 Aloha. Welcome back to Politics in Hawaii with Dennis Yasaki on Think Tech Hawaii. Today we will be speaking with Josh Green, a medical doctor and the Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii. You see Josh Green almost every day on TV talking about COVID-19. Josh, welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you, Dennis. Please tell us why you would go through all those years of medical school and residency to go to political office which doesn't require any education. Thank you. Well, the reason is because I really worry about people and I care about people. I'm still practicing as a doctor. I'm not sure if everyone knows that. I worked two weekends a month back on the Big Island, which is kind of my home base before I entered elected office. And it's just a combination life, a dual lifestyle. For me, I came to Hawaii with the National Health Corps and they put me in Ka'u as the doctor where there were no other doctors. So I had 8,000 patients that I worked with, people, mostly Filipino, Hawaiian, and Hawaiian people. And that was my kind of my first entry into Hawaii. And then when I saw some of the challenges where people didn't have treatment for addiction or didn't have trauma services, I'm an ER doctor. Basically, I was worried and I ended up running for office and I thought I would lose, but it didn't happen. I ended up winning and then was in the House of Representatives. So I just had that double life as a member of the House and then the Senate and as an ER doc. So I still practice because I don't want to give it up just yet, but one feeds off of the other actually. And I hope it makes me a better lieutenant governor. I don't know, but I think it does. Thanks. Plus you got a bodyguard over there on the 47, right? I do have a bodyguard or two, which is sometimes overkill, but they're very kind to me too. They're a nice guy. Anyway, we see you almost every day on TV. I'm mostly talking about the pandemic. So we do not need to spend all of our time on it. But how politicized do you think the COVID-19 protocols and mandates are? They're somewhat politicized. They were very politicized at the federal level. The mask wearing mandates or not wearing mask mandates, if they were to be described more accurately, were very politicized. The vaccination became very politicized. And a lot of things feed from that. That was one of the concerns we had. And I'm not going to be partisan or bash Republicans or Democrats or anything like that. It's just, as the doctor, I'm really a doctor first. And it really was very frustrating to see good people get caught up in the politics of these decisions. They're challenging. They're not easy decisions. And I have an incredible amount of respect for, though you might not see it or believe it on occasion, for our mayors, Mayor Kawakami, for Mayor Blangiardi and Victorino and Roth, and even their predecessors. They're very hard decisions they all had to make. And it seems political on the outside, but really I look at it as, you know, what's the best health decision and how do we survive? Not just from a health standpoint, but as a society. So all of that did have some politics in it. But for the most part, we're paddling the canoe in the same direction. Yeah, along the same lines and I say we're not going to be stuck on COVID, but we're still talking about anyway. And then the governor set up the COVID committee and a decision to us to be on. There was a shakeup in the health department. Is that all part of it? Yeah, it was. If I'm being really honest, there were some things that weren't getting done at the Department of Health level that had to get done. They were getting burned out. They weren't doing enough contact tracing and that was becoming a mistake. And it was jeopardizing the health and welfare of a lot of people. They were doing other very good work, but some of it was dangerous that wasn't getting done. And so there had to be a shakeup. And there was some change. And they've done better since then. This has been quite a roller coaster ride. I was just looking at the numbers back in 2020 because I wanted to see what the trends were and how they compared to the trends now. Basically it took about 40 days till we peaked. But at that time, we could not contact trace people because there were so many cases it was out of control. And the changes had to be made. There's a lot of politics because look, it's a huge health challenge and it's quite scary. And then also everything that we decide from a health standpoint may or may not affect everything else, whether we're locked down, whether people can fly here, whether they can travel here with a card, whether it's a test, all those questions do affect people in their lives and their businesses. And when that happens, it gets political. But I really do my best and I'm not perfect. I do my best to keep the politics out of it. And I'm even spending a little extra time trying to make sure I feel understanding about people who even choose not to be vaccinated because I understand that these are very deeply personal choices. Do I believe in it? I do. I got vaccinated. My wife did. My 14-year-old daughter who's the treasure of my life, my son, will get vaccinated. He's 10. But there are other families who may choose not to and we should support them because I just worry. So I worry very terribly that they're going to get sick. So that's not political. That's just personal. That's medical. But you're right that some of this becomes a political football. A little bit over 20 emergency declarations for the governor on COVID. The recent House bill 103, I believe it is, would have limited the governor's emergency powers, but it didn't pass the legislature, right? What are your thoughts? I think the legislators were pretty, you know, they were pretty thoughtful and they were in some ways right that you can't lean too heavily on emergency proclamations. At some point, that's got to end. That was also a concern about procurement. And if you suspend all the rules, then what's the point of governing? You know, it really diminishes their input. Their input has got to be equal to the rest of the input of the executive branch and the judiciary. So that is a problem. And I think it would be good if we stop using the emergency proclamation as soon as possible. But having said all that, you can't completely limit the executive branch's capacity to deal with emergencies because we're the only ones that are there 24, 7, 365, right? The legislature comes and goes after four months for the most part. The judiciary has a very focused requirement of activity. So, you know, I think there has to be a balance. I was a legislator for a long time, four years in the House, 10 years in the Senate. So some of that's still coursing through my blood. And I remember how we used to get upset when the other governors were messing around. And I was the health chair for like better part of a decade. And if you suddenly declared an emergency and the health director had all of the say and I could no longer give input, it would feel wrong. So I think we work through these things, but I'd love to see us get away from the emergency proclamations as soon as possible. Okay, thanks. Let's move on to another topic that I think is close to your heart. Do you have the homeless? How political do you see the government responsible? It can be political. It was very political between the city and the state. I'm just trying to give you some candid answers here. We differed in our opinion from the previous mayor, and that is a political question, as you know. They were doing things like what they called compassionate disruption. And I found it to be both ineffective and not compassionate, moving people around, taking their stuff, making them lose their IDs, they're already have mental illness or addiction, not compassionate. And so we have to be better solutions. So that became somewhat political. I would prefer us to actually just get roofs over people's heads, build tiny housing, villages, make it make it a point to get them a little bit more organized so they get to normal. You know, they can have some normalcy in their lives. It's a super hard challenge that's really hard. And so we can't really afford to let that be political. I'll tell you, as lieutenant governor, I flew to DC and I went and met with Ben Carson, who's Dr. Carson, who is the HUD secretary. And let's be honest, Mr. Carson and the Trump administration are a little different than me, okay, in general. But I went there and I gave them a six-state plan, three red states, three blue states, things to work on. And I was hopeful they would do it. And I hope the Biden people will take that up. And I'll keep working on these kind of things as long as people will have me because I think this is kind of the largest moral dilemma that we have, which is living in a beautiful, extraordinary state where 12 to 15,000 people are suffering like this. We got to do better than that. So there's really no place for politics. I think housing is healthcare. And because I'm a healthcare guy and because I know people get better when they have a house, I'm going to keep fighting for that. Yeah. Okay, when you say housing is healthcare, can you elaborate a little bit more? Yes. So when you look at what happens to people who are unsheltered homeless, the average lifespan in Hawaii is 81. We live longer than any other state, mostly because we have great mixed ethnicities and very good lifestyles. We don't smoke very much, good healthcare. If you don't have a house, if you're houseless, you go from 81 down to 51. The average lifespan is 51. And there is no other disease that affects anybody's lifestyle that severely. Nothing, not COVID, not leukemia, not pancreatic cancer, which comes much later in life usually. Homelessness creates an incredible and devastating health consequence for individuals. It's also super expensive. The average spend for a person who's homeless is about 80 grand per person per year because they go to the hospital all the time. They go to the ER. They get picked up by the police who I respect. There's a lot of trouble. And it's not necessary. There are other things that are better to do. So I say, you put a roof over someone's head, you lower their cost by as much as 73%. They restore all of their health indicators. They no longer die on the street or die early. And they can control their diabetes. They can control their chronic pain. They can actually get off of the drugs a fair amount of the time. So it is a healthcare solution, ironically, even though it just looks like a tiny house. I see, you mentioned that some people need help at that floor and for housing. I see some people kind of get there because maybe government regulations prevent them from getting a regular house. It drives up the cost of everything. The middle class is really having a hard time so they kind of dress into the lower income practice or the houseless. That is so true. You're absolutely right. We've made it so difficult on regular people to get houses or sustain houses or to deal with the, we've not done a good job on, for instance, Hawaiian homelands yet. In spite of some really good ideas from some people that I respect, live on Kauai even like Robin, Dana or others. I respect a lot of people that work on these issues, even sometimes who are controversial, but they're trying harder to get people houses. And when the middle class can't get houses, when it takes two, three, four years to start a housing project, that adds $200,000 or $300,000 to each house. And that is, I mean, that immediately takes anything out of an affordable range to a completely unaffordable range. And so I think that that's going to have to be corrected. If I continue to serve, I'm going to really do everything I can to accelerate the building of housing. I don't think we're going to sacrifice the environment in any way or sacrifice open spaces in any way that's consequential. That wouldn't be so beneficial to get, say, 50,000 additional families into a home that really is kind of affordable. And things are changing. The new generation feels differently. They don't all want to have single family houses that cost $875,000 or $1.1 million. A lot of them want to live closer to the land. A lot of people want to have other alternative lifestyles. Some people are happy with smaller places. Gen X people are really a little bit more mobile. There's a lot of reasons to do things differently. And we should do that. We should not do things the way we always have done. There's a generation of leaders that have done heartfelt good work for Hawaii, but they're stuck in the old way. And I think that we're going to have to do some things much different in the next 10 or 20 years if we want to actually keep our kids here in Hawaii. And we actually want real solutions to some of these huge problems. I think I recently saw in the news that the government is giving Hawaii or giving us $100 billion for arts and entertainment. I don't think we're using that amount of money for the homeless or the houseless situation. I think we get to work on that. Maybe you could... There's a lot of talk on tourism right now. You want to get into that? Yeah. Tourism, I mean, it's a little shocking. When people were saying we might get to 20 or 30 percent tourism by this fall, I told them, I think you're smoking Maui Waui because people are going to want to come to Hawaii. There's a large sense of escape, need to escape the COVID crisis. We've done better than anybody else and it skyrocketed. I was predicting 70 to 80 percent, even I was low. It's now at 105 percent capacity. And I think our people are very right to be concerned. Now we do have to survive and that is important. We have to pay for people's hospital care and we have to build roads and houses like we're talking about on your program so far, which is very thoughtful actually. But we also are going to have to change tourism. I don't think we can even dream of surviving at 10 million, 11 million people per year anymore. So there's going to need to be some adjustments. Now for a long time, we chattered about this, changing our economy. We'll talk about that more. But I think that it would be a lot, it would be sensible to bring down our numbers 20 or 30 percent down towards eight million. We're already feeling overwhelmed and we're right now projected to do about six and a half million tourists for this year from the time I got the Safe Travels program up till a year has passed. Now we could bring some real revenue. There's been talk about this too. Sooner or later people will realize the caring capacity of Hawaii is just not 11 or 12 million people. It's just not. There's no way for us to even have normal lifestyle here and a good quality of life at that number. But imagine for a second, I'm just saying we'll have to study this quickly and get an answer for you. But imagine if everyone paid $100 theoretically coming into the state of Hawaii, everyone, we'd give the money back to our residents through a direct tax credit. But if say eight million people paid $100 knowing full well that there is a large impact coming to Hawaii, that would be $800 million that we could spend on education, on roads, on healthcare and housing, housing most of all perhaps. So if we had that kind of resource, I don't think the price point would distract enough that would stop people from coming here. I know that because we just had a $119 test they had to pay for to come here and 35,000 people a day are coming. So I'm pretty confident that our market is so strong. It's something of this sort. It may not be specifically that but something of this sort should be done. It would probably decrease the type of travel that just flies in only on a whim and on a low budget and just takes up a lot of space but maybe doesn't contribute to the cultural experience. But it probably would fortify some of these solutions that you've mentioned or asked about. So I'm hopeful that that's the kind of direction that we will pursue. There's got to be a solution because it appears that there's infinite desire to come to Hawaii and we still are going to have to have our lives here. Yeah, I mean that's one of the things they talk about. They talk about, you know, charging a lot more percentage PAT towards a combination tax. But then if you look at the other way, you know, you charge them a lot. Think of it like you go to another state and they do the same thing. So like, you know, the, you know, middle or lower income guys cannot travel to other places. So kind of timing ourselves up. It could be. I definitely think that in order to not jam ourselves up, anyone who is a local resident, you know, anyone's come on or just here, right? They would not have to essentially wouldn't have to pay it. It would be given directly back to you. And there are strategic ways to do that. That and then there's other things we can do. Of course, there should be some serious visitor education. My team talked about the Pono pledge, which I think that Hawaii has done some of this big island. Others have done a great job with it. And a lot of that is just knowledge and experience and it costs nothing virtually. So we could do that too. But I'm more of a pragmatic person. I think if you want to really do something, you're going to have to hit it hard right now because it's really difficult for us to do, to convert some of the large numbers of tourism to resources that are adequate to keep us going. It's, we have about the same number of tourists as we did 20 years ago with no, I'm sorry, with the same number of dollars, but twice as many tourists. Forgive me. The twice as many tourists was about the same number of dollars. And that's just how tourism changed here. And we have to fix that for sure. Everyone says so. But just nippling around the edges with the, with the solutions I've seen is just not going to do it. I don't like to do stuff small, honestly. I like to try for bigger things. If it doesn't work, try something else, but just don't delay 10 years on a solution. That drives me crazy. Tourism is a big thing. Like, even now we don't have the Japan tours and we're still overbooked, right? Yes. So how do you see, you know, the other Japan or the other countries opening up coming here? Well, when they come back, so normally we get about 5,000 Japanese tourists a day and about 2,000 from Korea and China combined is my understanding. If that were to open up without diminishing the number of people from the mainland, we would be completely overrun. That would create probably backlash. I don't think that would be good at all. Now, what it would also do from an economic standpoint is it would drive the cost up incredibly for hotels, rental cars, everything. It'll drive more and more people to illegal Airbnbs, which is not cool at all, which also takes up a lot of our rental capacity for regular families. So it's going to be a challenge. I think what will happen is we will have to be deliberate about how many planes can actually come in and how many people we can accommodate. You know, the Japanese tourists historically represent 15% of the travelers, but 30% of our revenue. That is a group of people that we should definitely not turn our backs on ever. They are very good to us in terms of being respectful of our culture. Everyone, for the most part, is respectful, but they are very respectful. And they also invest more when they're traveling here. So just for the good of our families and our businesses, I think we have to support them. And speaking of Japanese tourists, I don't see many of them buying or renting a car and driving around. They're like the tour buses. Is it why the other people from other parts of the world come in, they rent a car? Is it why roads are packed, even though we can see more monitors? Yeah. Look, I came to Hawaii decades ago, but when my New York relatives visit, it is hard to deal with. I'll tell you the truth. And you know, they get in several cars and they're going around and I love them, but they have a very different approach than what a lot of my in-laws who are from Japan do. Okay? So I'm probably in the middle of this universe, married to a nice Mormon girl who grew up here and it's got Japanese relatives, but very different cultures. And so the culture of Hawaii tourism is going to have to reflect what we can accept and what we feel good about. And I think the Japanese are already pretty much there. And others are going to have to learn. They're going to have to catch up. And that's why I propose certain things to, you know, to put it right in people's face, that they have to see what's okay in Hawaii. You can't be touching our hono. You can't be chasing around monk seals. Although we'll get bit and then someone's going to know that was a bad idea. I'll tell you, that will hurt. But there's a lot of change that has to come. And we're coming out of the COVID crisis, it's a bit of a, people are a little shell shocked, honestly. It was a very traumatic experience, which is why I want to say something very positive and kind about all of the mayors, Mayor Kawakami, Mayor Blangiarity, all of them. They had to make these decisions that were, they were traumatizing to society and they had to deal with the consequences of them. And so I really appreciate them. Even though as the, you know, one of the leaders of the state, I have to sometimes make decisions that are not necessarily a perfect fit for each county. Look, I know that the people of Kauai are much more like the people of Ka'u where I worked than the people of Honolulu. I know that. And I know that it was heroin to imagine any kind of reopening, because that's not what we do in the rural areas. But the decisions are sometimes so large that we can't communicate nuance to the rest of the world as we have to do our best. And that's what I try to do. But I do think that these were tough years. They were tough years for everybody, even tougher for those who got COVID. I had a very mild case of COVID. So I feel lucky. A lot of people suffered greatly and had long COVID. Some of my colleagues retired because of it, both physicians and legislators. So when we come out of this, I think we're going to be a tighter community. I think we will be able to know that we've been experiencing something profound as a state. And Hawaii is going to come out better than any other state. Most states would really kill to have our economic potential. But we're feeling our way back into normal. And I think that that's pretty clear. Talk about tourism and traffic and a segue into the rail. Where are you on the rail? Well, I'm not on the rail because it doesn't work right now. And I'll take it once it's done. Look, the rail in my opinion has to get done. And it has to at least be done in phases. We cannot walk away from billions of dollars. That would be irresponsible. I mean, it was tragically mismanaged. I didn't vote for it. I'll be quite frank with you. I was the senator from Kona. I voted against it twice. And the reason I voted against it was not because I don't believe in rail and I absolutely support our workers. It was because committing 10 plus billion dollars, which I knew would be like that, would mean that we wouldn't have resources if we were ever in a crisis. And lo and behold, a crisis occurred, one that's bigger than we could have even imagined. I think rail should be done intelligently. We must finish it. I mean, at this point, you got to finish it because the black eye would be so catastrophic. And so much money wasted, it would not be acceptable. But we may have to temper our expectations a little bit in order to finish it properly. And we'll be smart about it. We've budgeted an incredible amount of money. And I do want to see it done. I also want to see us next time around be a lot more thoughtful about the future of Hawaii, because you can't commit yourself to one project and expect that to be the only thing you do. Look, that did not benefit the people of Kauai at all. It did produce some economic benefit for us as a state. And that was very important and good, good partnership with the federal government in general. But it was a screw up as far as the last 10 years anyway. And there's no forgiving that. So we'll move ahead, finish that project. We try to send the message that we can all work together. That's the kind of thing that I'm approaching. That's the way I'm approaching things now. A little bit more collegiality with all of our people. And Hawaii has great potential. We've actually managed to still rise above everybody else. It's incredible. But some of these have been big concerns. So in times, you know, at times I wonder whether that project was at the time too large for us. But I think there are good people that can solve it now. We will look forward to finding ways to deal with the bigger projects of the future. And just be open-minded. There's other ways to build an economy here that's not just tourism and not just rail, although I do want to finish it. In 1974, I was doing land surveying in Honolulu. We worked on the mass transit. They called it from the airport all the way to Hawaii. And as you may know, I guess Arnold Morgata voted against it in the way it got in. And you're in a different place. You can't pretty much kill this political career, I think, at that time. And now they have the rail stations and the housing next to it. One other reason, you know, you kind of stop it now, right? Right. Yeah. Now, in truth, I was four years old when that previous situation arose. So too small to know. But I hear you. All I can say is I try to make decisions best I can for how they're going to impact people. I like the idea of transient oriented housing. I really do. I think that that's good. That kind of development is smart. Today, I was out there, for instance, with the guys that run the bus. I have 500 people. They're great jobs. And there will be good jobs at the rail too. These are important industries for us. But we do have to be a little more savvy. And we will be. You learn lessons if you're any good, right? I think that I was probably right when I voted the way I did as a representative of my community. But going forward, you know, as your lieutenant governor, I'm really supportive of building. I have to say that's been one of my places of evolution because I see now, after leaving the Big Island, how significant a problem we have. I always knew it was there. But when you see it firsthand, it's of course more palpable. So I think that there's great, great potential for us going forward. Gotta finish the rail. We have to build 50,000 houses or units at least. And we just shouldn't make any excuses about these things. They will pay off. But I have a 14-year-old and a 10-year-old, like I mentioned, after they finish college, maybe it'll be here. Maybe it'll be on the mainland. I want them to be back here. You know, I want them to be here so I can see my grandchildren grow up. I want to be here for the important parts of their lives. And if they can't afford a house or there's not a great job, they won't come back. I know that, you know, they'll fly away. And so these are really personal things for me and Jamie and I think most of our families. I'm enthusiastic and encouraged because we're going to come through COVID and 2022 is going to look like a cakewalk compared to 2021 and 2020. But these are big challenges that loom for us. Well, I hope you're correct about that. We're going to start on time. Maybe you could just I wanted to talk a little bit about land use and then you can make a closing statement. We have to be more understanding about land use. Land use has to accommodate housing right now. Conservation land is critical. Open space is critical to keep the flavor of Hawaii there. And I also think that we should do a lot more ag housing. I think we should have sustainable ag in place and simultaneously use that land for housing and include Hawaiian homelands in that process. That's where I would go. We have tens of thousands of acres and many thousands of people that need to be housed who are, you know, from our host culture from, you know, from Hawaiian families like my wife's. We do that will be pretty good. We owe that as a commitment to our people and we want to do ag. That seems to be the right synergy. As to closing comments. I talk so much. I don't know if you need closing comments, but I will say, you know, we can care about each other more than ever now that we've gone through COVID. That really has got to be kind of the foundation of how we deal with all these challenges. I really don't think there needs to be conflict between families who love one another but are of different opinions on the TMT, of different opinions on the rail, of different opinions of rural versus urban living. And I just want to thank Kauai for hanging in there. It is a magical place. It is a place unlike any other. And it reminds me a lot of my time in Kauai. So, you know, I'm very fond of Kauai and people have been very good to me when I'm there. So, you know, even the people that, that beef a little bit with me, you know, I respect that Kauai is a little different and that it, you know, it is a valued and incredibly valued signature piece of our state. So, I'm really glad to get to spend time with you. Thank you very much, Dr. Josh Green. Thank you for watching Politics in Hawaii. I'll think back Kauai with Dennis Isaki and Josh Green. Aloha.