 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha, I'm Rufi Haneman and welcome to Think Tech as we debut another show here called Tourism 101. It'll be opportunities to talk to movers and shakers in our community. We'll share their thoughts and comments of where we are today in our tourism industry as well as the challenges and opportunities that await us in the future. Today our guest in our very first show is the chairman of the Senate Committee of Tourism, Economic Development and Technology. Please say hello to and give a warm aloha to Senator Glenn Mokhai. Oh, thank you for having me. It's such a pleasure to be with you in any type of environment, Rufi. Well, you know, Senator, you've had a very varied career if you will before you went into public service. I know everybody first heard about you when you were doing broadcast journalism on the news stations and so forth. Can you talk about some of the aspects of that career and what might have led you to go into public service? Well, I'm a local boy. I grew up in Wanaluo. I got a journalism degree from USC. My first job after graduating was going to Guam and Saipan and at first I thought, where's Guam? And so it was kind of a leap of faith for me to go out there. I spent two years in Guam and two years in Saipan and loved it. I had a wonderful experience there. Worked at a CBS affiliate in Guam, then went to Saipan and they didn't have television news. This is back in 1991 or 92. And so I helped create with another news director, the TV program that still exists today. And so that, to me, I thought was a wonderful legacy to initiate that communication tool for the people of Northern Marietta. Then came back to Hawaii. Worked for seven years at Channel 2 and what used to be KHNL News 8, which is now Hawaii News Now. But back in 2002, I realized the world was changing. No one's waiting at 6 or 10 o'clock. Everyone's getting their news right here, right now, instantaneously, real time. So I saw the writing on the wall that the news business was changing. So it was an opportunity for me to go and do something different. And one thing that is great about the news business is it's fun, exciting, different every day. One thing bad about the news business is that you're only a spectator. You're always talking about what other people are doing. And I wanted to be part of the change of Hawaii. So in 2002, made the jump into the political arena in the state house. And in 2010, made the transition to the state senate. And I've been there since then and now chair the Committee on Economic Development, Tourism and Technology. Now, I have lots of friends, as you know, in Guam and Saipan, and they still talk about you. You have such an impact there. And of course, now that you're here in Hawaii, the days that you spent being a broadcast journalism, I think has also enabled you to kind of have instant name recognition with a lot of folks. Tell me a little bit about public service in terms of the sacrifices that one makes to go into that career. And the fact that you've been so successful, you've never lost an election. I've not gone away, yes. So far, so good. 16 years in politics, I love it. It's a dream job. I wake up every day thinking, what can I do to help improve the environment? And as I was kind of mentioning briefly earlier about the frustration as a journalist, that you see the troubles in society. I mean, that's kind of what a journalist does, right? It's kind of poke and point to controversy here, screw ups here. And now in this capacity, I can watch the news and actually oftentimes respond to things as crime goes this way, education goes that way, house our infrastructure, and have a hand in trying to improve all of those various troubles that we have in our society. So I love public service and I found my true calling in life. And you're very actively involved in the community. I see you at the schools. I see you in the community. And you've done some wonderful things for the high schools in your area. Can you talk about some of those things? I'm a big fan of education because I think the greatest responsibility for any politician is to set the stage for the next generation. And to that end, I've always tried. I have three high school complexes in my district, Barrington, Wannillaw and Radford. And everything from getting them funding for tracks, gym, performing arts center, to doing just going in and talking to the Japanese students at Wannillaw High School or the band students at Farrington High School and just talking to them about leadership and how important public service is. I try my best to get involved in not just the macro of policymaking from the state capital, but going into the schools and effectuating kids and their lives. In fact, last this past year, you and I partnered with Kalakawa Middle School, Farrington High School, and Kalihi Elementary School for caring for Kalihi where we brought the kids together to try and see how they could address a problem that is on their front doorstep, which was homelessness. So with your assistance, we gathered school supplies, we gathered clothing, and we gathered toys, which we took to IHS. But just those grassroots efforts, I think, are super important to helping to revitalize our community. I was just going to mention that thank you for helping Kalihi. That's my hometown, as you know. And all the reports I heard is that you've really helped instill in students that they just can't be part of the problem. They have to be part of the solution. So you going into the schools and doing these kind of programs where they have to take the initiative to participate is very commendable. Yeah, and I have like during the legislative session, I have five high school interns every single day. I noticed that. Yeah, a student from Waterloo, Farrington, and Radford in my office every afternoon, they come over after school and see the legislative process. Because I'm also a believer that in the past, when we look at leadership, it was like natural evolution. Somehow the cream of the crop will rise like you had from your days in Iolani to Harvard. But I believe also that we should be more strategic. We should kind of engineer leadership. And we see a talented young middle school, high school student. Don't let them just kind of buy lucky, lucky strokes that they get into the right positions, but find them, nurture them, and then hopefully let them grow into a leadership capacity. Now, let's talk about your role in your current capacity as a chair of this very important committee. What have been some of your goals and objectives for this committee? I believe in having a robust economy. And when the economy is good, we can solve our problems with education, homelessness, our roads. When the economy is bad, then we have to make some very hard decisions. But to me, what troubles our policy is that we don't pay enough attention to growing the economy. And it's a complicated issue. Therefore, it doesn't get the headlines. Therefore, it doesn't get as much community support. It's easier when you see a homeless person at a tent at Thomas Square or in the Kalihi area to talk about it. How do you build a vibrant economy? Because it's not something you can actually touch, feel, and see. So it's harder to engage and energize the community about the importance of the economy. But I'm a big fan of how we're going to transition to an innovation economy. I believe that Hawaii's past was with agriculture, tourism, and use this muscle. In the future, we're going to need this muscle. This muscle can only carry so much for a period of time. This muscle has just unbelievable opportunities. And I'm a real fan of trying to push our economy to embrace innovative ways of revitalizing even some of our old economic drivers. Agriculture can use technology. Tourism can use technology. So we're not going to say goodbye to some of our bedrock economic drivers. But I think we certainly should be thinking about how we're going to enhance them with technology. Are you concerned of this ongoing brain drain problem? Everyone seems to characterize Hawaii's doing that. Many of our best and brightest youth that perhaps should look at a career here are thinking, if I want to make a dent, if I want to live where it's affordable, if I want to have many more opportunities, I think I should think about going to the mainland as opposed to staying at home. Do you buy into that or do you think it's changing now? It's changing slowly. I wish it was faster, but you're absolutely right. We have to give the kids a reason to come home. And sometimes the service-oriented industries don't provide the pay scales that we need. The innovation economy, an average tech job in Hawaii is going to bring in 80... We have actually a plan. It's called the 8080 plan where we're going to provide 80,000 new technology jobs with a minimum salary of $80,000 a year. At $80,000 a year, I think our kids would be willing to come home because those jobs are very hard to find right out of college today. But the innovation economy can get us to that point. So before we can really get there, because there's been many ideas to diversify the economy through the years, many well-intentioned plans, but it always seems to come back to tourism. So tourism as is now today, I think it's easy for someone to kind of sit back and say, well, we're doing so well, why change? But in your mind, and I agree, we also need to provide other kinds of jobs. So let's talk about the challenges that face our tourism industry today and some of the bills that have come before your committee at the legislature and some of the issues that you see that we have to address sooner rather than later. I think the big dog is Airbnb and the short-term vacation rentals. When you look at what we have about 40,000 or so hotels throughout the state of Hawaii, 25,000 or so just in Waikiki, and we have... Anyone's estimate like up to 22,000 short-term vacation rentals, you see how these are a big chunk of the entire tourism landscape. And right now it's the Wild Wild West for them. There is no rules for them. We're lucky if they even pay GET, but otherwise they're in our neighborhoods. They bring folks there, they bring cars, they clog traffic in our neighborhoods. They're having kind of a negative impact. Maybe we had like 100 or so, okay, we can let them live, but we were at the plus 20,000 units of the short-term vacation rentals. We need to provide some type of guardrails around them. Guardrails on the taxation side as well as guardrails on the land use and permitting side. And to this day, at least for Honolulu, we haven't figured that out yet. Now, why has it been so difficult for the legislature to wrap its arm around this? I mean, I think in the last three years, there's been several attempts. And we just can't seem to get the House and Senate to agree on a version, let alone get the governor to sign on to it. Why has it been so difficult? I think there's just different views and perspectives. I think the Senate's version is more aggressive in providing clear parameters, reporting requirements, audit requirements, taking cases away from administrative hearings to, you're going to go to court. You're going to get potentially penalties, perhaps jail time if you're a really bad actor. The House doesn't see it in that way, doesn't want to take quite that aggressive approach, a little bit more hesitant because of potential lawsuits that might come. But to me, that's why we have an attorney general to fight for Hawaii's position on issues. But that's just the two schools of thought on the Senate taking a very aggressive stance of the House taking kind of a shorter step forward in trying to figure out how we corral the short-term vacation rate. You know, some have suggested maybe the counties ought to be more proactive in this regard. They seem to also have hunted the issue down the road and so forth. And the city and county of Honolulu now has a major proposal that's been unveiled. And all the other neighboring counties seem to be doing things at the county level to be kind of more aggressive. I guess the idea is maybe to send a message to the state that they're ready to participate because in many of the discussions that we have had at the legislature, some legislators have said, you know, they really think the counties, because of the enforcement aspect and so forth, that they really should either be upfront on that issue or working side-by-side with the state going down this path. No, I totally agree. Especially the land use side and the permitting side, that really should be a county issue. But absent the county doing anything for decades, that's why the state is kind of in this situation of trying to do what the counties should have been doing long ago. So you're right. I mean, we're putting the cart before the horse, but the public deserves better. And if the counties are not going to act and for whatever reason are going to be paralyzed into doing nothing, then the state has to move forward. But you're absolutely right. The counties really should be taking care of the permitting side of this problem. And the state should really only be focusing on the tax collection side, the G-E-T and the T-A-T, that's the hotel room occupancy tax as well as the general excise tax for these individuals who are making oodles and oodles of money and not paying their fair share. Yeah. And Senator, while we're talking about these, I also want to make it real clear, at least from where Hawai'i Logic and Tourism Association, that we're not out to eliminate the Airbnb's and other type of platforms that we got. We just want to see a level playing field where there's transparency, accountability. If we're paying G-E-T, if we're paying T-E-T, who would like for them to pay the same? And I think also to be mindful of the fact that communities are being impacted. And it shouldn't be construed as a hotel versus Airbnb. It's more Airbnb versus the community because many community folks are saying they cannot afford to live where they want to live now. They have to look elsewhere. Yeah. And I totally agree. Because I'm a fan. When we grow the economy, it's not about digging deeper into people's pockets. It's creating more pockets. And here's a situation where there's plenty of pockets out there that should be paying their fair share. But absent that, what did we do last year? We dug deeper into your pockets. We added a G-E-T, a 1% increase to the G-E-T to pay for rail. I think if we had all of these unpaying pockets, so to speak, if we could get them to pay in, we would never have had to touch the G-E-T, excuse me, the T-E-T on hotels and perhaps wouldn't have had to extend the G-E-T for the greater public if we had this pot of money that should be paying into the state coffers. We're talking with Senator Glenn Wakai here on a new show that we have debuted called Tourism 101. We're going to take a quick pause for the call. We come back. We're going to talk about other issues that face the legislature with respect to our number one industry, tourism. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. We broadcast every Thursday from 2 to 2.30, and we highlight successful businesses in Hawaii. Hawaii has some challenges. Most places do, but we have businesses here that have figured out how to make it work, and we learn their secrets, and we learn how they have made it successfully in Hawaii. Occasionally, we'll have organizations that come on and explain how they help these businesses to be successful, and we find that there's an awful lot of resources out there available to anybody in business to help them do better. So please tune in every Thursday from 2 to 2.30 here at the Think Tech Studios and get educated. Hello, everyone. We're here on Tourism 101 with our guest, Senator Glenn Wakai, having a very interesting conversation about tourism. Everybody in Hawaii has an idea about tourism. You don't have to work in the industry because it affects all of us. Either you're working in the industry or you know someone in your family that is related to the tourism industry. And I think a question I'm going to ask you is that everyone has an opinion on is the state of our airports. Oh, that's a sore point for the state. You know, our mutual friend, Jerry Tan, who comes from Saipan and Guam to visit us every once in a while. That's the one thing that he always says, an impression about Hawaii is that, you know, your airports, you know, I travel all over and for a major city like yours, you know, why is there problems and how can we folks can't resolve the issue when we talk about the bill that's before the legislature and some of the challenges. And that bill, too, has not moved forward to where we'd like it to be. Can you share your thoughts on that? First of all, the airport is so embarrassing. I mean, to get out of the plane, you pay thousands of dollars. Here's your dream vacation. The toilets don't work. The lighting is dark. The wiki-wiki shuttle is cramped and the people mover doesn't work. And if you're coming in from a foreign country, you have a 45 to an hour wait at immigration. What a terrible experience for them to come in on. And when they leave, they see the same ugly run-down airport when they leave. What a terrible way to welcome them and say goodbye to them. But we're in this situation because of just government inertia. We're doing the same things over and over and getting the same junk results. So for the past three years, we had the legislature been trying to create what's called an airport authority, bringing the private sector into help, government where it can't figure out how to come up with a solution. And sorry to say to the public that for the second year in a row, this idea failed miserably. But I think the public deserves better. The public deserves to have an airport well planned, making sure that the quarters actually meet up would be nice. Some basic fundamental construction flaws that lead then to grievances, that then lead to lawsuits. We got to stop all of this wasteful spending and waste time. We got to get a first-class airport for our first-class tourism industry and having, I think, an airport corporation where you have smart public sector, private sector mines coming in to help the public sector, the airport's division, figure out how to build out a very efficient airport. That's what's needed because we can't continue with the same old, same old approach. You know, and I want to make it clear too, it's not just for Daniel K. Noyan International Airport. We're talking about all the airports throughout the state of Hawaii. Yes. The Kona Airport kind of is junk, too. Maui's one is okay. Kauai's one is a little bit better, but still, yeah, throughout. But in fact, I think that Maui, I was like, Maui, they have really nice bathrooms. Kind of sad that we were like, wow. That should be like a given, right? The airport bathroom should be clean and work, but the fact that I point out that Maui has nice, big, clean airport bathrooms that work is kind of a shameful commentary about Honolulu's airport here. And certainly, this is not to disparage the hard-working employees at the airport, but certainly, I think the whole idea behind this is we ought to be able to have them work in an efficient way and to be able to have the operation and such where the Department of Transportation is such a big department. And I think to afford Fujikami's credit when he was there to direct it, he was okay with saying, you know what, take the airport out of the DOT. We've got roads and highways and ports and the harbors to worry about. And perhaps with a laser-like focus coming from the airport corporation or airport authority, it'll get us better results. Right. And most of the public probably doesn't know that they don't, as taxpayers, they don't pay for the airport. It's all user fees, airlines, concessions. So to me, you have a ripe situation where, you know, you'd have to come to the legislature and politics gets involved, but airport can be kind of a standalone entity and figure out what its future is going to be. So you're correct in that they, more so than other government entities, can be kind of just jettisoned off to function more autonomously. And we've seen this notion work in other cities and states throughout America. Yeah, I think Kauai is one of only two states that don't have an airport authority. Now, let's move into another question on another state facility that's right in your district. In fact, you said your district goes from Kali to a law stadium. Let's talk about a law stadium and what you see is what we need to do to move forward. People have talked about building a new stadium. This one here is in need of major renovations. If we're going to attract more exciting initiatives and events and the like, we need to do something with the stadium. So what are your thoughts on that? I think it's a golden opportunity. You have 100 acres in a suburban piece of Hawaii and it shouldn't be just a standalone stadium, right? We have a law stadium and you have all the parking lot around there. You can create something super cool and dynamic. And one thing I am frustrated with are the small thinkers that we have 100 acres and maybe the conversation will start with affordable housing. Now, affordable housing is important, but it's not exciting. I mean, I want to help push something that's dynamic there. How about an amusement park? How about restaurants? How about retail? I was talking to AEG just yesterday. They have created, if you're familiar with Los Angeles outside the Staples Center, it's LA Live where you have restaurants, theaters, you have bars, you have museums. You have lots of inviting action there. We've got to embrace that idea of having a stadium that is surrounded by opportunities for housing, for entertainment. And what we also forget is that the number two tourist attraction in Hawaii is right next door, Pearl Harbor. 1.8 million of our 10 million or so visitors go to Pearl Harbor. And what do they do? They get from Waikiki, they get on a bus, see the memorial, get on the bus, and they dig out. We have a ready-made audience there. We created a promenade that connected the Arizona Memorial to this Oloha Stadium area that's going to be revitalized. Boy, we have a golden opportunity. Plus, the rail stop is there. I mean, we can't have the rail stop be a parking ride and people go there for six U.H. football games and otherwise the other rest of the year is not utilized. We've got to create that place as a destination and I think there's huge, huge opportunities for us to build a new stadium but more excitingly put some type of development, mixed-use development around the stadium. Now, some have suggested that maybe the stadium should be moved elsewhere and relocated. What are your thoughts on that? No way. Because if you think about, most areas traffic is the number one thing. Like, oh, are you going to bring 50,000 or 40,000 people here? We don't like the traffic. In that area, if you think about it, well, there's some problems sometimes with the Pro Bowl and getting in but no one has a problem leaving. We've got to get the coming-in part figured out but there's an H3, you've got to kind of juxtaposition between Hawaii Kai and Waianae so to me, the location is ideal. You put this thing out in Kapolei. I don't know if the people in Hawaii Kai or Kaneohe are going to feel compelled to go buy tickets for U.H. football or Bruno Mars or whatever attraction might be coming here. I think a low stadium is the ideal location and we should really focus on how to make that a center point for entertainment in Hawaii. Now, you and others at the legislature have had some serious concerns about the white tourism authority and yes, the tourism increases to our islands have gone up in the last six years and they're like, some might be thinking, why centered what kind of others concern and an audit that had come out that you folks raised questions about. Could you clarify your position on this? I think we're seeing record numbers of tourists because of currency issues, worldwide issues, natural disaster, terrorist things. Hawaii's a safe destination and Hawaii tourism authority should be helping to enhance that image and branding but the Hawaii tourism authority were to disappear tomorrow. We're not going to go to zero tourists in the future but it's concerning to me because the Hawaii tourism authority is a public funded agency and whether tourism is going gangbusters or not so good, they have an obligation to utilize the public funds to the best of their ability and an audit that came out in February of this year was an indictment on everything that they're doing, not everything but on a number of their processes there that they're paying for services that never got invoices. They're doing business with entities that aren't even registered to do business in Hawaii. You know, just the basics need to be assured and so what you saw and what the public saw in this past legislative session was us trying to reign them in to say that there are rules that you need to abide by you haven't been and therefore we held their feet to the fire because oftentimes we get audits scathing what happened after that nothing. I took that audit and said can it just be nothing? Put that on the shelf and cross our fingers and hope that something better happens in the next five years. This audit gave us a lot of direction as to the pain points there and I took it upon myself with my colleagues to say we're going to fix this machine that's kind of gotten sideways and make sure that the public funds are being utilized properly. A very quick question. Are we at the point now where we have to really reassess in the minute that we have left here and I know it's a very complicated issue but are we at the point where we as a community have to address the question of have we reached the tipping point of having too many tourists coming here because of the success of the last six years so we should kind of maybe take a step back and reassess where we are to make sure that it's not just a great place to visit but for our residents. Correct. I think we're going to take the foot off the gas just a little bit and focus more on management and less emphasis on marketing because you're right. There has been some community pushback of local impressions of tourism has never been lower than it is today. We have to write that shift so that we have a vibrant economic driver in tourism but that the people of Hawaii and the local people of Hawaii embrace it as well. Senator Wakai, thank you very much. We could go on and on and on seems like half an hour with you. I'll be back next week. Once again, we want to thank our guest today Senator Glenn Wakai as you can see has lots of ideas and certainly he's hard at work to ensure that this industry continues to move forward and provides a great quality of life for all of us and we wish you well. Session is coming up in a few months and you may be even going into a special session soon in October to appoint some judges or confirm some judges I should say. So that should get him into action there but it's going to be a very limited agenda if you will just on the judiciary appointments in our life. So thank you again folks for tuning in today and I want to thank our guest today Senator Glenn Wakai for being on very first show. Thank you. Thank you for getting us off to a great start. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. Aloha See you next time. Aloha.