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HB252: Malama Solomon Slips Geothermal Permits into Unrelated Bill
SA: State senators, fretting over transparency, want to give the public more time to digest a bill that was supposed to be about the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission but was radically altered to also apply to geothermal development.
Bills often take on different forms as they wind through the legislative process, but the changes to House Bill 252 are unusually striking.
The bill was drafted to require the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission, which is identifying Hawaiians eligible to participate in a new Hawaiian government, to submit annual progress reports to the governor and the Legislature.
But the bill was amended April 1 by the Senate Tourism and Hawaiian Affairs and the Senate Judiciary and Labor committees — without advance public notice — to also establish permitting, mediation and other regulatory standards for geothermal development. The bill, which would include geothermal in the definition of renewable energy, would restore the ability of counties to issue geothermal resource permits for geothermal development in agricultural, rural or urban districts even if such development is not a permissible use under county zoning laws or general plans….
…the amendments were seen as problematic enough that the Senate Judiciary and Labor Committee on April 2 did perform a "gut and replace" and duplicated the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission reporting requirements in a separate bill — House Bill 785 — as a precaution.
Sen. Malama Solomon (D, Kaupulehu-Waimea-North Hilo), who favored the amendments on geothermal development, said the issue is important for Hawaii island, where geothermal expansion is under consideration….
Sen. Russell Ruderman (D, Puna), who wants tighter regulatory oversight of geothermal, said he is "extremely disturbed" by both the substance of the amendments and the legislative process that senators used to add them to an unrelated bill.
HB252: Hawaii Senate Bill Sidesteps Public Input
read … Roll the Hawaiians
Fat City? Medicaid Punches $1.8B Hole in Budget
Borreca: ….For instance, just the cost of restoring the public worker pay cuts taken during the recession adds $78 million a year to the budget….
Perhaps the most serious hand-wringing comes from the Rep. Sylvia Luke's Finance Committee report, which notes that 23 percent of Hawaii residents are on some version of the joint federal-state Medicaid program.
The state Health Department is asking for increases of $207 million for the next two years for the health care payments.
The total state-federal costs are $4 billion, with the state's general fund share to be $1.8 billion for two years.
"Hawaii offers a Medicaid benefits package that is among the nation's most generous," Luke's report says.
She warns that Medicaid costs are expected to grow and that "without an accompanying effort in managing costs it will be unsustainable."….
"Your committee finds that the Department is still mired in bureaucratic inertia," he reports, adding that, "Your committee has grave concerns with the Department's ability to monitor and track its resources."
For instance, Ige says he asked for a report on all temporary positions established by the DOE and learned that the DOE has more than 1,000, and that they go on year after year, even though state law says "they shall not exceed a one-year term."…
Luke complained about the state's Health Department, noting that it seems to be in the throes of an undefined reorganization.
"The department's five-year financial plan … lacked an explanation of how the department's movement of funds and positions justifies its extensive, multiple, and prolonged internal reorganization initiative and financial plan," the report stated.
Luke warned that she did not want to toss state money for programs "that were eliminated due to insufficient oversight, inefficient administration, ineffective outcomes and most importantly duplicative services …"
read … State's expenses still need fixes before we can relax
HMSA: Obamacare Forces 9.1% Premium Hike
SA: The Hawaii Medical Service Association has asked to increase health insurance premiums on small businesses July 1 by an average 8.5 percent, its largest rate increase in four years.
HMSA, the state's largest health insurer, said Monday it needs the increase in part due to costs related to the new national health care reform law.
"Costs are increasing this year, partially due to health care reform," HMSA spokeswoman Elisa Yadao said in an email. Assessments and taxes related to health care reform account for approximately 23 percent of the rate request, she said.
The rate increase would apply to approximately 8,800 small businesses with fewer than 100 employees, Yadao said. HMSA said there are about 81,000 individuals affected. The state Insurance Division put that number at 118,000….
The 8.5 percent increase is for members in HMSA's preferred provider plan, which is the most common plan. HMSA is asking for a 9.1 percent increase for small-business employees on its health maintenance organization plan, HPH Plus….
The nonprofit Connector announced Monday it had won $128 million in federal funds to develop the exchange but hasn't determined how it will pay for its operations after 2014. Some states are assessing fees on insurance carriers.
As the health care reform law is implemented over the next few years, consumers and businesses can expect to see higher rate increases, said Gary Lee, a Honolulu-based principal with Mercer, a New York human resources and benefit plan consultant.
As Explained: Hawaii Health Insurance Rates to Rise 12% to 21% Next Year
read … Obamacare
Hee Has No Clue, Stuck in Past
CB: Sen. Hee, who should be the most informed of citizens given his power over our lives, is actually stuck so far in the past that he has little clue about the news industry's present state or where it's going in the future. You could easily reach that conclusion by the way he's rewritten the shield law and his definition of who or what a journalist is.
With the full Senate scheduled to vote on House Bill 622 Tuesday, and as this issue over media privilege has played out over the past few months, I've been pondering the distinction Hee and others are trying to make between "traditional" and "non-traditional" journalists.
Hee's latest iteration of our craft as laid out in his amended version of HB 622 defines a journalist as someone who works for a traditional media operation — newspaper, magazine, radio or TV station or a wire service like the Associated Press. Reporters, editors, writers, photographers and videographers who don't work for traditional media are apparently not really journalists in Hee's mind.
Even more puzzling is his apparent belief that a newspaper or magazine has to have paid circulation to make it a legitimate news operation.
Well, Sen. Hee, welcome to the 21st century….
read … Hee stuck in the past
House, Senate Budget Conferees Named
CB: The Senate on Thursday passed a $24 billion biennium state budget. The House’s two-year state budget rang in at $23.3 billion, roughly $600 million less than Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s proposal.
The House conferees are: Reps. Luke (chair), Nishimoto, Johanson, Cullen, Hashem, Ing, Jordan, Kobayashi, Lowen, Morikawa, Onishi, Takayama, Tokioka, Woodson, Yamashitsa, Fukumoto and Ward.
The Senate conferees are: Sens. Ige (chair), Kidani, Chun Oakland, Dela Cruz, English, Espero, Kahele, Keith-Agaran, Kouchi, Ruderman, L. Thielen, Tokuda and Slom.
Track the state budget bill, House Bill 200, by clicking here.
read … The Chosen
IBEW 1260 Endorses Schatz
Lets Just Skip to the Comments: Schatz is going to forever be owing his political career to Abercrombie and his faction of the Democratic Party. That means Schatz will do what he is told to do, not what is in the best interest of the people of Hawaii. We do not need to have an Abercrombie puppet as a US Senator. For all the endorsements Schatz has received, remember that this represents less than 5,000 members of these "organizations" and unions. There isn't an overwhelming surge of support for Schatz.
As David Shapiro pointed out in his column this past Sunday, "Linda Kwok Schatz, wife of U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, promised at his campaign kickoff that she won't let him get caught up in rattling cages or seeking the limelight. You've got to admire how she comes right out and says what she tells him to think." You can see that Schatz doesn't even have an independent thought even in his own home, so what makes anyone think he will even consider what the people of Hawaii want.
read … Another Union Endorses Schatz
Lawmakers should vote on pay raises
Star-Adv Editorial: Once again, state politicians confront a delicate political problem: Should they get a raise? In the last few weeks, salary commissions for both the city and state have recommended pay increases for lawmakers and other government officials.
City Council members declined last year to accept pay raises and may do so again, through a vote on a 4 percent salary increase recommended by the Honolulu Salary Commission. Whatever one's opinion on the proposal, the vote alone would demonstrate the superiority of the city's method of handling this issue.
On the state level, members of the Legislature can accept raises without accountability, due to a clever constitutional amendment approved in 2006 that allows the state salary commission's recommendations to go into effect without legislative action.
In March, the state commission recommended 2 percent raises for governors, judges and lawmakers. Last week, the city commission recommended salary increases for the mayor and other top administrators as well as for Council members.
Unlike the Council, which can accept or reject individual recommendations, the Legislature can only reject the guidance in its entirety. So Council members can reject pay raises for themselves while approving them for others as they see fit. For state lawmakers, if they don't get a raise, no one does….
Sam Slom, now the lone Republican senator, opposed the 2006 amendment and proposed during the current session that it be erased from the state Constitution. Instead, he urged that legislators "deliberate and vote upon their own changes in compensation as a means of making them more accountable to the members of the public whom they serve." Unfortunately, his proposal died upon submission.
read … Vote
28 Legislators Raise Funds During Session
CB: "Cash Calls" in our news blog. So far this year, 28 of Hawaii's 76 legislators have notified the State Campaign Spending Commission that they are holding fundraisers asking for $50 or more per contribution. (They are listed at the end of this article.)
Not included are fundraisers that ask for smaller amounts — like the one Speaker Joe Souki held March 15 (Day 32 of session). The reason we know about Souki's fundraiser is that he ran an advertisement (pictured here) in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Twenty-nine states place restrictions on giving and receiving campaign contributions during legislative sessions, but not Hawaii. Bills introduced this year to prohibit fundraisers during session were never heard.
read … Cash Calls
Council wrestles away control of vacant positions
KITV: Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi, who chairs the Budget Committee, says city departments will no longer be allowed to set aside money for positions that have yet to be filled. Instead, funds will be moved into a single provisional account controlled by the city’s Managing Director Ember Shinn.
“So it doesn’t become like a slush fund for the departments, and it’ll be even more transparent,” said Kobayashi. “The taxpayer can see what vacant positions have been filled, and where the money is.”
Under the new protocol, every department must justify a new hire before any money is allocated by Shinn’s office.
read … Vacant
Teachers Tax Credit to Cost $3.5M/Year
AP: The department estimates that the state could lose about $3.5 million a year if the bill is approved.
The Tax Foundation of Hawaii also criticized the bill and suggested giving teachers debit cards with predetermined amounts to cover the cost of school supplies.
"Instead of just throwing money at a problem, which in this case uses a tax credit, lawmakers should demand that the department fix the problem with the money that is there," the organization said in a statement.
Both the House and the Senate have approved versions of the proposal. The Senate is deciding Tuesday whether to agree or disagree with the House draft. Lawmakers will most likely send the bill to a committee made up of both House and Senate lawmakers for further debate.
read … Pay Hike and DoE Budget Boost
Cracking the Code: Are Hawaii Schools Doing Enough for Dyslexic Students?
CB: When Rhea Nekota graduated from high school, she read at the sixth-grade level. She had spent nearly all of her 13 years in Hawaii public schools bouncing between pull-out special education sessions, specialized tutoring, study hall and regular classes — never quite getting the support she needed for her learning disability.
Nekota has dyslexia, which experts say is likely the most common of all learning disabilities. Still, the Hawaii Department of Education, Nekota’s teachers and even her federally mandated Individualized Education Program (IEP) team repeatedly failed to accommodate her. She was isolated and ignored, too advanced for intensive special education yet in desperate need of instruction catered to her learning style.
“I started to feel that no one in the school system really wanted to help me,” she would later write in a personal essay. “My teachers would agree with my mother and say that I needed help, but no one was willing to do anything. I was just passed from one teacher to another. Quarters rolled into semesters, and semesters into years. Years of wasted time, filled with people who didn’t know or care what to do with me.”
SA: Faces of autism include those who fight the battle every day
read … Cracking the Code
Hawaii Co Council Rejects Call for Legalized Gambling
HTH: Hawaii County Council members indicated Monday they’re not ready to gamble on high-stakes bingo as a way to raise revenues in a tight budget year.
Kohala Councilwoman Margaret Wille posed the possibility of trying to get the state to allow Hawaii Island to investigate bingo as a money-making option, saying the county spends a lot of time on the expenditure side of the budget, but not as much on the revenue side.
Wille said high-stakes bingo is different from casino gambling because it’s not a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week enterprise. The pots are much lower, Wille said, and the game takes place at a multi-purpose center that is also used as a place to socialize.
“What is the least bad alternative to deal with the really important financial needs that we have right now,” Wille said. “The reality is, we are in dire financial straits.”
read … Is bingo a good bet for county?
Why big development is so difficult in Hawaii
HB: Not everyone believes that land use regulations are the problem. “When you speak to real developers,” Harris says, “the regulatory side is not where their source of frustration lies, and they’ll tell you that similar regulations occur in almost every state. What developers like is for those regulations to be efficient, to move in an orderly process, and they like to have finality when it gets decided. But it isn’t the regulatory process that daunts them. It’s the cost of financing a project out over time, the cost of construction and construction delay. Those are the things that really drive them to distraction.” While developers may say the biggest delays are caused by lawsuits filed by organizations such as the Sierra Club and the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., environmental and Native Hawaiian rights advocates contend they’re just making sure the process is followed.
Denise Antolini, an associate dean at the UH law school and a prominent environmental attorney, believes the current system works well for those who play by the rules. “I think there is a lot of development moving ahead successfully in Hawaii – some of it very good,” she says. “The rules are pretty clear on most land-use and environmental laws, and I think the businesses and developers who are used to operating here know how to get through the system. I think the projects that get stymied, or become controversial, or blow up, tend to be the projects driven by interests that don’t have a lot of experience or roots in Hawaii.”
Antolini’s contention is that most of the major land-use litigation over the past decade has been for projects developed by off-island corporations. Callies has a different take: He thinks only off-island interests – those who only expect to do only one project in Hawaii – can afford to challenge the system. Local developers, who know they have to deal with the LUC and the counties in the future, are afraid to rock the boat.
read … Why big development is so difficult in Hawaii
OHA Grabs for Piece of Obamacare Pie
HB: Speculation emerges about an alliance of Hawaiian values OHA cronies that could be formed by nonprofits and government agencies with land holdings… Some suggest an influential coalition based on Hawaiian values, cronyism, not simply economic value, could help steer the Islands’ future….
Office of Hawaiian Affairs Trustee Peter Apo recently offered a list of five entities created by or for Hawaiians. Three of them are private nonprofits and the other two are government agencies:
Kamehameha Schools, The Queen’s Health Systems, Queen Liliuokalani Trust, Department of Hawaiian Home Lands and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. (Clue: Queen’s Health Systems)
“I’d like to try to get them together and have a dialog to figure out ways to connect the dots, perhaps work together on a project or at least provide some direction,” Apo says. Collectively, they could offer a joint vision for a Hawaiian-driven future for the state, he says. …
TZ Economics principal Paul Brewbaker doesn’t buy the notion of a new Big Five. “It’s hard to imagine these five entities as being serious contenders for significant, real capital formation in Hawaii on urban lands not encumbered with various special conditions of their existence or historical origins,” he said. “Capitalism has a tendency to work around these kinds of obstacles, not with them.”
Nonetheless, Brewbaker recognizes the political power that big landowners have today, though it is much diminished from the days of the Big Five.
“The new 21st-century interrelationship between large landholders and government is more subtle and involves special-interest groups,” he says. “In urban development, large landholders are among the most influential special interests.” As evidence, he points to decisions to build the “Second City” of Kapolei, to route the rail line to Hoopili and to locate the University of Hawaii-West Oahu and future Ka Makana Alii shopping mall.
read … New Big 5 Emerging in Hawaii?
Kane: KSBE Trustees Much More Hands-Off
HB: I think there’s a perception that trustees operate like they did in the old days, but now we’re not active managers. We’re not there on a day-to-day basis. The focus is much higher, at the governance and oversight-of-the-assets level. We’re trying to continue to change the perception of how a trustee operates. There’s a CEO-based management system and the trustees are regular people who have full-time jobs and families. We meet once a week for about three hours.
read … Talk Story with Micah Kane Chief Operating Officer, Pacific Links Hawaii Trustee, Kamehameha Schools
Placing AIDS Patients at Risk, Hawaii Lawmakers Open STD Treatment Option To Gays
CB: Expedited partner therapy, a practice that’s growing nationally, lets doctors treat the partners of patients who have chlamydia or gonorrhea without first examining them. Advocates say this could help reduce Hawaii’s high rates of both diseases, particularly among women.
Senate Bill 655, as initially introduced in January by Sen. Josh Green, would have opened up this treatment option to anyone. But last month the Senate Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee, chaired by Sen. Roz Baker, restricted it to heterosexuals.
The House Consumer Protection and Judiciary committees last week undid the Senate’s limiting language by deleting “heterosexual” in references to partners. They also broadened it to include other sexually transmitted diseases that are or may be recommended by the CDC.
Rep. Karl Rhoads, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, could not be reached for comment Monday.
The Senate committee’s decision to restrict expedited partner therapy was based on a 2006 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that recommends it only as a last resort for same-sex couples due to the high risk of coexisting infections, especially undiagnosed HIV.
(Translation: MDs prescribing meds to patients they never see in person may unwittingly endanger the health of that patient. The risk is magnified if the unseen patient has HIV/AIDS.)
That report hasn’t stopped other states, such as Iowa, from keeping their statutes open to all patients regardless of sexual orientation.
read … Political Correctness vs Gay Health?
Study Claims Hyper-Thyroidism Link to Fukushima
G: Children born in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington between one week and 16 weeks after the meltdowns began in March 2011 were 28 percent more likely to suffer from congenital hypothyroidism than were kids born in those states during the same period one year earlier, a new study shows. In the rest of the U.S. during that period in 2011, where radioactive fallout was less severe, the risks actually decreased slightly compared with the year before.
Link: PAPER
read … Fukushima
Louisville's Pitino had controversial Hawaii ties
HNN: In 1989, the Lexington Herald-Leader and the New York Times cited a 1977 NCAA report on sanctions against the University of Hawaii.
According to the report, Pitino was implicated in eight of the 64 infractions that led the university to be placed on probation.
The violations involving Pitino included providing round-trip air fare for a player between New York and Honolulu, arranging for student-athletes to receive used cars for season tickets, and handing out coupons to players for free food at McDonald's.
The NCAA committee on infractions recommended in 1977 that Pitino and O'Neil be disassociated from Hawaii athletics.
In 1989 Pitino told reporters, "One thing you won't have to worry about is cheating with Rick Pitino. It didn't happen in Hawaii as far as I'm concerned." Pitino added, "I was a graduate assistant. I didn't make any mistakes, I don't care what anybody says."
read … I don’t care
Homeless Dude Announces Next Run for Congress
HNN: You'll recall we introduced you to Kawika Crowley last election. He was the homeless candidate who won the Republican primary for Congress. He is a fiery guy anyway but he really got angry when someone burned his American flag.
"Sorry guys. I get tears in my eyes, but that's what somebody did to my flag," said Kawika Crowley, former Republican Congressional candidate, as he pointed to the charred remains of the flag.
The homeless handyman's van is his transportation, home and office. Now it is also a crime scene. At 3:30 Sunday morning someone grabbed his American flag from its holder and set it on fire under the back of the van near his gas tank….
Word about the incident spread almost as fast as the flames and the Kaneohe Shell Station already gave Crowley a new American flag.
"She's going to fly again!" Crowley said waving the new flag.
The incident has not extinguished Crowley's passion. He does plan to run for Congress again next election.
read … Announces Campaign
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