Official Results: Sanders Winning Hawaii with 70%
Angry Democrats Caucus: ‘It was chaos and a farce’
HB1739: Boss Can Demand Your Social Media Passwords
Can Illegal TVRs be Taxed?
Bill Burgess: Honolulu attorney fought race-exclusive programs
Hawaii Family Forum Legislative Week in Review
DoE: $4M to Cover ‘Stupid Idiot Teacher Who Ran Over Student While Driving on School Lawn’
Cataluna: …last week, Sen. Laura Thielen let it fly during a meeting of the Senate Judiciary and Labor Committee. The discussion was on the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the family of a child who was run over by a teacher driving on campus.
“You guys should never have settled this case, and it sends the wrong message to every employee in this state that you can just be a stupid (expletive) idiot and drive over the lawn in a school and do stupid things like that, and we’re going to cover you,” Thielen said. “That is a horrible judgment.” ….
read … And They Wanted us to Raise the GE Tax
SB2690: Infinite Possibilities for Cigarette Tax Hike
SA: …Senate Bill 2690, which proposes an increase in the cigarette tax. The bill originally asked for a tax increase to 20 cents a cigarette up from 16 cents, but current versions have left blank the amount.
If an increase is granted, half would go to the Cancer Center.
But the center can no longer hang its hat on cigarette taxes. Its flawed business plan — which assumed its share of cigarette taxes would remain steady at $20 million a year — is in large part why the center finds itself in its financial fix….
read … Tax Hike
Bills Would Loosen OHA’s Grip on Airports
SA: …A Delaware company with a helicopter operation at tiny Port Allen Airport along Kauai’s south shore wanted to increase the state land it leases there by a third.
The state Department of Transportation recommended to the Board of Land and Natural Resources that the lease amendment be approved, but the recommendation was made without consulting the salt makers, whose families have been harvesting the ponds adjacent to Port Allen’s single runway for generations. (And these are the same salt makers OHA used to block Kauai County from building a drug treatment center. See LINK)
Fearing that their cultural practices would be harmed by increased helicopter activity, the salt makers and others sent dozens of messages urging the Land Board to reject the lease modification at its Feb. 26 meeting.
“It would be devastating,” said Abby Santos, whose family has harvested the ponds for five generations.
Thanks to the flurry of objections, the matter was pulled from the agenda. It has yet to be resubmitted.
Opponents of the lease expansion sought by Smoky Mountain Helicopters said they learned of the planned deal only because it was placed on the Land Board’s published agenda, as required by the Sunshine Law.
But the opponents and open-government advocates say such transparency could disappear under several bills pending at the Legislature.
One measure, Senate Bill 3072, would establish an airport authority governed by a five-member board that would oversee all airport operations, including land dispositions. The bill does not specify how the disposition process would work.
Two other measures, House Bills 2407 and 2408, would remove the Land Board from the approval process. The first one deals with long-term leases and other land disposition agreements while the latter pertains only to month-to-month revocable permits….
Salt-Maker Flashback: Office of Hawaiian Affairs Blocks Kauai Drug Treatment Facility
read … Save the Airports!
Legislator wants to ax Kihei high school in favor of West Oahu facility
MN: …Citing a Legislative Reference Bureau report showing declining enrollment at Maui High School beginning in the 2018-19 academic year, state Rep. Bob McDermott of Oahu says a new Kihei high school is not needed and that state funding should go toward building a new high school in West Oahu, which is "exploding in growth."
Already, Campbell High School in McDermott's House District 40 (Ewa Beach, Ewa Gentry and Iroquois Point) has 3,049 students, or 374 students more than the school's designed capacity of 2,675 students. In the same school complex, Kapolei High School, which opened in 2000, has 2,038 students, or 412 shy of its capacity of 2,450.
Campbell's overcrowding is so bad that students need to eat lunch in shifts beginning at 9:30 a.m., the lawmaker said, because "you can only run so many kids through the chow hall . . . it becomes unmanageable."
The same reference bureau report shows Baldwin High School's enrollment this year at 1,398, or 277 short of its capacity of 1,675. Maui High's enrollment is at 1,906, or 481 students beyond its designed capacity of 1,425 students….
Background: New School Construction: Intentional misuse of taxpayer money
read … Legislator wants to ax Kihei high school in favor of West Oahu facility
Legislators Demand Shelters Provide Better Accommodations for Homeless
SA: Hawaii lawmakers are pushing for greater oversight on how homeless shelters spend about $13 million annually in state funding, concerned that nearly 600 shelter beds remain empty on any given night while hundreds of homeless people are sleeping in alleyways, under bridges, in parks and in other public spaces.
“People would rather sleep on the streets than go to shelters,” said Sen. Jill Tokuda, chairwoman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, and a lead sponsor of Senate Bill 2559, which seeks to make shelter space more accommodating while also tying state funding to performance measures.
The bill would require shelters to comply with basic standards, such as having adequate bathroom facilities and storage for personal belongings and partitioned sleeping spaces to provide a modicum of privacy.
The bill would also require shelters to submit annual financial audits to the state Department of Human Services, tie stipend payments to “performance measures that are actually achieved,” repeal the automatic annual renewal of stipends and allow DHS to recoup funding if the provider doesn’t meet certain contract terms…
read … Maybe they Could Stay at the Hilton?
HB1751: Corrupting the drive towards a sustainable energy future
IM: …There is a bill that would define Renewable Energy to be everything you think it is plus something that is undefined, unknown, and may be needed in the future.
HB 1751 passed the House by a vote of 51-0. The bill was just yanked out of a Senate Committee that deferred the bill. Instead the bill will go before its last committee on Tuesday.
The proponents have never testified in public. They prefer the back rooms.
The bill has a specific but unstated target: solid, liquid and gas emissions from wastewater facilities should be classified as renewable energy. The electric utility should be forced to buy the stuff regardless of its nature or cost.
This is being pushed by the County of Maui which is currently appealing a federal court ruling that its Lahaina Wastewater Treatment Facility is in violating of the federal Clean Water Act for polluting the Ocean….
read ... Corrupting the Hawai`i drive towards a sustainable energy future
NextEra merger: HIEC willing co-op partner
WHT: …One wild card in the deck is the expiration date of the merger agreement itself. Announced on Dec. 3, 2014, the original term was for one year with the possibility of a six-month extension. That extension ends June 3. Given the strong likelihood of a regulatory decision not taking place by that date, what’s next? Will HEI and NEE agree to extend again? Or will one or both parties walk away?
Whatever the outcome, HIEC remains respectfully waiting at the door as a serious and legitimate partner to purchase Hawaii Electric Light Company and turn the utility into a member-owned and –operated cooperative.
We are also under no illusions of all that would need to take place to bring HIEC’s “Own the Power” motto to fruition, not least of which is needing a willing seller….
read … Partner
Without NEM, Nobody Wants Solar
SA: …Roughly 2,814 people were employed by the solar industry in Hawaii in 2015, according to The Solar Foundation’s Solar Jobs Census.
The HSEA board said solar companies are depending on a buildup of NEM applications that came in just before the rule changed. HECO has been slowly approving those. As of March 8, HECO was reviewing or studying 1,175 NEM applications.
“Frankly, the industry is living off of these approvals,” said Jae Kwak, chief financial officer for Haleakala Solar. “As those get built, there is going to be more hardships. There is going to be more job losses.”
In the last four months, 285 applications have been approved under the two new incentive programs. In 2013 the industry was installing twice that amount every month… (That’s an 8-fold reduction)
PVM: D.E. Shaw keen on SunEdison's 148 MW Hawaii solar projects
read … 8-Fold
Nobody Wants to Pay for Publicly Funded Campaigns
Borreca: …The fund collected a high of almost $500,000 in 1992. Last year, it picked up only $162,000, the Campaign Spending Commission reported.
The situation is actually more dire than just waning interest in good government. The commission was forced by the Legislature to dip into that campaign fund to pay its own operating expenses. The move was a tiny part of the crisis budget-balancing done during the last recession, but no new funding has been approved since then.
Kristin Izumi-Nitao, the commission’s executive director, said in legislative testimony last week that the commission is operating at an average net deficit of $524,000.
Noting that “the commission is concerned that revenue is insufficient to sustain commission operations and programs,” Izumi-Nitao told legislators that the commission may have to cut back its publicly funded campaign program.
“Of greater concern is that by December 2017, the funds are projected to be near depletion such that we will be unable to run the public-funding program for the 2018 election,” Izumi-Nitao warned.
To help the commission, both the House and Senate are moving bills to appropriate the needed $500,000 to run the commission, but the public funding is supposed to stand on its own….
read … $162,000
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