July 22, 2026 News Read > Hawaii Free Press

Hawaii Daily News Read

Wednesday, July 22, 2026

July 22, 2026 News Read
By Andrew Walden @ 7:48 AM :: 209 Views

Feds: Hawaii Homeownership 18.9% Lower Than Believed

Hawaii Tries and Fails to make Second Amendment a 'Property Rights' Issue

AG’s decision on Lt. Gov. Luke is ‘imminent’ –‘Quick closure for everyone’

SA: … “Imminent” but unspecified “major announcements” concerning Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke are coming following a seven-month investigation by the state Department of the Attorney General into allegations that an “influential state legislator” accepted $35,000 in a paper bag in 2022, according to Gov. Josh Green.

“A lot of the concerns that have been raised are going to be made public and you’re going to see a great deal of activity in a few short days,” Green told Hawaii News Now on Tuesday. “So get ready to have a vibrant discussion along with all of society. That is imminent. Can I give you the details? No, I can’t because that’s got to be done by the attorney general and it’s got to be done in a way that’s consistent with fairness.”…

Green said Tuesday that he expects there will be “a major announcement and then there will be, I assume, a lot of activity and resolution in the weeks that follow.”

He previously said he was not interviewed as part of the investigation and was not involved in the allegations….

Lopez, Green said, “did not provide any special treatment or any cover for anybody and I think actually there will be a fair amount of closure quite quickly for everyone.”…

Read … Gov. Green says AG’s decision on Lt. Gov. Luke is ‘imminent’ | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

A studio can be rented for up to $3,773 a month and be considered ‘affordable’

CB: … The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development starts with some income data then uses a complicated formula that also factors in Honolulu’s high residential rents to determine AMI, Bond-Smith said in an email.

The result, he said, is that “the $107,800 (median income) is constructed from market rent rather than measured income.”

In other words, area median income is simply a technical term that doesn’t mean what it seems to.

“It is a program eligibility threshold driven by Honolulu rents, not an income measure (even though it is called AMI),” Bond-Smith said….

(CLUE: Don’t blame the feds. Local authorities could have adopted a different system if they wanted to.)

Under state and local affordable housing policies, developers can receive a variety of incentives to help their projects pencil out if they set aside some of the new housing for people at certain AMI levels.

Under a Honolulu land-use ordinance passed in 2019, for example, developers can build bigger and higher than zoning laws would normally allow by agreeing to rent at least 80% of the new units at 100% AMI for at least 15 years. In dollar terms, that means a studio in one of these projects can be rented for $2,696 per month and a two-bedroom apartment for $3,465, and be considered affordable.

Housing built under a state affordable housing statute can cost renters and buyers even more. Under the law, which is administered by the Hawaiʻi Housing Finance and Development Corporation, developers can be exempted from all manner of state and county land-use laws if they price at least 50% of the units at up to 140% of AMI.

That means a studio can be rented for up to $3,773 a month and be considered affordable….

Read … Why Isn't Hawaiʻi's 'Affordable Housing' More Affordable? - Honolulu Civil Beat

Ranked Choice Voting Scam on the November Ballot – Honolulu Charter Amendment

HPR: … The commission on Monday approved about 20 questions to amend the Honolulu City Charter this election cycle.

One would ask residents if city officials should be elected by ranked-choice voting. Voters would be able to select their top five candidates for each race, and their ballots — and rankings — will be tabulated in a way that results in a candidate that gets more than 50% of votes.

If the proposal passes, and with state authorization, city elections could use ranked-choice voting as early as 2032….

REALITY: Ranked Choice Voting: Who Gets Disenfranchised?

FV: Honolulu will vote on ranked choice voting in November - FairVote

Read … Honolulu charter amendment questions finalized, with some big proposals left out | Hawai'i Public Radio

Petition: New Hawaii Drivers License is Gay

HNN: … During a press conference Tuesday, Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi commented on the criticism over the first update to the cards in 17 years.

The changes include 50 safety features to fend off fraudsters.

“Whatever those people were that didn’t like it, that’s just the way it is. We’re not backing off. This is the card. Get used to it. Fall in love with it. Take it home. Look at it. Stare at it. Learn to like it,” Blangiardi said….

Change: Petition · Reconsider Hawaiʻi’s New Driver's License & State ID Design - United States · Change.org

COMMENTS: “Rainbows are all over the world. Pick something about hawaii and hawaii is not a gay state.” … “THIS SHID GAY AF…”

SA: Hawaii driver’s licenses, state IDs get a redesign | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Read … ‘Get used to it’: Honolulu mayor responds to backlash over new Hawaii license, ID design | Hawaii News Now

No Penalty For Kauaʻi Candidates Who Blew Financial Reporting Deadline

CB: … Five candidates for Kaua‘i County Council and one for mayor were months late in filing mandated public disclosures about their employers, income, board positions, property and other financial interests.

Under current county rules, they face no consequences for failing to disclose their finances — a sharp contrast to Honolulu and Hawai‘i counties, where such tardiness could result in fines as high as $2,000 and even prison time.

“That is key information for many informed voters and not having that information when you’re making decisions is cheating the system,” said Camron Hurt, state director for Common Cause Hawaii, adding that the county should rectify it immediately.

The Kaua‘i Board of Ethics plans to discuss next month whether to implement fines for late filers. …The Hawai‘i House passed a resolution last year urging the counties to adopt similar standards as the state. Candidates for state office are assessed an initial $50 administrative fine for late financial disclosure filings. An additional $250 fine can be assessed if the candidate is over 30 days late.

Last September, the Kauaʻi Board of Ethics formed a working group to take up that issue and others, such as whether the board’s rules or county’s Code of Ethics needed amendments regarding fines, nepotism and gifts.

Hurt said a rule without a consequence is just a suggestion, and that there should be consequences for candidates filing financial disclosures late…

While the candidate financial disclosures are public record, the county doesn’t make them available online. Instead, the county will provide them upon request. Civil Beat obtained the financial disclosures from the 2026 candidates who have filed so far and put them in a public Google Drive folder here….

Read … No Penalty For Kauaʻi Candidates Who Blew Financial Reporting Deadline - Honolulu Civil Beat

1970 Flashback: Hawai‘i's election amnesia

ASD: … In case you’ve forgotten, that voter-ID regime was set up in 1970, via Act 26 of the Hawai‘i state Legislature under Gov. John A. Burns, when Hawai‘i was just as much a blue state as it is now. It was set up by Democrats following national trends toward good government reforms, modernizing and overhauling our elections for greater trust.

Hawai‘i threw that all away in 2019, ostensibly on the grounds that moving to an all-mail election would improve Hawai‘i’s lousy turnout.

It didn’t do that. As I pointed out on this subject last year, Hawai‘i’s 2024 turnout of 60% in the general election was the lowest in our entire history of statehood.

Too bad the bill didn’t include language that says, “If mail-in elections fail at this goal, we revert to the normal procedure.” So we seem stuck with this shabby substitute for a real election …

Read … Pipikaula Corner: Hawai‘i's election amnesia

Because of ‘Complete Streets’ mentality, Honolulu Cut School Zone Speed Limits But Won't Change all the Signs for 14 years

CB: … The speed limit on Oʻahu school zones is 20 miles per hour. You wouldn’t know it by driving by….

The city’s Complete Streets Program (pretends to) collaborates with other agencies like the Department of Transportation to del~~iver~~(ay) safety improvements for the city’s streets.

Updating signage can be more complex than it seems, according to Espiau.

“We really have to look at the entire school zone signage around the school and update the entire sequence,” she said.

(No. They need to order up a bunch of ‘0’ stickers and put them over the ‘5’, thus changing ‘25’ to ‘20’. Duh.)

In Espiau’s estimate, the first batch of roughly 14 schools alone requires removing 131 outdated signs and installing 387 new ones, along with making sure signposts meet the current federal standards such as placement distance and sign sizing.

Each school zone needs around 50 sign “adjustments” — removals, new signs and post changes — which pencils out to roughly 10,000 individual sign changes across about 200 school zones islandwide, she said….

(According to the Internet, which is The Source of All Wisdom, there are 180 to 200 schools on Oahu. 200/14 = 14.3 years to change all the signs.)

Read … Honolulu Cut Speed Limits By Schools But Didn't Change The Signs - Honolulu Civil Beat

Octogenarian, city, seek settlement in suit over $600,000 fine

ASD: … In May, Wilhelmina Rise resident Sandra May sued the City and County of Honolulu in federal court after she racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines by incorrectly listing a rental property as available to short-term tenants.

May, who her lawyer said “struggles to utilize any kind of technology,” intended to list her rental unit only for periods of 30 days or more, but had accidentally listed it as available for shorter periods on multiple occasions. The third time this happened, in 2024, the city informed her that her lapse would incur daily $10,000 fines until she corrected it, which she did 59 days and $590,000 later.

An additional $10,000 lien the city placed on May’s property brought the total amount she owed to an even $600,000.

May’s attorney Loren Seehase told Aloha State Daily in May that the city did not tell May of any way to challenge or appeal the fines, leaving her no choice but to challenge them on U.S. constitutional grounds: specifically, as a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which protects against excessive fines.

On Monday, however, attorneys for the defendants — which, along with the city, included Dawn Apuna, director of the county Department of Planning and Permitting, and the department itself — submitted a statement to the court informing it that the case will likely be dismissed….

Read … Octogenarian, city, seek settlement in suit over $600,000 fine

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