 Aloha and welcome back to Politics in Hawaii with Dennis Asaki on Think Tech Hawaii. Today we'll be speaking with Ron Kochi, the state senate president from Kauai. Ron has been the Kauai county council member and its chairman. He was appointed but it's to the state senate where then governor lingo when there was a vacancy in 2010 I believe. September 10th but who's coming? Yeah in 2003 I actually ran against Ron for seat on the island white KIUC board for island utility cooperative board along with 31 candidates. He came in first, I came in second, he had 138 more votes than me so we both got in. Well they took nine people so you know. Yeah I got it. Comfortably, so I didn't view you as running against me. You know part of the nine that we're going to be able to undertake that brand new adventure of the cooperative which now that we can look back almost 20 years later has become such an incredible success story and as climate change is featured so much in the news lately not just here in Hawaii but globally you know the ability of Kauai island utility to cooperative to be pushing at 60% or more renewable 25% higher than Hawaiian electric really speaks well for the cooperative and for the people of Kauai. Yeah thanks for your help in that. That's why I have a green shirt on today. Anyway welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. We welcome your thoughts on some of the issues facing us in Hawaii. Let's start with political decisions you have to make due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Well I think the biggest challenge has been in doing the best we can to protect the public health and safety. You need to shut down the movement of people and the activity and interaction of individuals whether it's visitors or residents and that shutdown of activity has you know tremendously strong adverse impact on economic activity and there's no threading the needle as we've opened up you know the case count has gone higher it's just how much higher for quite a while it was a number that was manageable where you know we thought we struck a reasonable balance between having economic activity well still providing you know a pretty safe environment but with the Delta variant clearly it's spreading rapidly and you know with the last seven-day average at 500 statewide as compared to 60 a month ago and a positivity rate above seven percent when we were a little over two percent just a month ago just shows how quickly this Delta variant is spreading and our hospital bed capacity which was not challenged for the longest time is now being challenged. Yeah but most of the decisions now is talks from the governor's office and the mayor's right. It was a recent emergency power bill limiting the power of the governor I guess, but you did it overrided and he talks on that. Yeah one of the concerns would be exactly what's happening now we adjourned at the end of April we did come back in early July for a week to consider a veto override or four days and at that point you know we went home thinking that you know we've got this under control the average case count as I said statewide was about 60 the positivity rate a little over two percent the council of revenues you know was saying that we were in a lot better economic position you know we did get the federal assistance and so our budget was you know in a much better place and now as the Delta variant has quickly overtaken us to get the legislature to come back into session to enact laws and to try to deal with what is occurring now you know that was one of the concerns that it would just take too many days to try to have the legislature work on something if you know it did go quickly and got out of control and clearly we're in that situation now and so that factored into not overriding the veto. So actually the governor has all the power but as you mentioned it it affects the state finances and economy and which you will have to deal with in the legislature right? Yes but at this point the governor and the mayors in their recommendation are going back to the gathering sizes of 10 indoors and 25 outdoors 50 capacity in the restaurants and when Oahu was in tier two as you recall you know they were in tier one they were still at five people indoors and outdoors and so you know they're in the current executive order they're hoping to take a more balanced approach to try and see if we can't get our health numbers in a better place without a complete shutdown of the economy. The other thing is that the governor and the mayors have still decided to continue to keep safe travels in place where trans-pacific travelers with proof of vaccination are not you know subject to quarantine or if you use a trusted partner 72 hours before you travel and get a negative test result then you are you know still eligible or you know not required to quarantine and of course in some of the confusion you need to load your material onto the safe travels app or get it done before you travel and print out your QR code to ensure that you know you would not be subject to quarantine and so that's a significant decision on their part although in the presentation we got from General Hara last week Thursday to the Senate's COVID-19 committee 85% of all of the positives are residents and 15% are visitors and you know certainly Hawaii residents enjoy vacationing in Las Vegas and quite a few of the infections are occurring with Hawaii residents who have traveled to Las Vegas on vacation have contracted COVID in Las Vegas and then brought it back home. Yeah well you mentioned you know the tourists versus the residents of course they could be transmitting it and as you mentioned there when our residents go on trips and return with it um so that's still going back to the governor or is it the adjutant general's decision and they're making these decisions in consultation with the department of health I haven't seen a memo yet when the COVID-19 committee hopes to reconvene you know they went through the superintendent or interim superintendent of schools they had General Hara and you know a few other Hilton ratio had given a health update but they ran out of time and didn't get to the department of health so I think our community and the members of the senate are certainly interested in hearing the report from the department of health but all of these decisions are made with the adjutant general the health department and of course the consultation of the mayors as we know on kawaii back in December Merakawa Kami chose to opt out of safe travel so any of the mayors still have the option of requesting to the governor to opt out of safe travels but right now you know everybody is in the program and you know that was in the joint statement from the governor and the mayors yesterday yeah you know still stuck on tourism you know it's a big economic engine as they call it when we had the shutdown state was starving you know hotels businesses that were closed and now when it's opened up it's uh overtroped so what is the solution well one of the solutions and it was piloted on kawaii is the reservation system to now get to k-a beach back in April of 2018 when we had the catastrophic flooding and part of the north shore got cut off because the bridge washed out finally created the opportunity for people to say we're going to limit the visitors to k-a at 900 a day we were getting upwards of two or three thousand a day you know they were parked all over the place an emergency vehicle couldn't get to the end of the road if there was some kind of medical emergency and you need to pay if you're a visitor for that parking and the reservation to go to the beach they took that to wainapa-napa on Maui the ways the means committee in 2019 visited k-a to see what was going on so senator english put that in place wainapa-napa between a $20 parking pass for a vehicle and $5 entry fee per individual is scheduled to make $3.5 million this year they just started at diamond head and diamond head generated just under $400,000 in its first month of operation you know we're looking at k-a and other state parks throughout the state for assessing parking fees and visitor entry passes and this could generate upwards of 40 to 50 million dollars but also would give us an opportunity to manage how many people can actually access the resource and give us an opportunity to better manage the resource by limiting the amount of people who go there and with the money being generated gives us the revenue to reinvest into the natural resources but i think that's you know one faction of it for one part and again you have some of the local guys who live there you know they kind of get their water heater fix you know call me to do a job i reluctant to go out there to do it you know because all the shutdowns and uh there's more to it than you know just that one piece right yes but that is the first step in how we manage it i mean we still have uh general issues the airport is controlled by the FAA which is federally controlled so we cannot really stop planes from coming in we don't control the private market so what the airlines decide to sell the seats for is critically important and then when you take a look at what the hotel rooms or other accommodations are going for all of those factor into the attractiveness of whether they're going to click the button to go to hawaii or to go to somewhere else and you know what is uh certainly something we're closely monitoring this is with almost no foreign visitors this is almost all domestic travel okay yeah um okay we passed a little bit on the finances uh can you discuss state finances where do we go from here well we um i guess what is really misleading is that the council of revenues when covid first hit and we shut the airport had a minus 14 growth and hawaii and nevada are the two largest service economies with hotels and restaurant and so it's been the biggest challenge for us to uh get back to a healthier economic path so as the numbers have gotten better people are asking me what are you going to do with all of the surplus well we don't really have a surplus they finally went from minus two in the last report to plus two and when they said we had six hundred million more to spend next year than was anticipated in the budget we adopted we uh generally pay 500 million dollars to the health fund and the retirement system and we did that this year but we did not make that payment next year so of that 600 million the first 500 million will go to pay our obligation in the health and the pension fund and then we had to use all of our rainy day fund and so a lot of that 100 million really should go back to the rainy day fund so that we're prepared when the next catastrophe hits and who knows the way the delta variant has been spreading we may be in the next new catastrophe right now so we've relied a lot on federal federal money going to people and they got to pay taxes on it right yes and you know we mentioned the like things opening up but we have problems with employees and uh housing uh was that the uh you cannot uh kick out the tenants right I would not say kick out there is an immoratorium okay yeah you're politically correct so you're there and I'm not as we've discussed before your uh SAT scores were very high yeah you know that uh you gotta look at all those things and uh people have uh this is hard time finding uh employees so they get it closed some days or shut the doors early what do you got to say about that I all I have to say is it's challenging uh ways and means they were on kawaii visiting a few weeks ago and the real question we had is what are the programs we need to put in place in k through 12 to start better training our uh students as they graduate to be workforce ready where are the jobs where is the need and uh you know hopefully we're gonna do a better job of delivering the education there to get a better workforce in the near term it is simply going to be a problem finding workers we have had people because of the cost of living we've simply left kawaii and gone to other areas where the cost of living is less and uh we don't have as many people here as we used to in uh in the workforce and then uh the unemployment benefits do not run out until next month so we still have people who are being uh you know paid that uh added benefit on the unemployment and uh you know I think if the unemployment benefits run out in September then maybe you know you'll see more people who are going to resume going into the workforce and uh you know I I get that there are those who are reluctant to go back to work who are concerned about their health and their safety and you know we need to just work uh to or to continue to strive to make people feel confident and comfortable that they can resume uh working uh and uh that they're gonna do so in a way that's safe I would be remiss if I didn't take the time to say I would still encourage anyone who does not have an allergy or other adverse reaction to the vaccination getting vaccinated is the most powerful way that we can fight the COVID-19 variants and it is the best way that we can try to get people safe and hopefully get to a point where people can resume more normal activities in their lives in a safe way. Yeah thanks. I'm getting back to housing and we all look at the median price climb higher and higher the million dollars now for a single family home uh you know granted the county and the state doing a lot of work on the lower end than a cold affordable which is just a rare affordable because you know the prices of uh houses in that range it goes up pretty high. I think the government would do more in in a for the middle class working people as far as housing you know to make it more available to them and they'll have to do less on the lower end. Any comment on that? Well no I agree with you Dennis and I know that you have represented uh the island of Kauai on state boards dealing with housing throughout the state and are very well versed in on this subject when uh D. R. Horton opened those homes next to King Kamua Lee School in Hanama'ulu at 400,000 or so people were screaming you know it's not affordable it's not affordable uh the low end affordable for that rezoning project had been built at Kaleppo Village many years ago so they did have the 80 and below or 65 and below units built uh for those who aren't aware of the numbers that we use 100,000 is a median income for a couple of two and uh at this point you know at 80 percent your combined income cannot exceed 80,000 dollars right now if you've been teaching for a few years you're making 50,000 plus you know a husband and wife or a teacher they exceed 100,000 dollars in income and they can't afford to buy a house uh police officer starts at about 65, 70,000 like a firefighter does all of a sudden we have people who are teaching our children and first line responders nurses as well if they're a married couple who are priced out of the affordable market and I completely agree with you that we need to have some of these units that are in place and then for those who were able to purchase those D. R. Horton homes where we see the market today you know though that would have been a really great investment on their part and uh you know to get into a home at 400, 450 dollars compared to today's market uh you know really really would have done well we're in a worldwide marketplace we have more people because of the safety numbers in Hawaii and Kauai in particular buying site unseen million-dollar properties to work remotely you know that global market is one we'll continue to compete in and I wholeheartedly agree that we need to have units available to uh you know our white collar workers and then first line responders who are they're protecting us each and every day yeah the phrase you mentioned site unseen we hear that all the time now you know guys buying it I hear from guys putting their homes on the market and they get it offers bidding wars and getting a lot more than what they asked for or was listed for yeah we're gonna I think you know we're gonna do that uh with leadership from the top you know but the other thing when people said let's go cap the uh prices but for someone who invested 20 30 years ago into a house and envisioned that as their retirement as a rental the market just paid off all of a sudden uh you know when they're offered that million dollar price for the house how do you tell that person who's 60 70 years old don't don't sell your house don't make a profit I mean you know they sacrifice a lot to to get it and there are quite a bit of people who are age 60 and older that uh investing in you know rental properties was a comfortable investment strategy one that they could see touch and they were familiar with you know there are people who are uncomfortable in the stock market and and that's all part of the challenge I mean it's not just rich people getting richer and they're you know they're offering this kind of dollars for old plantation homes yeah no that's you know that's not what I'm saying to do you know oh yeah yeah and yeah it's one of the things they talk about but I'm thinking uh like all the things that a cool uh developer although that word is kind of a bad name um has to go to land use change all the permitting and I think years to do it you know and which equates to money but the other thing Dennis I think that still you know the the biggest or best point that you've made is so much of our focus is on 80 and below or with the 9 tax credits 65 and below that we are not paying enough attention to those in that 100 to 140 group and well it may seem like it's not affordable to sell that high these are our friends and neighbors who are making over a hundred thousand dollars a year as a as a couple but they can't pay a million dollars you know for that market home and so we need to see things in that the price range so we are committing a lot of state resources for rental assistance but we're also committing money in the development revolving fund and we're trying to help look at financing interim uh construction uh costs for infrastructure and partnering with the counties across excuse me across the state to try and build more of these affordable units okay thanks we get the several minutes left um what one topic that comes up very so often is gambling another uh gonna elaborate on your thoughts on that uh i i'm not somebody who supports gaming and certainly pre-pandemic i enjoy going to uh las vegas and playing video poker and you know wagering on on uh sports events uh at the sports book but at at this point i think we can solve our problems without uh gambling the other one that's going to be i i believe uh you know top of the list again accession is the legalization of marijuana as another method of uh raising revenue and uh you know personally i have not been a big proponent of marijuana but i can tell you that an overwhelming majority of my caucus in the senate supported and i'm aware of uh you know how they feel and so i i'm sure that this is going to be something that will be widely debated next year okay but see if we're gambling here then guys don't have to go to Las Vegas to bring back the covid well i have no uh argument to refuse no and um i mean one uh one thing the dj shell was talking about gambling and on their property i know you had some thoughts on that uh again it's not something that i was supportive of but my uh hawaiian affairs chair senator shimabukuru senator kawaii who's the chair of the hawaiian caucus in the legislature they wanted to uh hear what the thoughts were and they had asked for a hearing and i supported them proceeding to try and get the information but in the end uh chair shimabukuru did not have the support of her committee to move the bill along after the hearing was held so what uh what was the plan or the discussion about on that uh it was that they were going to dedicate the funding to uh the department of hawaiian homelands for the development of housing for their beneficiaries and that's what the intended use of the revenue was going to be so i don't mean to deflect on the gambling uh issue i've said clearly it's not something that i support but i just know there's more support in uh senate caucus for legalization of marijuana than to consider legalized gambling at this point all the time i went by really fast uh round thanks for joining us in the closing remarks well just thank you for the opportunity to continue to connect with uh everyone out there and appreciate the invitation and uh happy to do it uh sometime in the future if you run out of new guests thanks again senator ron pochi thank you to uh thank that hawaii uh see you again in a couple of weeks aloha and mahalo