 Aloha and welcome to Kondo Insider, Hawaii's show about association living, and as I've said many times before, about one-third of our population lives in some form of association here in Hawaii. And the purpose of our show is to talk about relevant issues going on and bring in great guests to talk about those. And I just want to mention to anybody, if you're interested in joining our conversation, feel free to call our hotline at 415-871-2474. Well, we're in this political season and the 2017 Hawaii legislature is getting ready to get started very shortly. And so I invited as my guest today a very good friend, Alicia Malo-Affiti from Luigi Communications, who's a professional lobbyist. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Tell me, everybody about you, tell us about yourself a little bit. I am a lobbyist. I'm a registered lobbyist, but I'm a consultant, so I work on a variety of projects at the county and the state level. And I basically do anything from communications, shall reach an education to direct lobbying. And you have another little program you're the executive director of, I know, Poy Dogs and Papoke. That's my love. I want you to tell us about that. That's a very exciting program. Things we do professionally and things we do for love. And Poy Dogs and Papoke is a small little animal welfare nonprofit. But we run the island's only mobile spay-neuter clinic. We provide high-volume, affordable spay-neuter services to people all around the island. And I also do animal rescue. We help people with vet care and other support care so that people can be better pet owners. I know for condos, particularly you offer programs of trapping cats and replacing them after they've been neutered, right? We try to work very closely with property managers. We know that the feral cat population has some problems here on the island, especially within condominiums and plant community associations. So we encourage trapped neuter return. That is, we help them trap the cats, get them sterilized and put them back. It takes care of a lot of the cat fighting, the howling, urination, a lot of the issues that condominium and property managers face. We want to help them come up with a viable, humane, compassionate solution. So if you're a condo and a board and you have that problem, they should call Poy Dogs and Papoke and ask for help. Absolutely. We will help them. And I can tell everybody, because I've worked in the condo industry for a long time, it really works trapping, neutering and returning them to the scene. It's a great program to solve the problem here in Hawaii, the feral cat problem. It's a great, great way to make a better place for you to live. But back to being a lobbyist, are there rules and regulations for lobbyists? I mean, everybody kind of, I hate to say it, but the word lobbyist sometimes has a negative connotation to it. It's not very popular, yes. And so, how does that, I mean, how do you become one? And are there rules and regulations? What do you do to become a lobbyist? Most people don't even know what a lobbyist is. They hear it, it's negative, but they don't really know what we do. What we do is we work with clients, and it could be non-profits. It could be a for-profit corporation, and they might have an issue or a problem with the way the law is created, and they need a solution. So it might be something small, it might be something big. So we work with our clients to introduce legislation, a bill that can correct their issue, and we work with them to educate lawmakers, try to get that new law passed and implemented. And do you have rules of conduct, or when you're working with legislators in the sense of what you can do and can't do? Absolutely, we have to follow a code of ethics, just like elected officials do, and that has to do with whether we're taking them to dinner or providing other entertainment or providing a campaign contribution. We also have to be registered. We have to conduct ourselves in a certain manner as we go into legislator offices or work with other candidates for office. So absolutely, we have to follow a code of ethics. And me also being a lobbyist, as you know, I know that the legislator themselves, as well as we as a lobbyist, have to give very detailed financial reports and the things we've done to make sure that it's fully disclosed, and there are rules on what you can do and what you can't do. Absolutely, and I think maybe one of the misunderstandings or a perception out there is that legislators or elected officials are bought and paid for by lobbyists, and I will tell you right now, I'd be a very popular lobbyist if I could make a campaign contribution and get a vote pass. It really does not work that way. Everybody out there, every voter, every resident is encouraged to support candidates for office that support their issues. And lobbyists, that's what we do as well. I know from my experience, I've always found the legislator very open to hear from me, but at the same time, they make their own independent judgment because they're going to get both sides at a coin and people advocating for both sides of an issue. So I found the legislator being very sincere and trying their best and hear both sides and give an opportunity to everybody to be heard, but I'm with you. You can't buy and sell a legislator. First of all, they're ethical and they're good people caring about Hawaii, but it's just the rules would catch it. Well, I think in any industry, in any profession, you're going to have some bad apples. So I think once in a while, you hear about it in the news, but the majority of lawmakers, elected officials and politicians and lobbyists are good people and we're just trying to do our job. I agree. So the legislature, the system globally, or strategically or the high level, how often does it meet, how big is it? Kind of tell us about the legislature in Hawaii. So here in Hawaii, we meet once a year. It's usually the third week of Wednesday of January through the first week of May. So we've got about 60 days of working days in which to pass a bill and get it out and up to the governor for signature. We have a House of Representatives and a Senate with 51 elected House members and 25 senators. And then we have the lieutenant governor and the governor. And so if a bill is going to be introduced, how does the people bring the bills to the legislators or the legislators themselves make these bills? Where does the bill come from initially? So most of the time, it's because of constituent concerns on issues. I would say the majority of those are residents and communities and even if you have a problem, you go to your lawmaker and say, hey, I don't like how this is happening. I need a solution. So you go to them. They will introduce the bill, the legislation. Your member in the House will introduce it and then your member in the Senate will introduce it. So you've got two bills being heard by what we call these chambers, the House and Senate. And halfway along there, they're going to cross over and they're going to be heard in both chambers again. At the end of all that, the last two weeks, we get the Senate and the House together and they need to finally negotiate on that bill to figure out, can we come to an agreement on what we both want for this legislation? And that assumes, of course, that the bill has value and merit by both the senators and the representatives. They see there's a need for this. So how about how many bills a year are introduced into the legislature? Do you have any idea? It's big. It's anywhere from 2,500 to 3,500 and maybe at certain times in the past, it's tipped 4,000. At the end of the day, though, after session is out, we're really looking at maybe 100 to 150 bills that actually pass out. So a number of bills don't even make it into a hearing. So the bill's been introduced. And so it's going to get assigned to committees for hearings. Is that kind of the next step? Yeah. So if you have an issue, so I'll take the caregiver issue because it's been recently in the news where a husband and wife couldn't actually live in a care home together. They had to separate them. So that's kind of a health and human services issue. So what the House and the Senate will do and their leadership, they'll assign it to health and then a human services hearing and then maybe even a finance hearing. So it'll go to each committee hearing first in the House and they'll mirror that in the Senate and then we call it crossover and that's when if the bills really made it through their own chambers, they're going to crossover and repeat that sequence. And it really, it's called subject matter areas. So it might go to consumer protection. It might go to finance. It might go to water land. It might go to agriculture. So all these issues are being introduced by people with all kinds of problems looking for solutions and it's going to be referred to committees that have more of the subject matter expertise. And who is the person that refers it or selects the committee it's referred to? So each of the House and the Senate has what we call leadership and it might be comprised of the majority leader, the caucus leader, it might be the Senate President, Senate Vice President. So each chamber picks, you know, four or five of their leadership to decide where to refer their bills to. So if that happens and the bill comes in that leadership will say, in the case you gave, that belongs in health and it belongs in housing or whatever it may be. Is it possible they'll say, we're not going to hear this bill at all if anybody? Majority of bills don't even get a hearing, not at all. So they are going to refer it to a committee and as a lobbyist and as the public, my job is to go to those committee chairs and make sure that they hear the bill. That is part of what we do as lobbyists. So the first step is the bill gets introduced by one of the elected representatives and the leadership then signs it to a committee. And then maybe that will get a hearing and maybe it won't get a hearing. Correct. And if it doesn't get a hearing, it's for all practical purposes dead. For the most part, it could come alive later in the form of another bill that's often discouraged, but a lot of things happen at the legislature that we can't control and some things we can. But for the most part, if the public is looking for a solution to a problem, then I think the lawmakers are going to do what's right. So we take a bill that's now been assigned to two or three committees, maybe one. Is it mostly one, two or three committees? I mean, I would say on average it's two committees. If you get, we call it a triple referral. If you get three committees that it has to go to, remember we only have a certain amount of timeline to get these bills out of their chambers. So it's very hard to get bills out if they have three committees. If they just have one committee, if it just has to do with a tax, the general excise tax, it might only go to the finance committee or the ways and means committee. Those move very quick. Those types of issues move very quickly. So I'd say on average, two committees. You want a couple of views. You want different people looking at it from different angles because issues are so broad, so complex, and lawmakers are voting on these issues. So like you said, we want to hear both sides. We want to get all the information, make sure we're making a fact-based decision on whether to pass it out or not. So triple referrals are difficult because of the time required and the amount of time you have with the legislations and session to go through this entire process of the public hearing and the testimony and this process. You're saying it's just generally very hard to get through a three committee assignment. It is, but in general, getting 76 people at the state capitol to agree on one issue and the solution to that issue, that is really the most difficult thing. So you're going to have problems. You're going to have challenges. And that's why at the end of the day, we're only going to have a certain number of cases of legislation actually pass through. So let's just take it now. Let's just say it's a single referral, a single committee. So that committee chair, they'll all schedule a hearing and you will have a chance to testify either over the internet, I would assume, or in person or both. And nowadays it's so easy. The state legislature's made it very convenient for people to go online to register to submit their written testimony. They can even type out comments right there online. They can also fax in their testimony. They can email in their testimony and they can show up. They can actually come to the hearing and offer oral testimony. So that's what we have, written testimony and oral testimony. Oral testimony is a little bit harder because you need to get to the capitol. You need to sit around. An agenda might have 20 bills to be heard. So you may sit around for an hour or two hours waiting for your bill to be heard. But the most effective is to put in written testimony and then to come down and testify. So it's important to be written and be there in person, not just to do the written testimony. And not everybody has the ability to do that because as I said, I am a lobbyist and this is my job and I do it for a living and I get paid to do it. But for everybody, you know, Joe blows sitting at home. It's a little bit harder for them. They either have to take off from work or, you know, arrange their schedule or pick up the kids. So it is harder for the public to be there in person. So if they can't be there in person, they should be sure to communicate with their lawmaker. And I would say one thing. I've used the website to make, to testimony. It's a very robust website. You can do searches based on a keyword. You know, you can see the bills, the hearing dates, the schedules. You can submit testimony online by either writing in the notes column or by attaching a Word document or a PDF document. It's actually quite easy to testify in writing with our legislature here in Hawaii. And you can actually see other people's testimony at some point during the process. It's not online instantly, but it eventually gets online. And because this process is very quick, you really need to stay on top of these bills if you're following one. Now you can sign up and make sure you get a notice. Every time there's a hearing on your bill or your issue, then you'll get an email reminder saying, hey, your bill's coming up for hearing. Get in your testimony. It's a very quick turnaround. And we have, they have another office at the state capitol, legislative information, and they have people working there to help the public navigate the process. Well, this is quite fascinating. We have more to talk about. We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back in a second. Hello, this is Martin de Spang. I want to get you excited about my new show, which is Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond. We're going to broadcast on Tuesdays, 5 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Hi, I'm Stacy Hayashi, and you can catch me on Mondays at 11 on Think Tech Hawaii. Stacy to the rescue. See you then. Hi, I'm Chris Leitham with The Economy and You, and I'd like to invite you each week to come watch my show each Wednesday at 3 p.m. Hello, I'm Mary Ansaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Welcome back to Condo Insider. Again, you can join our conversation by dialing 415-871-2474. We're talking with Alicia Maloafiti, a professional lobbyist in our legislature, and we're talking about how the legislator works. I guess some people would say how it doesn't work, but to me, I think that there's a very difficult job being a legislature. They have so much on their plate, and I think they're all trying to do the best they can for Hawaii. But we were talking about the ways and the importance of testimony by the public, and then review, you were saying, they can do it written and oral. So when you find someone goes down there and testifies oral age, you find that legislators are really interested, or they have preconceived, made up their mind, or how do you... No, I think that for the most part, I think just... I think all of us that are at the Capitol every day, anytime you see somebody take time out of their very busy lives to come down and share their opinion on an issue, the issue must be very important to them, because that's exactly why they're there. And so I feel legislators really appreciate folks that do take the time out to come down and testify. And do you have any words of wisdom for someone testifying, like be short, be honest, look them in the eye? Well, rule number one is never read your testimony. So I would say that if you're... And I have a master's degree in communications, and so what we like to do is submit your testimony if you can keep it to one page, but really pull out talking points. Like what are the three most important things that you would tell the lawmakers? Some of these hearings are timed. You get a little one-minute or a two-minute ding, and then they ask you to wrap up. You don't want to have to be wrapping up your testimony when you didn't state the most important issue. So I would... I think that that is going to be the most important thing to do. It's just be succinct and be clear and prioritize your message. I think I've different people you said also. You've given them the written testimony. Don't read it. It's probably frustrating to them, because they've read it already. You're just restating what you've already said in writing, and they want to hear from you one-on-one, mono-o-mono. This is the most important thing to me and why. And like you said, you only have one or two minutes to do this, so you've got to be prepared, and otherwise they will cut you off. And they'll ask you questions if there's something that they need clarity on. They have the ability to ask the testifier some questions. I've seen that too, because people will testify that at the end they'll ask certain people to come back up and they'll ask questions, but I think we have to be respectful of their time. It's a very busy job and being succinct, and I want to throw in being honest, because I've seen people exaggerate in their testimony. And I think the legislators are smarter than that if you're not really upfront with them and you try to create a position that's really not based on the facts, you can lose credibility. I think also that some people, because a lot of these issues are emotional and very near and dear to their heart, you really kind of have to tone down the emotion. I think it, and I'm a very emotional person when I testify, but I think things that are very negative or name-calling or accusations, I would just try to keep it as positive as possible and really make sure that you're focused on the facts. A lot of folks do have emotion when they testify. I think that's okay, but not to resort to a more of a negative testimony. Keep it positive. So the bill gets introduced. It's referred to committee. The committee now has hearings and at some point in time, they're going to vote on that bill either as it is or typically they're amended, I would say. More often than not, they're amended. And so what happens after it gets passed by committee? Well, it's going to go back down to the floor. So basically each bill goes to their committees and are heard and the lawmakers in that committee will decide whether to pass it out. It goes back down to the floor of the entire House or Senate and gets voted on again there and it goes back to the next committee. So they keep repeating this process until we come to that crossover point and that is all the House bills go to the Senate and all the Senate bills go over to the House and they just do the same thing over and over again. They refer to committee, they vote on the floor and they pass it out again. So if a bill didn't get through all the committees in the House, that means it would kind of naturally die because it couldn't cross over because it never got passed out by all the referrals. It could die in the House, but like I said, if you're playing your cards right, you're going to introduce the bill in the House and introduce it in the Senate. So you might still have a Senate version of that bill alive. And so that bill is crossing over because sometimes it doesn't make sense. Why I got to hear this bill? I see it's moving in the Senate. I don't have time to hear it. We'll wait for the Senate bill to come over and then we'll hear it. So there's a lot of strategy that goes into moving a bill through the legislative process. And at some point though, they cross over and maybe it died in one House in the House, but not in the Senate. It crosses over and like you said, it begins the process again of going through the committee hearings. Absolutely. And then what happens? At the end of the day, after all these bills returned back to their House, we call them the originating chamber, the House or the Senate, they've got two bills or one bill and they can't agree on. We call it conference committee and the lawmakers from the House and the lawmakers from the Senate get together for about two weeks and they hammer out an agreement on what they think would be the appropriate language for that bill. So that's conference committee. It's the last two weeks of session. And once, not all bills pass out of conference. Sometimes they die in conference. If the House and Senate cannot agree, the bills are gonna die. If they agree, they go back to the floor for final reading. And so the final reading and then there's a final vote. Final reading, final vote. If they get enough votes, you need majority in the House, majority in the Senate, right? So we need 26 votes in the House and 13 votes in the Senate. And if they can all get those bills out and off the floor, then they go up to the governor for signature. So let's just, before it goes to the governor, now we're back and we're gonna have the vote in the Senate or the House and the majority approval. It's gone through a lot of vetting by now. It's been going, you know, these legislators are in the committees, many of them. Do most of these pass out after they've gone through this extensive process kind of quickly and unanimously? Is there still a fight on the floor of the final version where... Every session, there are gonna be very controversial issues. I think those are the issues that are going to have conflict on the floor. And the lawmakers who feel passionately about those issues or if they wanna explain their position, they're gonna do a floor speech and they're gonna get up and say, Speaker, I rise in support of this bill and this is why. And it could be because they have constituents who have issues, it could be a personal thing and it could just be that they know this issue better than everybody else. So there are gonna be arguments on the floor for and against these bills. I don't think there's ever, ever a sure thing. And so it gets passed out. And now it goes to the governor. What's his choices? His choices are... And by the way, if the bills could pass out quicker than the end of session, it could just be a really boom, boom, they're done and it goes up to the governor and he can sign it. He can let it become law without his signature or he can veto it. Now, usually about a month after session ends, he has to put out a list of the bills that he has not signed that he may veto, may veto. So that list comes out about the middle of June and he has to usually first week of July to actually veto the bills. And if he vetoes it then... Well, usually I would say if he vetoes the bill during an election year, that's it. The bills are dead and they may bring it up during the next session but this past session, they have a special election. A special session. Special session is they take the governor's vetoed bills, the ones they want to vote on and if they go down to vote on these bills they need two-thirds vote to override a veto by the governor. So they did this with the hospital issue on Maui. And that's two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate. It's the same set of standards and rules. Special session is very hard though but we have had special session and I think almost the last three, four years they've gone into special sessions. During sessions you drink a lot, it sounds like... No, I don't drink at all. It's very stressful. We have a lot of people that we're with from morning to night, the first hearings at 8 a.m., finance hearings. I've been at the Capitol till 10 p.m. at night. Sometimes hearings go till 2 and 3 a.m. So they work long hours. We work long hours and hopefully at the end of the day they'll be happy with what's passed out. Is the time they're not in the session, I don't know if they're in the session, what they call it, is that an important time to go talk with legislators? Because it seems like they're so busy during the legislature that you may be hard... It is, in fact, that's the best time to talk to them, I will say, except in an election year many of them are very busy working on their campaigns and even other candidates for office. I think for anybody, if you're looking at making a policy change through legislation, you should just try to talk to as many people as possible. Start with your House of Representative, your Representative, your Senator, and even possibly your Council Member. But it is, it's probably the best time to catch them, is that little, you know, second week of May through maybe the middle of November. Usually around November is when we're kicking up what kind of issues are we going to face, what kind of... Where do we think they're going to go as far as committees? Those are the folks we want to talk to and make sure we get in before session. When it starts, it's a rush. Have you ever thought about running for office yourself since you've seen the process? I have been asked to run for office repeatedly. I have to tell you, I just would never want to run for office. I see what these folks go through, the campaigns that they have to run. It is a lot of work and it's the kind of job that people just don't seem to appreciate. I mean, there's a lot of critics out there and until they've run their own campaign and had to run for office, I think maybe there's not a lot they could be saying about it. So, no, I am not interested in running for office. It's a lot. They take on a lot. So, we're going into the 2017 legislature. What do you think of this year? What do we think the hot topics are going to be? What do you see as going to be the forefront of the legislature in 2017? I think these are all the issues that are near and dear to our hearts as comma, aina. And I think number one is going to be housing and homelessness. As we see every year, these are very important issues. The cost of being able to afford to raise our families here. And the second issue to that is going to be, and you heard the governor already talk about doubling food production by 2030, and that's food security and food sustainability. So, agriculture is going to be, I believe, at the forefront, the ability of farmers to produce the food to stay here in Hawaii. I think the third issue is really that's been coming up year after year as well because we have some 2050 goals in mind, and that's energy. A lot of our energy issues and the ability to sustain the living here in Hawaii to have lower bills, it really comes down to families. And how do we continue to raise our families here in Hawaii? Those are going to be, I think, the top issues at the legislature. Well, I want to thank you for being here today. I mean, it is a tough job being a legislator. It's also, frankly, a tough job being a lobbyist. You have to give up a lot of time and be ready to give up evenings and weekends and spend a lot of time on the issues, but it's very important for the health of Hawaii to have good legislation recognized by good legislators in our legislature. So, I want to thank all of you for watching this week's Condo Insider, and we'll see you next Thursday at 3 o'clock. We hope.