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Wednesday, March 28, 2018
March 28, 2018 News Read
By Andrew Walden @ 4:05 PM :: 3257 Views

UH-Manoa updates its policies to earn better free speech rating

Republican Tax Cuts Help Hawaii's Middle Class

Super PAC attacks Hee using divorce filings

SA: Former state Sen. Clayton Hee, who recently announced he is running for governor, was accused of verbal and physical abuse by his former wife Lyla Berg in 1989 divorce filings, according to state court records.

Those records have been unearthed and circulated by a super PAC, or political action committee, called Women Against Domestic Violence Hawaii, which loaded almost a dozen of Berg’s decades-old court filings from the divorce case on a website Thursday.

Megan Kelly Kau, chairwoman of the super PAC, formally filed to create it on March 14. Its funding is unclear since the super PAC has not had to file financial reports yet….

Among the court papers listed on the website is a document filed by Berg’s lawyer in 1989 that described the Hee-Berg relationship as “a short and fundamentally unhappy marriage,” adding, “There was also some degree of physical and verbal abuse.”

Another document dated the same year alleges Hee’s name was added to the title of a property on Kika Street in Kailua “at a time toward the end of the marriage in circumstances of physical and verbal abuse, and during constant disagreements about money.”

Hee and Berg were married in 1982, separated in 1988 and were divorced in 1989…

Berg, 67, said the divorce filings relate to a family situation from 30 years ago. While the #MeToo movement has lately been shining a spotlight on all forms of abuse of women, “I am not part of that at all. If I wanted to say something, I would have said it 30 years ago,” she said.

As for the court filings, “What was written, what’s truth is truth, what’s in black and white is right there….

The old allegations are coming up now because “At least one opponent believes I will win the election unless negative campaigning by a Super PAC is injected into the governor’s election,” Hee wrote….

read … Super PAC attacks Hee using divorce filings

$271M Honolulu water rate hike proposed

SA: The Honolulu Board of Water Supply is proposing to raise the price of municipal water over the next four years and have larger users in single-family homes shoulder more of the increase…

Board members of the independent city agency voted unanimously Tuesday to solicit public feedback on a draft package of rate increases that it describes as … 12.5 percent over four years….

For average residential customers, most of the hike would hit next year and be followed by smaller increases in the three years after that….

Overall, higher rates in the proposal would generate an extra $271 million over four years. The current BWS budget for the fiscal year ending in June is $344 million…..

read … Honolulu water rate hike proposed

Shibai: House Pretends to pass TAT bill—Senate Expected to Kill it

KGI: …A bill that allocates transient accommodations tax revenues to Kauai, Hawaii and Maui counties from July 1 through Dec. 31, 2030 passed through the House of Representatives Tuesday with 44 out of 51 votes in favor of the bill.

Now on its way to the Senate, Bill 648 would increase Kauai’s share of the TAT from $14.9 million to $24.4 million per year, Maui’s share from $23.5 million to $38.3 million, and Hawaii County’s share from $19.2 million to $31.2 million.

Honolulu City and County’s portion of the TAT would remain unchanged under the bill, at a rate of $45.4 million per year.

Rep. Dee Morikawa said she’s hoping the bill will pass through the Senate…

Rep. James Tokioka had a different view, saying without the funding in the budget to support SB 648, it’s ineffective.

“It’s all shibai,” he said. “The House has not set any money aside to pay for (SB) 648, so they’ll send it to the Senate and tell the Senate ‘you kill it, because it’s not responsible and we look good because we tried something.”…

read … House passes TAT bill

Shibai: Airports authority bill nearing passage—State Procurement Code Set to Stifle Initiative

HTH::  While a bill that would restructure the management of the state’s airports is nearing passage, supporters of the bill fear it is missing terms that would allow it to better serve its purpose.

Senate Bill 2996 will appear before its final committee today. The legislation proposes shifting authority over the state’s airports from the Department of Transportation to a largely independent Airports Corporation.

However, the current language of the bill removes earlier terms that would, in the eyes of some supporters, provide one of the key benefits of the bill.

Last week, the House Committee on Transportation and the House Committee on Labor and Public Employment removed language from the bill that would make the Hawaii Airports Corporation exempt from the state’s Procurement Code.

Gordon Takaki, president-elect of the Hawaii County Chamber of Commerce, said allowing the corporation to be exempt from the Procurement Code was one of the key points of the bill, the removal of which will greatly hinder the corporation’s ability to efficiently improve the state’s airports.

“Going through the procurement process takes a too long,” Takaki said. “One of the main benefits was that eliminating the procurement process makes things like construction or renovation quicker.”

The passage exempting the corporation from the Procurement Code was included in the first iteration of the bill. Since then, it has been a sticking point for several organizations and agencies, many of which supported the bill, but advised against the exemption.

“The Procurement Code was put into place in order to avoid irregularities in the expenditure of public money. It serves a good purpose,” wrote Tim Lyons, president of the Subcontractor Association of Hawaii, at a testimony hearing in January. “We have heard few accusations tying the operational aspects of the Procurement Code and the other woes of the airport together.”

Specifically, Lyons and several other organizations — including the State Procurement Office — feared exempting the corporation from the Procurement Code would remove the requirement that prime contractors must list their subcontractors upon bidding for contracts. Removing that requirement could, in turn, lead to less-than-scrupulous contractors shopping or peddling low-bid work to others.

Several organizations offered conditional support for the bill, so long as legislators either added language requiring that subcontractors are listed (SEE HOW SIMPLE THIS COULD HAVE BEEN?), or simply removed the exemption. Ultimately, legislators decided upon the latter (uh huh.).

However, Takaki said adherence to the Procurement Code will also slow down any airport-based construction project, which would stifle commerce and delay the improvement of the state’s airports into “world-class airports.”

The bill will appear before its final committee, the House Finance Committee, today…

read … Airports authority bill nearing passage

Shibai Bill 58: Social Engineering more important than Affordable Housing

CB: …Bill 58, a cornerstone of Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s strategy to address the city’s affordable housing shortage, would require developers to build affordable units in all new residential projects with more than 10 units.

The city’s current affordable housing policy only affects developers who want to rezone land, requiring them to build units that remain affordable for just 10 years.

Councilwoman Kymberly Pine, who chairs the zoning committee, loosened Caldwell’s original proposal that called for units to remain affordable for 30 years but at the behest of housing advocates, she nixed the option that would have allowed developers to pay a fee instead of actually building affordable units.

Developers, many of who attended Tuesday’s meeting, opposed the measure, fearing regulations will make it unfeasible to build projects….

Bill 58 is up for final vote Wednesday….

The policy aims to reduce the concentration of poverty by ensuring poor people can afford to rent or buy in wealthier communities. (Because social engineering is more important than affordable housing.)

Pine’s committee approved a companion measure, Bill 59, in January which gives developers incentives to build moderately priced units around planned rail stations….

SA: Caldwell likely to sign affordable housing bill

SA: Affordable-housing bill poised for final Council vote today

read … Updated Honolulu Housing Bill Seeks The Middle Ground

What message is Honolulu sending the FTA when it posts multiple errors in city documents?

CB: …Several members of the Honolulu City Council met with the Federal Transit Administration earlier this month as authorized by Resolution 18-38. Their Permitted Interaction Group Report clearly outlines who was at the meeting….

The report then goes into a brief discussion of the recent five-year and three-year rail tax extensions. Here we run into problems with the numbers — in both cases, the report erroneously states the general excise tax surcharge as “0.05 percent.” The actual rate is .5 percent. The difference is like saying rail is going to cost $950 million instead of $9.5 billion….

The letter Mayor Kirk Caldwell wrote to the FTA in February also includes the GET surcharge as 0.05 percent. In fact, the wording is very similar to that used in the council report and is also signed by three people. This error is repeated in an attachment to the mayor’s letter in which he states the city’s commitment to rail. 

Everyone makes mistakes, but errors like this seem to be pervasive, including instances in which they are called out and not corrected.

In October, the Council adopted Resolution 17-263, CD1, regarding rail and public-private partnerships. The second “whereas” clause indicates that Act 001 of the 2017 Special Session included a “one percent increase” in the transient accommodations tax.

The TAT went from 9.25 percent to 10.25 percent, so the resolution should have stated there was a “one percentage point increase,” or simply that the rate increased from 9.25 percent to 10.25 percent….

PDF: Honolulu Mayor Caldwell’s Letter To The FTA, Feb. 23, 2018:

read … What message is Honolulu sending the FTA when it posts multiple errors in city documents?

HGEA Members Fall for Hackers Trick at 2 state agencies

HNN: So-called "phishing attacks" targeted state computers over the holiday weekend, officials confirm….

The first phishing attack happened Saturday when an employee from the Department of Agriculture clicked on a corrupted link.  …

A warning from the state's IT office was sent out to workers reminding them not to open links without investigating first.

But then on Monday, a state holiday, an employee with the state Department of Human Services did it, too.

The state's chief IT security officer, Vincent Hoang, said both times alarms went off immediately and they were able to limit the damage to just the affected employees' inboxes. Hoang said they believe the two cases are connected and the emails come from the same source. …

Hawaii was listed as a target of the Iranian group that went after state and university systems all over the world.

Former Honolulu Police Department cyber crimes expert Chris Duque said if this past weekend's incidents are not part of that group, it could be copycats who saw Hawaii as easily compromised….

read … Hackers targeted 2 state agencies in 'phishing' attack

Caldwell Drops $31M for Second Try at ‘Smart’ Fare Card System

CB: …In 2016, the city and the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation jointly awarded the global ticketing firm INIT a $31 million contract to produce what eventually became Holo.

It’s not the city’s first stab at creating a smart-card pass for TheBus. In 2003, Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris declared in his state of the city address that riders would soon be able to use such a pass. That never materialized, however, after the city awarded the contract to build a state of the art system to a company with no experience in the transportation and high-tech fields.

City leaders such as Mayor Kirk Caldwell and Brandon Elefante sounded a more optimistic note about Holo at a press conference Tuesday. They hope Biki riders will eventually be able to use the pass for Honolulu’s new bike-share system as well….

read … Smart?

Because We Do Not Force Them into Rehab, Homeless Destroy Waikiki

CB: …I have lived in Waikiki for the past 45 years and have seen a lot of its deterioration because these homeless are stealing, sleeping, panhandling, pooping and urinating everywhere.

While he may have been more refined then most, the majority of these homeless people are druggies or drunks, and because of our constitutional laws we can’t force them into rehab facilities. The majority of the disgusting behavior comes from the chronic homeless, of which he was one….

MN: Stolen property used as a homeless shelter

read … Homelessness is not a lifestyle

Report: Hawaii County Water Dep’t Fails to Maintain Backup Pumps

WHT: The North Kona Permitted Interaction Group — comprised of Water Board members, Department of Water Supply (DWS) employees and individuals from the private sector — convened in late 2017 to examine the root causes of the North Kona water crisis that saw as many as five of the system’s 13 deep wells simultaneously inoperative.

…One of the notorious contributors to deep well pump and motor failure is backup equipment stored horizontally and rotated too infrequently. DWS suspects the practice significantly exacerbated the 2017 crisis. 

(IQ Test: Can you solve this problem?  Keep reading….)

The problem is, they’re still short a solution.

Takamine said the first idea (wow) was to store equipment with manufacturers on the mainland but the estimates received weren’t financially viable.

The price stretched to nearly $100,000 per pump and motor set for the year, said DWS Manager-Chief Engineer Keith Okamoto.

“We were dealt defeat by going through our procurement methods and allowing it to be a bid item that came back to us that was being submitted by a contractor,” Boswell said. “That’s where the fluctuations got out of control.”

Okamoto said DWS is currently attacking the procurement process in hopes of dealing directly with manufacturers to mitigate whatever markup the contractors heaped atop initial estimates. He added creating storage facilities on Hawaii Island, or even digging holes (huh?), would prove too costly a measure.

Currently, DWS is relegated to storing equipment horizontally (AMAZING!) in crates, but Okamoto said the department is able to rotate as needed….

WHT: DWS uses its Own Incompetence to Argue for 19 More UPW - HGEA 'Positions'

read … Government in Action

Homosexual Child Molester Foolishly Leaves Hawaii--Gets 30 Years Prison on Next Bust

CR: The Wisconsin man who was arrested at the Grundy County Lake last summer for attempting to solicit sexual contact with a minor has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.  (Stupid child molester.  He shouda stayed in Hawaii where he coulda done it again and again.)

Carson Sibley, age 27, of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, was already a registered sex offender in his home state after being convicted of felony Possession of Child Pornography in Hawaii in 2013, and he pled guilty to one count of felony Enticement in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids in late September.

According to court records, Sibley used online video games to connect with his victims and often pretended to be female to coerce underage boys into sending him explicit photos, and he traveled to Grundy County at least twice in hopes of having sex with a male under the age of 16.

(B-b-but they were born this way.  At least that is what we have all been told to pretend to believe….)

“They try to find a common bond first, and then they resort to their illegal behavior,” Grundy County Sheriff Rick Penning said. …

read … Shoulda Stayed in Hawaii Where He Woulda Been Safe

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