Hawaii’s failed wildfire rebuild should not be a model for California

by Zachary Faria, Washington Examiner, January 24, 2025

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is looking to Hawaii for advice on how to rebuild after wildfires. Here’s hoping that he is using the Aloha State as a model for what not to do.

In the 18 months since Hawaii’s wildfires, the state has rebuilt a total of three homes, according to data from Maui County. Over 2,000 properties in Maui suffered major damage or were completely destroyed by those fires 18 months ago, and many Hawaiians were forced to wait six months or even a year just to receive a permit to rebuild their homes, and will be forced to do so under more burdensome regulations and restrictions than when those homes were first built, meaning many of them cannot be built back in the way that they were previously.

Gov. Josh Green (D-HI) tried to use his emergency powers to clear red tape and allow the rebuilding process to go faster, as Newsom is doing, pausing environmental reviews and zoning regulations to speed up the rebuilding. For his efforts, he was hit with lawsuits from the environmentalist Sierra Club, the left-wing American Civil Liberties Union, and native Hawaiian organizations that accused him of “dictatorship” and “genocide.” Green then meekly walked back his executive order.

Even if the concern with Green’s executive order was one of his authority acting without the state legislature, there is no reason that should have been an impediment. Democrats have a 23-2 majority in the state Senate and a 44-6 majority in the state House, a larger Democratic majority than even Newsom’s Democrats have in California. The entire Democratic machine in Hawaii was and is in position to make the rebuilding process easier and faster, and yet, again, only three homes have been rebuilt in the last 540 or so days.

California’s crisis eerily mirrors Hawaii’s, from the government incompetence that led to the fires in the first place to the Democratic governor with an overwhelming Democratic majority in the legislature having to wrestle with the fact that onerous environmental and housing regulations that they have passed are the biggest hurdle to a rebuild.

If California follows the Hawaii model of a slow rebuild done at the preferred speed of left-wing activists who want to drown people in environmental reviews and burdensome regulations, it will be a failure. Given California’s proven track record of failures in building housing and building anything else (like the high-speed rail), it is also the most likely outcome.