Crossover List: House Passes More Than 150 Bills, Senate 136
Testimony: Passage of SB286 Will Lead to State Court Challenge
EPIC: FBI Sued over ‘Orwellian’ Hawaii Snooping Program
Jones Act in the News
Hearing Today: HCR189/HR150 Alternatives to Big Wind, Big Cable
Land Use: Making an Environment for Those With Means
No ‘Constitutional Right’ to Leave Unattended Property on the Street
Gut and Replace: Committee Chairs 2 - Committee Members 0
SB982 Changing the Way Votes Are Counted on Constitutional Amendments
DLNR participating in Statewide Earth Month events
Caldwell Rewards Campaign Chair With Zoning Board Appointment
CB: Caldwell wants to appoint his campaign chairman Lex Smith to the Honolulu Zoning Board of Appeals.
Here’s his letter to the Honolulu City Council asking to approve the appointment.
Smith, a local attorney, headed up the mayor’s controversial transition team that received hundreds of thousands of dollars from private donors to help him settle in and pick his cabinet.
According to Smith’s application, his law firm, Kobayashi, Sugita & Goda, collects an estimated $500,000 in fees from the city.
Smith is a former chairman of the Honolulu Ethics Commission (appointed by Mr. Ethics himself, Jeremy Harris). He resigned in 2010 to help Caldwell run for mayor.
Related: Feds Investigate Caldwell Admin Official, Caldwell Secretly Appoints ‘Chief of Staff’--Convicted Criminal Harry Mattson
read … Payback
Homosexual Child Molester Wins Big at Merry Monarch Fest
ILind: Veteran journalist Bob Jones took to Facebook to break the silence about the elephant in the room ignored in all the Merrie Monarch news coverage.
Maybe you’ll disagree, but I’ve never been ok with Chinky Mahoe let right back into the Merrie Monarch after his conviction for sexual abuse of boys in his halau. He got no jail time on that, and then he gets applause and awards. He was like a schoolteacher — a position of special trust. He violated that. I’d have said “sorry, no Merrie Monarch invitation.” Now he’s top award winner. Doing business as usual. No penalty. Audience wildly claps.
The charges against Mahoe were reported as “breaking news” by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin back in May 1997.
A year later, the S-B reported Mahoe entered no contest pleas to five felony counts of third-degree sexual assault and one misdemeanor count of fourth-degree sexual assault.
When sentencing was delayed for a third time, the mother of one of his victims spoke out.
“He did the crime,” she said yesterday after Circuit Judge Wilfred Watanabe postponed Mahoe’s sentencing until Sept. 24. “He should pay for it and not travel around and not have fun.”
She said the four boys Mahoe sexually assaulted were the ones “locked up” in their own emotional prisons, unable to heal until the court concludes the case.
Mahoe’s attorney said:
“He (Mahoe) is continuing to teach and tour,” Gierlach said about his client. “He’s doing just fine.”
Hawaii Threads: Chinky Mahoe
Related: $5M Settlement in Homosexual Rape Gang case at DoE Blind-Deaf School
read … Merrie Monarch winner still on the sex offender registry following 1998 convictions
2014: HHSC Hospitals Come to Dead End
SA: The Legislature is failing abysmally by not facilitating transition of the Hawaii Health Systems Corp. into a sustainable 21st century enterprise….
» Dismal reimbursements: Outer island residents are disproportionately insured by Medicaid and Medicare, both paying about 77 percent on the dollar. HMSA pays 106 percent of cost, versus a national figure of about 125 percent, and not enough to make up for the pitiful payments from Medicaid/ Medicare.
» The unions: There, it's said. No one wants to call this spade a spade, but numerous state senators, representatives, the heads of the Honolulu hospitals, heck, even the governor, admit this behind closed doors.
Staff at HHSC facilities are civil service employees, relatively low-paid but enjoying generally stellar health care and retirement benefits. Total employment costs for HHSC consume 75-80 percent of revenue generated — in stark contrast to national figures of 45-50 percent.
The unions are brilliant at pursuing their interests and with a PR machine that portrays their efforts as protecting the public. But, God bless 'em, they know absolutely nothing — nothing — about running a hospital or a health care system.
Reality check: HHSC hospitals are not a works program (though they're often the largest employer in their communities). What's so galling is that the unions' shameless efforts to perpetuate the current unsustainable system — requiring a $72 million-plus yearly state subsidy that must only grow in face of reimbursement decreases and increasing costs — will only, in the very near future, actually result in major job losses as the hospitals are forced to cut services.
But the necessary legislation — House Bill 1483 — has been diluted, diminished, shriveled and amended by a gutless Legislature so that all that remains is an anemic intent to create yet another task force to study the matter.
The unions and their cowardly legislative minions are holding the future health care of the entire outer island populace hostage to misguided, short-term interests.
This is the ultimate kicking the can down the road — except that around the very next curve, as soon as 2014, the road comes to a very dead end.
And that's a fact: Medicare payments will decrease by millions of dollars and the recent Hawaii Government Employees Association nurses' award will increase costs by $11.5 million, boosting the employee costs to 80-85 percent of revenue….
Background:
read … Unions are main reason state hospitals are broke
Hidden Unemployment 12.8% in Hawaii – Rank 17th in USA
SA: A broad measure of joblessness that includes those who are forced into part-time jobs or have become so discouraged that they've stopped looking for work fell in Hawaii last year to its lowest level in four years, according to a report released Tuesday.
The rate, which represents what some economists refer to as "hidden unemployment," dropped to 12.8 percent in 2012 from 15.1 percent in 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. The 2012 rate was the lowest since 2008 when it was 8.8 percent.
The number of unemployed Hawaii residents totaled 38,600 in 2012. There also were 34,000 workers who were employed part time involuntarily because they could not find full-time work due to "slack work or business conditions," the bureau reported.
In addition, there were 10,600 individuals classified as "marginally attached" to the labor force, who had looked for work at some point during the previous 12 months but not in the four weeks before the survey was taken. Within the marginally attached group, 2,900 were classified as "discouraged workers" because they indicated in their telephone interview they were not looking for work because they believed no jobs were available for them….
Hawaii's U-6 rate in 2012 was the 17th lowest among all 50 states, the bureau reported. The U-6 rates ranged from a low of 6.1 percent in North Dakota to a high of 20.3 in Nevada. The national average was 14.7 percent.
Hawaii's U-3 jobless rate averaged 5.8 percent in 2012, the lowest since 2008 when it averaged 4.1 percent for the year. The national U-3 unemployment rate averaged 8.1 percent in 2012.
Read … 'Hidden unemployment' hits 4-year low
FACE Makes Excuses for Not Increasing Tip Credit
FACE: As the discussion continues, I have grave concerns about increasing the so-called tip credit as a part of this legislation. Tip credits allow businesses to pay workers less based on the assumption that the employees will make tips. Yet tips are an income stream that does not involve the employer — they are between the customer and the server, and are based on the quality of the service. It seems remarkably unfair to insert the employers into this dynamic by exempting them from wage laws.
Increasing the tip credit essentially allows the employer to reach into the pocket of the server and take some of their tips. Even worse, tipping does not occur across the board — in the visitor industry, a large percentage of tourists are from countries that do not tip, so hotel workers cannot rely on tips in the way that workers who serve local customers do.
Reality: How Hawaii Minimum Wage Workers Earn $24.24 per hour
FACE: Tracing the Financial Outlines of Socialism in Hawaii
read … A bunch of Excuses
If Lawmakers Spend Too Much Now, They May Have to Raise Taxes in Election Year
SA: State House and Senate leaders said Tuesday they are confident they have the money for a robust two-year state budget, but they are increasingly tentative about spending on tax incentives and new state programs because of the financial uncertainty in future years.
Lawmakers have positioned the budget and dozens of other bills for conference committee negotiations over the next few weeks, including Gov. Neil Abercrombie's early-childhood education initiative, an increase in the minimum wage, a loan program that would help consumers finance solar improvements, and the restructuring of solar tax credits.
The Legislature is also on track to address the multibillion-dollar unfunded liability in the public worker health care fund and to replenish the state's hurricane relief and rainy day funds, which had been tapped during the recession.
But lawmakers are less sure about income tax relief, expanding film production tax credits or providing incentives for entrepreneurs. The House and Senate have also staked out competing ground over whether to extend a temporary increase in the hotel room tax beyond 2015, money the state budget director insists he needs for the state's six-year financial plan.
Lawmakers also do not know whether they will have to immediately account for new contracts with public-sector labor unions beyond the tentative agreement between the state and the Hawaii State Teachers Association. Other unions are still in negotiations with the state, and any agreement reached after the session ends in early May would likely not come before lawmakers until next year.
With the state finally on more stable financial footing, lawmakers see danger in committing to new spending now only to have to search for revenue next year because of collective bargaining or other pressures.
read … Elections Coming
Crossover at The Legislature
- CB: House Factions Clash Over Hurricane Reserve Fund
- CB: Early Ed Funding Proposal, Highway Vending, Bus Contracts, Med Pot Bills Pass
- CB: Public Financing Of Elections Bills Pass House, Senate
- CB: Tax Credits for the Poor, Emergency Contraception… And Bird Poop
- CB: House Likes Green Loans, PV Credits, Pre-K, SHPD Bills
- AP: Hawaii Senate approves public land agency repeal
- BIN: Senate Approves PLDC Bill; Decision Reverts to House
- AP: Hawaii House moves forward bills to address unfunded liabilities, protect domestic workers
- DN: People to legislators: Stop “gut and replace” shenanigans
- HR: Lawmakers Pass Legislation to Put More Restrictions on People, Businesses ... and Birds
Ban fundraisers during session
SA: Two virtually identical bills to ban fundraisers during session — House Bill 1246 and Senate Bill 843 — were introduced, respectively, by Republican state Rep. Cynthia Thielen and Democratic state Sen. Les Ihara. Neither measure moved an inch and are now dead for the year.
There is still hope for two other bills, championed in particular by Common Cause Hawaii, that now seem headed for House-Senate conference committees. They should be passed into law.
HB 1147 would require noncandidate committees, also known as political action committees, to identify certain top contributors in their advertisements, making the source of the funding more transparent.
The other is HB 1132, which seeks to move up the deadline for lawmakers to file public financial disclosure statements. Now the deadline is May 31; enactment of the bill would make them due Jan. 31. That's soon after the Legislature convenes, shedding more light on the politicians' financial interests.
read … Ban fundraisers during session
7 Newly Elected Democrats Offer Themselves for Sale to Highest Bidder
CB: State Reps. Bertrand Kobayashi, Kaniela Ing, Nicole Lowen, Gregg Takayama, Richard Onishi, Justin Woodson and Takashi Ohno are holding a campaign fundraiser Wednesday (April 10 — tonight) at Ferguson’s Irish Pub
read … Cash Call
Finally ... Rail CEO Faces Off with Opponents Over Rail Project
HR: One year ago, the city’s Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board hired Dan Grabauskas as its CEO and executive director. Unlike his predecessor, Grabauskas promised to run an open and transparent administration and he started with putting several thousand documents about the rail that the media and the public had been requesting on HART’s web site.
But he wouldn’t debate rail opponents in the media or at an event. In fact, it took Grabauskas one year to agree just to appear in a public forum with opponents of the city’s planned $5.2 billion rail project.
On Tuesday, April 10, at the University of Hawaii's art center, Grabauskas participated in a student-organized panel on the rail project along with HART Board member Ivan Lui-Kwan.
Grabauskas and Kwan faced off against rail opponents Dr. Panos Prevedouros, an engineering professor at the University, and Randy Roth, University of Hawaii law professor, who is one of the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging the rail project.
Panos: Panel Discussion on Rail at University of Hawaii-Manoa
read … Finally
Frivolous Claim Over Sovereignty Snags Homeowner
ILind: A number of competing individuals and groups claiming to be the legitimate successors to the pre-1893 Kingdom of Hawaii have encouraged a “sovereignty” narrative which includes the belief that official actions of the state since the overthrow of the monarchy are illegal, including real estate transactions.
These beliefs can have real consequences, as one former Kaaawa resident is learning after the sale of his home suddenly became entangled in a legal mess caused by an apparently fraudulent claim to the property filed by an unrelated third-party.
The homeowner, who Civil Beat agreed not to identify because he feared it could compound his woes, put his house up for sale after getting transferred back to the mainland. He recently accepted an offer on the house and the deal went into escrow. All looked good to go until he was informed the title search had turned up a document filed in the state Bureau of Conveyances less than three weeks ago claiming ownership of some or all of the property.
The document filed with the bureau on March 21 is titled: “Affidavit of Gilbert Ah Quin also known as His Highness Keone, a living Sovereign,” and claims to establish that the land had been granted to him in 2011 by the “Hawaiian Kingdom Government.”
The homeowner says he does not know and has never even heard of Ah Quin before being informed by the title company.
“What really scares me,” the homeowner told me this week, “is that the state put it in there (in the Bureau of Conveyances) without question. It should ring a bell right there.”
“When I spoke to the person who answered the phone at the Bureau of Conveyances, he looked up the document and immediately said, ‘yes, this is fraud,’” the homeowner said….
This appears to be the same group which has staged several high-profile protests at Iolani Palace since 2008. The link seems confirmed by the final part of the document which purports to be a “declaratory judgement” by the Supreme Court of the Hawaiian Islands. This document refers to “Mahealani, by the grace of God, of the Hawaiian Islands, Queen,” apparently a reference to Mahealani Kahau, the group’s leader, who claims the title of queen.
…title searches typically weed out obviously frivolous claims, and that could still happen in this case….
Background:
read … Frivolous Claim Over Sovereignty Snags Homeowner
Private Schools Fill Gap For Hawaii's Dyslexic Kids — But At High Cost
CB: Just as her grandson B.J. was gearing up for high school, Carol Mikasobe decided she was fed up.
No more exasperating meetings with B.J.'s Individualized Education Program (IEP) team. No more stonewalling from the schools. No more expensive outside tutoring. No more seeing B.J. suffer.
B.J., 14, has dyslexia, a learning disability that along with similar language-based learning disabilities affects as much as 20 percent of the population.
And until she decided to scrape together the money last year and enroll B.J. in Assets School, all Mikasobe could do was watch her grandson struggle.
"It's the most frustrating thing," Mikasobe said, recalling B.J.'s three years in middle school. "I had been asking at all the IEP meetings for special reading classes. They said 'Our teachers are trained,' but not once did they have any time or process for him to get special reading classes."
B.J.'s public elementary and middle schools, she said, refused to provide the specialized and intensive support he needed. After being notified that B.J. had a reading disability, the school put him in an extra reading class for one year. But in seventh and eighth grades B.J. was placed in cooking and sewing classes instead, said Mikasobe, who currently serves as B.J.'s primary caregiver.
Conversations with other parents and advocates suggest that experiences like B.J.'s are widespread throughout both the state and country.
read … Private Schools Fill Gap For Hawaii's Dyslexic Kids — But At High Cost
BoR Claims Problem is a PR Matter
SA: Board of Regents members told an advisory task group conducting a study of accountability in the University of Hawaii system that there may be a disconnect between their role and the public's perception of that role, but that they understand they have to improve efforts to be more transparent.
The interviews were conducted in March, and the task group will next sit down with the Governor's Office and key legislators.
Lawrence Rodriguez, chairman of the Board of Regents task group, said BOR members felt the public misunderstood their duties as a board that formulates policy and oversees the university's president.
He also said members are looking to "enhance their transparency."
"It's not something new to them, but it's something that they understand they need to place higher levels of concentration on … to continue to build a trust with their constituents," Rodriguez said.
The advisory task group, made up of BOR members and members of the public, is studying a host of operational concerns at the university, many of which were raised in the wake of last year's Stevie Wonder concert debacle.
read … Blame the Public
Another Day, Another Escapee
SA: Police today arrested an 18-year-old escapee who allegedly robbed a 14-year-old boy in Kaneohe on Sunday….
Police said the man had also failed to return to the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility in Kailua from a weekend furlough on Sunday.
read … Justice Reinvestment
Accused of Attacking Japanese Tourist, Could Have Been Extradited Back to Mainland
HNN: According to authorities, Klein's rap sheet in Oregon includes reckless endangering, drug offenses and arson. He was convicted of starting a fire inside Eugene Christian Fellowship in 2010. He violated his probation and was also wanted for allegedly possessing methamphetamine. A bench warrant caught the attention of Kauai police when he was arrested a month before the tourist attack for driving without a license, but the District Attorney's Office in Lane County decided not to seek an extradition since the sheriff couldn't guarantee that there would be room for Klein at the overcrowded jail.
"Justice is not being served here (in Lane County) and I don't see it changing dramatically in the foreseeable future. Our sheriff's office is incredibly underfunded and staffed, and our jail is barely functioning," said Patty Perlow, Lane County's chief deputy district attorney.
Klein's sister questioned the decision not to send him back to Oregon.
"If he had been extradited initially, before this happened, we wouldn't be in this circumstance. So I do blame Oregon for part of it because Oregon already knew that he had been in a mental hospital previously," said Pearson.
As Explained: Connecticut Shooting: Failure of Mental Health System
read … Soft on Mental Illness
Order aerial hunting on Big Island to resume
AP: A federal court order is allowing Hawaii officials to resume aerial hunting of feral sheep and goats in an effort to protect a critically endangered bird found only in certain parts of Mauna Kea.
Earthjustice hails the order issued earlier this week as crucial to the palila's survival.
The state Department of Land and Natural Resources suspended hunting the non-native animals after a Hawaii County ordinance was passed with strong community support to ban hunting from helicopters or airplanes.
read … Eradication
Sierra Club Used Wrong Population Projections in Support of Honolulu’s Rail
HR: Anthony Aalto, Chair of the Sierra Club, Oahu Group made a presentation in late 2012 at a forum at the UH's Richardson School of Law. The focus was to “Keep the Country Country by Making the City more City.” After watching Mr. Aalto’s presentation I suspect that Oahu’s Sierra Club support for rail may be based on wrong numbers. Here is why.
Between minutes 13:30 and 16:00 Mr. Aalto lays the foundation of Sierra Club's support for rail as an absolute necessity due to the impending population boom. He says that (unnamed) experts predict that in the next 25 years Oahu will grow by 200,000 people. This growth is only the base. It is attributable to the natural growth from the difference between births and deaths.
Then there will be added growth from migration. This will add another 125,000 net in population in the next 25 years, he proclaimed. Then he rounded these sums to an even 350,000 for Oahu’s population growth by 2035.
But these population numbers are wrong. Between 2000 and 2009 Honolulu had 122,222 births and 59,029 deaths. In the same period, international migration came to a net gain of 27,918. Domestic immigration, that is, people leaving Honolulu County to other county in Hawaii or the US mainland came to a loss of 54,238. Long story short, the State of Hawaii is growing by about 0.7% per year and the City and County of Honolulu is growing by about 0.36% per year.
read … Sierra Club Used Wrong Population
Hawaii 9th Smallest Male-Female Pay Gap
CB: According to a study by the National Partnership for Women & Families based on U.S. Census data, a Hawaii woman who holds a full-time job “is paid $37,242 per year while a man who holds a full-time job is paid $45,494 per year.
This means that women in Hawaii are paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to men, amounting to a yearly gap of $8,252 between men and women who work full time in the state.”
That’s actually better than the national average, according to the study. A woman holding a full-time, fullyear job is paid $37,118 per year while a man is paid $48,202. Overall, women nationally are paid 77 cents for every dollar paid to men.
Hawaii had the ninth smallest wage gap nationally.
Link: News Release
read … Hawaii Women Make 82 Cents For Every Dollar Made By Men
Is Hawaiian geothermal investigation a flight of fancy?
GH: Eastland Group has drawn a line under its failed aviation adventure — or nearly has, pending the sale of some helicopters — just as it seems it could be about to launch its next “big thing”.
Group business development manager Gavin Murphy, who is also president of Gisborne Chamber of Commerce, is halfway through a two-month stint in Hawaii assessing prospects for investing in a geothermal energy project there.
Eastland Group has a right to take part in the project courtesy of its partnership with indigenous Hawaiian group IDG (Innovations Development Group).
It had seemed the Hawaiian link with the eastern Bay of Plenty Maori trust that owns the land where Eastland Group operates a geothermal plant, and plans to build another, was a necessary but unwelcome complication.
IDG was granted the exclusive right to develop the trust’s geothermal resources in January 2008. It brings to the table its proprietary Native-to-Native community-based development model but no actual geothermal development experience.
Eastland Group, also new to the industry, came on board as the technical and financial partner in August 2010 — bringing in outside expertise and developing its own.
The community-owned energy and logistics business has made the case for some years now that it needs to grow and diversify outside this region to reduce geographic risk — in a relatively small district where it is already a dominant economic force — and to create wealth for its owner the Eastland Community Trust.
Its ambition is to be a great New Zealand company.
But many of its beneficiaries, essentially the people of this district, believe it should focus on the key infrastructure assets it operates — our electricity network, port and airport.
It is good to see the group back fully out of its aviation investments. It should also tell its beneficiaries how much it lost — and learned — on this ill-fated endeavour, as it asks them to trust it to make the right calls with its geothermal business.
read … New Zealand
Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is a double-edged sword
Henry Curtis: The Hawaii Consumer Advocate notes that "HECO and Hawaii Gas, formerly The Gas Company, are both carefully studying the possibility of importing LNG for electricity generation." The Consumer Advocate goes on to say that "given this currently low price, LNG offers potential lower cost electricity generation for Hawaii’s consumers.”
Commercial and industrial customers could rely on the Hawai`iGas pipeline system to get gas delivered to their buildings. These customers could install on-site combined heat and power (cogeneration) units which can convert 90% of the energy content of LNG to useful heat and electricity.
Commercial and industrial customers will also be able to choose to stay attached to the HECO grid and to rely on utility generators which are 20-40% efficient. Most of the energy content of the fuel burned in a utility generator is lost as heat, either up the smokestack or out to sea through an outfall pipe.
Many of these large users will find the Hawai`iGas option to be much more desirable, and will sever their electrical connection with HECO’s grid.
read … Something Doubtful
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