 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. Navigating the journey, and today we are journeying into the belly of the beast, that big square building that we call the State Capitol. It is where the office of the Lieutenant Governor, the Governor, 25 Senators, and 51 members of the House, all our House members there. Can they get along? Probably not. Can they at all get it together? For us, our taxpayers? Probably not. But as we speak today, they are talking about the ominous rail project. It is a special session and they are trying to figure out how to get it paid for. What can I say? Will we, the residents of Honolulu, be left with unfinished rail system and debt? Can the leadership pull it together so that we, the taxpayers, aren't paying for this for the rest of our lives? I don't know. My guest today is Scott Foster, the founder of the Hawaii Advocates for Consumer Rights. Scott and I worked together for so many projects, like the stewards for Waimea Valley and the stewards were credited with saving Waimea Valley from the Ferris wheels and all the nonsense. Scott worked with the Pew Foundation for the National Marine Monuments and the Rose Atoll, the Marianna Stretch, and who knows what all of them. So he was a part of the Needle Exchange project. Yes, he'll pass that. And of course, he and Jugi Heen, my dear friend Jugi, they will revitalize the Kapuna Caucus of the Democratic Party. So here we are today with Scott and, as I said, that ominous rail project. So, Scott Aloha. Aloha, Marsha. Now, tell me, tell me, how in the world, you seem like a nice guy, how in the world did you get involved with this rail thing? Or when did you get involved? Because this rail has been going on forever. When did you get involved? Well, it was going on before I got involved, but it had quieted down. The year was, let me see, I'll read you a headline story here. Oh, is that the one from the new, the star bulletin? Right. Monday, August 8th, 2005, transit approval not assured. Vote on Wednesday stirs memories of past council rejection of a plan offered in 1992. So it was 1992 that I got involved. It was several years before I helped create advocates for consumer rights, Hawaii advocates for consumer rights, which Ralph Nader came over to Hawaii and helped us co-found that organization. And it was because of issues such as the rail project and many other things, car insurance reform and banking charges reform and on and on and on, that we created advocates for consumer rights. But all by myself in 1992, I was living in Moeilele. And it was announced that drawings and pictures and collateral material for the proposed rail project was going to be presented all over the island at neighborhood boards and at city hall and all over the place. So I went to a couple of them just to see what was being proposed. 1992, I'd been in Hawaii about seven years. So I wasn't really Akamai about everything, but I was learning. And when I saw the photographs of the intersection in Moeilele of where University and King and Baratania merge, that the photograph showed that that entire intersection was going to be under concrete. The entire view plane was going to be devastated. It was at that moment that I realized, wait a minute, this thing is too big. It's over-engineered. It's over-built. This can't be. So I got involved and started protesting the whole thing. And here I would congratulate Cliff Slater. That's when I met him in 1992. And Cliff and I are on opposite poles of the political spectrum. He's a Republican. I'm a Democrat. But Cliff through the years has done an amazing job of documenting how this thing came to be that we're dealing with today at the legislature as the Senate prepares to vote on the funding mechanism to continue building this huge project that we've been fighting for all these years. Now where are we in the process today? What's going on today at the legislature? Today being the last day of August. This is the third day of the special session. It began on Monday. About 10 days ago there was a joint hearing to get ready for the special session. Yesterday after a five-hour hearing, the vote to move the funding bill to the full Senate for a vote today at 1.30 at the Capitol was passed by one vote. He was contentious. Won't get into all of that at this point. But so today the vote is whether to pass the bill over to the House for their consideration, where this whole process will be repeated. They will be hearing the House if the bill passes today. The House will then be hearing the bill and all of this has got to conclude Friday. Well then I read that the neighbor island people voted against. Neighbor island senators voted against most of them. Yes, that was an interesting part of this. The tourism industry, after the informational briefing that the Senate had a couple of weeks ago, jumped on this because they did not want the transient accommodation tax raise. The TAT. That's the TAT. The TAT is the transient accommodations tax. And that is a state tax on hotel rooms, which at this point in time, it's a small amount. If the TAT is increased as they're planning, it'll increase it less than $3 a day. So that's the big fuss. And the reason the neighbor island senators voted against it is they were erroneously informed that they would be, the neighbor islands would be paying part of the TAT, which they will be collecting the TAT and the increase in the TAT. But the point that I have made to the legislature in my testimony is that 80% of the GET is collected on Oahu. What that means is the Oahu taxpayers pay 80% of every state project on every island, including schools, teacher salaries, hospitals, roads, environmental programs, and all of the rest. So it doesn't seem to me to be quote, unfair that the TAT be increased and that that money go to help Oahu pay off this monster project, which by the way, I have fought from day one. It's too large. It's over-engineered. It's just a- And it's ugly. And it's ugly. All these things. Hawaii sells beauty and that's ugly. But it's here. But it's here. And so what- Now what? My organization, Advocates for Consumer Rights, is trying to do is get the best of what we can get because of the circumstances we now find ourselves in. So if each hotel room is $3 a day, because it's already at, you know, $300, so what's another $3? Well, it's more, the TAT is already in place. I think it's, I'd misquote the number, but it will be an additional less than $3 a day. Okay. In addition to whatever taxes they're already paying. Yes. Okay. So now- Statewide, not just on the neighbor island. Statewide, yeah. So the state, do the neighbor islands that they collect from the hotels on those islands, they get to keep that much? Already? Well, already the state refunds a certain amount of it, not all of it, to the various islands, counties. And as I understand it, the state will be increasing that amount, a proportional amount. So the counties will be doing better, actually. And that's why I'm very surprised at the way the boats went on the neighbor islands. Political cover, maybe. I think it's more that the tourism industry does not want any additional fees that don't come into their pockets, such as the various fees that they charge visitors. And when they raise the room rates, anything else that gets added on means that they maybe can't raise the room rates as large as they wish. Now, here I would point out, it's a great article in the morning paper, the morning civil beat. Oh, I got it here at the time. Yes, it's this morning. Excellent article. Anybody interested in this issue, read Lawmaker's Skeptical that Hotel Room Tax Hike Would Hurt Hawaii Tourism. The senators, several of them, Donna McMurdo-Kim, to her great credit, had asked for documentation that the tourism industry had been, to what the tourism industry had been saying about it. And damn it, she didn't get it. And it's all published in this article in the morning civil beat. So anyone really interested, I urge you to go to civilbeat.com and read that. So that documents how much is taken in, where it comes from, and does it do anything to slow tourism? To the contrary. It has, well, not to the contrary, but it has apparently no effect on it because tourism in the last, and again, I don't want to misquote dates, but the last years, decade or so, has gone from 6.5 million to 8.5 million. A steady, I believe the number was 8% increase year after year after year, despite the fact that the tat has been raised several times. It's had no effect on tourism. Okay. Well, we need to take a break, and we will be back. And let's talk about some more of this, what's going on with our legislative. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. And we're back talking with Scott Foster, who is founder of the Hawaii Advocates for Consumer Rights. And Scott is bringing us up to date on what is going on at the state legislature special session, and about getting us funded or not for the rail. So Scott, tell us, what is going on today? What do you expect today? And then can we rewind for those people that haven't been with us since 1992? Well, today at 1.30, the Senate will either vote to pass the combination increasing the tat, the transient, the combinations tax on hotel rooms, plus extending the general excise tax for, I've forgotten, several more years. That's the compromise. It's the combination of those two taxes. It will either pass or it won't. If it passes, it will move over to the house and go through the whole process again. And again, this all has to be done by Friday. The whole session has to be done by Friday. If it doesn't pass, I don't know. It's anybody's guess. We'll stay tuned for that. A little background, I was fortunate enough to have worked for and with the late state representative and council member Dr. Duke Venom. On June 2, 2009, Duke Venom had written a letter signed by then council member Duke Venom and council member Charles DeJew to the Under Secretary for Policy United States Department of Transportation. And I'm just going to read one paragraph here. We have the opportunity to go a long ways in solving our transportation problems while still protecting our lifestyles, if and only if all transit alternatives are given a full and fair consideration. We are only requesting that light rail at grade and elevated be examined as an alternative to all elevated systems as currently pursued by the city administration and that money not be spent for preliminary engineering or construction until this evaluation is complete. It is for this reason that we bring this matter to your attention. That was the day before he died. He died on June 9. This was June 2. Unfortunately, then council chair Nester Garcia held the vote and again memory fails a week or 10 days later, maybe two weeks. Duke Venom was dead. He was our turn vote and that brings us to today. Of course it was a devastating loss when I woke up the next morning and realized that I had been working with Duke only a few hours before he died of a heart attack. And I knew what this meant. The one thing we were successful in that ill-advised council meeting was we were able to force the city and county and I think Hart was in place then to come back to the city council every time there was a bond issue. In other words they wanted full bonding authority without having to come back to the council. That was the one victory we got out of that. Now if I remember correctly they had a council meeting almost immediately after Duke died even without taking a breath to say we're sorry you're not. Yeah that's that's the meeting I was talking about. So now here we are with this horrible thing and if you've been to Waipahu you know how many businesses have been lost and if it ends at Middle Street which seems to me to be the best solution because there are at least five hundred buses that transverse Middle Street every day so you can get on a bus and go someplace. My point in the position you're talking about which is let's stop it at Middle Street now whether it gets built on to Ala Moana later or not my argument and advocates for consumer rights argument and another hat that I wear the Kapuna Caucus the Democratic Party's position is no I misspoke. The Kapuna Caucus supports raising the TAT. Advocates for consumer rights in my position is let's put it on pause stop it at Middle Street and get it operating between where it starts way out in Eva and Middle Street and get the bugs worked out of it see what it costs to operate and then decide if we want to continue to build it on to Ala Moana and hopefully later the university. Well okay so what will the electric bill be if you push the button and it starts rolling down the track what happens with the electric bill for all of us because we've got to pay that what is it cost to operate this thing now it's up high and you've got folks riding the bus what happens if you have an emergency let's say somebody has a heart attack on the thing how do the emergency people get up there to the patient to the person that's number one if you have a disturbance on there and there's no driver who who is what happens those are you see I'm a bus rider those things I have seen happen on the bus what happens when you're up there how do you get emergency vehicles there how do you get time well the questions you're posing Marcia or a whole other show suffice to say we do not know what it's going to cost to operate because those numbers have not been put forth as I understand it certainly a additional substation is going to have to be built some are saying they're going to have to have a whole entire power plant for it a separate power plant I do not know because it's not been discussed nor has it been really widely discussed the fact that there's only one restroom in each one of them and those are going to be locked with a security person on site with the key now you know getting off of a cold bus sometimes the first thing I'm a bus rider too I'm looking for a place to pee and in this town that's hard to find that's hard to find so these are unanswered questions and the other reason I would like to see some resolution to getting this thing operating out there is so we can begin the important dialogue about affordable housing along the transient corridor the TOD the corridor the right of way yeah because once you get in town there is none right but out there out in the country yes there's plenty yeah because once you get to Chinatown there's not a square inch of space no real or white Paul you know or even white Paul there but all that all that ever ever planned yeah that's the transit or that's the TOD the what is it transit development development corridor that we need to be talking about and my fear is that the big developers are going to get a hold all that land and there will be no affordable housing bill and I would bet if that man that you're right but if you look try to take that to Alamoana have you been down to Alamoana recently and see all those million dollar condos and you're going to ride a train in their view plane I don't think so you're going to ride a train pass bird off again this wasn't my idea I don't like it any better than anyone else does but this is what is coming I the people already a friend of mine just finished doing a survey at the of marketplace international marketplace and almost to a person they were dissatisfied with Honolulu because of all of the high-end commercial spaces and one person said she just left Jamaica and it was so lovely and the music and the people and it's Jamaican flavor and she gets here and it's all high-end and she's disappointed well the naysayers and the war we we've warned people with a little common sense have warned the city council for years about this and that's one point I want to make before we leave the city council makes decisions today that really won't many won't have any effect for years they won't show up and yet while organizations will go to the legislature they rarely turn up at the city council and so I encourage people we've got to keep a better eye on this city council well they have the plans and permitting department and in the city council which they have to go to but the plans the net but as we learned last year when we were working on the amendments the master plan is 25 years old so the city is still working on a master plan that's 25 years old and hopefully was on the master plan 25 years ago things have changed in 25 years so that everything now is different than the master plan that the city is working on and well this is this is why citizens must become more involved in in their government we must we must get better organized we must raise our voices more often and not be afraid of retribution which is one reason a lot of people don't you know you can ask anybody on the street for all of the words to um any you name it uh Taylor Swift's newest song they know it all but you ask who is your city council person they don't know I know and they don't know who their elected representative or senator are yeah mostly don't mostly don't and one last thing before we go because I've been complaining about this forever in 1908 when the city was made in county of Honolulu became incorporated there were nine city council people they were called county different but nine today still we have nine everything has changed the population's changed the face of the island has changed everything has changed still only nine people we have 51 house members nine council people that has to be changed I agree that that let's start there let's figure out how to change that let's do another show on that yes okay thank you so much for spending this day with us and we'll see you next week I love you