Stop the Rail GET Surcharge Extension Bills
Let Your Voice Be Heard for Maui Hospital!
Momentum for Jones Act Reform Reaches Faraway Shores
Incense and Candles Can Pollute
Rise Up People: Redefining What It Means
HSTA Contract Reopener Comes down to wire: Study Terms Teachers' Pay 'Robust, Very Competitive'
SA: Negotiation teams for the Hawaii State Teachers Association and the state have met three times over the past month and need to reach an agreement in the "next week or so" in order for any increases to be funded by the Legislature this session, said HSTA Vice President Joan Lewis, who is on the union's negotiating team.
The union is seeking added compensation for the remaining two years of the teachers' existing labor contract.
"We've had comprehensive meetings. At this point we are not scheduled for another meeting. Everybody is standing by," Lewis told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Department of Education Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi declined to comment on negotiations last week, other than to say that the employer team — which includes representatives from her office, the Governor's Office and the Board of Education — wants to ensure any agreement can be funded before the Legislature adjourns May 7.
HSTA's 2013-17 contract, with an initial $330 million price tag, restored a 5 percent pay cut made in 2009, and includes annual salary boosts of at least 3 percent through a combination of across-the-board increases and pay grade step-ups in alternating years.
It's unclear what the union is specifically seeking, but the parties have agreed to use the salary study as a base line for the negotiations.
Beyond pay, the existing contract prescribes a seven-hour workday along with up to 18 sick-leave days, 13 holidays, two weeks off for winter recess and one week off for spring recess during the 10-month school year.
Teachers also receive retirement benefits and have 60 percent of their health premiums covered by the state — a benefits package the salary study called "robust."
The study — which was paid for jointly by the union and the Department of Education and conducted by Denver-based APA Consulting — found Hawaii's starting salary to be "competitive" when compared with 12 school districts that have similar student body sizes and percentages of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. It included school districts in Northern California, Nevada, Texas, Florida, Maryland and Virginia.
Hawaii's minimum starting salary of $44,538 is higher than the $40,723 earned on average in the 12 comparison districts.
The study noted that Hawaii teachers face a high cost of living but concluded that even when salaries are adjusted for workload and "geographic cost differences," Hawaii's rates are "very competitive at the early levels of teaching."
read ... Robust
OHA Trustee: Pay Us Rent and Telescope will become 'Extension of Spirituality'
CB: Rather than consider the telescope as an injury to Mauna Kea, perhaps we can view this instrument as an extension of the spirituality directly connecting us to the stars. (When OHA gets the money, we will turn the protests off like a switch.)
Navigating the rising sea of passion surrounding the Mauna Kea Thirty Meter Telescope controversy demands clear thinking and patience from all sides. I sense that this critical conflict will severely test Hawaii’s leadership on all fronts and is shaping up to be one of the year’s most important and difficult challenges. Whatever the outcome, the aftermath will reverberate for years to come as was the case with the Kahoolawe stop-the-bombing movement. (And we got some serious money for that, oh yeah!)
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustees’ intent to retrace their deliberative process when previously considering the telescope proposal is a step in the right direction. Given the context and circumstance of a somewhat new reality it seems that any path to a resolution must lead through a review of the Mauna Kea Comprehensive Management Plan of 2009 even if it means rolling back the clock. (Rent money baaaybeee!)
read ... Rent Seeking
Who Needs Telescopes? Hawaii Can Always Rely on Tourism
S2.0: ...once an actor supported it, University of Hawaii faculty and students began organizing a walkout. Well. sort of a walkout. It was organized by University of Hawaii professor of Hawaiian Studies Jon Osorio, who was probably just happy his life's work can get him in the news, and the students were in his Hawaiian Studies class. They all repeated this 'sacred land' argument, despite the fact that Hilo is the poorest town in Hawaii and is about to get a $1.4 billion influx.
There is nothing sacred about poverty and none of the "haole activists" and wealthy University of Hawaii people promoting protests care about those actually living there. Protests have sprung up in other places in the state also, and most of them had never heard of Hilo or could find Mauna Kea on a map before they read about this in the newspaper.
Construction won't stop, environmentalists don't have the sway they used to have, but it is not worth the hassle. The University of Hawaii has already announced the Thirty Meter Telescope is the end of the road for astronomy there.
So it goes. They can always be dependent on tourism.
Read ... Science 2.0
Mauna Kea Is a Special Place in Humanity’s Quest for Knowledge
CB: As a scientist, I cannot stay silent about my disappointment with the widespread opposition to the TMT, especially among students who should be knowledge seekers. I ask Hawaiian protestors and their sympathizers not to play into the anti-intellectual movement that is currently sweeping our country.
read ... Science
TMT tries to counter misinformation
KITV: Located at www.MaunaKeaandTMT.org, the so-called microsite provides answers to some of the more commonly asked questions about the project. At the very top of the web page TMT addresses what was done to protect Mauna Kea’s cultural resources, which includes an answer about Area E, a rocky plateau that was chosen to be the site of the new telescope.
"It's a plateau that has no archaeological sites,” said Dawson. “It's not a place where people have gone historically for any cultural observations. There were no historic sites there and so it was chosen specifically for that reason."
Despite claims to the contrary, the Thirty Meter Telescope has cleared all of the necessary regulatory hurdles, including completion of an environmental impact statement. The effort to begin construction of the telescope atop Mauna Kea goes back seven years and included more than 20 public meetings. TMT has also survived several court challenges on whether it meets eight requirements to build in a conservation area. The telescope received its Conservation District Use Permit from the Department of Land and Natural Resources in February 2011.
"Every time we've been challenged and every time we've been to court, the decision has been that we do meet the criteria," Dawson said.
read ... Counter
Senate to vote on Maui state hospital private partnership Tuesday
PBN: Legislation allowing Maui's state hospitals to enter into an agreement with a private entity such as Hawaii Pacific Health will go to the state Senate for a vote on Tuesday.
The Senate appears to be in favor of the bill; however, if it passes, it is still subject to debate by both houses in conference committee.
House Bill 1075 HD2 SD2 would authorize the Hawaii Health Systems Corp. Maui region, which includes Maui Memorial Medical Center, Kula Hospital and Clinic and Lanai Community Hospital, to collaborate with a private entity, “to transition any one or more of its facilities to management and operation by a new nonprofit management entity.”
read ... Maui Hospital
Hawaii Health Connector's future is in the governor’s hands
PBN: It appears the Hawaii Health Connector, currently a state-based exchange, may have two paths:
Switch to a federally facilitated marketplace, where the state does not run exchange operations. The federal agency responsible for implementing the Affordable Care Act would work with insurers to oversee the small group insurance and individual health insurance market. “No state based exchange [in the country] has switched to this route,” says Milbank Memorial Fund President Christopher Koller.
Switch to a supported state based marketplace, where the state runs exchange operations while utilizing the federal IT system. Nevada, New Mexico, and Oregon began as state-based exchanges and have since pursued this route, “presumably to gain IT reliability and avoid future costs to maintain the current IT [system,]” Koller says.
Either way, any current IT system contracts would significantly change in scope or scale, Koller said....
According to Kollar, Hawaii has one of the smallest state-based exchanges in the country, but one of the highest percentage of eligible individuals enrolled in the marketplace....
Hawaii and Colorado are the only two states in the country set up as a separate nonprofit — other exchanges are either state agencies or quasi-independent authorities....
read ... Up to Ige
State Hospital had most patients ever last month
HNN: "Frequency of court orders, people using drugs, people getting arrested. People using placements in the community, people losing housing. Having a hard time finding jobs and keeping jobs. So just the combination of things that result in a relapse of psychosis or whatever their mental illness is," Sheehan said.
The overcrowding means the hospital has turned classrooms and offices into temporary patient rooms.
"We do what we can to keep people safe and assure their privacy while at the same time meeting their treatment needs," Sheehan said.
The Health Department has asked lawmakers for $1.75 million for additional security as well as$2.9 million more for other overcrowding costs....
State health officials are also asking lawmakers for $2.2 million to demolish the two-story Goddard building on the State Hospital grounds. The building, built in 1947, has been empty since about 1992. The Health Department wants to build a new building there, increasing the capacity of the State Hospital, something that will cost millions more and take years to complete....
Up until about 10 years ago, people could voluntarily admit their loved ones to the State Hospital. But because it's so overcrowded, that doesn't happen anymore. Judges are the only ones who can send people to the State Hospital in recent years. Before, family members and private doctors could contact the hospital to admit their loved ones.
In a trend that's happened nationwide, the State Hospital has become full of forensic or criminal patients.
read ... Most Patients Ever
Water Commission: Enviros Hammer Nominee for Refusing to Support Federal Water Grab
CB: Public opposition to Gov. David Ige’s nominations to the powerful board that administers the state’s water code is mounting ahead of a key legislative hearing Wednesday.
An online petition against longtime sugar-plantation boss William Balfour’s appointment to another four-year term on the Commission on Water Resource Management has garnered more than 1,200 signatures since the governor quietly sent his name to the Senate for confirmation.
Emails are flying between environmental groups and others, calling on people to urge the Water and Land Committee, chaired by Sen. Laura Thielen, to reject Balfour because they think he has developers’ interests more at heart than the resources the commission is bound to protect.
There’s particular concern over Balfour voting in 2013 to deny the National Parks Service’s petition to designate the Keauhou Aquifer on Big Island for protection without giving the NPS the chance to present any evidence to the commission, said Steve Holmes, Sierra Club Hawaii Chapter conservation chair, in his testimony on the nomination.
read ... Water
DLNR Rules Linger in Governor’s Office
CB: Hawaii Gov. David Ige has yet to sign off on aquarium fishing rules and commercial fishing restrictions off Kauai.
read ... Sign off
Not Red Hot: Hawaii carpenters union advocacy group reports fewer workers
PBN: Hawaii’s construction industry is close to firing on all cylinders — private-sector construction permit value reached $2.89 billion in 2014, the highest level in about eight years.
But PRP’s analysis shows that residential construction has yet to rebound to 2007 levels and industry employment is lagging.
“We have to build homes for all income levels,” White said. “While the growth in permitting activity is encouraging, the lack of residential construction in particular has hindered job growth and access to housing for middle-class families.”
read ... HART Lying
HB496 Sick Leave Bill to be voted by Senate
KGI: Bill proponents say the new employer requirements outlined in House Bill 496 will close a loophole in existing federal and state laws by extending sick and family leave benefits to more people, including part-time food service workers, employees of small businesses, and women who often serve as primary caregivers.
Opponents, meanwhile, say the proposed law would hurt small- and medium-sized businesses by increasing their operating costs and curtailing job growth.
“Most casual workers of the resorts have another full-time job with benefits, including sick leaves and to work one or two days a week — it’s basically to supplement their income,” Pono Kai Resort general manager Peter Sit said. “By passing the bill, it will increase the costs of hiring casual workers which can decrease opportunity for employment.”
The measure, which is slated to be considered by the full Senate today, requires the Office of the Lieutenant Governor to work with the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations to conduct a study on the cost of implementing a family leave insurance program that would provide an employee with up to 12 weeks of paid family leave annually.
It would also require a company with at least 50 service worker employees to accrue and use paid sick leave beginning on Jan. 1, 2016 at a rate of at least one hour of paid sick leave for each 40 hours worked, up to a maximum of 40 hours per year.
These employees, under the proposed law, would also be allowed to carry over up to 80 hours of unused earned paid sick leave for the current calendar year to the next one....
If the proposed law is approved today by the full Senate, it will be sent over for state House lawmakers to consider and review.
read ... Just as Inefficient as HGEA
NextEra: An Evening With the Illusionist
CB: Like the movie, we are still seeing the magician on stage but in fact he has already left the building.
read ... Illusionist
NextEra spreads around money
IM: NextEra and Hawaiian Electric Company submitted nearly 800 pages of testimony and exhibits to the Public Utilities Commission. Among the filings is a description of NextEra’s focus on spreading money and the resulting letters of praise.
MN: Why Maui Electric’s future matters
read ... NextEra spreads around money
HCDA to Pave Endangered Species, Install Solar Farm
SA: A 2014 study published in American Antiquity by J. Stephen Athens, Timothy M. Rieth and Thomas S. Dye said Ordy Pond "has some almost unique characteristics" in that coring samples can be used to obtain high-resolution chronological and environmental information dating to and beyond the earliest human habitation on Oahu. Using plant remains analysis, the authors concluded colonization may have occurred between A.D. 936 and 1133.
UH described Ordy Pond's 44 feet of aquatic sediment as the "best-preserved, continuous, high-resolution Holocene sedimentary record in the Hawaiian Islands, and probably in the central Pacific."
The northern and southern trap and skeet ranges — both of which were littered with lead and later cleaned up — are the two other parcels the Navy wants to convey to HCDA as part of a more than 200-acre deal.
Ironically, the northern range has the world's only native growing population of Chamaesyce skottsbergii var. kalaeloana, otherwise known as the endangered Ewa Plains akoko, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Both sites were identified as having Hawaiian habitation features.
HCDA wants to put in solar panels on parts of both ranges....
read ... World's only native growing population
Homeless Camp Generates 37 Tons of Trash
HNN: IHS officials say 70 percent are COFA migrants, Compact of Free Association migrants that include three sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia that includes Yap and Chuuk, the Marshall Islands and the Republic of Palau.
Among the issues that have been ongoing here for months are the pollution issues. There were also some reports of the canal being used as a bathroom, concerning the Department of Health. Nearby businesses are also complaining about the unsightliness surrounding the area.
The city -- which has posted signs saying no camping or fishing is allowed -- says the only law that impacts the encampments is the Stored Property Ordinance, which requires a 24-hour advance notice if illegal property is found on city property.
To date, city officials say from July 1, 2014 to March 31, 2015, there were 24 enforcement actions, including 37 tons of trash collected at a disposal cost of $1,665, not including the number of items taken and stored by the city.
HNN: Homeless Shopping cart fire spreads to Waipahu businesses
read ... 37 Tons
Career criminals bail out of jail, even after allegedly assaulting cops
HNN: Combined they have more than 150 arrests and more than 80 convictions, but they are out of jail, just days after allegedly assaulting two police officers in Waikiki....
read ... Career Criminals
Former New Mexico police chief sues Maui Police
HNN: A former Mainland police chief said he was illegally arrested by Maui Police.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court today, Jason Griego, then chief of the Cuba, N.M. Police department, said he and James Sanchez, a former reserve officer with Cuba police, were held for hours in a filthy jail cell in July 2013. No charges were filed and the two men were never given an explanation for their arrest, the suit said.
"Maui police officers rousted them, dragged them outside (of their hotel rooms) and placed them under arrest," said attorney Eric Seitz.
"They were thrown in this cell in the middle of the night where there was urine and feces on the ground."
According to Seitz, the two men were on Maui with their family after completing a private security assignment for a mainland developer on the Valley Isle. They were staying at the Makena Beach Resort when they were arrested.
The lawsuit says that one Maui officer taunted a handcuffed Griego, asking him "how it feels to be a police chief in cuffs." The officer also told Griego that his bond would be so high he wouldn't be able to bail out, the suit said.
Seitz said he suspects that the two men were mistakenly arrested because they were carrying their firearms, which active duty officers are allowed to do.
"There was no illegality about that because of their credentials as police officers," he said.
read ... Chief Arrested
Star-Adv: Drunk Cops Shouldn't be Armed
SA: Police are continuing to investigate the circumstances of the shooting, including whether or how much Kimura had been drinking. In a news conference the day of the shooting, deputy Police Chief Dave Kajihiro said HPD policy allows police officers to carry their firearms when off duty, but they are not supposed to do so while under the influence of alcohol.
What was unsaid and left vague, though: that the decision to pack a loaded firearm, and how much alcohol equals intoxication, is at the discretion of the off-duty officer heading out. And that's not safeguard enough.
So it's wholly encouraging that on Monday, HPD Chief Louis Kealoha told us: "We are reviewing the policy and considering prohibiting carrying a firearm while drinking any amount of alcohol. The policy would have an exception for undercover officers."
According to the National Rifle Association's rules of safe gun handling: "Alcohol, as well as any other substance likely to impair normal mental or physical bodily functions, must not be used before or while handling or shooting guns."
read ... Drunk
Nobody Wants Gary Hooser so he is running for Council Again
KE: After “much soul searching” — and an absence of other job offers — Kauai County Councilman Gary Hooser has decided to honor us by seeking another term.
But there is a catch. We must send money. Now.
In an announcement made Sunday — yes, he and Hillary — Gary informs us that his campaign bank account is “literally at zero.” And, it seems, the solidity of his constituency is rather Jell-O-like:
“So I begin today rebuilding my political base and campaign infrastructure in order to ensure a successful election in 2016.”
Gary starts with a bit of backstory:
A few months ago I mentioned to a friend that this might be my last term in office. I have served for over 15 years and perhaps it was time for me to move on [yes!] and pursue other avenues of service, [except neither the governor nor Center for Food Safety offered a job], perhaps even travel the world [except that costs dough he doesn't have] and relax a little bit.
People often inquire as to what my plans are the future. Will I run for re-election to the Kauai County Council? Will I seek to return to the Hawaii State Senate [like he has a prayer of getting elected]? Will I retire from the political world and focus on my work with the Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action [which he's been doing while collecting a county paycheck, 'cause there's no dough in HAPA]?
Faced with all those options, Gary has decided that “if the community support is there [don't bet on it], I will remain in office [what, you were thinking of leaving early?] and run again for re-election in 2016.”
Gary then takes hat in hand and tells us:
Those of you that follow elections know that it was by the slimmest of margins (82 votes) that I was successful in 2014.
read ... Fate of an anti-GMO Politician
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