 Welcome to another episode of Kondo Insider. My name is Jayden Sugimura, and I'm gonna be your host for today's episode. And this is part of a continuing series that I've decided to do this year because it's an election year. And I'm interviewing candidates who are running for elected office and mainly candidates who have lots of condos in their district. Because as a condo owner or someone who works in a condo, you would want a friend in the legislature because they're the ones who pass the laws that you grumble and gripe about to me, at least that's what I've been hearing about. And so it's really important for you to get to know your candidates. And today I have as my very special guest, Representative Adrienne Tam, who is the sitting representative in the House of Representatives for the Waikiki Alamawata area. I think it was District 22, isn't it, Adrienne? Yes, I represent District 22 currently. After reapportionment, it will be District 24. Okay, and so you're the current representative for that area, right? Correct. Okay, and so tell us about your background. So a little bit about me, my name is Adrienne Tam. I was born and raised here in Hawaii. I'm the proud son of immigrants and I'm a proud graduate of our public schools. I had the opportunity to go to Penn State University. And in case anyone was wondering, the public school is Kalani because we all know how important public school, where you went to high school is here. And after college, I decided to come back home to work from my family's small business and take care of my grandmother and just wanted to be back home where I was born and raised and grew up with. I gave me a licensed realtor with my family business and I wasn't getting enough clients who was going to trust a fresh out of college guy with their biggest financial decision, right? So I took a part-time job at the legislature as a session hire under speaker emeritus Calvin Say and I immediately fell in love with the legislative process and community service. I then worked on the campaign for Senator Stanley Chang and ultimately got him elected to the Hawaii State Senate. And I joined his office as his office manager. In 2020, I decided to run for office myself because I felt that, you know, the voices of the people who I needed a new perspective. So I ran for office and I probably wanted, now I currently represent one of the most beautiful districts in the world or most beautiful places in the world like he, all and wanna and soon to be more Ili Ili and McCully. Okay, so you're running for a reelection, right? In this election? Yes, I am. And so can you give our listeners some of the reasons why you're running for reelection? You know, when I ran for my first term, I didn't do it the conventional way. I challenged an incumbent and, you know, I ran on the idea of, you know, these new problems will need new solutions and that requires new leadership. And I still believe that today right now. And that's why I'm running for reelection is because, you know, it takes some time, I believe to really work on a lot of these issues. I believe that I've gotten the conversation started on a lot of the issues that I care about, which is economic diversification, Kupuna issues, Keiki issues, education and now especially in our district condominiums. I happen to live in a condo right now. So I understand a lot of the issues that many of my constituents care about. And I think that's very important in an elected official that is representing a district that is so heavy with condos. Right, and you do have a lot of condos in your area, what you said, Waikiki, the Albuwana area, Moeile, so there's a lot of condos there. And the challenge for, you know, somebody running for office is getting access to the people who live in condos, right? I mean, that's the challenge and, you know, so hopefully, you know, this show will get your message to, you know, condo dwellers, especially in this area because, you know, we, I particularly think it's very important because I've been, you know, advocating for condominiums in the legislature got for almost 40 years. And, you know, and so I really believe that, you know, condo owners, you have to be best friends. And in my district, I made best friends with my representative, my senator, my city council person. And so when I call their office and they know who I am, and I freely tell people in my building or people I meet, you know, and if they have a problem, I say, oh, you have a problem? In this area, this is who you call. You call your city council person and that person is, I give them a name. Go on the website and go to the city council website, find your council member and your contact information is there. They want, they're there to help you. That's their job. And the same with the state issue, if it's a state issue, here's the representative, here's the senator. And I've learned that, you know, that the most important words is hello, I'm a constituent and I vote and I have a problem. And I'm so glad when I, on the other side, they say, okay, tell us what your problem is. And they, you know, maybe they don't fix it, but they sure, you know, I get the impression that they're there to help me. And I think, you know, that's what you and your colleagues do. You write your office answers, questions practically all day long from people who live in your district. And you have a lot of condos. And let me just go over some of the issues that seem to come up. And like one of the issues is their housing and reasonable accommodation. And there are two issues. And one of them is emotional support animals. And that cuts both ways. Because there are some buildings that are no pet buildings because their bylaws have indicated that, you know, the owners have voted and they said, you know, we don't want pets. But, you know, emotional support animals are not considered pets. So under the Fair Housing statute. So I mean, have you had any experience dealing with, you know, these requests regarding the emotional support animals? I've never had any experience dealing with that actually. The closest thing that I have experience with is my grandmother herself. She has an emotional support animal. It is actually our family dog too. Her name is Winston. But this past legislative session, we did pass SB2002, which clarifies a lot of the misunderstandings or the conflicts between what defines an emotional support animal and who can provide papers on what it needs an emotional support animal. I think now it is a health care worker, a mental health professional, and or a social worker that can do that now under that new law. Oh, well, potentially a new law, only if the governor signs it as an act. Right. And, you know, with emotional support animals, I mean, all of us know what service animals are. And we know that there's no issue that service animals are allowed in condominiums. And nobody disagrees that a person who is disabled and needs a service animal to assist them should be allowed to have them. The controversy, I think, with emotional support animals and comfort animals is that some people think that this is just a scam. They're not really providing any type of service. But somehow they've been able to, you know, some people are allowed to have these emotional support animals. But this is beyond state law. It's federal law, isn't it? It's fair, and it's discrimination. And basically the licensed professionals who have to sign the letters have to say that they are treating. In fact, that's one of the points of this new legislation, Senate Bill 22002, says that the licensed professional who signs the letter that goes to the board for a reasonable accommodation needs to say that they are treating the owner. Under fair housing, I guess the way it works is if you need an emotional support animal to treat a symptom of a disability and the condominium doesn't want to know and doesn't need to know what that disability is. But a licensed professional, whether it's a medical professional or a social worker or some, has to be a licensed professional, has to write a letter saying that the person who's requesting the reasonable accommodation. And the reasonable accommodation is usually because that building has a no pass law or no pass rule, a bylaw rule. And so you have to, so under fair housing, the owner is or the resident is allowed to make a request to the board of directors of the association for reasonable accommodation under fair housing, which is a federal law. And failure to do so is discrimination. And then you end up with the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission. But anyway, so the concern was that people were going on the internet and talking to somebody in New Jersey. And the boards were getting these letters from people on the East Coast, from North, from all over the mainland saying, I'm a licensed professional and this person has a disability and you should let them have a service, an emotional support animal. And we were told we have to accept it. But there was a lot of grumbling. And so part of this Senate Bill 2002 says that the person who writes the letter has to be actually treating that person. And so I think, although it's not a win for the people who are grumbling about the emotional support animals, I think it allows boards to at least question if you get a letter from somebody in New Jersey. And the letter doesn't say that they are treating the person who is asking for the reasonable accommodation. You can then ask, well, we have a law in Hawaii. It says if you want the reasonable accommodation, why don't you go see a doctor or a licensed professional here in Hawaii and bring us a letter? Yeah. And when we talk about mental health or emotional support like that, it really walks in water because you don't want to be discriminating against anyone and be filed with a lawsuit, which can be very costly. And that's why we passed this law to make sure that boards can question where they come from. And we define where these letters may come from, that it has to be someone that is being treated with, that is someone treating that individual with their mental health. And it has to be a health care worker, a mental health worker, or a social worker. And another area of discrimination and reasonable accommodation is medical marijuana. And there have been lots of people who have applied to the Department of Health for that card to use medical marijuana. And that's been a challenge for the legislature because then you're dealing with whether or not it's consistent with rules in a building. Let's say a building allows smoking in the common areas. And so you can't really then tell somebody who has got a marijuana car that they can't smoke in the common area because you allow regular people to smoke or vape in a common area. Correct. Yeah. And so that's another area that has proved to be a challenge to the legislators because it seems like periodically we get changes to the medical marijuana law. And I think just recently, maybe last year, there was a law passed about a medical, that there could be no regulation or prohibition of use of medical marijuana if there was smoking allowed. Yeah. The biggest complaint that our office myself get from our condominium owners on medical marijuana is the odor that lingers around and oftentimes travels into other people's units. When it comes to reasonable accommodations, it's always about trying to make sure that the person has the ability to practice with and use their medical marijuana without passing laws that will hinder them in any way. One thing that the legislature has done, and I sat on the task force for this, which was we basically allowed medical marijuana industries to start developing and selling edible cannabis as of January 1, 2021. Edible cannabis is actually much healthier than inhaling hot air into your lungs. It's proven much more effective when dealing with health conditions such as sleep apnea. And it doesn't have that odor that comes with the smoke when you're smoking marijuana. So I think that's one thing that the legislature has done to provide some kind of reasonable accommodation to those that have the medical marijuana card. OK, and another issue that popped up this session in the legislature and that's electric vehicle charging station in multifamily building. And I think it was well intentioned because the legislature for years have been working on laws to limit the use of coal petroleum and to use energy efficient technology. And so what this bill addressed or tried to do was to say that all condominiums or all multifamily buildings, which are condominiums, need to develop plans for putting charging stations in each parking stall. That was the bill. That was the way the bill read when it was originally introduced. And we got involved. My organization, the White House, got involved. And we basically said, you know, for one thing, it's impractical. I mean, you have 300 stalls. You can't put a charging station in each stall. That's expensive. You know how, in fact, any type of retrofitting is terribly expensive. And so when you bring up, when you try to do retrofitting in an existing condominium, I think along with passing a law, you've got to provide some incentives or some funding or tax credits or something because this is going to cost the building a ton of money. And especially with putting charging stations in each of the parks, I don't think they understand. First of all, the electric connection that goes into the parking garage always supports the use of maybe a few lights and some electrical equipment. And you think about putting 300 charging stations in a parking structure. How many wires and lines you're going to have. And you're just not going to have an electrical source that's large enough to service that. Either that or it's going to be super expensive. Yeah, I remember that law. I remember hearing that law, asking a lot of questions because it didn't define what an outlet was going to be either. Could it be an outlet that you can just charge your iPhone in at each stall? Or is it something much bigger that it's enough to charge a car? And there's also the idea of fairness, too. So let's say a condominium has the electricity built into their maintenance fees, that everyone's maintenance fees are going to go up to accommodate those driving electric vehicles and charging them, even though they may not be driving an electrical vehicle. So those are the questions that I raised. And it was definitely a very difficult bill to pass through, even though we didn't pass it, though. Because we do want to meet our clean energy goals. And we do want to be more environmentally friendly. And we do know that electric vehicles are the future. And that one day, gas-powered vehicles are going to be phased out. Right. But the issue would be retrofitting. And one thing that I brought up at one of the hearings was that right now, you have technology that allows one charging station to service more than one vehicle. And they can fully charge a vehicle in less than an hour. So if that's saying that, then that's the technology that exists today. And today, in a condominium of maybe 100 units, I doubt if you've got more than 20 electric vehicles in that building. So installing an electric vehicle charger in every stall is overkill. And in a condominium, in order to do that, you're basically assessing everybody in the building, even though they don't have an electric vehicle, which doesn't, isn't fair. Yeah. Right? It isn't fair, because I have a gas-powered car, and I think a lot of you would do. Does that mean we put gasoline pump stations in every single condominium in every stall? No. I think that the best way we can move this forward is to make sure that there are enough charging stations out there that are conveniently located across the island so that anyone who needs to charge their vehicle can do that. And I brought up at one of the hearings too, Hawaiian Electric. In fact, when I was testifying, Hawaiian Electric had a request before the PUC to install 75 free charging stations across the state. 44 of them would have been in Oahu. But they were doing that across. And so here they are. They're putting in free charging stations, plus you have technology that's evolving. And God knows whether it's going to be 10 years from now. Maybe you'll just have a remote that you can use to charge an electric vehicle. You don't know what the technology is. And so to tell a condominium or a co-op, you've got a plan now. You've got to come up with a plan and we want to see the plan on how you're going to remotely, how you're going to charge all these vehicles that you don't even have. I mean, that's kind of stupid. Yeah, absolutely right. Especially with older condominiums as well too. Yeah. And you know what? I was talking to one association representative and I never thought about this, but I know that it happened. She says, you got to watch where you put your station because if you put your charging station in a part of the condominium, common elements, like let's say visitor parking. Yeah. And there's no gate. The condominiums across the street, they see your charging station. Guess what? They're going to come in and they're going to use your charging station. So what's to stop them from using your charging station? Exactly. Yeah. So that means you've got to put it in a secure place so that only people in your condominium or the residents in your condominium can use it, right? So it has to be in the secure. You can't put it in the guest parking because guest parking is usually out there in the public area, right? Anybody can drive in from off the street. They see your charging station and say, oh, wow, look, there's a charging station. And they go and they hook up. Yep. And there's no possible way to determine whether that car is a car that belongs to a condominium owner or not. Right. And I never thought about that. But then I know that when we do bulky item pickup, I live in a loop and there are six condominiums. And when we put our stuff on the sidewalk, it's like a disease. I mean, you can come back in two hours and there's all this stuff. And we, in fact, my condominium was talking, our board was talking about putting up cameras. Saying, where does this stuff come from? It's the people across the street, they see the stuff on the sidewalk and guess what? They bring their stuff down and they put it there. And we don't know, we know it's not ours. But if the bulky item people don't come and pick it up, our maintenance people have to move it into our garage right until they come. And that's not fair, because, and if we leave it out there, we're going to get fined by the city. Yep. And so I know about, if you do it and the neighbors see it, they're going to come and use it. And so I was really kind of surprised that when they brought that up. But there was another bill that you guys passed, the omnibus condominium, the hospital 2272. Yes. That was a good job that you guys did passing that bill. Yeah. It really puts us in line with like new technology, especially with the remote owners meeting and electronic voting. Yeah. And I think we needed that, because of the fact I think we needed that because I mean, last year they passed the bill, which allowed for remote hearings for the associations and electronic voting. But that was only in the case of an emergency. And so that's why we went to the legislature and others brought up certain things that, hey, what if it's not an emergency? And we want to have remote meetings because we kind of like the remote meetings because that means that people who are, our investor owners who live on the mainland or who live on a neighbor island, they can join by Zoom or go to meeting or whatever platform is available. They can join the owners meeting because it's allowed to be done remotely. And so this bill basically leads it up to the owners. The owners can designate their board or delegate the authority to the board to do remote meetings. And if that's the case, then the board can decide they're gonna have owners meetings remotely. They can already do board of directors meetings remotely. It's just more convenient, especially now that we know with the new technology that people can do it. I understand that there was some issues regarding electronic voting that someone could be pressured to vote a certain way or someone could take the code to vote for that individual and vote on behalf of that individual. But I think that we worked it out by establishing a lot of the safeguards into the bill. Okay, we're kind of running out of time. So I just want to bring up one more issue. There was a leasehold bill that was introduced. And it didn't get a hearing. But I'm hearing that there are some buildings who are kind of concerned about it. There are leasehold buildings in Waikiki. You've got a Yon Arba Tower, Discovery Bay, Wailana, the Canterbury. And they, they're not peace simple. And so what is this bill that you introduced? What would it do? This bill will basically extend the seller fee owner from paying the Hawaii State Capital Gains tax of 8% on any lease fee interest transfer to the leasee. So, and basically when they sell because of it's been so long that the family, that the property's been in their family, that the capital gains tax can be huge, millions of dollars. So this 8% savings is a big benefit to the sellers and an incentive for them to sell to the leasee. And if you're a plan, if you're reelected to reintroduce this next year? Yes, I plan on reintroducing it again and again and again until it is passed because it is a very important bill, especially for those that are currently coming up on their leases ending. Okay, well, thank you so much. I mean, we have gone over time, but I'm so glad that you were able to join me on this episode of Condo Insider. And for our listeners out there, please join us next week. And I'm gonna have another candidate for you to another candidate to interview and to tell you why they're running for election. And I hope you join us for that episode. Mahalo and Aloha. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.