Flagged for being too efficient?

by Keli'i Akina, Ph.D., President / CEO, Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

Is Honolulu’s building permit process so broken that fast-moving approvals are automatically suspicious?

A recent Honolulu Civil Beat article tells the strange story of Kim Kehrwieder, who was fired last year from her job as a building plans examiner for the Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting.

The problem?

She expedited permits in violation of DPP policy. At a time when the average wait for a permit was six months, Kehrwieder was approving some permits in as little as 24 hours.

What’s more, Kehrwieder was not fired for receiving kickbacks or gifts for fast service. Rather, she was accused of violating DPP procedures and providing preferential treatment — though Kehrwieder claims she had verbal approval for her actions and was providing good service.

Valerie Ogawa, whose company, Permit Processors Hawaii, helps applicants navigate the city’s permitting process, told reporter Christina Jedra that Kehrwieder was one of the few DPP employees who wanted to help people. She said she thought it was absurd that someone could be fired for being too efficient.

“Everybody else should’ve gotten fired except her,” Ogawa said. “If they had five Kims, [stuff] would get done.”

In any case, regardless of where you stand on the decision to fire Kehrwieder, it is depressing to think that the folks at DPP might be regarding slow-moving approvals as a sign that things are working as intended.

This is why we need to keep moving forward with permit reform.

At the state level, the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii supported a reform enacted in 2025 that expedites the permit process for certain projects, but it still needs to be implemented at the county level.

Honolulu, in particular, would benefit from putting this process in place, especially since Kehrwieder’s alleged attempts to expedite simpler projects were among the reasons she was fired.

The state should also consider creating a civil service exemption for jobs related to permitting, which would make it easier to fill those positions and ease some of the manpower shortages that have exacerbated permit delays.

Finally, as Grassroot suggested in the October 2024 brief “Seven low-cost ways to speed up permitting in Hawaii,” policymakers could exempt basic or nonstructural projects that pose no major safety risks and projects that are below a certain cost threshold.

The goal of DPP should be to get to a place where expedited approvals are the norm, not the exception. If we improve the permitting process, city employees won’t stand out just for being efficient.

E hana kākou! (Let's work together!)