Ige Signs Bill Lowering Unemployment Tax
HSTA orders BoE to Dump Kishimoto
Kauai asks to rejoin Hawaii Safe Travels program in April
Blangiardi Submits City Budget
OHA releases $2.92 million in grant solicitations
Official State Meetings Calendar Updated
OIP: UIPA Under COVID Emergency Rules
16 Hawaii Towns Ranked by Median Credit Scores
Is the Aloha Stadium Deal a Criminal Offense?
ILind: … “The taxpayers of Hawaii are getting screwed again….It’s a land giveaway to a private developer.” …
“Affordable housing should be no-brainer,” he said, and should be the top priority for the state. The fact that the state is instead pursuing a deal that would give long-term development rights to a private developer, recognizing up front that “market changes” could reasonably justify changes from what is initially proposed, is “borderline criminal.”
“Who is the state’s leadership looking out for?” he asked….
Land costs and financing are usually the biggest hurdles affordable housing developers in Hawaii have to overcome. Yet here is a situation in which public land is available, and the state has already ponied up $350 million in public funds in the form of $50 million in general funds, and another $300 million in general obligation bond funding….
And although the “entertainment district” project has been fast tracked due to the supposed “urgency” of replacing the Aloha Stadium, one of the first official pronouncements was to tell the stadium’s anchor tenant, the University of Hawaii football team, that it cannot be guaranteed any special consideration, and that the terms, conditions, and costs associated with playing in the new stadium will be up to future negotiations with the developer finally selected.
In other words, when push comes to shove, a new stadium for UH football isn’t at all a priority. It’s just been used as a cover story to get the public to acquiesce….
“It’s like you hire a contractor to build a house on land that you already own, and you provide them your credit card to use,” he said. “Then, after the house is built, you learn you will have to pay rent to live in it, and your hired contractor will decide what that rent will be.”
What kind of a crazy deal is the public being saddled with here?
What’s worse, the selection of a developer is being done in secret negotiations, behind closed doors. When the public actual terms are finally revealed to the public, it’s almost certainly going to be presented as a “take it or leave it” deal. Then, once the deal is approved and we’re locked in to one developer, “it is going to be hard to rein them in.”
In essence, a private developer is going to be allowed to steal the unique stadium site away from the state and Hawaii taxpayers….
read … A dissenting view of the Aloha Stadium redevelopment
Rail construction in Dillingham corridor halted
HNN: … Construction of the problem-plagued Honolulu rail project in the Dillingham corridor has been halted, interim HART CEO Lori Kahikina said Wednesday.
In an interview on Hawaii News Now Sunrise, Kahikina said construction of the airport guideway segment is still ongoing but she stopped construction in the Dillingham area.
“The reason I stopped it was we actually did not have 100% design drawings complete,” she said.
“You need to have the complete in order to go to the city to obtain permits before you can start work, so you’re just paying a contractor to be on standby out there.”
Kahikina said the guideway might be moved to the mauka side of Dillingham Boulevard instead of right down the middle due to high voltage lines and other utilities that have to be moved out of the way.
But that effort hinges on approval from landowners like Kamehameha Schools and the University of Hawaii. “When I first came in in January, I knew Dillingham was a problem,” Kahikina said….
Kahikina also said the project is currently $2 to $3 billion over budget and that expensive consultants have been let go because she found redundancies and inefficiencies while reviewing project expenses.
“We’re paying layers upon layers of not just HART staff, but consultants and contractors and we need to cut that waste out,” she said. “Our operating cost is about $12 million per month. We need to tighten our belts internally to cut out any waste.”
She is hoping to turn over part of the route by the end of the year for operation but says it will be up to the city Department of Transportation Services and the Honolulu mayor on the exact date….
read … HART interim CEO: Rail construction in Dillingham corridor halted, route may shift
Hawaii Aims To Reopen Elementary Schools After Spring Break—HSTA Freaks out
CB: … Facing mounting pressure to get kids back in class, Hawaii education officials have announced a plan to fully reopen elementary schools later this month, a major milestone after a year of mostly remote instruction during the pandemic.
The state Department of Education said it hopes to have all elementary students attending school in-person on a daily basis when the fourth quarter of the school year begins on March 22.
The plan, which will be presented to the state Board of Education on Thursday, comes at a time when the number of coronavirus cases in the islands has been declining and many teachers have been vaccinated.
The DOE was less specific about middle and high schools, saying “all schools will work toward returning more students to campus daily.”…
read … Hawaii Aims To Reopen Elementary Schools After Spring Break
Unemployment office puts ‘bot blocker’ in place to reduce volume into call center
HNN: … Labor Director Anne Perreira-Eustaquio said repeat callers will be blocked so that more people can get through. She said some had apparently been using apps to repeatedly call the unemployment office.
She said the state’s unemployment call center was getting about 200,000 calls a day or about 6,000 an hour. It can only take about 1,600, and it had received about that much on Tuesday morning….
Meanwhile, Perreira-Eustaquio said there were no immediate plans to offer in-person servicing at the unemployment office. That’s something advocates and claimants have been calling for.
She said the call center can help more people via phone than they could in-person.
Perreira-Eustaquio also announced that callers who can’t get through will start getting call-backs from representatives. “So if you had called and you are not able to get through the center, we are going to be reaching out and calling claimants in order to help them with their outstanding claims,” she said….
read … Unemployment office puts ‘bot blocker’ in place to reduce volume into call center
Hawaii hits highs for needle exchange and overdose reversals
KITV: … While many businesses slowed down during the pandemic, the state's needle exchange program is busier than ever.
"We exchanged nearly 1.2 million needles in 2019, that went up to 1.3 million in 2020. So we have seen an increase in need," said Hawaii Health and Harm Reduction Center Executive Director Heather Lusk.
Along with the number of exchanged needles going up, there has been a 30% in people using of Narcan - which can reverse an opioid overdose….
"We have had 211 reversals reported to us, and I would say the number is twice that," said HHHRC Outreach worker Paij Nakamura.
Word on the street is: more overdoses happen because more people use a synthetic opioid 100 times more powerful than morphine.
"We've been seeing a lot of overdoses related to fentanyl," stated HHHRC Outreach Team Leader Leanne Simon….
"It is not that people are doing more drugs, it is that there is more fentanyl in the drugs. That is what is driving potential overdoses," added Nakamura….
SA: Alleged heroin trafficker dies in Federal Detention Center (Former Longline Captain.)
Feb 15, 2021: Did Miske-owned Longliners Run Drugs to Hawaii?
KHON: Hawaiian non-profit organization forced to pump breaks after thieves target mobile studio
read … Hawaii hits highs for needle exchange and overdose reversals
Most Police Reform Measures Fail To Gain Traction At Legislature
CB: … As the Legislature reaches the halfway point of the 2021 session later this month, most measures that sought to reform police practices in Hawaii will probably be shelved for another year.
Lawmakers were considering measures to ban chokeholds, allow individuals to record police activity, require police to report instances of misconduct in their own ranks, strip convicted officers of retirement benefits, ban military-style equipment in police departments, and give citizens more representation on boards charged with overseeing police.
The measures were all introduced in the wake of high-profile police killings and protests nationally led by the Black Lives Matter movement calling for greater police reform. While Hawaii legislators appear ready to move forward on bills to ban “no-knock” warrants and collect data on use of force, most other reform-minded bills appear dead for the 2021 session.
“It’s really disappointing,” said Nikkya Taliaferro, one of the Hawaii teens who helped to organize a 10,000-person march to the State Capitol last year. “We had all this action last summer, and then to have the legislators defer, or not give hearings … it’s upsetting.”
Hundreds of bills are expected to drop off in the next two weeks as the Legislature heads toward crossover on March 11. That’s the final day for Senate bills to move to the House and vice versa.….
But another measure, authorizing forfeiture of some retirement benefits for state or county employees convicted of an employment-related felony, is moving at the Legislature. Hawaii News Now reports that the Kealoha scandal is fueling momentum for the bill.
Former ex-Police Chief Louis Kealoha collects $9,700 a month from his pension in spite of felony convictions stemming from his time leading the Honolulu Police Department….
read … Most Police Reform Measures Fail To Gain Traction At Legislature
HB796: Public Reports of Inmate Deaths
CB: … The current practice is to release almost no information about inmate fatalities at all. Last year 16 Hawaii prisoners died in state custody, but the only deaths the DPS felt compelled to announce publicly involved two inmates who died of COVID-19.
So far this year, the department has announced five more inmates died of COVID-19 at Halawa Correctional Facility in January, and then issued more news releases last month disclosing coronavirus deaths of two more Halawa prisoners.
And that raises new questions as lawmakers consider a bill to require the release of more information when inmates die.
House Bill 796, which the state Department of Public Safety “strongly opposes,” would require that more information about inmate fatalities be made publicly available from death notices that the prison system is required to submit to Gov. David Ige’s office.
Heavily redacted versions of those death notices were made public for a time in 2019 and 2020, but that stopped when the Department of Public Safety began marking each death report with a bold-faced warning that sharing the reports with the public is legally prohibited….
read … Death Behind Bars: In Hawaii, The Death Of A Prisoner Is Often A Closely Held Secret
Maui County working on bogus lawsuit against Bank of America
MN: … Committee members also discussed working with Miami-based foreclosure litigator Bruce Jacobs, who has been retained by Na Po’e Kokua, a Maui-based housing advocacy group that on Feb. 11 filed a whistleblower complaint against Bank of America alleging that the company defrauded its investors by not disclosing its “criminal and civil exposure” for “systemic fraudulent conduct” involving its failed commitments, false statements and false claims, among other actions through the years.
The bank has said it fulfilled its $150 million home loan pledge and that the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands confirmed it in a letter in 2007. But according to public documents and news reports, the Hawaiian Homes Commission in 2012 disputed the earlier letter and said the bank did not fully follow through.
(CLUE: The litigants don’t want you to distinguish between making $150M of loans ‘available’ and actually writing $150M of loans. They are two different things.)
Na Po’e Kokua President Brandon Maka’awa’awa said Tuesday that he supported the council’s resolution.
“Na Po’e Kokua is really here to help the county to move forward,” said Maka’awa’awa, who also advocated for the county to work with Jacobs.
Haiku resident Ian Chan Hodges of the Hawaii Fair Lending Coalition, who has also been “taking on Bank of America” for a “long time” also asked the county to work with Jacobs.
“I don’t think we will be able to prevail against Bank of America unless we are all working together,” he said.
As a point of disclosure, Council Member Tasha Kama reminded the committee that she was a founder of Na Po’e Kokua and continues to sit on its board of directors….
2019: Villain or Vigilante? Miami Attorney Faces Disciplinary Action After Criticizing Court
read … County working on lawsuit against bank
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