 Welcome, Aloha. Welcome to Talk Story with John Wahey. Boy, do we have an exciting show for you today. I have, as a guest, Representative Bette Fukumoto Chang. And here's the exciting thing. She is right now currently in session, you know, doing good things for all of you. But more importantly, she is there as the leader of the minority in the House of Representatives. So, Bette, welcome. Thanks for having me. Yeah, you know, I've been wanting to have you on the show for quite a while, as you know, and the reason is that I think that you're one of the more fascinating people at the state council. Hopefully that's good. Yeah, it is good. It is good. I mean, in politics, if you're not fascinating, you know, it's rough. Good point. But anyway, OK, tell us a little bit about yourself. You know, where did you grow up and all of this other thing? Well, I grew up mostly in Mililani. We moved there when I was 10. So most of what I remember is the district that I represent. But born in Salt Lake, but born in Honolulu. So you grew up in Mililani, which is your current district? Yes. Yes. So the people that are there are like your neighbors, although Mililani grows really fast. Oh, yeah. Well, the house that I live in now didn't exist when we first moved up there, right? All of Mililani, Malca, wasn't even there. It was just red dirt, right? So I remember that and I remember everything getting built. All right. Exciting, yeah. So tell me, OK, here you are. You're a progressive young Republican, a progressive meaning that you have committed yourself to government service for all the people. And the normal cost of event for politicians starting up in Hawaii is to go and be a Democrat, but you chose to be a Republican. And I've always, I wanted to ask you this question forever. Why? OK. Well, my first job in the legislature, it was 2008, and I wanted to be a professor, but I didn't want to keep myself a professor. You want to be a professor? Of what? Literature. OK, great. English literature. You're like my wife. You think everybody other... Well, I've met, yes. Everybody should read well and enjoy literacy, right? So I wanted to be a professor and just wanted to stay in the library all day long. That was my plan, but in 2008, the markets crashed, right? And I needed to get a job. So the legislature was hiring, and the minority research department was hiring, and I started working there. So the minority research office. Yeah, so I wasn't a Republican at the time. No, but you were somebody that they recruited. I needed a job, yes. Yeah, once again. You know, once again, you can't believe the number of people that I've met that really... I'm a Democrat, as you know, right? I've gone so far as being a Democrat that I'm actually going to the convention. Oh, OK. But I always constantly learned of all the people we didn't recruit into the party, and you want them. You want them to go away. But what was it about the party, the Republican Party itself, that fascinated you? Right. Were there particular values or precedents that might have been of interest? Well, I mean, as you know, the state is majority Democrat, always has been, right? And when I first started working for the minority, I really... I'm a moderate. I'm a political moderate. I feel like I could have gone either way. But when I started working for the minority, I just felt like these people don't have a voice, that there's this significant viewpoint that just isn't ever getting voiced in the legislature. And for me, I always like an underdog. I'm the type that cheers for the Madsons and the Yankees, although the Madsons are a big deal now, right? I cheer for the Cubs. I've been doing it for years, you know? I keep waiting for them one time when a miracle would happen, you know? Yeah, so that's me. I always cheer for the underdog. And in Hawaii, that was the Republicans. And I just, I sort of liked this story and this idea that there was a chance for more dialogue and more diversity in the legislature. And I didn't feel like the currently elected Republicans were really doing that well. And I thought we needed more people. Oh, that's a great ambition, you know? They are... One of the things that I've often thought about is, and when I'm talking to, you know, I say young, but meaning these, you know, chronologically, meaning I was governor in the 90s, right? And the 80s. So people who have come on board since then is whether they should evolve their sort of uniquely Hawaiian, meaning Hawaii version of the Republican principles. And I say that because actually Hawaii has had a whole string of Republican heroes, starting from Prince Cahill, who was obviously very much in favor of restoring some of the land back to native Hawaiians and doing things like that. And then you had Hiram Fong, remember, Senator Fong? Senator Fong is an unsung hero in Hawaii because people forget that he actually was a father of Asian immigration to the United States. It was his bills that opened up the immigration system. And actually, if you trace it back far enough, cause the whole revolution in higher education and the rest. That was a senator from Hawaii and a Republican one. And obviously, Pat Psyche, we hear about Congresswoman Mink on the Democratic side and rightly so for her accomplishments. But Pat Psyche, who was a friend of mine, although I don't really like some of her endorsements, but don't tell her that. But she was all part of that, what is it, Article 9 battle as well. And she followed up with it. And yet, what the public hears about is we never seem to talk about those individuals, those Republicans, those Republicans who were strong enough from time to time to demand their way into leadership in the state legislature. So I mean, I'm hoping that your group of Republicans begin to realize that we have a Republican candidate and a Republican ideology that may be real suited to Hawaii. Yeah, yeah. There's a rich history for Republicans in Hawaii and even nationally that we just haven't been drawing on for decades really. Yeah, for real. And it's, you know, I don't want to use his name, but you know who I'm talking about, right? Your presumptive nominee. You know, it's really sad to me. Yeah. You know, one of my favorite people in politics was Rockefeller and he had a buddy named John Lindsay, who when I was in college was the mayor of New York, one of the most progressive mayors in any city and he was a Republican. So you've got a great history. So what are you going to do about it now? Right. So tell me what's your vision for Hawaii? Yeah, you know, I think there's a lot of space, especially now, and you see the different things that are happening, especially on the city level, but on a state level too, where people are demanding more fiscal conservatism, and that's something that I think as a party, we should have to offer. We don't talk about it enough. We get sort of wrapped up in other issues, but I think being able to say, especially to millennials, to people my age, to say who tend to be more fiscally conservative, that we're willing to protect your pocketbooks. We want to make sure everybody is well taken care of, but everybody is handling the money responsibly, right? And I think trying to sort of moderate the tone of political discourse is also my goal. So in addition to trying to offer people sort of a better path forward for the economy, I think we also need to start showing the people of Hawaii that we are willing to change the way we do politics, start getting along a little bit better. And work collaboratively. Work collaboratively. Maybe you ought to run for Congress. There you go. Yeah. You know, because that's where you really need that. You really do need it, yeah. You know, but talking about, you know, Hawaii and being fiscally conservative, one of the great challenges, I think, for a legislature today is to begin to realize that, and I made this, said this in speeches, that all too often, sometimes we start to, start to idealize our accomplishments. You saw the Democrats, for example, I know you're in special session now. You're dealing with a number of issues, including the neighbor highland hospitals. But for example, precisely that, we were so bound to the fact that the Democrats helped to produce a safety net, a medical safety net across the state, but the society evolved and changed. And so the way that that's paid for may have to evolve as well. So it seems to me that if I were coming in as a young representative, whether it would be as a Democrat or as a Republican, that would be a challenge to come up with a new idea, a new solution, a new way of doing things. Is that sort of what you hope will happen? Yeah, I think so. And I think a lot of that comes from putting aside party labels, which is sort of what you're saying. This sort of entrenched ideology that each party has, I think it's hard to come to the table when you're gonna automatically say I'll never increase any tax ever, right? And as a Republican, so many Republicans do that, but I think you have to come to the table with all options, knowing that for me, I'm coming from the perspective of being a fiscal conservative. So I don't want to raise any taxes, but I recognize that it's always a give and take, right? Right, and that's, I think, is really important. But it's also, I think we ought to recognize that some of the principles, for example, dealing with the dignity of the human being, or the idea of personal freedom, the millennium generation would be ripe for that. And one obvious would be the legalization of medical marijuana, which is a generational issue. You know, in the, at the Democratic Platform Committee, there was a vote, and everything was sort of worked out between the Sanders group and the Hillary group and all of this, you know, this politics. But on one issue, there was like a rebellion of the leadership, and it had to do with medical marijuana. And it passed, it passed, so it's now, the legalization is now in the Democratic Party Platform by one vote, and it was because, and literally, the young people on both sides created a new vision, right? Is there any room for that in Hawaii with some of the Democratic reps and yourself, just like grabbing an issue and saying, you know, I don't think we, you know, if we're gonna talk about public safety, for example, then is there new ways of doing it? Yeah, I think the issue would be affordable housing. If there's one thing we could hold on to, it's gotta be affordable housing. And I think that there are a lot of young legislators that can come together around solutions for that. Okay, well, look, we're gonna take a break pretty soon, but affordable housing is something that excites me, you know, and I guess you, because especially since you live on, you know, where all the housing used to be affordable. Anyway, we're gonna be back in a minute or so, and we're talking to the House of Representative, Minority Leader, Beth Fukumoto Chang. So thank you. Hello, I'm Mary Ann Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Aloha, I'm Carl Campania. I hope you please visit us this summer. It's a wonderful summer. It's actually a cooler summer than we're used to. But I hope that you come back and visit us and watch our show, Education Movers, Shakers, and Reformers here on Think Tech Hawaii. It's at noon every Wednesday. See you then. Hi, I'm Chris Lethem with The Economy and You, and I'd like to invite you each week to come watch my show each Wednesday at 3 p.m. Aloha, everyone. I'm Maria Mera, and I'm here to invite you to my bilingual show, Viva Hawaii on Think Tech Hawaii, every other Monday at 3 p.m. We are here to talk about news, issues, and events local and around the world. Join me, Aloha. Well, come back to Talk Story with John Wahee. Today, our guest is Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Beth Fukumoto-Chank. And we were just talking about affordable housing. And you were telling me that there was a whole slew of bills that actually the Millenniums or the younger members actually worked together on a bipartisan basis. Yeah, so we have something called the Future Caucus, and it's the 35 and under legislators. So we all got together this year and said, let's do something about affordable housing. And put together, spent a lot of time in meetings and put together a package of about six bills that I think all really could make a difference. And did they pass? A lot of them did in different forms. So the governor had a similar bill which was to lift the cap on the rental housing trust fund. I think we lifted it all together, but he just increased it a little bit. So the legislature did do that. One was something about tax increment financing to allow the city to basically, which has been in the news lately with the rail and everything else. Another one that we're still working on and it got out of the house, but we didn't get out of the Senate, is about to- Well, it's all full news. There you go. We need to explain more, maybe. It would have helped to redevelop Kapa Lama, especially with transportation coming through, maybe the rails coming through. But this idea of sort of better utilizing that space for affordable housing, kind of like Kakaako, but Kakaako hasn't been affordable, right? So can we do the same thing? No, it went completely the other way, unfortunately. Right, so can we do the same thing and what sort of things can we do to make sure it stays affordable in Kapa Lama? So I think it's the best place really to build. There isn't a lot of opposition because, right, I mean, it's in the urban core already, it's near downtown. And there's a lot of state land. Well, there are people when they only see luxury apartments being built, that's when you'll have opposition. Right. I dreamt of that happening in Kakaako, but it really ought to be a place for young families who are getting started, until they can finally move out to Mililani. Right. Which is very expensive now. Yeah, and someday make enough money to move back into town and stay at one of the senior salzings or in Kahala or something. Right, right. So let me, what about the budget itself? It seemed to me like one of the things about the state budget that the average citizen doesn't appreciate is how much of it is beyond your discretion. Well, it seems to be beyond your discretion because they pay what we call, I guess, ongoing bills, right? Is there any way that that can be worked on? That would be like a Republican virtue that everybody ought to get behind, making a much more efficient government. Yeah, I think two things. One, this year we talked a little bit about if you're gonna do a CIP or a capital improvement project, you need to make sure that the debt service is calculated into how much that's gonna cost over the course of the project, which we don't do, right? We sort of just appropriate things and forget that we're gonna pay that down the road. So that's one thing. I think the other thing would be to go to zero-boy base budgeting like the city. Well, you start all over. Yeah. So every year the departments are justifying, this is why we need this amount of money. I think the city budgeting process is very interesting. It's so much different than the state process. Well, I'll be working with it, you know. And it's interesting because I'm on the Charter Commission. And so we've been looking at that. Yeah, it's different and it has some advantages and then the state does have some too. So it'd be worthwhile, I guess, there's some millenniums in the city council. Definitely. And I think maybe, I know they start from absolute zero, maybe the way in the state to do it would be to start with, at least things like electricity costs, you know, or baked it, right? You can't really mess with those. But I think there's a way to do that so that we're every year really examining every piece of the budget. Well, you know one of the interesting things, talking about electricity for myself, and I'm not gonna put you on the spot unless you wanna go there, but you know with this purchase of Hawaiian Electric. Yes. Recently I guess the PUC voted against. One of the questions I had, and I'm not that aware, you know, up on the entire subject and which is why it's good that I'm only asking questions. But one of the things that interests me was, you know, and the question that I would ask is, you know, if the utility got purchased, how much of the money goes through the rake pairs and how much of it through the shareholders? Right. And that kind of question about, you know, how do we deal with these issues? I think that it would be good to test everybody. Yeah, I think one of the things, and I had come out early on with a few of the Democrats and said we need to look better at this next era thing. It shouldn't just be a done deal because we're not sure where the money's gonna go, right? Right, exactly. Are there golden parachutes attached? What is it? What is it? And nothing was ever answered clearly, I don't think. Well, I'm still not happy with the answers that were given. Right. And, you know, and I thought that we're really putting the focus on the wrong foot because when you have a regulated industry, essentially it's built on taxpayers' money. Right. You know, and then because it's guaranteed profits and everything that's being sold was paid for by the rake pair. Right. And we have this ridiculously high, you know, so I hope that you and your caucus come up with a solution for the cost of energy. Oh, yeah, I mean the cost of energy has been crazy and I think it's gonna be a bipartisan solution. I think, you know, everything should be on the table from, you know, modernizing the infrastructure with capital improvement project funds or, you know, a public option or whatever it is. I think we need to talk about all options. Then put it all on the table and really get creative, you know, do something. When we were dealing with affordable housing, one of the problems that we dealt with in my time was there was so much monopoly around, okay? And in fact, what you had on this island was essentially three large landowners that were dictating the amount of land that would be going into housing. You had essentially three developers and you had really three suppliers that actually did it. So we got into it in Kapolei by bringing additional land into the process of cheapment, which was the beginning of the villages of Kapolei. That happened, yeah, because prior to that, that was came to see, you don't know any of this because you're younger than young. This is fantastic on one hand, but on the other hand, then I'm sounding so like historical. But it was all Canefield, right? So Kapolei began and today it's, you know, maybe something like that dealing with taking industry out there, some kind of way. But how do you make work and break a monopoly? And one of the problems in Hawaii is we do have this history of monopolistic thinking. So breaking it apart is a good republic. That's Teddy Roosevelt. Yes, very much. Teddy Roosevelt's one of my favorite republicans. Yeah, in fact, see, today, well, over the period of time, just ideologically speaking, for a long time after Ronald Reagan, you got to be, you don't want to be called a liberal. Right. And now the big word on the left side and with the Sanders campaign was progressive. Right. But progressive is a republican word. Exactly. Yes. Progressive is a word that Teddy Roosevelt, brand of republicanism. Thank you for bringing that up. Yes. You're right. And so, you know, I'm expecting that you might find a lot of fertile ground with younger people who are interested in not being stuck where their parents are. You see, I think, and I oftentimes say this, that I think people who achieve things get too possessive. For example, one of my things that people credit me with doing is the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. I think by now they should move on. You know, I mean, something needs to evolve. Right. You know, they constantly evolve. I'm talking too much, actually. No, that's okay. It's interesting. But we want to hear from, you know, I'm hoping to hear from your caucus and from other people, the progressive caucus, you know? The Teddy Roosevelt's. Yeah. Getting together with the, you know, the people of the democratic side. Yeah, I think there's a lot of room for that. People forget that the republican party, Teddy Roosevelt's party ended child labor, they broke up the trust, you know? Abraham Lincoln ended slavery, you know? We have this rich history. People created Hawaiian homes. I told you about Hiram Fahl and what he did through immigration law. Yeah. You know, these are all really positive traits and they're positive solutions. And I think that one of the weaknesses of our system is that today, well, I think on the democratic side, I think that they're getting too cautious. There are too many victories. You know, we used to be first on everything. I mean, first in this, first in that. That's true. All these firsts, Hawaii would be first, right? And on the republican side, they have this, in my opinion, have a tendency to just latch on to whatever the national politics may be without understanding that behind those solutions may be actually be principles that somehow needs to be localized, you know? How do you apply that to Hawaii? And people have been so reluctant. That's something that I've really tried to do as minority leader. And when I try to talk about it, people just tense up. People are very reluctant to talk about how do we localize these sort of principles. People want the national party. Yeah, because they see it on television all the time. But Hawaii is not Texas. I mean, they say that all the times in people, Hawaii is not Texas. We have to appeal to people here. Exactly. And that was what made the democrats very successful. But now we're sort of, as I said, I really think we need to be challenged a lot more. And on a whole slew of issues. For example, if the private sector, there was a time when the University of Hawaii and the legislature really collaborated on finding solutions. Which is not true now, you know? But I don't understand why we own the place. Why we're not using that resource and treating it like they're a resource instead of an enemy. Right, right. I think we don't treat the university like we own it. People forget that. It is actually a state entity and we fund it. Right, so yeah. So how does that relationship do for the rest of society? What are we doing? It's not just a play. Well, also there was a, the legislature, both Republican and Democrat, because there were times, in fact, Dickey Wong used to tell me all the time his most valuable votes was from the other side of the aisle because they would save him from his colleagues. Right, yeah. By the way, you probably know something about it. But except you mean, well, anyway, they would save him from his colleagues. And the whole idea of creating a Hawaii-based paradigm, I think, would be exciting. And that's what I'm hoping you become known as. I am working on it. Really, good for you. And real quickly, what's your priority right now? Housing? Yeah, it's affordable housing. I think it has to be that. The cost of living is really going up and young people are leaving Hawaii in droves and we need affordable housing. Well, I don't want to ask you, but real quickly, a little bit about yourself. Do you have any children? I don't, no. Nope, not yet. Not yet, no. No, no. Just me. But you got a husband, I'm sure. I have a husband, yes. That's where the chan comes from. Yeah, the chan comes from there. And he was any chairman of the Republican? He was, yes. Oh, so you see, no. So we got two for the price of one. That's right. Well, I want to thank you so much for being on my show. Thank you, yeah. I wish you well. Thank you. And I hope you the greatest success in the legislature. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Come back in two weeks and you'll talk story with John Waihe. Thank you very much.