 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha, this is Karim Anli on Think Tech Hawaii series, Making Leadership Work. And today my guest is Representative Linda Ichiyama, representing the House District 32. Linda was elected into office first in 2010 after graduating from the William S. Richardson School of Law and has been in office the last seven years. And so she's been around for a little bit of time. So welcome, Linda. Thank you, Carol. Thank you very much for having me on the show. Oh, we really appreciate having you and talking about young leadership in the legislature and how laws are reviewed and made to work and what your particular interests are. Thank you. So tell me a little bit about your background. I know you studied law. You were a lawyer. So did you have a practice law? I did. I actually ran for office straight out of law school. I was basically campaigning my last semester of law school, so that was a little rough. So while you're doing exams, you're also waving signs. Yes, walking door-to-door campaigning, asking people for their votes, so it was interesting time. And then I delayed taking the bar exam for a year so that I could focus on the election, the campaign. And I'm so glad that I did. I don't think I could have done both. Then I took the bar in 2011, and then I started practicing in 2012. So you were practicing while you were a legislator, a legislator, and what kind of law practice were you in? So I worked for a law firm called Porter McGuire, Kiakon, and Chao, and they focused mainly on condominium law, representing condominium associations, HOAs, but they also do more business litigation as well. So I represented a couple of partnerships and different types of business disputes. And are you still doing that? No, no. I actually had to take a step back. I'm a new mom, and so juggling both the legislative and a attorney career with a new baby was a little bit too much. I see. So our state legislature allows, it's not a full time legislature, right? So how many months a year does our legislature, is our legislature in session? We're in session from January through May, and then a lot of legislators have careers outside, and it was designed to be that way. The Constitutional Convention wanted us to be part-time legislators so that we could bring our outside expertise when we're dealing with policy issues. I see. And so as far as which you represent district 32, right? So tell us about your district. Well, let's see. My district composes Salt Lake, Aliamanu, Moanalua. So basically the area around Salt Lake Shopping Center, below Tripler Hospital, Moanalua Valley, part of Moanalua Gardens, all the way to Aliamanu. Is that the airport? No, it does not include the airport. My boundary is Salt Lake Boulevard at the bottom. But I do represent a lot of condos, so I was very fortunate in that aspect to have a familiarity with living in condos and some of those issues that arise between condo owners or renters. I'd say maybe a little less than half of my district is condos, and the rest is single-family homes. So two very different populations. Very, very transient and also home owners. Very stable, yes. So do you have a lot of military in your... We do because our district is surrounded by so many bases. We have Fort Shafter, we have Hickam, we have Pearl Harbor that are all close by. So we do have a lot of military that live in our district. And how about homelessness? Is homelessness an issue in your district? Fortunately, not as other parts of town. For example, like downtown Chinatown. We haven't been as affected, although we sometimes get people who are homeless in our area. Usually though, they don't stay very long and are referred to services. We have a really active community. We're very fortunate. They really want to take care of our area. And so they try to help people and make sure that they get to the right place that they need to get to. I know you actually grew up in that district, right? Yes, born and raised in Salt Lake. And you went to high school? In Salt Lake Elementary, in the middle of the High School. Yes, I'm very lucky. I used to serve on the Board of Education, as you know. And I understand you were once a student representative on the Board of Education. Yes, my senior year of high school, I was the student board member. So elected by roughly about 180,000 public school students. And then represented them on the board for a year. A great experience. Was that your first taste in politics? Yes. And I guess you could say I got bit by the bug. What were the big issues in those days? What year was that then? So that was 2002 to 2003. And the big issue was the local school boards and breaking up the State Board of Education. And whether or not we should have smaller local school boards like they do in the mainland. At that time, Governor Lingo was advocating for breaking up the school district. So by island? By island, by county. There are a lot of different scenarios. But I think the concern was is that you lose a lot of economies of scale and efficiency that we have by doing a statewide system. For example, recently when we've launched a statewide program or curriculum like Common Core, we're able to do it across the board. And so you have students who are in Hilo versus students who are in Kauai learning the same things. Right, right. So you were on the board of education and then you went to college, where did you go to college? I went to Georgetown. Georgetown and then you went to law school at UH and came back home for law school. So you got the bug from being on the board of education and into politics. Now how many women right now in the state legislature? Usually it's about 15 or 17. We've lost a few women, unfortunately, to the city council. This is in the House. In the House and the Senate. So Representative Kimberly Pine is now a councilwoman, so is Senator Carol Fugunaga. But it's great because we have those partnerships there. And so just recently the women's legislative caucus expanded to include county council members. So not just at the state level, but also at the county. Nice. Well, I want to talk a little bit more about that after the break. But as far as your district, tell us about, in particular, are there specific socioeconomic issues that affect your district that you've found yourself advocating for or that need more addressing that cut across the state? I think that my district is very typical of other urban districts in Honolulu. A lot of working class families, and they just want to make sure that they're able to take care of their kids, put food on the table, and maybe save a little money for retirement or to take a trip once a year. So a lot of the issues that I've been trying to work on is to help them, for example, with the renters' tax credit. A lot of the folks who live in the Conros are renters, so the rental income tax credit helps them pay less than their income taxes. We're also trying to look at ways that we can create more fairness in our income tax structure, so it's not as regressive, so that we can give our middle class families more of a break. And I think that has helped a lot of the families that live in Salt Lake and Honolulu. So what's the status right now of the renters' tax credit? What is it? Is it a percentage of... Of their... No. The way it works is they're able to apply some of the rent that they've paid and show that they're renter, and then they can deduct it off of their income. I see. Yeah. Right. And then the other tax benefits or tax initiatives that you've... These are state or... State, yes. Yeah. And be nice if you could affect federal legislation. That would be a dream come true, yeah. How about rail? Was there a stop that's going to be near Salt Lake? Originally, the rail was supposed to come through Salt Lake along Salt Lake Boulevard, but the route got shifted to the airport. So my district, I would say a little more than half voted for it when there was the Charter Amendment to support the establishment of Hart. And I think that having it move to the airport, although it would have been more convenient to have it in Salt Lake, probably for the better, you know, we don't have the noise and construction that we have to deal with, unfortunately, like our neighbors in IA and Pearl City are living through right now. So I think that was probably for the better, but they plan to have a lot of bus transportation and bike routes from Salt Lake to the rail station at the airport so people can use it. How did you... What was your particular position on recent budget issues relating to rail? So we've always asked for more transparency and accountability from the county and from Hart on rail. I think over the past years, a lot of people have been frustrated with the way the project's been handled and what we've seen is mismanagement of the funds and resources. So I supported the bill this past special session, which created more accountability and changed the payment mechanism for how rail will be funded. Prior to this, the city would receive the general excise surcharge directly from the state. Now we've changed it to a reimbursement system where the county actually has to show us their invoices, contracts, receipts, and then the state will verify those, make sure that there isn't being waste or mismanagement, and then reimburse the city for those funds. I see. So was that a difficult period of time dealing with the budget issues and what do you expect in the next few months in the next session? Well the deadline for the city to submit their revised plan to the federal transit administration was the middle of September, which they did. We're waiting for the FTE to come back and say that they've approved the plan and that they can then release the rest of the money from the federal government so the project can continue. I hope this is the last time the legislature has to take up this issue, although I'm not certain that it will be, but I'm hopeful that it will be. Which committee is that in transportation? So this past session it was referred to the committee on transportation and committee on finance. Right. And you are, I know you're vice chair of one committee. Chamber of protection and commerce. Yes. Okay. Ray, I think we have two slides I'd like to show our audience. And these, okay, now this, let me describe it for our podcast audience. This is a picture of, looks like representative Ikechiyama painting a wall. So tell us a little bit about what you're doing here. So this is at Muonalua Elementary School and it is a celebration of their anniversary and they did a huge mural on the administration building as well as a library building that shows the history of Muonalua from the beginning when it was a school in the late 1800s and all the way back to the history of the valley and the petroglyphs that we have in Muonalua Valley all the way to present day. Nice. And it's really a great project that the kids worked really hard on. Okay. And then our next slide. And this is a picture of representative Ikechiyama in a classroom it looks like and talking to a group of... This is, yes, our town hall meeting that we had with Senator Kim and representative Johansson who are there in the front row on the special session for rail. We wanted to get our constituents input before we're going into special session and hear their thoughts and concerns. And a lot of them like I shared with you earlier were frustrated with what they saw as mismanagement of the rail project. And so I think we listened to their concerns and tried to address them in the bill that we passed. Okay. Very good. And so let's talk a little bit more about your particular influences in getting to the point where you are now representing your district and juggling motherhood and legislative, important legislative work. Do you see this as a long-term career and influences in terms of family or social or school or role models? Well, I'm very fortunate that I represent the area that I grew up in. Like I said earlier, I was born and raised in Southlake and I'm the oldest of four kids. My mom's a single mom. And so I really feel like we were raised by the community and the schools and the people that live there. So this is my opportunity to give back. And so I'm just so grateful that I'm able to help the schools that I went to. For example, we're trying to work on building a performing arts center at Morelil High School. I know they're already very experienced and have a great reputation as... They've been to Carnegie Hall three times. My goodness. Yes. So it's a really great music program. But I would have to say that my mom has been my role model in a lot of ways, raising us on her own and teaching us really strong values of working hard and being generous and giving back. That's always been really important. And then politically, I mean, I've always looked up to a representative, Congresswoman Petsy Mink, and all of the things that she stood for in terms of equality and social justice. And then here at home, I think all of the women legislators that we have who have been fighting on so many fronts in many different issues, like Representative Marilyn Lee and Senator Suzanne Chen Oakland, who unfortunately no longer...and the legislature anymore, but they really did a lot of work for the families in Hawaii. All right. And what about our congressional delegation? Oh, yes, definitely. Congresswoman Gabbard. Yes. And Senator Hirono and Congresswoman Abusa. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So how about any men role models? Have you...do you spend time, let's say, clerking or interning with any of our... Yes, I did, actually. And that was a really formative experience for me. I had the opportunity to work for a couple summers for Judge Gary Chang. And he's... Which court? Judge Chang. Circuit court. And tax court. So circuit court. Civil cases. Civil cases. Mm-hmm. Yes. And he has a reputation of being very tough, I would say. And funny. And funny. Isn't he funny? But not at the same time. I see. Yes. He's tough on the bench and funny off the bench. But he takes his work so seriously and I think is so thorough and well-prepared. It really was a role model for me as a young attorney of what I wanted to be and how I wanted to practice as a professional. It was a very high standard. Yeah. Okay, well, we're going to use this opportunity to take a short break and we'll be right back with my guest representative, Linda Ichiyama, from the 32nd District in Honolulu. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Ted Rawlsson here, folks. You're a host on Where the Drone Leads are, weekly show at noon on Thursdays here on Think Deck. We talk about drones, anything to do about drones, drones, remotely piloted aircraft, unmanned aircraft, whatever you want to call them, emerging into Hawaii's economy, educational framework and our public life. We talk about things associated with the use, the misuse, technology, engineering, legislation with local experts as well as people from across the country. Please join us noon on Thursdays and catch the latest on what's taking place in the world of drones that might affect you. Guys, don't forget to check me out right here at the Prince of Investing. I'm your host, Prince Dykes, each and every Tuesdays at 11 a.m. Hawaii time. I'm going to be right here. Stop by here from some of the best investment minds across the globe. And real estate, finances, stocks, hedge funds, managers, all that great stuff. Thank you. Welcome back. This is Carol Mann Lee on making leadership work at Think Tech Hawaii with my special guest today, Representative Linda Ichiyama from the House District 32 in Honolulu. So welcome back. Thank you. We were talking all about your interest in politics and working for your community. Specifically, however, I know that you've been very involved in the women's legislative caucus. So tell us a little bit about that. So the women's legislative caucus is a group of female elected officials. And we recently expanded to include county members. So not just the State House and Senate, but also county councils. And we try to advocate for women and girls on a variety of issues, whether it be education, health care, human services, all across the spectrum. And every year we work together with the Women's Coalition, which is a group of nonprofit organizations that work on women's issues. And then we come up with a caucus package. So we've been very successful. Thank you, Abdulls, that we work on throughout the legislative session anything from appropriating more funds to girls' court to help troubled girls or to address the opioid epidemic that we know is becoming a problem on the mainland and we hope to stop before it gets widespread in Hawaii. So a wide range of issues. So how successful has, I know it's been around for many, many years, women's caucus. How successful has it been in actually passing legislation? Well I would say in the past maybe three or four years we've been very successful. And I think that had to do with a lot more, well just to be frank, more women in roles in leadership. Recently we had Chairwoman Jill Tokuta in the Senate with the Ways and Means Committee and then Chairwoman Sylvia Luke in the House Finance Committee, Senator Ros Baker leading the Committee on Consumer Protection and Health in the Senate. And then, sorry, I represent the Chair of Health in the House. And I think that when we have women in roles of leadership, I think then women's issues become our issues and they are successful. Right. So the visibility of having the women there and makes a wider audience and therefore, so as far as the men legislators, how has women's caucus and their bills fit into the overall legislative agenda? I would say that there's something that all of our caucus members can be proud of. For example, one of the things we worked on was the sexual assault kit backlog. And I think as fathers, as brothers, as husbands, they all wanted to make sure that there are protections for victims of sexual assault and that there are going to be repercussions for the perpetrators. Right. So let's discuss the sexual assault, the sexual rape kit? Rape kit. All right. And before our audience, you can describe exactly what is a rape kit. Sure. So if you're a victim of sexual assault, and let's say you report to the police and you're on a wahoo, what will happen is they'll bring you to Kapiolani Hospital and the Sex Abuse Treatment Center will, has doctors on call that go through this, what they call a medical legal exam. And that's to make sure that you're safe, that you don't have any sexual transmitted infections, covers a wide range of services, and it's completely free. No one ever has to pay for the medical legal exam. And if you choose so, you can have what's called a sexual assault kit collected. And the sexual assault kit will look for DNA evidence or any type of evidence that could be used to prosecute the person who assaulted you. And it can be a very long process, several hours. It all depends upon the victim and what they choose to participate in its own voluntary, but the kit itself is also free. And then afterwards, the kit can be either held until the survivor is ready to file a police report or they can follow a police report right there. They can also receive counseling services and they're receiving services all the way through. So if the survivor- Who holds the rape kit? You said it can be held. Yes. So on a wahoo it would be held by the Sex Abuse Treatment Center. And so is that a government agency? No, it's not actually under Kapiolani Hospital, Hawaii Pacific Health. But they have the funds from the counties for the rape kits. And so they can hold the kit for you if you choose not to report right away for whatever reason they will hold it for you for as long as forever. Because technically there's no statute of limitations for criminal prosecutions for sexual assault for rape. So then when you're ready you can file a police report and the kit gets transferred. There's a whole chain of custody that's followed to HPD and the forensic lab. And then the lab will test the kit to see whether or not there's DNA evidence present. And then they can run those results in the federal database called CODIS and hopefully find a match. Right. Now I know there's been some controversy, right? How long have these rape kits been in use? That's roughly 1992. So it's been for a while. And so was there a backlog and that there was a backlog? Yes. So there was a number of kits that were untested and the reason was because the way law enforcement looked at testing of the kits because it was expensive and time-consuming process was whether or not the kit would be probative in that particular case. So let's say that you had two adults who both agreed that they had sex but one said it was consensual and one didn't. In that case the prosecutor or the detective may not have ordered the kit to be tested because they both agree that sex occurred. And so what happened though was that on the mainland they found that those kits, even if you know who the perpetrator is, they can lead to other hits in CODIS for unknown cases. And that's what really was the paradigm shift, is that we want to solve those cold cases because we know that a lot of perpetrators are serial offenders. Okay. We have two more slides relating to this. So Ray, can you put on the screen our slides, our images? So the first one, if you want to describe it, it's a group of people around our Governor Figue. Yes. So for the past few years we've been having a bill signing ceremony with the Governor. I believe this is from this past year. Yes, I think it is from this past year. And so he signed a number of bills into law that were from our women's caucus package. So there are nine women legislators surrounding Governor E.K. Yes. Signing a very important bill, very good. Congratulations. And the next slide. And this is a picture of you sitting at a hearing, it looks like, right? This is the Attorney General's office and we're doing a press conference for Malama Kako, which is under the Department of the Attorney General. The women's legislative caucus took on the issue of the backlog of rape kits and we mandated an inventory of the kits. We wanted to know how many were tested, how many were untested and what were their plans to test the kits and in what priority, right, which kits are you going to test first? The newest kits? Is it the ones where you have an unknown perpetrator or where the victim is young? Right, there's a lot of different factors. And so out of that project, we got the inventory and as a result as well, we also were able to apply for a federal grant of $2 million. And that federal grant helped us build the Malama Kako project, which is to help survivors. And the project is absolutely survivor-centered. We wanted to make sure that it was always a survivor's choice, whether or not they wanted to know the status of their kit. They can access the website on the Attorney General's office, the Malama Kako website, and they can find out, you know, why wasn't my kit tested, how do I find out the status of my kit. There's an email address that they can contact, put in as much information as possible, their name and if they have a police report number. And then they can track down your kit through the various police departments and then a detective will contact you to follow up on the status of your case. Great. Now is that the URL that we have? Yes. So let's see. I think we have the URL for the Malama Kako. And it'll be on the screen. It says visit ag.hawai.gov slash h-i-s-a-k-i for more information. Okay, this is very important to our audience to get more information about how to research and find out more about what's happened to their rape kits. Absolutely. And which is, you mentioned all sorts of data, but what exactly are the numbers? How many of these cases are outstanding and how many? Well, we brought the numbers down quite a bit and so there are a number of different factors that we looked at in terms of what kits to be tested and what priority. There were a little over a thousand kits that were not tested and the each county police department has been working on which kits will be tested and to be sent to the mainland for testing. So the legislature appropriated $500,000 for kits to be tested, 500 kits, and they've started sending them to the mainland. The Honolulu Police Department also received an assistance grant from the FBI for additional testing. So they're also sending their kits. So we're slowly, slowly working on the backlog. And did you get that $2 million grant? The Department of the Attorney General, yes, received the $2 million grant. So that's funding a sexual assault kit coordinator and he's the one who's basically responding to the emails. I see. Well, we just have a few minutes left and I know we want to talk about Title IX on the federal level and our new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. And so tell us a little bit about that, what Title IX is and what changes have been made. Well, Title IX is basically a federal law that says that any educational institution that receives federal assistance must provide equal opportunity regardless of sex. And so a lot of people think Title IX is sports, right? If you have so many men's teams, you need to have so many women's teams, but it's much broader than that. It also includes pregnancy discrimination and it also includes victims of sexual assault or sexual harassment. If I'm too scared to go to school because my stalker is going to follow me from class to class and that bars me from education, then that is a Title IX issue. If I get assaulted on campus because it's not safe at night, that's a Title IX issue and the educational institution, the school, the university has an obligation under federal law to respond. And so what were the recent changes? So under the Obama administration, the Department of, Federal Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights really issued a lot of very strong language and guidance around Title IX and the responsibility of educational institutions to respond. And a lot of this also came about because of the national attention about campus rape on universities. Unfortunately, we know that roughly one out of every four or five women who are usually between the ages of 18 to 24 will be sexually assaulted while at a university or college. And so the Obama administration took a lot of forward steps to make sure that universities were responding and not trying to hide or cover up those statistics or cases. And what happened recently, unfortunately, is it looks like the new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, wants to change some of those guidance and rules that were implemented under President Obama. This just happened, right, last week? Just last week, at the end of last week, they issued not new regs. They said new regulations are coming, but basically they took back some of what the Obama administration had done and said, you know, we're going to go in a different direction. So it's causing a lot of concern for a lot of campuses. Yeah, because I think the headline was that the perpetrators, the alleged perpetrators, needed more protection, right, that the law seemed to be skewed to protect the victims, yeah. Yeah, and I think that whatever process you have in place needs to be fair. You have to give due process to both sides, absolutely. But I think you also need to recognize that for the victims, you know, this is something that we need to make sure is a safe process and a transparent process for them, which it hasn't been, unfortunately, in the past. Well, we almost finished with our interview, but I want you to take a few seconds just to look into Camera 4 and tell our audience, remind our audience a little bit about the Malama-Caco. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I just wanted to encourage anybody who wants to know the status of their kit to visit the Malama-Caco website to find out the status of their kit and ask any questions that you might have about your case. I think it's so important to know that there are people who care about you and who want to support you and are wanting to help you. Okay, on that note, thank you so much, Representative Linda Ichiyama, who is representing the House District 32 in our wonderful state of Hawaii. Thank you. This has been Carol Monli in Making Leadership Work, and we'll see you next time. Aloha.