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Wednesday, March 26, 2025

March 26, 2025 News Read
By Andrew Walden @ 4:00 PM :: 537 Views

Prince Kuhio's Fight to Americanize Hawaii

Trump Pardons Devon Archer, Hawaii High-Tech Tax Credit Scammer Turned on Bidens

A Man Convicted of Trump Media Insider Trading Had Ties to a Firm Holding Hawaii Cannabis Contracts

Hawaii 2nd Worst Taxpayer Return on Investment

Hawaii 2nd-Highest State Tax Collections Per Capita

Feds Release $2.5M to Reimburse Nonprofit for Shuttered Lahaina Jobs Program

Hawaii to Charge EVs a Road Usage Tax Starting July 1

DPP Waitlist ‘Solution’ -- Purge of 6,800 permit applications allegedly left idle for more than a year

HNN: … The City and County of Honolulu announced Monday that the Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting (DPP) will purge expired and idle applications.

DPP said that it has begun enforcing its permit application expiration policy by purging applications that had no new activity for more than a year.

This includes permits that have been approved but weren’t picked up. Idle permits are marked as “In Progress” in DPP’s system.

Officials said they have over 3,600 resident and over 3,200 commercial permits listed as “In Progress.” ….

SA: Off the news: DPP cleans out idle applications from attic | Honolulu Star-Advertiser -- BEST COMMENT: "It does make you wonder what the notification process is. Should the outgoing message "accidently" get lost, the process would stall and now the staff would have time to get to the favored applicants. It will be interesting to see how many people come forward complaining their application got canceled and what their story is."

SA: DPP to purge building permit applications that have been in system more than 1 year | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

read … City’s DPP begins purge of applications left idle for more than a year

HB371: What about the First Amendment?

ILind: … Civil Beat’s “Sunshine Blog” threw it’s weight behind House Bill 371, proposed legislation described as “the measure that would ban the owners, officers and close family members of government contractors and organizations that receive state grants in aid from donating to political campaigns.”

Apparently CB sees it as a way to put an end to pay-to-play politics.

A worthy goal.

However, in my view, CB and the Sunshine Blog are making a grave error in not taking into account the First Amendment implications of this bill.

The sweeping scope of this bill and its restrictions on First Amendment political speech is breathtaking. Despite this, the legal issues surrounding free speech in the context of political campaigns and campaign finance were not mentioned in any of the testimony during hearings on this bill.

That’s a huge omission because, if passed into law, HB371 would not simply “chill” free speech of corporations, it would eliminate the First Amendment rights of an large but as-yet-undetermined number of individuals associated with, and would trample on long-accepted legal precedents.

These issues are so glaring that the bill appears written to invite a successful First Amendment legal challenge….

HB371 would prohibit contributions by state or county contractors, as well as state or county grantees, along with their officers or immediate family members, whether or not they have any role in the contracts or grants, or even any contact with the family member directly involved.

And immediate family members, according to the bill, includes any child, parent, grandparent, brother, or sister, and the spouses or reciprocal beneficiaries of those officers.

I haven’t seen any discussion of the loss of rights for officers of state grantees, along with their family members.

Check this list of organizations that received state grants in aid during the 2024 legislative session….

read … What about the First Amendment? | i L i n d

Digitized agriculture form disrupts tourism data

SA: … Akamai Arrival, the pilot program for a digitized agriculture disclosure form, left out the optional tourism questions from the back of the form, creating a blip in the state’s continuous tourism arrivals set that goes back to before the jet age.

Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke said the decision was made to initially leave off the questions to start with a simplified form….

Jennifer Chun, DBEDT director of tourism research, estimates that the pilot eliminates tourism questions from all arriving Southwest flights, all American flights, five Alaska flights, one Delta flight, two Hawaiian flights and two United flights — roughly 31% of scheduled flights and 28.4% of scheduled air seats.

Paul Brewbaker, principal of TZ Economics, said an interruption to tourism data could have serious repercussions as economists use it to make economic forecasts. Brewbaker added that the Council of Revenues relies on tourism data to figure out how much money is available for the budget. The information also is used in bond ratings, which set the interests rates for government borrowing, he said.

Brewbaker said interrupting Hawaii’s tourism data set is problematic when tourism “accounts for about one-third of the neighbor island economy and 15% to 20% of the statewide economy.”

“I’m going to go write some papers now that say, ‘Here’s what the tourism data tell us, and from here on out we’ll never know — so this is economic history now.’”

The initiative was authorized under Act 196, and has been touted by state leaders, including Gov. Josh Green, Luke and Sen. Glenn Wakai (D, Kalihi-Salt Lake-Pearl Harbor) as a significant step toward modernizing Hawaii’s biosecurity efforts.….

read … Digitized agriculture form disrupts tourism data | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Mufi Hannemann’s Events Spark Inquiry Into Freebies From Tourism Agency

CB: … Concerns over possible inappropriate use of Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority resources by two nonprofits led by HTA Chairman Mufi Hannemann have been turned over to the Attorney General’s Office and the Hawaiʻi State Ethics Commission for investigation.

HTA board members on Tuesday questioned Hannemann at length about the events hosted by HTA for Hannemann’s organizations.

Jimmy Tokioka, director of the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism who’s also an HTA board member, said the ethics commission has already begun interviewing people as part of an inquiry into more than $14,000 in food and beverages provided for the two events.

State Auditor Les Kondo said the AG and the ethics commission were notified of the issues which surfaced in a recent audit.

The events are the Hawaiʻi Lodging and Tourism Association’s public safety conference at the Hawaiʻi Convention Center on Dec. 6, 2023, and a meeting of the Pacific Century Fellows in HTA’s offices at the convention center on May 15.

HTA documents show HLTA and Pacific Century were supposed to pay for breakfasts served at those events that cost more than $14,000, Tokioka said in an interview.

“Mufi said he paid it, but there’s no record that he paid it,” Tokioka said….

Auditor: HTA Audit

read … Mufi Hannemann’s Events Spark Inquiry Into Freebies From Tourism Agency

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