Prejudices of rich denying poor benefits of biotechnology
Am Samoa: Amata Blasts Administration’s “Environmental Colonialism”
Top Issues? Budget, Homelessness, Housing, Rail Tax, and Marijuana
Hawaii #2 in USA: 43% of Households Spend at Least 30% on Housing
With Reservations
AG Charges Fired Homeless Shelter Director with Embezzling $500K
Ethics Commission: Mayor can use city resources for 'Keep Hawaii's Heroes'
Senators Gut House GE Tax Bill, Insert Their Own Version
CB: ...Senators essentially gutted House Bill 134 to put forward the latest proposal. The House version, which passed earlier this month, cut the 0.5 percent rail surcharge to 0.25 percent starting in 2017, but left open the possibility that the surcharge could live on in perpetuity.
The new version of the bill keeps in place the state’s 10 percent administrative take of the city’s 1 percent surcharge. It also allows neighboring counties to implement a 0.5 percent GET surcharge, although officials on those islands can spend the money on the projects of their choosing.
Sen. Sam Slom, the chamber’s lone Republican, was the only dissenting voice Thursday. Slom said the city has broken too many promises, chiefly that the project would come in on time and within budget. He said he didn’t want to place the additional tax burden on residents....
The bill now must go the Senate Ways and Means Committee, which is headed by Sen. Jill Tokuda. A Senate version of the GET extension is also awaiting a hearing in the House Finance Committee, chaired by Rep. Sylvia Luke.
That measure, Senate Bill 19, calls for a five-year extension of the GET, which lawmakers say should provide enough cushion to start planning for future legs to UH and downtown Kapolei.
read ... Gut n Replace
Rail will 'most likely exceed' its budget, monitor says
SA: And after calling rail officials' "minimal" cost-containment efforts "alarming" in its December report, Jacobs Engineering Group now states that the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, which oversees the ongoing rail project installation, has recently implemented cost-containment measures in the hope that they will help get a handle on ballooning costs. (Translation: They realized that their December report was damaging to the push for tax hikes. Now Jacobs is singing in unison.)
The February report is Jacobs' first monthly briefing on the Oahu transit project since December.
Instead of a monthly report for January, HART officials said, the firm released a report detailing its quarterly meeting with HART and federal transit officials. The report is posted online and can be downloaded at honolulutransit.org/document-library/fta.aspx.
read ... Sales Pitch for Tax Hikes
Ching Debacle: Ige Doesn't Yet go the way of Abercrombie
Boreca: Ige used a low-key, quiet and informal lobbying tactic to win support for Ching. The nominee met privately with many environmental groups and with community members across the state.
It was a tactic that did not move the needle.
If anything it helped establish Thielen as an organized and professional committee chairwoman who wouldn't duck a tough call.
She came away saying she was still in Ige's corner.
"I was an early supporter of David Ige as governor. We don't always agree on issues, but I think he is a good governor," Thielen said in an interview after Ige withdrew Ching's nomination.
And Ige is not going to pick a fight with the Senate.
"I respect the Senate. I had been there for a long time. They are committed to doing what they believe is their job," Ige said in a news conference after the defeat.
What is clear is that Ige did not get his way. Ige felt that he could not turn back from the nomination until the very end when it became clear that Ching did not have a winning majority.
Ige says he "learned a lot about the process. … Obviously a lot of lessons were learned."
While Hawaii's new governor is trying to rid himself of the "In Training" badge, something else was dropped in the Carleton Ching loss: a chance for the new administration to establish publicly its priorities regarding the environment, a good open and public discussion of what Ige wants for Hawaii's future, with specifics regarding how development will either be encouraged or controlled. Is it waterfalls and fish or jobs, and where does Ige stand?
AP: Ige's defeat highlights thoughtful culture he helped create
read ... Ige should move to define his views on environment
Price Resistance: Hotel occupancy fell in isles during January
SA: The number of visitors filling hotel rooms in January declined across all major islands except Maui, causing a dip in statewide occupancy.
Statewide occupancy fell 2 percentage points to 77.5 percent in January, according to the latest hotel flash report, to be released widely by Hospitality Advisors LLC and Smith Travel Research on Friday.
Statewide average daily room rates, which climbed nearly 2.4 percent year-over-year to $254.62, rose across the major islands in January. However, only Maui and Kauai had high enough rate gains to boost revenue per available room (revPAR) from the prior year. Statewide total hotel revenue fell 1.4 percent to $482 million.
"We're still seeing people willing to pay premiums, but we are starting to see some price resistance," said Joseph Toy, president and CEO of Hospitality Advisors. "We'll see continued expansion in 2015, but we may see shorter booking windows and push back on pricing with gains likely to be moderate compared to the prior year."
read ... It Begins
No Prison-for-Pineapples After Land Swap Bill Stalls in House
CB: Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz and 17 other state senators introduced Senate Bill 1374 in January. It was simplified in the Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Sen. Jill Tokuda. It cleared the Senate on March 10 and crossed over to the House.
That’s where it apparently died this week after Rep. Ryan Yamane, who chairs the Water and Land Committee, did not schedule it for a hearing.
read ... Land Swap
Federal judge extends injunction blocking Maui County Anti-GMO Ordinance
CB: A federal judge has extended an injunction blocking Maui County’s voter-approved moratorium on genetically engineered farming from going into effect for at least another three months.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Susan Mollway based her decision on two bills introduced in the Legislature this session that sought to block counties from regulating agriculture. Both bills are effectively dead this year but she noted that the issue could still resurface.
“In light of the possibility that legislation may affect this case, even if ultimately through legislative vehicles other than those two bills, this court continues the hearing on the pending motions in this case until the legislative session has concluded, and extends the injunction staying the enactment, implementation, and enforcement of the ordinance at the heart of this case,” Mollway wrote.
The injunction was originally supposed to be lifted on March 31. Mollway pushed back the next hearing on the motions of the case to June 15.
read ... Ordinance
Small Business Will Lose $1000 on Plastic Bag Ban
SA: We're a small business, one of the people banned from having plastic checkout bags. We asked the mayor's office of complaints, we asked our City Council members for Waikiki and Kailua, but got no answers. Why can't we use up the bags that we bought under the current rules, showing that we bought them prior to the rules change? I have a small business that will be out a couple thousand dollars just on bags.
Answer: At this stage there is no grace period beyond when the ban takes effect July 1....
Meanwhile, business owners are reminded that they are required to fill out and return a compliance form, indicating how business plans address the ban, by March 27.
The compliance forms will then be required to be submitted annually.
read ... Kokua Line
Lack of Smoking Killing Cancer Center
Boylan: Blame it on the kids. It’s all their fault. We did our part; we started puffing on cigarettes as teenagers. Smokes made us look cool, sophisticated — manly with Marlboros, girly with Virginia Slims. Then, in 1964, along came Surgeon General Luther Terry informing us on every single pack that “Smoking could be injurious to your health.” Too late; we were addicted.
Our kids knew. They came home from school with the message: “Daddy, my teacher says smoking’s bad for your health.”
“Oh,” we coughed, “I know. I’m going to quit.”
Many of us did. Many didn’t. Addictions are like that.
But the kids did, in droves. They went further. In college they demanded that their schools not invest endowment funds in tobacco companies. As adults, they sued those same companies for decades of lies about the harmlessness of smoking, and they supported dramatic tax hikes on tobacco products.
Settlements of those suits and larger tobacco taxes provided states with a revenue windfall. But it couldn’t last. Tobacco sales plummeted, so too did the taxes collected from those sales.
Thus the dilemma of University of Hawaii Cancer Center. It faces an $8 million mortgage payment every year on its state-of-the-art Kakaako facility. The money earmarked to pay for the new building and its grounds come from tobacco taxes.
As recently as 2010, they brought in $20 million to the cancer center. Last year, collections fell to $14 million. It’s estimated that they will fall further in 2015.
If those kids had only kept puffing, if that surgeon general hadn’t insisted on spreading his message, all would be solvent.
read ... Sick Irony
Consultant Pushing New Stadium Hypes Aloha Stadium Repair Costs
SA: To keep Aloha Stadium operational for the next 30 years will cost $200 million just to address priority health and safety problems, a consultant told the Aloha Stadium Authority on Thursday.
And Irwin Raij of the New York firm of Foley & Lardner cautioned the panel that the figure was calculated in 2014 dollars and the cost will rise significantly the longer repairs are postponed....
The data came as part of a briefing on the results of a request for information put out by the authority last fall as part of its process to decide the future of the 40-year-old, 50,000-seat facility.
Raij said a consensus of the five respondents to the RFI calculated it would cost $134 million to $300 million to build a new stadium seating 30,000 to 35,000, with possible expansion possibilities to as much as 42,000, on the current site, depending upon amenities and materials.
A separate, non-site-specific report commissioned by University of Hawaii athletic director Ben Jay last year proposed a 30,585-seat facility at a cost of $165 million to $190 million.
At least four of the respondents to Aloha Stadium's RFI suggested the inclusion of loge boxes, club seating, suites or a combination.
None of the five favored continuing to renovate the existing stadium....
read ... Sales Pitch
Caldwell's Selective Love for Parks
Bob Jones: Mayor Kirk Caldwell says he loves our parks. He’s spending $1.5 million of our money just for a consultancy on remaking Ala Moana Beach Park.
And just in time for the 200-unit condo project by MacNaughton Group, Kobayashi Group, BlackSand Capital and General Growth Properties across the street. Don’t want people paying up to $10 million for the penthouses looking down on the shabby and the homeless.
“Three-hundred parks around the island … they are our front doors, they are our backyards,” says the mayor.
So, mayor, how about Aala Park downtown?
It’s a door hardly anybody but a down-and-outer would want to open. If it’s a backyard, it’s one in a slum.
It didn’t become that on Caldwell’s watch. Nothing good but a drab skateboard rink, basketball court and unsuccessful homeless tent city happened there under mayors Fasi, Anderson, Harris, Hannemann and Carlisle.
It’s a disgusting place. The grass has turned brown. The city ignores homeless camping on the sidewalk along the Beretania Street frontage. There’s been a homeless encampment as long as I can remember at that little triangle on the King Street side that’s marked Chinatown Gateway.
The park should be filled at night with citizens from nearby Mayor Wright housing project and Kukui Plaza, and weekend days with children. But with the kind of humanity that uses it as a hangout, I’d not recommend it to them — and certainly not to tourists walking Chinatown.
Some of the scariest-looking people in our town hang out there, do drugs there, drink there, defecate and urinate there....
read ... Tent City
Hawaii County fire chief suspends 2 chiefs who called for his removal
HNN: Big Island Fire Chief Darren Rosario has suspended two battalion chiefs after they complained about his alleged mismanagement of the department.
They've been on paid leave for four months -- and now are under investigation themselves for speaking out.
Rosario has been chief of the Hawaii County fire department for three and a half years and now two men who he promoted to battalion chief are calling for his removal.
"He surrounds himself with a bunch of people that can't do the job in my opinion and it's dangerous,” said West Hawaii Battalion Chief Steve Loyola. “Public safety is affected by the people running the department now."
Loyola claimed the fire chief has built a culture of favoritism and retaliation, leading to the lowest morale he's seen in his 24 years in the department.
read ... Retaliation
Health Department Can't Exterminate Rats Without Capital Improvement
HNN: The employee said exterminations suddenly started up last week, after another staff member posted a picture of a dead rat on social media.
Health Department officials say they're trying to be proactive and have laid out traps at the facility.
"For a couple of years we have actually been taking measures to try to control these vectors as best we can," explained Stan Michels of the Health Department.
Officials say the office, which is on the ground of the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility, is almost 80 years old, but there's not another location for the employees to work at this time.
Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility administrator Mark Patterson stated that they were not able to do any type of capital improvement at this point.
"We work with what we have and try to keep up, maintain the buildings and upkeep them the best we can," Patterson said.
The anonymous employee says more needs to be done to address the cause of the infestation, as well as the horrendous smell of rat urine and droppings that are left behind.
read ... Rat infestation at DOH spreading illness, disease
Four Years Later Hawaii County Discovers Million Dollar AV System Never Actually Worked
WHT: The county has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on two audiovisual systems that were supposed to connect the West Hawaii Civic Center with the county building in Hilo. Four years after buying the system, the county in January finally tried to use it, only to find it doesn’t work properly and one of the warranties has already run out.
Meanwhile, County Council members and the public have been beset with shrill audio feedback or on-and-off volume when trying to speak or hear from one location or the other. The problem is magnified when four satellite videoconference sites also tap in.
The problem stems from two different systems being installed during two different projects, county officials say. The county building in Hilo, a $28 million renovation project, was completed in 2010. The West Hawaii Civic Center, a new structure with a $50.5 million price tag, became operational in 2011.
“The Hawaii County building and the West Hawaii Civic Center are two separate buildings and were two separate projects,” said Brandon Gonzales, deputy director of the county Department of Public Works.
The county wasn’t aware of the extent of the problem until County Clerk Stewart Maeda hired in-house staffers in January to replace longtime AV contractor, Hilo-based Out Of The Sea Media Arts. The full council met with the new workers in a 20-minute closed-door session in January that was neither noticed nor open to the public.
Out of the Sea had created a work-around using a traveling AV system, rather than the one installed in the civic center, Maeda said. That was costing the county about $1,000 a month when meetings were held in Kona.
“This system has not been used until just January,” Maeda said.
read ... A Very Typical Story
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