EMS lost $33M after failing to bill patients?
Hawaii slowest to recover pandemic job losses
High School Teams to Compete in the 2024 Hawaiʻi LifeSmarts State Competition
Maui County diverts UIPA requests to 'online portal'
Maui: Unemployment drops to 6.5%
“I lost it all”--Small Businesses Survive Lahaina Fires--but not aftermath
SA: … The Lahaina fire resulted in the closure of some 834 businesses within the disaster area, according to data from the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. Since many West Maui business owners will not be able to reopen in the near or far-off future in West Maui…
“My revenues are 50% to 60% of what they were last year,” said Albitz, whose five-year lease is ending this month and is not being renewed….
Glenn Harrington, owner of Studio 151 Tattoo & Skate at the Azeka Shopping Center Makai, said he supports such interventions, though they would come too late for him. Harrington filed for bankruptcy Dec. 12, and his lease ends Sunday.
He said the Lahaina fire hit before his business, which opened in March 2020, had come back from the COVID-19-related shutdowns, tourism drop and labor shortage.
“My common area maintenance (CAM) fees and my rent is $5,300, and they are saying the comps are higher now, so they want even more …
“I leveraged everything. I worked the oil rigs and I sold my house. I put all my equity on the line, and I lost it all.”…
read … Aftereffect from Lahaina wildfire will create opportunities for some businesses
Conflict Of Interest Has Clouded This Big Island Judge's Family Court Cases
CB: … Hiatt was on the board of directors of a nonprofit organization, Children’s Law Project of Hawaii, paid to provide guardians ad litem to the Family Court where Hiatt serves as a judge. GALs are appointed by the court to represent the interests of children in foster custody and other cases involving alleged abuse and neglect.
Hawaii’s code of judicial conduct states that judges can serve on the board of a nonprofit “unless it is likely that the organization or entity will be engaged in proceedings that would ordinarily come before the judge.”
Judges are also barred from serving on a board if the organization will often take part in “adversary proceedings in the court of which the judge is a member.” This could include GALs, who can find themselves opposed to parents or other parties in child welfare cases.
This rule applies even to part-time judges who fill in as needed, such as Hiatt….
He reported the apparent conflict to the Hawaii Commission on Judicial Conduct, along with all the documentation, in mid-October. He heard nothing. Around that same time, he also filed a motion in Family Court pointing out the conflict.
He later got in touch with me and I asked the Judiciary about it earlier this month.
That’s when things started to happen. One day after my inquiry, Hiatt resigned as a board member. One day after that, Hiatt reported the situation to the judicial conduct commission, which is looking into it, according to a Judiciary spokeswoman.
The Judiciary says that before all this, Hiatt had been verbally disclosing her role at the nonprofit “to attorneys handling GAL cases.” But the Judiciary could not say if she did so to all parties in every case involving a GAL from the children’s law center.
Hiatt is now filing written disclosures in all cases involving the children’s law project, going back to her appointment as a part-time judge on Aug. 31, 2022. Hiatt will also disclose in writing in the future that she was once a member of the law project’s board….
I’ve written about Hiatt before. That case hinged on Family Court secrecy, which I think can go hand in glove with the chumminess — a cozy little circle taking care of business behind closed doors.
The case involved a Big Island woman, Deborah Goodwin, trying to adopt her grandson after the death of her daughter. For various dubious reasons, Goodwin was blocked from fostering or adopting the boy, who was placed in foster care and eventually adopted by the foster parents.
In 2019, I wrote a story about Goodwin’s frustrations. Three years later, Judge Hiatt ruled against her in the contested adoption case.
Among the reasons Hiatt cited were that Goodwin had spoken to Civil Beat about her case three years earlier. In addition, Goodwin had vowed to write a book about her case and had taken every possible legal step to gain custody of her grandchild.
While Goodwin had the right to do all of that, Hiatt wrote, her actions “appear to confirm that she is prone to put her own needs in front of” her grandson’s….
Hiatt … seemed affronted that Goodwin had pierced the secrecy of Family Court…
Parents who get caught up in Hawaii’s child welfare bureaucracy often feel like strangers intruding on a chummy club of lawyers, judges, state social workers and nonprofit service providers.
Even their own lawyers can seem to be part of this group, parents told me when I was reporting last year on the effectiveness of court-appointed attorneys. Parents come and go, but the child welfare professionals form relationships over years and decades….
read … John Hill: Conflict Of Interest Has Clouded This Big Island Judge's Family Court Cases
CD5: Will Calvin Say Run for Reelection?
CB: … When Calvin Say was first elected to public office “Rocky” was the No. 1 film in America, “Silly Love Songs” was the No. 1 song and Jimmy Carter was poised to take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
That was November 1976, and Say stayed in the Hawaii House of Representatives until 2020.
The Saint Louis High and UH Manoa graduate served 13 years as speaker during that time and then was elected to the Honolulu City Council for a four-year term to represent Palolo Valley, St. Louis Heights, Manoa, Moiliili, McCully, Ala Moana, Makiki and portions of Kakaako. That makes 47 years in office.
Now 71 years young, Say says he’ll decide whether or not to seek a second and final term on the council next year by the filing deadline come early June. House Rep. Scott Nishimoto (District 23 for Moiliili, McCully) and former Manoa House Rep. Dale Kobayashi are said to be interested in running for the District 5 seat. …
read … The Sunshine Blog: A Councilman Ponders Retirement
It’s Time To Take Meaningful Action Against Cockfighting
CB: … Our investigative report detailing major traffickers of fighting birds surmised that it would only be a matter of time for murder and other chaos to occur. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened in 2023.
Local police knew about the regular cockfights in Waianae but did nothing about them. On the April night when shots rang, there were 100 to 200 spectators, with five ending up shot, two fatally.
News reports across the country show that cockfighters engage in a wide range of correlated crimes, including murder as we’ve seen in Hawaii, as well as money laundering, drug trafficking, and high-stakes gambling….
A247: Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono stands up to cockfighters as other pols quail - Animals 24-7
read … It’s Time To Take Meaningful Action Against Cockfighting - Honolulu Civil Beat
New Database Tracks Millions In Donations And Government Funds For Maui
CB: … The entries in the Maui Fires Money Tracker can be filtered for non-government or government affiliation, and the “Details” button will provide more information on the intended purpose of the donation, if known….
read … New Database Tracks Millions In Donations And Government Funds For Maui - Honolulu Civil Beat
State Hospital Workers are totally at the mercy of criminal insane ‘patients’
CB: … Two of the workers rushed in to help Bautista after he was stabbed. They tried to stop the bleeding and performed CPR in an attempt to keep him alive. After those efforts failed, Miscovich said, they did their best to comfort him in his final moments.
Meanwhile, (instead of a squad of guards rushing in to beat the assailant to a pulp,) the other two workers did their best to keep Bautista’s attacker from causing more harm. Miscovich said they convinced Carvalho to drop the pocket knife he’s believed to have used in the stabbing and then shepherded him out of the building and through a gate that they then locked behind him until authorities arrived….
(This proves that the nurses at the hospital are not equipped to be jail guards. Hence the problem.)
Miscovich is all too familiar with violence at the state hospital. Over the past decade he estimates he’s treated about 35 hospital staffers who were injured by patients. In 2013, he was instrumental in convincing state lawmakers to launch a formal inquiry into the conditions at the hospital. …
read … State Hospital Workers Who Witnessed A Nurse's Murder Have Been Denied Workers Comp
The Insane Die on Hawaii Streets because They Are Not Forced into Treatment
SA: … Hawaii’s incoming homeless coordinator — state Rep. John Mizuno — knows the tragedy of homeless personally.
He was at The Queen’s Medical Center on Nov. 13, 2017, with state Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz and House Speaker Scott Saiki learning firsthand how homeless people disproportionately use hospital resources, costing millions every year, when — five minutes into their tour — an ambulance crew arrived in the emergency room with Mizuno’s younger brother.
Dean Mizuno was homeless, bipolar and suffered from addiction when he fell backward and cracked his head on a sidewalk, leaving him in a coma with massive bleeding to the brain….
(IF he had been forced into an insane asylum, he would be alive today.)
read … New Hawaii homeless coordinator Mizuno saw his unhoused brother die
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