civil aviation security services.
SA: Homeland Security Shutdown would Slow Pay for 3,000
read ... Obama Tax Hike
Legislation Would Make Homeless into Sacred Cows
CB: Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland introduced Senate Bill 269 to allow homeless people to erase convictions for violating the city’s sit-lie bans. The measure passed the Judiciary Committee on Monday and is now heading to the full Senate for a vote.
Chun Oakland also introduced Senate Bill 273 to allow homeless people to apply for driver’s licenses even without the required state and federal IDs if a social service organization, attorney, member of the clergy, correctional institution staff, or health professional presents a signed statement certifying their personal information.
And two Senate committees plan to take up Senate Bill 1014 on Friday to create a Houseless Bill of Rights in a desperate effort to keep them on the streets and out of shelters....
Colin Kippen, the governor’s coordinator on homelessness, believes the city’s sit-lie bans criminalize homelessness, but that the solution is to create more housing.
“We’re focused on trying to end homelessness,” Kippen said. “We just think that there’s just not enough hours in the day to have divided strategies … I’m in the business of trying to create a permanent solution and I think the permanent solution is trying to house people first.”
While he’s opposed to the city’s sit-lie bans, he has reservations about SB 269 because he’s not sure whether a state law can vacate a conviction for a city offense. He’s also worried that SB 273, which aims to help homeless people get driver’s licenses, conflicts with federal law. Instead, Kippen supports Senate Bill 192, which would create a fee waiver for homeless people to get IDs. That proposal has more broad-based support among homeless advocates.
read ... Keep Them On the Streets
Proposed $500,000 Vanpool Grant the Latest ‘FrankenBill’
CB: A two-sentence state law to boost bicycle safety morphed this month to include a $500,000 grant for Honolulu to help run a vanpool program on Oahu.
The evolution of Senate Bill 128 provides the latest example of Hawaii lawmakers shortcutting the legislative process, spurring some would-be supporters of the proposal to come out against it.
“We are extremely unhappy that they continue to do the gut-and-replaces,” said Janet Mason of the League of Women Voters.
read ... Franken Bill
Measures to create public isle preschool advance
SA: Forty-three percent of children entering kindergarten at Hawaii public schools had not attended a preschool program, and fewer than 3 percent of kindergartners had met all learning benchmarks, according to the Hawaii State School Readiness Assessment for 2013-14.
Last year the state for the first time designated public funds for prekindergarten education, joining about 40 other states that provide state-funded preschool. Lawmakers agreed to provide $3 million to set up 21 prekindergarten classes at 18 public schools this school year to offer free instruction (public schools can't charge tuition) for about 420 students who meet geographic and income qualifications.
The state also provided an additional $6 million to cover almost 1,300 children through the existing Preschool Open Doors program, which provides tuition subsidies for low-income families to send their children to a licensed preschool.
Senate Bill 844 and its companion, House Bill 820, would authorize the Executive Office on Early Learning to work with the state Department of Education to establish preschool classrooms on public and charter school campuses. The bills — which would require the early learning agency to measure educational outcomes — unanimously cleared the education committees in each chamber.
read ... Preschool
Minimum wage hike could Drive Up after-school care prices, Cost State $6M
KHON: Hawaii’s minimum wage has been going up, but does that mean prices for everything else will go up too?
The minimum wage is currently $7.75 an hour, up 50 cents from just two months ago.
KHON2 recently found out that increase could affect after-school care providers.
Providers of the popular A+ program say they can’t afford to pay the higher wages and either parents or taxpayers will have to pay more.
There are some 20,000 children statewide who participate in the A+ program. The cost is $85 a month.
“I think that’s reasonable considering the staffing needs that they have and what they provide for the children,” said parent Suzanne Williams. “It’s very good. They provide a really good service.”
With the minimum wage rising every year, providers such as Kamaaina Kids and YMCA say their costs will keep going up so they need to get more money.
One idea being considered is to have parents pay an extra $85 for the whole year....
Adams says another idea is to have the state give money to the program–as much as $6 million has been proposed–to offset the operational costs and to improve the programs.
It will be up to the state Department of Education to come up with the solution.
read ... Price Hike
Middle Class Earn less in Hawaii--Even Without Cost of Living Factors
CB: Civil Beat selected a handful of traditionally middle-class professions: contractors, police officers, teachers and pediatricians, to see where the state stacks up. With few exceptions, Hawaii doesn’t do well — and that’s before the state’s high prices absorbs a substantial additional portion of those workers’ buying power.
Building contractors in Hawaii enjoyed incomes that were roughly on par with counterparts in places like California, New York, the state of Washington and Boston in 2013.
That’s pretty much it for the good news. The average teacher in Hawaii earned $5,000 less than in Washington, $13,000 less than in California and Massachusetts, and $20,000 less than in New York, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Police officers made $12,000 more in Washington and New York than they did in Hawaii, and about $28,000 more in California. Cops earned about the same in Massachusetts as here.
Pediatricians in Hawaii are out-earned by their counterparts in California by $12,000, in New York by $17,000, in Washington by $22,000 and in Massachusetts by $27,000.
Computer programmers earned $12,000 to $47,000 more in those states than in the islands.
read ... Middle Class
Bill upholding increased public school hours advances, Amended
HNN: Amy Perruso teaches 25 ninth-graders in her Wednesday U.S. History class. She said class sizes will explode when school hours at public high schools jump from 990 a year to 1,080. She said teacher hours will remain the same but students will need more class time, so adjustments will have to made.
"One thousand eighty, we're looking at class sizes, like 35 to 40 for our school. In other schools it'll be bigger, " she said.
Senate Bill 822 originally removed the additional hours but lawmakers re-inserted them. They then changed the term "student hours" to "student instructional hours."
"It's a significant difference because sometimes we over-categorize learning, as to just like the time that you sit down reading a book and answering questions" said DOE Deputy Superintendent Ronn Nozoe.
The DOE and HSTA like that schools will now be able to decide how to spend the longer day. It could be used for excursions or community service, not exclusively class so class sizes shouldn't grow by much.
"It takes away everybody else telling schools, 'And this is what should happen during that school day. We believe as professionals, that's the right call," HSTA vice president Joan Lewis....
Unless the extra hours requirement is taken out of the bill, the school day will be longer starting in 2016.
read ... Hours
What happens when UH faculty, staff cross the line?
KHON: Collective bargaining and state laws limit how much can be disclosed, but here’s what we found:
There have been 20 formal complaints involving sexual harassment against UH Manoa faculty and staff in the past five years.
The details spell out unwanted advances, sexual comments and gestures of a sexual nature made targeting a student victim.
Most of the complaints are brought to light by students though sometimes other faculty or even the administration steps forward.
So far only a quarter of the cases ended in consequences for the faculty or staff, like a handful of five-day suspensions. One lost a department chairmanship.
Several others appear to have quit before the cases reached the findings and consequences stages.
About a quarter of the complaints are still unresolved, some of them dating back to 2013.
Click here to view a full breakdown of sexual harassment complaints for UH Manoa for calendar years 2010-2014 (.pdf).
read ... Sexual Harassment
Bill on UH autonomy shelved by lawmakers
SA: Lawmakers on Wednesday shelved a bill that would have let voters decide whether the University of Hawaii should remain semi-autonomous.
Senate Bill 637 proposed a constitutional amendment to remove the "exclusive jurisdiction" the university's Board of Regents has over the "internal structure, management and operations of UH."
The bill's author said the measure was prompted by concerns from lawmakers and the public over the university's spending decisions in recent years.
The bill had passed out of the Senate Higher Education and Judiciary committees, but Ways and Means Chairwoman Jill Tokuda deferred the measure indefinitely at a hearing Wednesday.
PBN: Bill that would strip University of Hawaii regents' authority is deferred
read ... SB637
Lab school admissions policy legal challenge
HNN: Each year, the University Laboratory School in Manoa admits less than 60 new students, earning a reputation for being one of the toughest public schools to get into.
But now, the Hawaii State Public Charter School Commission says a legal opinion by the Attorney General's office has determined that the school's admissions policy is legally flawed.
"They are targeting a certain number of seats for students based on their ethnic background on their income level or their attempt to achieve a 50-50 gender balance," said Tom Hutton, the commission's executive director.
"A charter school cannot limit admissions based on race, gender or income."
For admissions, it uses a blind lottery but gives weight to students' ethnic backgrounds, their family income levels and their parents' educational history.
The aim is attract a student body that mirrors the demographics of the Hawaii's general population.
The school says those demographic factors are included because the Lab School serves as a test bed for curriculum research and development by the UH.
Keoni Jeremiah, the school's principal, said similar admissions policies have been upheld by federal appellate courts.
He said overturning the admissions policy will mean that future enrollment will be decided by a random lottery and will skew the UH's research goals.
SB1348: Text, Status
read ... Lab School
HELCO Decision Marks End for IDG Geothermal Scheme
IM: One of the companies competing for the HELCO Power Purchase Agreement was Innovations Development Group (IDG). Innovations Development Group submitted a proposal to HELCO to build a geothermal plant on 406 acres of Kealoha Estate land in Pohoiki.
IDG invested heavily in seeking to get the 'right' people elected to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) Board of Trustees (and it paid off). The Office of Hawaiian Affairs made a $1.25 million investment in IDG including an advance payment of $600,000 to be used to help IDG secure the contract. OHA thought they could make a 20 per cent rate of return on their investment. (Instead, they lost every penny.)
Richard Ha, Rep. Denny Coffman, Rep. Mark Nakashima, Sen. Malama Solomon, and Sen. Gil Kahele submitted testimony in favor of the investment. On April 18, 2013 the OHA Trustees voted 6-1 to make the investment (suckers). Pierre Omidyar's Ulupono Initiative also made an investment in IDG (suckers). Mililani Trask was hired as an IDG consultant (ca-ching!) and Dawn Morais Webster was hired to handle public relations for IDG (ca-ching!).
New Zealand’s Eastland Generation Ltd (EGL) created a subsidiary company Eastland Hawaii Inc. to invest $10 million in IDG (suckers) in exchange for becoming a 20 percent partner. In 2012 Eastland wrote off a $1 million loan to IDG.... (burned)
Weeks before HELCO announced that Ormat was the winner, Eastland Group Ltd pulled the plug on their investment in IDG. (b-bye)
read ... Rise, Looting, and Fall
Biofuels Don't Work, But Feds Keep Paying HC&S to Talk About Them
MN: The sugar company has already secured grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Energy and other agencies to begin planting test plots of new crops on its 36,000 acres of farmland in Central Maui to test the viability of biofuel crops like bana grass, varieties of cane and sorghum, Bingman said.
"We want to ultimately be an energy producer, either minimizing the sugar production or moving to energy entirely," Bingman said.
It's not the first time HC&S has made this announcement - officials held a news conference in April 2010 announcing that the company would commence feasibility studies to see whether shifting to biofuel would be cost-effective. They had projected then that the research process would take two years, and converting the mill would take another three.
Five years later, the company appears to be stalled in the research process.
HC&S General Manager Rick Volner said in an email Wednesday the company "ha(s) yet to find a crop . . . that compares favorably to sugar cane with its ability to grow across a multitude of soil types and conditions, withstand drought conditions and stand up to Maui's strong winds."
And, even if HC&S did find an alternative crop, no one has yet developed the technology to convert the crop into renewable fuel on a commercial scale, Volner said.
"We've extensively evaluated biofuels, but the technology advancements necessary to viably convert plant materials into energy on a production scale haven't been realized yet," Volner said. "At present, there are no commercially viable conversion technologies that have been developed anywhere in the world."
HC&S currently produces 150,000 to 200,000 tons of raw sugar and more than 60,000 tons of molasses each year, according to the company's website.
About 90 percent of the raw sugar is shipped to California for final refining and sold under the familiar C&H sugar label, Bingman said. The remaining 10 percent is cooked, processed and sold on-island as Maui Brand Natural Cane Sugars. The molasses is sold to the Hawaii livestock industry for feed, with the excess shipped to Mainland customers, the website states.
read ... Your Tax Dollars at Work
Hawaii County Boosts Assessments Rather than Hiking Tax Rates
WHT: Property values are averaging about 3 percent higher than last year, giving Hawaii County government enough breathing room to create a no-frills budget without having to resort to increasing property taxes.
That’s according to Mayor Billy Kenoi, whose administration was putting the finishing touches Wednesday on its proposed spending plan. The early estimates form the first draft of the budget; final numbers won’t be known until late April, after the certified property values are computed.
“We are thankful that we have some increase,” Kenoi said. “A lot of that will go toward absorbing fixed costs.”
The slight property value increase follows a 7 percent increase last year, as the county pulled itself out of recession. It’s not yet known how much in property taxes individual homeowners might pay, but on average, taxes will increase slightly as property values go up.
Still, Kenoi said, he’s hopeful there will be room for a “small expansion of services,” such as adding vehicle registration services in Waimea, where two Department of Motor Vehicles clerks will supplement the driver license services at the police station.
Kenoi plans to submit his preliminary budget to the County Council by Friday. The council will undertake a line-by-line scrutiny of the budget with each county department April 22 to 24. The mayor then submits an amended budget May 5 that takes into account the certified property values....
Last year’s budget, Kenoi’s first budget hike since taking office in 2008, was $416.9 million, or 5.7 percent higher than the previous year. It added 10 new positions and included raises for almost all county employees, union and nonunion alike. More than $20 million of the $22.6 million increase went for employee raises and increases in benefits.
The total value of net taxable real property last year, at $25.2 billion, was $1.7 billion more than in 2013-14, a 7 percent increase.
read ... 3% Solution
DLNR Lease Renewals Slowly Strangle Hilo Businesses, Prepare Banyan Drive to be Abandoned
HTH: The land leases for Uncle Billy’s Hilo Hotel and the Country Club condominiums will expire next month unless the state Board of Land and Natural Resources approves an extension Friday.
The extensions will allow the Banyan Drive leases to last one more year followed by a month-to-month revocable permit.
The leases are set to expire March 14, and a longer extension is not being considered since the state Department of Land and Natural Resources is assessing whether the lands should be redeveloped.
An engineering report completed last year estimated the buildings had five to 10 years of useful life. That assessment estimated Reed’s Bay Resort Hotel, whose lease also was to expire on the same date, had a useful life of 12 to 15 years.
The board, which declined to provide Reed’s Bay a 15-year extension, approved a one-year extension for the hotel in December.
Aaron Whiting, Uncle Billy’s general manager, said he is hopeful the board will approve the extension but noted it remains unknown if the 51-year-old hotel will be open after another year.
“If that goes as planned, we will be here at least until March 2016,” he said.
Whiting said he could not comment on what the hotel, which employs about 35 people, is considering to do after that date.
Because of the uncertainty, the hotel had stopped taking reservations for dates after Jan. 31. Whiting said it changed that policy last month and is taking reservations for the rest of the year.
Richard Emery, Country Club-Hawaii managing agent, said condo owners have been informed of the situation with their master lease.
“We will have to enter into an extension with them as well,” he said, if the board approves the request.
The 148-unit condo building has faced financial difficulties during the last few years as it fell behind on utility and maintenance payments. Emery said a special assessment on condo owners was issued to deal with the delinquencies.
Meanwhile, the future of the three properties — Uncle Billy’s, Country Club and Reed’s Bay — remains unclear--(all because DLNR can't make simple decisions).
Russell Tsuji, DLNR land administrator, said it likely will be at least another year before recommendations on the future use of the properties will be made to the board.
He said the department will next hire an architecture team to analyze potential uses.
PBN: Should affordable housing initiatives in Honolulu emphasize rentals or fee simple units for purchase?
read ... Idiocy of Leasehold
Hawaii bill would make super PACs disclose sources of funding and how money is spent
AP: ..."One of the biggest mysteries in the last couple of election cycles has been the growth of independent expenditures by non-candidate committees," said Democratic Sen. Gilbert Keith-Agaran, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Judiciary who introduced the bill. "They're not supposed to be directed by a candidate, they're not supposed to be coordinated, and increasingly they're becoming important, not just on the mainland, but also here."
Keith-Agaran introduced the bill, SB 1344, in an effort to peel back the layers of the organizations that are pouring millions of dollars into Hawaii campaigns. He said super PACs were spending money to influence county council elections throughout the islands.
"The amount of money they're spending is sometimes disproportionate to the kind of offices that we're talking about," Keith-Agaran said.
The proposal would make a super PAC reveal whether its contributors and recipients are also required to disclose campaign spending information. If so, the super PAC would then have to provide access to that information.
The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the bill Wednesday. No one testified against the measure....
read ... Disclosure
Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement talks to continue in Hawaii next month
PBN: Nations participating in the TPP include Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Other nations may sign on after an agreement has been reached.
After the TPP is negotiated between participating nations, it will go back to each country's legislative body for approval.
If the TPP is approved, "It presents a huge opportunity for Hawaii businesses, particularly with Japan," Holman said. The agreement would expedite the export process and most products would see tariffs and taxes near zero. In addition, it also would open large markets like Vietnam and Malaysia to Hawaii companies, Holman said.
TPP does have its critics. One sticking point is the document's secrecy, which have only beenmade public via WikiLeaks.
According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative's website, the TPP would benefit from Hawaii's good exports, which $598 million to 2013.
read ... TPP Coming
Inmate on work furlough arrested at burglary scene near Honolulu airport
SA: Police caught two men, one of whom was a prison inmate out on a work furlough program, at the scene of a burglary in progress.
An alarm company detected an alarm system triggered at a business establishment on Tuesday night and notified the Honolulu Police Department.
Officers went to a business near Honolulu International Airport where they found the men, ages 54 and 49, inside, according to a police report. ...
Both men have lengthy criminal conviction records. The older man has a history of burglary convictions....
Police said the alleged burglary occurred between 10:25 p.m. and 11:37 p.m., when most inmates are given work furloughs so they can engage in their traditional and customary occupation....
read ... Soft on Crime
HPD Plate Scanners Got 194 Hits Last Year
KHON: Lt. Barnett said last year, the scanners examined 1.66 million license plates leading to six arrests.
“Out of that we had 194 hits, said Lt. Barnett. “That included 109 that were stolen vehicles. 71 were stolen plates and 15 wanted vehicles were found during that period.”
The device also helped police find a missing person, but while the technology is aimed at being used for good some see it as an invasion of privacy.
“It is a core principal (sic) that the government does not invade people’s privacy and collect information about citizens’ innocent activities just in case they do something wrong,” said the American Civil Liberties Union in a statement.
read ... 194 Hits
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