 Yeah, five o'clock on a Monday. I'm Jay Fidel. This is No Surprise Think Deck, and it's Community Matters here today with Senator Sharon Moriwaki. I'm talking about a retrospective of the 2021 session. Very interesting session. Hi, Sharon. Thank you for joining us today. Hello, Jay. Nice to see you. Nice to be on and being on your program again. Yeah, so it's great to have you. So let's talk about the session. First, as sort of in a general sense, how would you characterize this session as opposed to other sessions? You know, they say that last session was not this past one, but the one before when COVID hit us was the worst, and it was a really different session. This session was not any better. We are still not out of COVID. We cut short our session. We ended in April. We have not ever, as I've been told, had 28 vetoes of our bills. That's quite a bit. And so we learned a whole lot this session, not only in terms of the number of bills and trying to work remotely and getting as much in as possible, but having a real run at the end on the conference committees. We were running around trying to get bills saved and bills together, and we missed on 28 of them. And we had to come back in special session because, well, it wasn't really our fault. It was a number of bills had to do with the budget and with the debt service. And all of those couldn't be paid with the federal relief funds. So we did have to come back to fix that. So in override, you override, and that's it, the overridden bill becomes law. And you also have the opportunity to look at all the bills to say, can we fix it? If you can fix it, you can come back. And if the governor agrees, the two houses agree, the governor agrees, then you can actually fix a bill, and it can go on its merry way to be passed and signed. So we had a couple of those. We could not get agreement on a couple of others, and I hope next session, we could work on those bills again. So, you know, is it? Is next session the second of a biennium? Yes. So a lot of what, you know, what didn't get done this year. Yeah, it'll be carried over. I want to ask you at the end of the show what, you know, what's cooking there. I mean, what is likely to come up next year on that basis? So government operations, that's a really special committee. We don't hear too much about it, but you're the chair and, you know, given the kind of energy, excuse the term that you have, I imagine there's been some interesting legislation out of that committee. Can you talk about it? Sure. You know, you would think that government operations, it's really kind of an in the weeds committee, you know, we look at how can government be more efficient? How can we make sure that our programs are structured or we evaluate them? We do procurement. I oversee the Department of Accounting and General Services. So there's a lot that's in that department. That's that's in what they call my purview under the Senate rules. So I thought it would be, you know, kind of straightforward committee. And I had over 100 bills that came to my committee. It was craziness. And we had to and we, as I said, we had a curtailed session. So it was how can we push as many bills through as possible that were good bills that we would be able to improve the services of government? There were reorganization bills, there were bills to have the state be more, how should I say, more efficient, save us money, as well as provide more services for what we have. So for example, we have several million dollars that we spend on on these space, all of that. And so we toured some of the the office buildings. And we found that that a lot of space was not housing people. It was housing people's junk. You know, it was a lot of things that should be going to archive or be shredded or lots of PPE all over the place on floors that were very nice office spaces. You know, so so part of looking at that and how can we do it? We talked to the comptroller and he said, you know, it's up to each department. We can't tell the department what to do. So, you know, there it goes. We said, well, what would make it more effective so that you do assess how much space they do need. And then give them the space they need and add more people in and bring them out of least private space and save that money for other purposes. He says, well, we don't have the authority to do it. So one of the bills we passed and was signed gives a comptroller the authority to go in and look at space. I know a number of you state employees might not be so happy. But this is all for the good of the public and being much more thoughtful and mindful about the space we do have and use it for the benefit of the public. So that is one thing the comptroller is now assessing the space from the Ways and Means Committee. We have gone to Kauai and the Big Island and one of the themes is looking at how well they use their space. Somebody has to do that. Somebody has to do it. You know, I'm taking it for the team. Well, that's good. That's like dealing with special funds that are hidden in the corners and nobody ever sees them and somebody's got to take a look. One of the things we did do though, you know, near and dear to me is renewable energy and electric vehicles that the state is a big user of vehicles both when our employees go to the neighbor islands or go elsewhere and rent cars or when we buy vehicles for our motor pool. So the bill that passed and already the comptroller is working on this is that we when there is when our employees go to the neighbor islands if available and with you know again comparable in terms of cost they can't go renting you know a Tesla or something you know it really has to be functional and can get them from point A to B and that they we have a preference for using electric vehicles and the comptroller is already starting to purchase electric vehicles when he's replacing vehicles that we now have. So we are really being a model for the state in using electric vehicles. That's great Sharon. It's not just that you know state agencies you know can be more efficient and and be a model to you know have a model in general you know internally and externally. It's that it's a nod you know it's a nod it's saying the state the legislature governor they want to focus on electric vehicles. We really mean it. We're committed you know you can count on us maintaining this policy so it's time for you to go out and get an electric vehicle. That's that's a fabulous message. And and you the other thing is that we create the market so once we create the market more cars will come in that are electric and and and then you actually have more vehicles available for others to purchase. Right now we don't have it. I think California is taking all these electric vehicles. I was trying to buy a Kia and and the one that I wanted wasn't coming in because they were all going to California. And so so what if the state becomes the driver so to speak the driver of bringing in more electric vehicles there will be more of a market created for others to then purchase hopefully at a lower price these new electric vehicles. I think I think that's clearly a terrific bill. One of the things I think you guys did was streamline the computer system for the state. What did you do in that regard? Okay so under under my purview also is the Office of Enterprise Services and they are in charge of all the computers the large computers for the state. Part of the problem there is that as we saw in the unemployment insurance program these are legacy systems. They're huge legacy systems. They have to comply with the federal regulations but it's also having a more nimble system having something that's really updated had not been done. And so the Office of Enterprise Services was working with these these programs. Now I talked to the programs and they said well you know we've got to send it up to to the office and the office will look at it and there's a three or four person committee they will look at it and we are scheduled to meet I don't know in the next monthly meeting. I said well that's crazy you've got a problem in your hands today what are they doing today and why do you have to wait a month or when their next scheduled meeting is there should be something that's closer in time to when you need to be working the project. So I talked to Doug Murdock the the the director and said why why do you have to have that why can't you have an ongoing open door for departments to work with you and not not at the tail end but at the front end you know when you're developing the program you talk to whoever has to use the program and and try to streamline it at that end and then put your computer system together and help them get the contractor help them execute so you don't leave them stranded at the tail end you also make sure that it's implemented and I call it the cradle to grave on on on what we do in state government a lot of times it's so fragmented and silo one doesn't know what the next does and so we have wasted money and programs that don't always work to the user's benefit so so we have a mod we put money in and staffing in to to Doug's program to do a modernization program within their department to do just that so we're working with him I want to see a plan and how he's going to use the funds we gave him so that we really can help the departments again the departments become more efficient they serve the public much better because they now have all the tools before it so that's well we we know at think tech how you know having a decent computer system database system these days communication system can make life so much easier so much more efficient yeah it's the tools that everybody needs and you know we can't have it so our cake that you know it breaks down and you don't know how to fix it so the other thing we're working on and I was just going to talk to Doug about it because uh Senator Dela Cruz is very interested in growing our own talent and workforce and what are the training and competencies we need so instead of working off a consultant that we pay millions to why not train our own people so that we've got in-house talent and we can pull in from the high schools from the community colleges from wherever and bring them in as an intern so they know the system and hire them on and as as they perform and and I I think a lot of what we're we're facing are uh how should I say this nicely um we've got we've got managers or administrators saying no I want somebody who knows how to do the job when we hire them well if you want somebody to know the job when you hire them then you better be be able to pay the big bucks you know if you want to have somebody who's going to stick around know your system be able to to learn and grow with your department or with your division then why not show a young person and they're very talented now if you're talking about it to come in learn your learn everybody's job and see how you can make that job easier and work on a computer system and be there train them train them up train them constantly because as you know j it changes day by day and you can't say okay we're gonna wait um and uh you know when we get the next funding and I don't know when uh we'll upgrade the system it's a daily thing to be looking around and seeing how can we improve and that's the mindset that young people have that we don't sometimes we have to keep them here gotta keep keep current keep with the times keep you have to build a um a generation of of I don't want to say kids but young people who are akamai about this but we can do it here ourselves we don't have to bring them in from the mainland all the time and send away our kids so it's great to build local competency in this and so many other things this is this is what we're really trying to develop j is at least from the senate is how can we develop our local kids so they don't have to go away to get a decent job with enough pay so they can buy a home or at least a condo and live here you know this reflects um a phenomenon that I have observed and that is um COVID COVID has you know threatened us COVID has disrupted us COVID has made us think maybe a little more out of the box and has changed us uh it has changed our our state our society our people our businesses for sure and this I think it has changed the way the legislature looks at things and what you are talking about is an example of that am I right is that is that what's in the air that was that in the air during this session yeah you know and and we've been talking about this for a while it's just it became much more prominent because we saw of our stable industry um without a workforce uh it really almost crumbled and how did we how could we save it and also seeing that we had to look at and diversify our economy I mean we've talked about it for years I mean you know we've always talked about diversifying economy but it was so stark when we saw the empty beaches the empty hotels the empty restaurants that we are depending too much on an industry um and not and and it's not that we don't want to support the visitor industry because it is our staple but we weren't we weren't expanding into other areas we're just talking today um with uh uh Jerry Gibson and uh Senator De La Cruz talking about why don't our local kids get up into the management stream in hotels if they did then we would be much closer to the hotels and see how we could support the hotels because the hotels are us and we are them um and it hasn't been so visible um the other the other part of this is why don't didn't the hotels or some of them are um connecting with the community so for example if we wanted to build agritourism we've got all these beautiful um um decorative plants we've got we've got all kinds of new plants and new um species that we're developing at CTAR uh why not just instead of as this is senator this is senator De La Cruz's point so why is it that we just have the marimona and the pacific festival why not have people come here as really a truly destination for for seeing what the new species are you know in in plants and and in um vegetables and fruits and and and that would be the draw and and the hotels would be a part of it so we say why isn't the hotel buying all of these products that that are locally grown good question you know we do farm to state farm to school why not farm to hotel and and really start looking at the connections of the industry the visitor industry growing other industries that would really be the feeders for the hotels and vice versa yeah i know he's been interested in local agriculture for a long time uh we did a show years ago about one of his projects and and uh this you know as i say this is a time when we've been disrupted by covid this is the time to take a hard look at the factors of the economy and one of them is agriculture for sure that pink tech is making a movie a documentary about uh agriculture in hawaii this is the time to look at it i'm so glad you guys are looking at that and trying to uh incentivize um you know the hotels and and at the same time offer a career offer it's just like it's just like the computer the it thing offer careers to young people where they can visualize even from a young age they can visualize uh spending their time uh in a farm in a high level agricultural experience this is great to offer them an alternative sector to invest themselves it could be so exciting because you know their grandparents they oh no you don't want to go into egg farming is hard work you've got a hole and you've got to you know get up early and and so forth but with the technology and how we're looking at different different um jobs there isn't a whole stream of agribusiness right whether it's you know you really need to to adjust to okay new seeds or or then you look at not only um farming but the farmer maybe just want to farm but what is the network that from from the farm and the harvest then you have to go to to the um processing and then to the distribution marketing all of that is business acumen that we need to train our kids it's not just the farming it's the whole complex of of of competencies there and you don't have to do one part of it you could have a team doing a whole the whole and one of the exciting things is is um we went to kawaii and kilohana um um which is gay lords and and was a small little restaurant before it's a nice restaurant now it's a whole complex he's he added on I think 60 acres it's about 80 90 acres and and he's got all kinds of orchards and vegetables and everything is growing there that he can use in his in his um um restaurant and then he's got little little huts that you can have drinks and he's brought in uh you know a trolley that goes around the place and has become a visitor you know a destination point so so there's so much that you could do to make it tourism but also he's gotten plots that he gives to the local farmers they can farm and that becomes their produce that they could sell and the other exciting thing is if you could get um a hub that does value added to the product so you could have one example that that um that senator de la Cruz was talking about when they went to Oregon I think um was that the the farmer had all these chestnuts and and it was and and they were all going to be thrown out so he went to the the their sitar and said you know I I'm gonna have to throw this out I'm gonna lose my whole crop and and they said well no you could do value added they made chestnut butter chestnut jam and so on and so forth and now the guy is like growing a lot of chestnuts because now there's a value added industry that comes around creativity creativity isn't it exciting I think that's wonderful one of my one of my wife's relatives who left Hawaii decades ago came back recently and started a coffee a coffee farm in Calico Cua and um and she is having a whale of a time and get family and a whole a whole group of people up there working on this and and you know and take it farming farming Sharon you can quote me on this farming is fun farming is fun okay farming you have to tell the kids that it's going somewhere well you know all of that all of that is good I mean we we would be remiss if we didn't talk about in terms of this diversification issue about the bill that that reduced the amount of state support to the Hawaii tourism authority can you talk about that for a minute sure that's hb 86 to the hta bill there's a lot of things in that bill but the one that people most concerned about was the reduction of or hta support there was no reduction in hta support I think we all support the visitor industry what we did do was change what they call the the method of funding and up to this year they've been getting special funded that means it's a separate part of money and and you can use it and it's not in the general fund so we can't touch it you can use it for the purposes for which they were created and it was created to to support the visitor industry so originally when it was funded it was for that purpose we found that you know we needed to support the the visitor industry big time so that's what it was done I don't know 20 years ago whenever it was and and we also gave them a special fund because we know how slow the procurement processes in the state and they needed to work quickly to to get programs out so that was the concept behind funding the hta but the hta's purpose at that time when it first got created was to put a head on every bed and and they did that so well we had 10 million people coming to our shores um and we were we were generating income from it fast forward to to today and more so what we saw during the pandemic is that hey you know what we've got to be a little bit more mindful about what we're calling the visitor industry it has to be a destination management um program not just head on every bed and you know not and everything is just overrun and we haven't put enough money into the infrastructure so so our beaches are overrun you know our roads and you know as you can see in hanah they're all over the place touching our seals whatever right all right yeah right no you went over um and and that i think from the legislature's viewpoint was not was not their job their job their mission was to make this a quality destination to make make it so that our our industry was really um uh not only providing a good experience for the visitor but also taking care of our environment taking care of our culture our history and making the visitor understand that and working closely uh with our community with our residents so they didn't overrun uh your neighborhoods with um well these short term rentals or you know all these people wanting to see what's happening in your neighborhood uh and not really respecting that we live you're totally right about that you're totally right yeah so that that's that's what happened this year with the bill and it really did it gave them 60 million dollars i've heard that they had 20 million in their account so 20 million in their account plus the 60 million is the 80 million they've been receiving the big change is that they will have it funded by general funds not by special funds and the purpose is to rein them in to say okay you're saying you're doing all these things come like any other state agency and tell us what you're doing with your money or the taxpayers money and and tell us how are you managing our our uh industry so that it really does meet the needs of the of of bringing in quality quality tourists who who respect the place we live so that's great you know that's why we did what we did and we're saying we're not it's not forever if they can show us like they're starting to do now finally pivoting and i see them going to the neighbor islands working on the short-term rentals on how you rein that in how you control that that is one of the biggest problems we have because people come here on the cheap they they then you know get every single car they can find go all over the islands and and not respecting you know our our culture and our people so um that is the charge to the hta if the hta can do that they now have 80 million in their account 20 million carry over and another 60 million which we gave them this this is general funds like any other agency tell us what you're using taxpayer monies for and is it managing our tourist uh that's not god vetoed but you guys overrode it that's why we overrode it correct and and you know i i i represent waikiki i represent kakaako many of whom are um rely on the visitors coming in and so you know it it was very hard decision for me but it's because i think it's not it's it's it's really for the purpose of rating in an agency and say hey remember your mission your mission is just not you know just bringing a tourist in just letting go all over the place your job is to make this a quality destination where people can come in and enjoy and we can enjoy them as well so that's i think it's a great a great step forward conceptually uh you know and historically uh turn in the remaining time let me ask you about you know a couple of things that do um directly affect um you know your constituency and your district um one of them would be homelessness and the other would be crime can you talk about sure you know um they're both very much a problem we have tried to um introduce bills on crime we did get one pass it was for the elderly was upping um the the penalties for anyone who attacks uh either physically uh uh or in their homes as we've seen they're so vulnerable uh it's increased from you know to a felony we also included people who financially abuse the elderly so so that's one crime bill that passed others where we wanted to to have what what the prosecutor is now doing is based on that weed and seed model is if you've committed because some of these people are committing crimes like 20 or 30 it's a revolving door so part of it was okay if you commit three then you know it bumps you up and you can't come into the area it's and especially in Waikiki because you know we have a lot of tourists so it's easy for them to pray on the tourist because they're not going to testify against you once they go on they're gone so um you know looking into to that as well uh what what we're also doing is um I'm working with a small group to look at the whole homeless problem and who are the homeless the homeless aren't just this big mass of people who have no homes it ranges from an offender who actually does commit crimes and we're hearing now that some of these offenders are not living on the streets they go into these tents and they sell drugs to the the homeless they pray on the homeless and and so that group should actually be be actually cited and charged and you know go to prison or some kind of treatment if they're they're on drugs or you know there there's a diversion program the others are mental mental ill substance abusers those as well fine and we've been working with HPD and and captain Lambert who ran the honu established the honu his point is we want to divert them we don't want to fill the portrooms with them we want them to get to a better place so a lot of this may be administrative it may be procedural but it couldn't come up with bills for example a number of treatment agencies don't want to take in people because they're afraid that if somebody dies while they're in their their their center that they'll be charged and they will lose their license so we need some kind of good Samaritan law to help these people so that they will take in people because a big so this is the thing we we met with some homeless who are now in a better place and to a person they said well two things one that they've they connected with somebody who cared for them that they trusted somebody and that's what these outreach workers and and the treatment programs are doing and those should be funded those that really care about taking one person putting them off the street but the other thing they said was we do have no matter how bad we're in this moment of clarity a moment of clarity when we know that it would be better not being where we're sitting today and whether it's in prison or whether it's in a treatment program or whether it's finally I can't be here anymore and that moment of clarity is 10 minutes 10 minutes so what we're looking at now is how can we change our systems and our programs so that we accommodate the 10 minute moment of clarity and that's really tough because we've got to put our resources to those places where you can take a person they can get it assessed they can get treated they can move into permanent residency or treatment that's the goal when you ran for office originally what three years ago and and and you know when you conceived of how it would be as a state senator I doubt you realized how many different disciplines and issues you would have to cope with and address and solve in in that job it's a difficult job you know you think it's really easy I thought campaigning was hard and the job would be easier but it's just as hard because you've got so many problems and you know you've got to make the connections and it's not always like you you are the in local parenthesis for the whole community you have to think of everything well let me I wish we had more time and maybe we should do this again because I know there are a lot of other issues and things that have happened and this has been a tough session I mean last session you were you know out of luck because it was closed for so many weeks this session it was like hybrid and curtailed and you know you you know you didn't have the full the full geography of what to do of the of the time and effort and resource to do it next session knock wood I'm knocking wood as we speak we'll be out of COVID I'm knocking wood you'll you'll have more opportunities resources time support what have you tell me next session the second session of the biennium what do you expect for the session next year in 2022 well it's we're we're we're hoping and we're planning for it to be open and and now that we're learning that we can actually do remote as well as in person that's going to be really important because we need to hear from the community that is so important and critical to a lot of the bills that we have and so looking at next year there are bills still you know in the hopper that we have to go back and fix you know a couple of them like the emergency powers we just ran out of time and there's there's ways that we could fix that bill at least for the future not not this this this governor but but really addressing some of the problems there there's a lot of the bills that that we have in there hcda is one we wanted to restructure that and we had a bill almost ready to go and we we just didn't make it in in the when we ran out of time yeah ran out of time well there was just a small little error and we were trying to fix it but we just could not do it and get a get everybody to agree on it when with the override looking at the override so some of the override bills there's still good bills we'll come back to those we're looking from from my my purview of government operations we're looking at improving procurement we i have a special committee that i'm chairing on government accountability and it's focusing on procurement we have a number of bills that will come out from the committee we are now asking departments for a lot of information on how they do procurement um last year we passed a bill that requires the departments to um to to evaluate contractors and put it into a uh perform past performance database so when anybody contracts out they can see the performance of these these contractors which is a good thing because it's also a way for um contractors say hey you know what i better do this job well because it's going to be up there on that website if i if i don't you know so great idea clean clean up how we do business been sloppy it's been sloppy and and um it's about time because we're we don't have the fund so so we really it's time to use our funds more wisely for the benefit of our public it sounds like my theory is correct that is we've had a disruption over the past 18 months um and we have seen that we have to think out of the box and you do think out of the box and uh that'll that'll raise all the boats that'll raise all the boats in a funny way we are remaking the state you are remaking state so really appreciate your efforts i know how hard you work Sharon but it's you know what it's fun when you see a little progress little progress here a little progress there you know it's nice to know that um you're not just doing it for not no no we appreciate it um senator Sharon moriwaki of the hawaii state senate thank you so much for joining us i hope we can do this again and explore so many other issues in which you are involved thank you thank you for inviting me jay