Federal Recognition: How ‘Super 8A’ Companies Make $800M by Doing Practically Nothing
Hawaii: “The only state in which both legislative and executive branches are perceived to be very corrupt”
Hawaii Lowest Property Taxes in USA
HB2084: Your Insurance Rates Will Be Going up to Pay for Trannies
Report: Hawaii Among Best in College Affordability
Oshiro: Hi Tech Schemers Grab for Control of Wahiawa Hospital
CB: …Can’t the state afford $3 million to help WGH? The answer is yes. The state ended 2015 with a surplus of more than $800 million, and the same is forecast for 2016. The state also saves about $50 million every year. And, understand this: $3 million out of the $14 billion state budget is a very small amount — about .0214 percent. This is a no-brainer. We would look foolish hoarding a cash surplus if WGH closed. Our friends and families would rightfully feel shame.
So, why are a few legislators forcing a $5 million general obligation bond sale and buy-and-lease deal on WGH? Is having the High Technology Development Corporation take over WGH’s skilled nursing facility and parking lots — an idea that was introduced but that failed to pass in the 2014 legislative session — necessary or appropriate? There’s been no public or local discussion on this idea, and it is not the official position of the governor or the Legislature. The corporation has yet to even complete a feasibility study. Honestly, isn’t this premature at best, suspicious at worse?
read … Rep Marcus Oshiro
Good News! Legislators Reject High Tech Demand for $5M Cash
PBN: The Hawaii Strategic Development Corp.’s request for $5 million to support Hawaii’s high tech industry through the HI Growth Initiative failed to win approval from the state Legislature.
The money was deleted from a draft budget by the House, but was then reinserted by the Senate. However, it didn't survive conference committee….
A recent analysis by the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization found that every dollar the state invested in the HI Growth Initiative yielded $12 in private investment. (And with $5M they could ‘invest’ in even more bogus studies.)
read … Get a Job!
HMSA Red Tape Sends Cardiac Patient to Emergency Room
SA: Jerome Fukuhara knew something was wrong with his heart when it got harder and harder to breathe while walking around the block.
In February the 52-year-old Salt Lake resident went to his doctor, who wanted him to get a heart scan to check for blockages in his arteries. The doctor’s request for a test was denied by the Hawaii Medical Service Association, the state’s largest health insurer, which began requiring pre-authorization on imaging tests in December.
Then in March, Fukuhara had a follow-up with the doctor, who told him to go to the emergency room to get the exam done immediately. HMSA does not require pre-authorization for emergency room or hospital patients. Fukuhara’s test revealed one of his arteries was nearly 100 percent blocked, two others were 90 percent obstructed and a fourth was 80 percent closed. Four days after the test, he was undergoing quadruple bypass heart surgery.
“If I had waited for approval, he’d be dead,” said Fukuhara’s doctor, Dr. Calvin Wong, chief of cardiology at the Queen’s Medical Center….
HNN: HMSA imaging policy still drawing doctors' ire
read … HMSA pre-authorization policy delaying critical tests
Solar Contractors Salivate over Cool Schools Plan
SA: Lawmakers are still debating where the tens of millions of dollars in funding should come from, and are working to add in language aimed at curbing energy consumption and costs at state Department of Education schools. The DOE already has a $48 million annual utility budget without the anticipated influx of air conditioners….
Conference committee negotiations are scheduled to resume Thursday on Senate Bill 3126, which initially proposed using $100 million in general funds and $30 million in state-backed bonds for the initiative, and House Bill 2569, which proposed a combination of GEMS funds and state-backed bonds.
“There’s no hang-ups, per say,” Rep. Chris Lee (D, Kailua-Waimanalo), (owned and operated by solar contractors) chairman of the Energy and Environmental Protection Committee and one of the lead negotiators for the House, said after a brief conference committee meeting Tuesday.
“I think it’s more a question of coming to agreement on the source of the funding — whether it’s general funds or GEMS — and then also on final language that would allow ‘cool schools’ to move forward with cost controls and energy savings in place to protect taxpayers and to ensure that money that the department spends is focused on students rather than utilities,” Lee said.
read … Lawmakers on track to pay for schools’ cooling
Blank Geothermal bill moves to conference committee
HTH: State lawmakers will meet today in a conference committee to discuss the fate of a bill aimed at curbing the ability of counties to pass their own geothermal regulations.
The legislation passed both chambers, though the House advanced a nearly blank version known as a short-form bill.
Rep. Richard Onishi, who will participate in the conference, referred to it as a strategic move that kept the bill alive while forcing negotiations between Senate and House members….
Sen. Lorraine Inouye, the bill’s main sponsor, said the Senate will bring its complete version to the table and see what House members offer.
“The Senate will continue to keep its position, the bill that passed the Senate,” said Inouye, D-North Hawaii.
She said it makes sense to have geothermal regulatory authority in the hands of the state so rules are consistent.
“The emphasis of this measure is to have state control under the support of (Department of Land and Natural Resources) and the Department of Health,” Inouye said. She said the state still needs to be kept accountable to ensure the health and safety of residents are protected.
The measure is supported by Ormat, the parent company of PGV. Inouye previously said the company requested the legislation….
Additionally, Inouye said she will offer an amendment allowing counties to provide a stipend to neighbors of geothermal power plants who want to relocate as a result of drilling or other factors.
Hawaii County runs a program funded by its share of geothermal royalties allowing it to purchase homes from residents at 130 percent of assessed value to help them relocate. The homes are then auctioned….
read … Geothermal bill moves to conference committee
Adjusting low-income renters credit long overdue
SA: The Legislature has an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of our low- and moderate-income renters throughout the islands.
This week it will be considering adjusting the existing credit of $50 provided by the low- income household renters credit (LIHRC) to account for the inflation that has occurred since it was last modified in 1981.
Today that $50 is worth less than $19 in inflation-adjusted dollars….
In supporting this common-sense adjustment, we join the overwhelming majority of residents who recently responded to a poll that indicated 95 percent of Hawaii residents believe that the high cost of housing is a major problem for our community (“48% walk financial tightrope,” Star-Advertiser, March 29), and the 86 percent who support tax credits that allow working families to keep more of what they earn.
Updating the credit is an efficient and immediate way to alleviate the tax burden on families that rent and too often are struggling to stay in their homes and build assets for a brighter future.
HB 2166: Text, Status
read … Adjusting low-income renters credit long overdue
How Hawaii’s tax structure is hurting small businesses
PBN: Running a small business in Hawaii is a “disadvantage” compared with other states in the nation, according to Raymond Jardine, chairman CEO of Native Hawaiian Veterans and the U.S. Small Business Administration's Small Business Person of the Year for Hawaii.
The Aloha State’s main downfall? Its tax structure….
“If you get a federal contract in Hawaii you have to pay an additional tax,” said Jardine. “That has caused some issues for us as the Mainland companies bidding for the contract aren’t bidding with that tax.”
The 4.72 percent tax — the maximum rate for Hawaii's general excise tax on Oahu — makes it difficult for Jardine to make his offers competitive.
“On the Mainland they get better rates,” Jardine said. “It makes it tough to start a business in the federal marketplace in Hawaii.”….
read … How Hawaii’s tax structure is hurting small businesses
Farming inspires fantasies but requires viable funding
SA: …One artist’s rendition of Maui’s future shows golden fields of watercolor crops stretching from the central plains all the way up to the foothills of the West Maui mountains. The houses and buildings and highways that already exist aren’t quite there in the imagined future, blurred out like an aspirational ad.
That’s an image from the Maui Tomorrow report, which is different from the plan by Community Organic Farmland Initiative. An artist’s rendering for that plan shows blond children climbing fruit trees, a woman in a blue dress cradling a harvest of leaves in her arms, surfboards, happy turtles and a rainbow stretching across a houseless, building-less Central Maui. Next to that childlike image is a depiction of the alternative: farmers in hazmat suits, a helicopter spraying poison over dusty fields, ugly condos and factories looming in the distance.
The fantasies are darling. The reality, though, is that precious little former sugar land in Hawaii has successfully been diversified for other crops, and it’s not for lack of trying.
The sugar cane fields just up the road from Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. that used to be farmed by the Wailuku Sugar Co. are now subdivisions with hundreds of houses. The higher up the hill, the more expensive the homes. Wailuku Sugar tried to diversify. The company changed its name to Wailuku Agribusiness and planted macadamia nut trees and pineapple — even before the phasing out of cane — but uncooperative weather, a glut of cheaper products being imported from Central America and the cost of doing business in Hawaii made the company quit trying to farm in 1999.
On Kauai there are hundreds of acres of former sugar lands sitting fallow. For the last 40 years, various interests have tried to make a go on former Kilauea Sugar lands with aquaculture, guava farms and agritourism. The most recent venture, a cute field-to-table restaurant, shut down in 2014, and the land is back on the market.
On the west side of Kauai, former sugar lands are partially being used to grow seed crops by companies like Dow and Syngenta. To say that those companies have been demonized by some is putting it lightly. You’d think growing seed was somehow immoral.
On Hawaii island Richard Ha recently shut down his farming operations on former sugar land.
“The main reason we shut down the farm is that we saw what was coming. We knew the cost of farming was rising, rising, rising, and that in order to survive, at some point we would have to start cutting our employees’ pay and benefits,” Ha wrote on his blog...
read … Farming inspires fantasies but requires viable funding
Water Diversions: Resurrecting the Past
KE: …in still another effort to return to the good old days, when “water ran free, as nature intended,” a group of protestors converged on A&B headquarters in Honolulu to rail against HB 2501. The compromise bill allows A&B and others to continue diverting water under revocable permits for no more than three years while the Department of Land and Natural Resources updates the permitting process.
I understand that some East Maui taro farmers are frustrated. They've been fighting water diversions for a long time. But in their desire to stick it to A&B, they're forgetting that water users on other islands would also be impacted if all the permits were yanked. This would create hardships for many small farmers and ranchers, and their needs must be considered, too.
The protest attracted opportunists like Gary Hooser, who is always trying to latch on to other causes, especially those that involve Native Hawaiians:
And since Hooser gets to decide what constitutes “justice” — remember the "rescue game?" — you can be assured that it, and thus peace, will never be achieved.
Hmmm. “No justice, no peace; no water, no justice.”
Or here's another way to look at it: “No water, no food; no food, no activists.”
read … Musings: Resurrecting the Past
DoH Website reveals 25 percent of Hawaii restaurants received yellow, red cards
KHON: Which restaurants in Hawaii have people complained about?
What kind of food safety violation did your favorite restaurant get cited for?
Now, anyone can look it up online. Access the website here.
read … Unclean
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