 and welcome back to Politics in Hawaii on Think Tech Hawaii with Dennis Isaki. Today we'll be speaking with Vicky Caetano, candidate, Governor of Hawaii. She's a successful businesswoman. She starred in a movie with Elvis Presley. He's a sister of super pianist, Jenny Thieu. Oh yeah, she was also the first lady of Hawaii. Vicky, thank you for joining us. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. Well, thank you for having me, Dennis. It's always a pleasure to see you. Yeah. You've been here about a year ago. A lot has happened. Tell us what has happened in the past year. Well, it's been very interesting for sure. I announced officially on August 30, 2021, and in that time, putting together a team, a strategy, reaching out to communities all across our state on every island is, I think, so important. And in the process, learning more and more about the needs. Some are very similar and some unique to every community. But just being able to listen and to hear for so many, the silent majority, I call them, that are really suffering. Five years in a row, Dennis, our state's lost population and the people who are leaving, young people, the middle class, working people. Without them, Hawaii cannot hope to have a thriving community. So we're really at a very critical time. But listening to them, gives me both a challenge, but also encouragement. Because the issues that we talk about are preventable. They're not inevitable. Yeah, thanks. He was just on spotlight the way. One of the things you talked about was your plan to reduce the income tax for middle class people. What would you do to make up the money for the state government? So the plan is basically to call for an exemption on the state income tax for earnings of $50,000 in under. This translates to approximately $3,200 a year. Now, if you take someone who's making $20 an hour, that translates to an additional one month or 20 days of income right off the bat. That is a game changer. Because when you talk to a lot of employees, they say, by the time you take out this, this, this, what I put in my pocket doesn't make sense for me to go to work. And that's a valid argument. So by doing this, it helps them immediately to have $3,200 that goes straight to their pocket that can then be pumped into the economy as well. How we make up for it is going to be one looking at, first of all, the state coffers, the surplus that we have, working with the legislature, we should be able to do this. Long term, we need to analyze the impact of this on the state tax revenue and look for opportunities both to cut expenses in state inefficiency. And again, not anybody's fault. I think workers work really hard to be efficient, but just modernizing our state government. I'm sure you're aware that our IT accounting systems are over 40 years old. So we're not nearly as efficient as we could be. And then we can look at the GE tax because about 30% of the general excise tax revenue comes from visitors, tourists. And perhaps we can offset and increase a slight increase in GE tax with also waiving tax on food and over the counter drugs for residents who make less than $100,000 a year. At the end of the day, we've got to stop the working people, the middle class, the young people from leaving Hawaii. Otherwise, all these ideas we want to do, affordable housing, improve healthcare. If you don't have the population to do this, you cannot achieve anything. So that's a good plan. So your plan is $50,000 per person. So like a couple would be $100,000 for two people. That's correct. But it would be, now if they file jointly, it has to be on the first $50,000. So that's what we would have to look at. But either way, it's going to, in my mind, provide immediate relief. If you look at, and we do need to increase minimum wage, but by the time you deduct for all the taxes, what goes into the pocket for the employee is not as impactful as something like this. That's why I feel so excited about this idea. It is a game changer. Yeah, it's a good plan. If people have said, like, you haven't been in government, so you don't have the experience, what do you say about that? I would say that what we really need is leadership. We need a leader who, one, thinks outside the box to the problems we're looking at. Because the problems are so deep and so broad that the traditional way of approaching it, small kind change, isn't going to make any difference. We need both creative leadership. We need someone who can communicate and collaborate with people. Respectfully, I have 34 years of being a CEO, and being a CEO is very different from being one of 76 members in our state house or being one of 535 in Congress. So I respectfully would say that my opponents don't have the CEO experience that's going to be absolutely needed for the next governor to have. Yeah, thanks. Oh, this is a kind of sticky one. Recently, we have seen politics that it's worse both the ends of the spectrum. What have you noticed or what do you say about that? You're talking about negative. So I think negative for me is saying something that is not true. That's a big difference. But raising legitimate questions. As an employer myself for so many years, when I hire someone, I vet them. That is my job. And in particular, when you are going to be trusted with decisions that impact taxpayers and their hard earned money, you need to be sure that the CEO of this state is vetted properly. That Dennis to me is not negative campaigning. That is smart questions that needs to be asked. And if the media is not doing it, frankly, shame on them. Because that is, you know, media's responsibility is the conduit for information to the people of Hawaii. And so I think it's very legitimate to ask someone about their financial situation when they aspire to be the leader of the state. It appears that some of the media has looked more at your questioning rather than the answers. Perhaps that could be who has more ads. And on the other side, he got some really negative ads going against some other candidates. And they run that. And at the same time, they run the ads for somebody else. So it's going to deal with money talks. No, you're right. And I think the thing I'm very leery about is anytime money comes from outside a state of Hawaii, you know, or money that's from special interests, because then clearly, clearly there is a motive and objective for any organization to pump a million or two million into a single campaign. Come on, you got to ask a question. What's in it for them, right? So I just be very leery of money that comes from special interests or from outside of Hawaii. Yeah, you know, we've been talking throughout the year about rising price of goods in Hawaii and housing. And, you know, going back to the middle class living in Hawaii, what can you say about that, you know, tying in with businesses, kind of get workers. What do you say? What can you do about that? Well, you know, again, like I said, the problems are broad. It's not just fixing one thing. Affordable housing is certainly at the top of the list. But if you just do the housing without addressing things like opportunities, especially for young people, not everybody wants to be service industry job. And we need to offer them together. So affordable housing is one thing. In one of my communications, I had said that I would look very seriously at freezing rent increases for 24 months. And let me be clear, I do not support rent caps for permanent situations. But I do think that the way the housing market is to help especially people like our kupuna on fixed income, we have to stop any increases for the next two years while we accelerate building affordable housing. This will help them not worry about, am I going to get evicted, you know? So we need to address that. We need to look at the cost of living, you know, HECO just announced because of a number of reasons now that electricity, the average electric bill is going to go up much more than they had originally projected. And this is why, you know, I'm thinking we've got to provide relief immediately by exempting state income tax for people on the first $50,000 of earnings. This will help them tremendously. The other thing I do think we need to look closely at is eliminating the GE tax on food and over-the-counter drugs. I know the argument against it because, you know, when you cut a big chunk out, then you may have to increase the tax on the smaller amount, right, of goods being taxed. So it's something we have to look at closely with the experts and with the legislature. No governor can do this alone. So that is something we have to look at. And at the same time, we must look at job opportunities, creating a more diversified economy outside of just over-reliance on tourism. Like I mentioned, you know, a lot of businesses are closing. Businesses kind of get workers, restaurants are cutting the hours. Part of it is COVID. What is your response to that? Well, that's why I say that we need leadership that is bold. That's going to come up with ideas that are outside of what we traditionally do because the same way we've been doing it just isn't going to cut it. And the other thing I think that's really important is that we need a governor who is going to focus on taking care of these problems for the majority of the people, not for special interest groups. And I'm very happy that at this stage of my life, I am not beholden to anyone. That gives me the independence and the ability to make some really tough decisions. But it will be done. I will do that for the people of Hawaii if I have the privilege to be the next governor. You know, it's not a stepping stone to another job or another career. For me, at 66 years old, I am looking at leaving a legacy that really can say I gave my all for the people. I know you've been sharing other nonprofit agencies and helping a lot of people and, yes, it kind of overflows into this. There's a lot of ties to COVID in the last couple of years. My personal experience, I've experienced it and from my experience, I get a call saying, I heard you had COVID. It seemed like the state might be more interested in the statistics than helping the people. I really felt that way with who we had a questioning was. They didn't care about anything else. What is your reaction to the COVID pandemic? Well, I think that they do care, but I think they are very single-minded on statistics, number of cases, number of deaths, impact to the hospitals. I scratch my head and say, number one, why don't we have more capacity? Why don't we have more beds? This is something we should do regardless of COVID. COVID just showed us how our shortage in capacity is, but I think the problem that people don't or leadership didn't think about or has a mindset to think about is how disruptive COVID is to businesses and to our communities, to our kids who lost two years of their life. I have a grandson who was at Aina Jaina Public School and not being able to go to school and then when he went to school having a mask on, you cannot see, he could not see your mouth moving, they lost two years. That to me is one of the biggest problems is that leadership is just single-minded, case count, statistics, number of deaths, but how about the impact to our community, to our economy? I mean, that's what we have to deal with, and I do believe that there are ways that we can manage COVID so that it is less disruptive to the workforce because like you say, when people are out because they've been exposed to someone or they themselves come down, added to the shortage of people, employees, it's a triple whammy. So here at our headquarters, we have these two machines that basically project UV to kill all the viruses, and I'm happy to tell you that in the one year here, even with all the gatherings we've had, we not had any cases of COVID related to meetings here at our headquarters. So we got to think outside the box of how government can give incentives to businesses, especially the small businesses, so that they can mitigate the impact of living with COVID without disrupting the workplace as we're seeing right now. Even flights being canceled because they don't have the staffing. We have got to find a way to do this so that we can minimize that negative impact to our communities and to our economy. Thanks. You know, we touch upon a lot of things. You've been asked with all the other interviews, things like tourism and climate change, any comments on those? You know, tourism plays such a big role for us as a state that one of the things I feel, Dennis, is really important is we need to ask the tourism industry, hotels in particular, to be more of a partner in managing the resources that they utilize. So one of the things I would do very specifically is to work with the hotels and have them implement systems, mechanisms to monitor the amount of energy, water, and wastewater that they are using in their hotels on their properties per guest so that that is a good starting point to say how can we manage the utilization of our precious resources better by the seven, eight, nine million tourists that come every year. Right now there's no measurement. There's no accountability. And that has to start. Yeah, I heard you mentioned that you compare the impact of a tourist versus a local resident and it's not the same, right? That's right. This person from the visitor industry, when I spoke about this, said you're spot on. He said because when they did their own studies, it was like two and a half times that they use. So this isn't to discourage them. It's simply to say globally we have a responsibility to our environment. And so travelers need to do a reset on their thinking and just can't come and, you know, without any accountability of how they use our resources. And I think this behavior will produce a different culture, a different mindset of people coming to Hawaii. And I think it will be much better. And it affects a whole bunch of things, you know, all the way down to the landfill, which is a big issue. Okay, what about agriculture? You know, all the politicians talking about agriculture, but we don't see much improvement. We still impart most of our food here in Hawaii. So, you know, the way we've managed agriculture in my mind is reflective of the way we've done so many things. It's to siloed off farmers, farmers working on theirs, Department of Ag, CTAHR, Agri, you know, business development. We need to bring everyone together, these valuable stakeholders and really create a much more collaborative and coordinated plan to support not only farmers, but really a sustainable plan for the state of Hawaii so that we are able to grow more here to sustain us. You know, I was told on Maui, for example, they grow a lot of lemons, limes, and then they export them. You know, so why aren't we growing things that we could enjoy and have here on the islands for our residents? So, the goal will be to increase more than 12, 14 days worth of food that's for our residents. That is a very precarious position to be in when you think about it. 12 to 14 days, that's all we've got on island. So, we have to start with a goal and then create the plan and then how to implement with accountability and urgency. It's a very, I wouldn't say touchy, but very important issue. And climate change in environmental issues has a lot to do with, you know, it ties in with tourism and land use, shoreline management, all of those very important things like anything to add on that. It is and we're certainly not short on studies or expertise. We have that at the University of Hawaii already. Dr. Fletcher, I think what we need to do is, like I say, though, bring the parties together and put a plan in place with timelines, accountability, and, you know, revisiting it. The state is great about coming up with ideas, but the execution has always been a little bit short. And that's been my 34 years of experience is getting it done. I'm not so big on the talk, but I'm proud to say I'm just a doer. And that's what I want to do. That's why I'm running for governor to get things done. I get a lot of things to get done. And like you said, there's a lot of talk. One of the big issues we're talking about now is the Red Hill fuel issue. And first going back to the water and affecting the water, water table for drinking water. And also nobody talking about when it goes in the water, water also seeps into the ocean. There's a lot of that sipping in the ocean nobody talked about. So it's a big issue that's going to be handled. You do anything different on what would you call for regards to the Red Hill issue? Well, I think we need to meet, of course, to the military, the Navy, also the congressional delegation. I mean, I think at this point, if the Navy doesn't hear us loud and clear about a better timeline and a plan with details, it cannot just be dismissive and say, here's a plan that's very general. Then I think we need to work with the congressional delegation and use all the powers we have to take it up a notch higher. Because Hawaii is so important, not just to the Navy, but really, if you think of global security, security, national security, we have to recognize what's at stake. And I would hope that they do see that and address Red Hill with urgency. You mentioned earlier about the equal thing that the price is going up. Here on Kauai, we have the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative. We're leading the nations in renewable energy. And we're glad to say that we're not going as much as the other places. So there's a lot more to be done on renewable energy and at the same time, helping the environment. Exactly. Right now, we're closing down the coal-fired plants on Oahu. Up to now, they've been providing about 20% of the energy. Granted, it's cheaper, but that's not what we really want. So you get to tie everything together. We do. We need to tie in dependability to, reliability and cost. And of course, what we have to do for climate change to address that. Yeah. Getting back to the cost of business in Hawaii, people, like you said, our children are leaving. Where do you think price of everything has gone up so drastically in the past year or two? And what can we do to it? So recognizing the supply chain issue and yes, the Ukraine war, one of the things I want to do is a top-to-bottom review of that to really make sure that the increases are justified. I know sometimes there are events that happen, but businesses sometimes take advantage of it also. And that's what I want to do is apply my knowledge and business to make sure that the people of Hawaii are being treated fairly with regards to shouldering the burden of these increased costs. I recognize there are increases, but are they justified? Or frankly, are some of it really being taken advantage of our situation? We need to take a deeper look at that in order to make sure we're not being hoodwinked on this. Exactly. Yeah. Thanks, Vicky, for running out of time. Any last words? No. Just thank you for having me. And from the beginning, my campaign has been about bringing real change to address these long-standing issues that we keep talking about. Enough of the talk. We've got to get things done. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. We realize you're not doing it for the money. Mahalo to our wonderful guests, Vicky Caetano, and Mahalo to the viewers on ThinkTech Hawaii. If you like the ThinkTech for media shows, please help support this nonprofit platform. Aloha, Mahalo, Ahoiho, Malama Po. Thank you so much for watching ThinkTech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.