 Pacific Law Institute. We're at the halfway point in this 2024 session and there's about 750 bills still on the table over 2600 that were introduced in January. So before I mention some preliminary matters and what will be covered this morning let me introduce the speakers for this seminar. First we have Senator Drew Mamal Kanua from the Big Island who is the Senate majority leader. We also have Representative Nadine Nakamura from Kauai who is the House majority leader. Senator Angus McKelvie from Maui is the government operations committee chair and we'll be talking in a little more detail about the Maui wildfire and recovery. And last we have Representative Della Albalotti from the House who's the chair of the House Health and Homeless Committee and will be focused on the homeless issues. So this morning what we want to cover is the Maui wildfire with a brief overview with Senator Kanua and Representative Nakamura and then with Senator McKelvie getting into more detail. We also will touch on the economic concerns and the budget, affordable housing, education, a touch of crime and maybe some other issues depending upon the time that we have. If you have any questions please write them in the Q&A box at the bottom of the screen and we will answer as many as possible as time permits. If you need to use utilize captions press the CC button at the bottom of your screen and then press request. Keep in mind that you can also access at later on the legislative website capital.Hawaii.gov to look at any particular bills that you are interested in. Lastly at the end of the seminar this morning please fill out the questionnaire. We're trying to determine what kind of future programs in the legislative arena that will be of interest to you. We will begin with Senator Kanua and Representative Nakamura and Senator McKelvie and Representative Bellotti who will be joining the seminar at a later time. The Maui fire created many complicated issues and we want to spend some time with the two majority leaders on what has passed so far in terms of issues but we have time devoted later on with Senator McKelvie being from Maui to delve into more detail on some of the bills. So I'll start with Senator Kanua and if he can go over very briefly you know what are some of the major substances substance of the Maui wildfire bills. Senator. Thank you Bob and good morning everybody. I just want to say Mahalo for inviting me to participate this morning. Also hello to my colleagues on the call. House Majority Leader and House Rep Bellotti and of course my colleague in the Senate Senator McKelvie for being here as well. Thank you for giving us the time to update all of you on a lot of these important issues that we're facing here in mid-session. Again you know I represent District 3 on Hawai'i Island, Kona Ka'u and Volcano and the Majority Leader of the Senate so just kind of like a brief overview of the fiscal impacts of the Maui wildfires. Obviously we have our hearts out to everybody who has been impacted by this devastating event on Maui and you know including our colleague here on the call on the Zoom call Senator McKelvie who has been deeply impacted by what has happened and but you know basically some of the fiscal overviews in the Senate you know I'm also part of the Ways and Means Committee with Senator Donovan Delacruz Vice Chair or as a chairman of the Ways and Means Committee Vice Chair Moriwaki and also our other Senator on the Ways and Means Committee Senator Troy Hashimoto has been kind of leading a lot of the Maui discussions in the Ways and Means Committee. Of course Senator McKelvie has been part of this discussion as well being heavily impacted by the fires but they've been basically leading a lot of the Senate's efforts to stabilize the state budget with regards to a lot of the costs that have been coming out from this disaster. You know we've been providing housing for the affected families that are not covered by FEMA you know basically FEMA ineligible debris cleanup costs and you know just a lot of the costs and anticipating a lot of the potential liabilities that are going to come out of this. So this has been the biggest topics of discussion that we've been dealing with lately. As many of you know prior to the convening of the legislative session Governor Green directed funding into the major disaster fund you know close to 200 million dollars and the Green Administration anticipated that this was sufficient to cover a lot of the state's costs to address the response recovery expenses for 2023-2024. However as we've been diving deep into a lot of these the revenue or the the discussions in Ways and Means the costs that have been incurred by the state are pretty much expected to be to greatly exceed the amount originally budgeted and thought of by the governor. So with many of the recent issues that have arisen over the costs what is eligible reimbursement and kind of a clear but unclear timeline by which the state will be reimbursed for eligible costs from the federal government. The Senate proposed a few bills and that have been going through that we did send to the House. One of those bills was SB 582 this related to the state budget it kind of it serves as a vehicle for the emergency disaster appropriation. So when Senator De La Cruz is working diligently Senate leadership with the Green Administration our congressional delegation FEMA the county of Maui to basically determine this fiscal need which is going to be something that we've been dedicating a lot of time towards and making it a priority in the legislature. I know that the House is as well so hopefully as constitutionally mandated to provide a balanced budget at the very end of session. So we'll see how these discussions happen over the course of the next month or so with the House and the governor but that's kind of a basic breakdown of what we've been dealing with trying to address the need for our people in Maui and the needs of the rest of the state and everything that we have to take care of. So that's that's a basic overview of the types of issues that we're dealing with with regards to helping the people of Maui. Thank you Senator. Representative Nakamura there were many bills that were companion bills so to speak. So both the Senate and the House passed bills and they crossed over this a few days ago and one bill if you can just mention it very briefly apparently both the House and Senate want to have the utilities prepare a mitigation plan by the PUC so can you touch on that just very briefly. Thank you again Bob for inviting me to participate and to the Pacific Legal Foundation for for the invite. I wanted to the bill that you're talking about HB2407 I believe is the establishes this a process for all electric utilities to develop and submit wildfire prevention plans to the PUC and so this there are different versions of this bill that were introduced I think the one that's moving forward includes a way to recover once they identify these are the things we need to do to mitigate future wildfires. It also includes a securitization component which allows the utility to consolidate debt and then to have the cost of implementing the plan recovered by I believe either the rape pairs or the shareholders I'm I think is these things still need to be worked out. You know I found it interesting when I was looking at the various wildfire bills so to speak that there was there was a bill both in the House and Senate requiring the University of Hawaii to develop wildfire susceptibility maps and I assume that both the House and Senate felt that this was important to have some kind of idea where wildfires in the future could erupt is that true? Yes there's you know we have so many lands that are in Hawaii that are not that are in conservation or preservation and that are susceptible to future wildfires so what this does is give the University of Hawaii I think it's UH at the engineering department working with the Water Resources Research Center and College of Tropical Agriculture to combine their skill sets and expertise to identify those priority areas where there maybe there's a higher probability of wildfires and then to come up and then we can use this data and information to prioritize our resources our limited resources to looking at where we ought to be doing more work in forest management planting native and fire resistant vegetation and then developing green belts so that we can create natural buffer areas to separate these wildlands from urban areas. In on both the Senator and Representative reading some of the media stories I know that in West Oahu the Waianae area concern and same thing on Maui is that in case there's a devastation fire like what happened in Lahina I guess the legislature was also concerned in looking at trying to determine uh exit routes and I know that was a problem uh I don't know if there were any bills with regard to that but I know that was an issue especially on West Oahu the Waianae residents were very concerned about that too. I believe there is a bill to um there is oh thank you and I went to the Transportation Committee and to look at an alternative exit route for the Waianae Cokes. Oh thank you um the other bill that you know I kind of looked at was hospital 2700 Senate Bill 3344 on the Relief Fund compensation for property damage and so similar to the one Ohana Fund that is a um a fund that the governor um has proposed to and is actually has implemented to provide a relief for the victims of the wildfire uh and and survivors who were injured uh this this would be a similar type of fund for property damage and it would pool resources from the state electric utility the telecom companies private landowners who who would contribute to this relief fund to cover future so this wouldn't deal with the Maui disaster specifically but this would be a going forward um uh process to look at future claims because we know that with climate change there will be more incidences of wildfires um well throughout our nation but in Hawaii as well so this is um something that um uh crossed over to the Senate so um Senator Kanuha you'll be seeing it shortly yeah thank you thank you representative uh there was a question that came up I just looked about uh the bill numbers for the mitigation plan and it is Senate Bill 2091 and House Bill 2447 that you can look it up on on the website um right after the fire uh Speaker Scott Psyche created uh several six I believe working groups to look at various aspects moving forward and I think and maybe uh Representative Nakamura you can talk about that I think there were several bills that passed uh with regard to the recommendations that were made by the working groups yeah there's about uh 10 bills and two resolutions that are part of the bipartisan wildfire package uh and as you said uh Speaker Psyche set up the six groups uh a month or so after the wildfires to really take a look at uh how do we address some of the concerns and how do we um plan for the future based on what we learned um from this experience uh so while things are fresh in our minds uh we came up with these bills and some resolutions um and they're in very different categories uh many uh to deal with funding for the Department of Land and Natural Resources that um really has been underfunded in the area of wildlife wildfire emergency response so they need some staffing equipment resources to to do a better job and to do more preventive work on our state lands also um there are uh bills relating to the air and water quality in Lahaina as all of this remediation is going on we'd want to make sure that the air and water um is safe for residents in this area uh we want to make sure that we have better school evacuation plans in the future um and then uh we know that we can do a better job in terms of food supply and equipment uh distribution there were some breakdowns and so we know uh so one of the bills is to you know create the statewide plan to include stakeholders in each of the counties and to really come up with a much more um uh responsive plan and um looking also at the how we can um try to phase out or amortize um short-term vacation rentals that uh as we are seeing in the case of Maui uh there are many of them and it crowds out the you know the local market please so we um there's a bill in play to to also address that I know that's a very controversial issue I always had a hearing on another issue and there were a lot of individuals that testified and organizations that testified on that vacation rental issue um as I mentioned uh senator mckelvey is going to delve into more specific specificity on the wildfire bills so I'd like to move uh now to the economic uh impact that is had and any kind of budget issues and uh first to you know senator canoe and there was a bill you mentioned 582 uh but there was also senate bill uh 3068 let's say I want to make sure I got the right number yeah senate bill 3068 and that pertained to the cost allocate at the cost associated with the wildfire and I wonder if you could comment on it because when it came up off for third reading they were 20 senators I think mostly ways and means which are on that voted with reservation and maybe you can explain uh why that happened yeah um you're you're absolutely right uh the the reason why we voted with reservations was because we didn't have a clear idea of how much everything was going to cost um so it's it's hard to you know as legislators you know our vote every single vote matters um especially when you're explaining it to the general public right and to your constituents so when you don't have an idea of the exact numbers and where it's gonna go you you kind of have a little bit of reservation about that vote so I think um it became incumbent not incumbent it became uh uh a way to for the the senate to say you know we do have some reservations about this we want to do as much as possible to make sure that the the funding is there to help everybody that is in need but if there's not if there's not uh uh exact cost and identified uh line item and everything that's going on with what's going on with what's happening then it makes it very difficult to completely approve of the the the vote that we're testing so that's that's the basic of what happened with that those reservations and you you saw the senate you know trying to get answers and about everything is it's very you know it's very dynamic issue there's things going on that we don't really all completely know about so that's that's that was the basic reason of why um the votes with reservations we wanted to keep the bill moving because we know that there's a desperate there's a there's a very dire need uh to to help everybody involved um but uh there there's gonna be some reservations until we get a a complete idea of what's happening you know in a Saturday it just so happens that I was watching that when I'm hearing out of the interest uh because they had uh the budget and finance director on as well as others and I was uh it was very informative that you know Sena de la Cruz was uh uh chairing the meeting and my understanding is that initially uh the legislature was told that maybe it was going to cost about 200 million for the Maui recovery through this fiscal year which is June 30 2024 and after listening to the to the hearing it looks like it's going to be 400 million and and you know I maybe you both want to comment I just all of a sudden it went from 600 million over four years to a billion over five years or something like that yeah that um you're you're absolutely right and that's why we're we're trying to delve deep into what is being paid out what we're obligated what the state's obligations are what the county is doing where are all the nonprofits at in helping you know how does that all come into play where's the FEMA reimbursements we're the state is paying out the the original payments and hoping that in the next several years we're going to get reimbursed by FEMA um we don't know that that timeline so this is all coming out of pocket right now um and we just want to get a better idea of what uh the state's obligated to pay for and who else is going to help pay for this and you know again we're we're we're trying to bring all this information out because we we want the public to know everything that's involved in all these decision-making um uh efforts by the the legislature and the governor so I think it's a it's a it's a good thing that we're diving deep into uh the the the the pay the payments happening and obviously we want our our people to be housed we want the entire we we need a lot more housing throughout the entire state so we we we're trying to focus on not only helping Maui but everybody else in the state so this is you know we're trying to do our obligated duty to make sure that our state is fiscally uh sound and make sure that again like I said earlier we have a balanced budget at the end of the session thank you very much senator the Reverend Dr. Mora uh you know your comments and then I know finance house finance committee just had budget hearings uh on the general budget and the judiciary budget so if you want to make any comments feel free to do so sure I I just want to agree with senator Kanuha um Majority Leader Kanuha who um that everything is still really in flux that it's a um a dynamic process we're finding out information and I think even at the WEM meeting the council members were finding out from the ministry council administration uh county administration you know what was happening so there's just a a lot going on I'm not sure all of the answers we're going to get during this session so we probably you know we'll need to be looking at uh what you know what throughout this this year in the next few years uh you know what the costs are going to be and when the reimbursements are going to come in because we have to like uh what senator Kanuha said is we're going to have to print some of the monies a lot of the female monies and then we'll get reimbursed over time uh but yes there were um many um uh tax related bills uh introduced this last um over the last few uh weeks and uh that crossed over to the senate uh they were uh you know the household and dependent uh care services tax credit there was a family caregiver tax credit the kupuna caucus introduced a refundable child care uh tax credit uh many of these bills is really designed to help our alice families asset limited income uh constrained employed families um in hawaii um and we know that um child care and um elderly care is a big portion of um the household budget so this is to assist in that area uh there were also uh tax related bills uh relating to amending income tax rates uh that have not been adjusted for a while and then increasing the standard deduction uh so there are a lot of um tax related bills in play but so much of it will be dependent on uh the cost of maui and one thing that we didn't mention is that because the state is picking up the cost of of those who don't qualify for female aid so these might be um uh a undocumented immigrants and our kofa families that uh that cost is you know was at the time a million dollars a day to the state and that's why the need for some transitional housing and permanent housing is going to be important thank you you know one of the things that i learned from the hearing and i think senator alluded to it is that fema federal is going to contribute to the maui recovery however it is unclear how much they're going to do it and when so i guess the issue for the state maybe the counties as well is that they have to front the cost and hopefully get reimbursed by the federal government but i have another question and and i never heard this at any hearing but you know just out there in the chatter that uh whether there might be a reduction in the budgets to the departments is that on the table because it affects other appropriations i guess i'll just comment briefly about that uh you know because because as as a majority leader nakamura said earlier you know it's a very dynamic time right now with trying to figure out the the budget of the state and and dealing with our you know this this unprecedented national disaster um so we've we've asked uh during ways of means committee i think it was uh um the chair of ways of means asked the departments when they provide a budget to you know to the committees to look at possibly reducing 10 to 15 percent giving us those options because when we're looking at the the the spiraling amount of money that the state has been spending on um taking care of our our people on on maui you know we we just cautioned and asked that if this keeps on going the way it is first number one um how how does the state outlook look you know and the budget director said you know in july of 2025 we're going to be out of money so with with those responses uh we we we we need to again constitutionally mandated to make sure that we have a balanced budget so we've asked the departments uh to send us um uh projection on a 10 or possibly 15 cut and that's that's that's something that's not mandated by us we just wanted to see what it would look like what services every single department would have to reduce um if we continue to uh spend this much money yeah thank you senator and i think almost everyone on this uh webinar knows that you are required to have a balanced budget and so you know it depends on how much money you have to to balance the budget you know but you know i have another quick question for both of you um um what is this going to do to grant in aids gi aids um because you know not for profits especially are really looking for this but because of the tight situation in terms of funding um and i know you can't pre-camp that because you just don't know yet but is there still the possibility that some monies will be allocated to grant in aids as far as you know yes hopefully yeah i've talked to some of the legislators you know and uh involved either in finance or wham and they're concerned but you know i just wanted to raise that it's it's not an easy thing to uh determine but uh i think for not for profits out there i think they realize the the uh economic situation so you know can't get your hopes up too high or say if you ask for x dollars you you may not get x even if you get 25 percent x that's better than nothing and lastly uh i know the council of revenues is going to come up with a uh report shortly but i have no idea what it's going to be probably you you may not either but i assume you're waiting for that uh report to help uh determine the budget in the future for this the next couple years yeah um i i believe it's going to be uh their meeting shortly and uh you know in january of this year the council of revenue met and increased their projections for growth in hawaii for this year and next year it was four percent and four point five percent for next year which was very um gave us a lot of hope that the recovery was going smoothly but in yesterday's star advertiser the dbed came up with dbt came up with their projections of much slower growth at 1.5 percent in 2024 and 2 percent in 2025 and that's going to really affect our revenues and our ability to do all the things as senator kanu has said it you know throughout our state not just the maui wildfire but all the other things and needs we have around the state you know i assume that uh because there's funds in the rainy day fund that the legislature can access that to to help with the cash flow right it is a source of funds and i think the reluctance is that um the bigger the balance is in that rainy day fund the better bond rating we will have and assurance that we can repay our debt over time helps in in that regard so we uh yes it is raining that we have access to those funds so i think it's a balancing act thank you uh representative um there was one question that you know they leave for senator mckelvey about able to access private donations on the on the wildfire issue so why don't we move we have a few minutes left for both majority leaders uh what's happening uh either in the senate and or house on affordable housing legislation in the house uh you know we have a couple of major approaches one is a finance financing affordable housing assisting housing developers through the rental housing revolving fund and the dwelling unit revolving fund so we have a bill out in our majority package to provide funding for the rental housing revolving fund and what makes this bill different from others that have been introduced is that this um a lot of the financing in the past has been for 60 and below am i so very low income families but we know that working families are struggling to find rental housing throughout our state so this is to provide a subsidy to our nonprofit our state developers our private developers who are building up for this group between 60 and 120 percent of area median income to um so it's to you know provide additional funding to to that fund we also have sort of non-monetary bills this is to help uh use our zoning codes to mm more denser housing in our urban districts the state urban districts so um we have a hb 16 30 that gives uh homeowners the opportunity to build two additional dwelling um additional rental units on their single family lot if if the you know there's adequate infrastructure and parking and so forth um so it's just to promote more multi-generate rational housing in our urban districts that already have infrastructure and then um another bill to try to do more adaptive reuse and to encourage adaptive reuse of commercial buildings because we know there's a lot of vacant commercial buildings so making it giving the counties a couple of years to set up their rules to make adaptive reuse of these commercial structures allowable for residential use oh thank you representative i know the senate has passed a couple of bills to excuse me one an affordable housing credits and also on uh inclusionary zoning so you know both the house and senate are looking at trying to pass certain legislation to uh encourage the building of more housing and as as we it's a huge problem but any comment senator or we can move on yeah i mean uh uh uh dr morrow is absolutely right there's a lot of these are companions on the senate that we've been hearing and and advocating for and i mean i just briefly wanted to mention including all the ones that uh revna kamura spoke about um uh one of the bills that that the former one of the former housing chairs on the house uh who now is senator hashimoto uh as vice chair of the house um as vice chair of the senate housing committee uh he i just briefly uh introduce sp2133 um this basically um authorizes hhfdc hoi housing and finance development corporation to issue bonds for infrastructure and and to finance the development of regional state infrastructure projects so you know typically offsite infrastructure is a kind of one of the main a big barrier to development of housing typically paid for by you know the private developers who in turn you know pass a lot of those expenses off to home buyers and renters so this this this bill kind of i mean this bill does empower hhfdc to facilitate the development of the of the infrastructure needed to support new housing projects throughout the state so that's one of the one of the few um one bill that i just wanted to mention besides all the other ones that we've been trying to advocate for um both in the house and the senate oh thank you senator what why don't we we have a few minutes left for your segment and so uh why don't we talk about if you have anything to you wanted to comment on on education and i know there were bills uh pertaining to the department of ad doe as well as the university of hawaii so if you have any brief comments you know we can do it at this moment now i think um one of the things that the house is uh pursuing is uh funding in the budget to help continue to grow access to high quality early learning opportunities through pk pre-k uh 19 million dollars in the budget and then for the preschool open doors program 38.8 million and that's um you know we all know that you know having a real strong pre pre-k program is uh is foundational and it um will make a big impact to our students and our teachers if the students are learning at you know when they're three and four year olds they're learning they're they're socialized they're um know what it is to um to be um a good learner and so that's something we're really um promoting for three and four year olds also work based learning we have a majority package bill that helps to um build more on the healthcare academies in our high schools because we know that half of our kids don't go on to college they're looking for good jobs once they graduate and so having a nice um uh learning the skills that they need to in high school so when they graduate they can go right into a hospital setting or a clinic setting and um from there um get into a glide path program where they can maintain their full-time job but also uh take classes on the side so they can move up into the healthcare profession so that's something that we're excited about thank you representative any any other comments senator no I I also wanted to you know thank our education chair Kidani and vice chair Donna Mercado Kim she's also uh senator Kim is also the the higher education committee chairs um moving a lot of these a lot of the bills forward um I just wanted to briefly mention I'm not going to talk about it but um if you have the time to look up SB 2257 it's about CTE courses in Hawaii schools take a look at that one it's a really important bill that we've been trying to try to try to move forward um but I briefly wanted to mention um SB 3328 um this this kind of clarifies a lot of this a lot of what we've been trying to do with the school's facilities authority um so it it just replaces that with the office of facilities and real estate development um and the office of school operations and services so you know recently with a lot of the lapses with the CIP funds in the Department of Education um and you know a lot of our schools around the the state have been needing a lot of these funds to uh you know uh keep update keep updated with um how the facilities are taking care of so this kind of streamlines of the execution of CIP projects um and it further assists DOE in Department of Education with Fulfillian's mandate to provide you know high quality public education to Hawaii's Kiki so look up that bill as well it's again SB 3328 something that we've been trying to move forward. We have time for uh in this segment for two quick things. One is you know on crime and public safety uh there was a lot of discussion on the firearms bill and gun safety and you want to make a quick comment either one of you or both of you on that? Yeah so um very very controversial we want to make sure that you know the the that um we clarify a lot of the the laws that Hawaii has with regards to what the Supreme Court has has uh mandated on the states so um we're trying to look at what's allowable what's not allowable you know I have a very rural district um on Hawaii Island that we have a lot of hunters and you know a 50 caliber gun you know you use that um for hunting is you know shoot a sheep with that thing it's going to explode so what what what what what what do you know how do we clarify what's allowable what's not allowable what what can we pass on to the kids like obviously we want better education um to those that that use firearms so that's just something that we wanted to clarify it is it is a controversial thing um the house is going to have to deal with it now I'm sorry Nadine but um that's something that uh you know we we had a lot of debate about there there's also another bill the fireworks control law we wanted to just authorize law enforcement and fire officers to be able to enter and and inspect any licensee or permittees premises there were issues about um being able to safely destroy and dispose of confiscated fireworks and requiring violators to be held liable for storage and disposal costs so that's something that we want to improve upon um we know there's some some good progress being made and they just need time and resources to do a better job you know I think we are at the end of this segment and Senator Kanula and Representative Nakamura uh the neighbor islands are well represented today uh from Big Island, Kauai and Senator McKelvie from Maui but thank you very much I appreciate the time that you spent not only for uh this program today but in preparation for the program and I really appreciate that so now we'll go to Senator uh Angus McKelvie from Maui and you know for many many years uh Senator McKelvie was a member of the House of Representatives and I think many of you know that uh Senator McKelvie lives in Lahaina and was one of the individuals who lost his home so I wanted to give uh him some time to go into uh some of the topics and including recovery timeline but and the allocation of funds but also some of the particular bills that pertain to the uh Maui wildfire and you know like uh residential rental uh bills etc but Senator you're on you know thanks for having me you know first off Bob I want to say that you know I actually in comparison to my community fared pretty well in so far as being come out of the fire there's so many people families in particular that lost everything across the board and you know many people in West Maui we had an affordable housing situation that was in crisis mode anyway high zip code no affordable housing which put constraint on our transportation system and now all of a sudden this has been exasperated and wrong belief right now and so we need to accelerate the affordable housing that was needed before the fire now it's having an impact on there but many people most of you know part of the conversation all these have been you know driven by many people many voices but you know there's been a concern that you know particular a few voices you know those are people who are homeowners who houses have survived the fire uh their voices are becoming more predominant and those uh people particularly the renters of which 75% of the remaining people of whom support is being extended are not being included in the equation I think this is why the absolute determination to have a granular meticulous housing plan that tracks literally the individuals down to the units in a different stage is critical from all stages of government but I think that you know these these issues hit for me personally because I'm in the middle of it and I see you know rub elbows with the affected victims every day and so that's why I understand we need to be super aggressive on accountability on numbers and results not only physically but it's about the human and the family you know they're left twisting in the wind they're left caught up in the wash and everything gets delayed and with every phase slowing down becoming delayed that's financially the costs increase and getting West Maui which is 15% of the GDP of the entire state back up and running becomes delayed so those are the issues you know I see it personally every day I know the frustration of many survivors that came to that that I seen the legislature but I think right now what I think the biggest thing that is occurring that has been occurring still is the inability of government to not only coordinate amongst themselves but to actually get into the community to the survivor base and not everybody at large because that's where the real intel the real effectiveness of programs the real you know whether bills you know whether well-attentioned not are going to work that's upon them they're the user group that hopefully will be listened to because that way the relief and response and the timelines can be tailored to those who are actually trying to be assisted you know there was a question senator that came up uh I'll just and you know I know that you're well aware of the situation but the question was that or the comment was that the fact that uh rentals and are already here in Lahaina people are seeing rents with three bedroom homes in upwards of 9 000 a month yeah and whether this is accurate I have no idea but it is absolutely accurate and it's being caused by the federal government a lot of what is going on whether people need to understand we're fronting all the money up front and pie crust promises I call them easily made and broken and now they're being broken and as a result what was envisioned to be compensated or taken care of and covered is not for instance the copa population the federal government has a compact with the copa migrant nations and communities to compensate them for what you know they incurred you know over years ago and so FEMA and the federal government should be stepping front forward and helping us with the copa populations directly instead of having it fall back upon the state you know and the federal government is coming with this housing brokers who have aggressively not gone after as much inventory as they can but they've also been offering those rates you just said the housing market rental market in Maui not West Maui Maui is up 300% and you know you it's called FEMA fevers and the people are hearing about these high amounts that they can get property tax forgiven completely at the same time and they're trying to get their properties and meanwhile because of this broker system what happens is the broker pre-chooses a unit behind the scenes and then calls up a survivor and said like them kind of like the mob this is what we got take it or leave it and so now what's happening is because many families many businesses need to be in West Maui because the school don't have any cars burned up they're being offered units on the other side of the island and that take it or leave it you know and the frustration with survivors is again boils down to two things lack of choice and lack of voice and this is one of those areas that if there was a transparent open housing market for all the survivors they could consciously choose their option and adjust to it but right now what's happening it's a one-size-fits-all take it or leave it this is what's generating not only the rental increases but also the lack of mobility of getting people out of NCS into these residents so by the way I'll just mention a couple of bills for the audience that you can always look up there's a residential rentals bill senate bill 2908 there's an emergency management bill 2904 and there's a bill on permanent housing that was introduced by senator Hashimoto from Maui which is senate bill 2836 so these are some of the bills that the audience may want to look at in terms of what the legislature is doing to help the Maui recovery but senator I know that you put in a bill on charitable fundraising can you expand on that a little bit yeah it's to try to address the situation you know it's based off of California the truth in giving that many of the non-profit entities will raise funds in the name of a disaster like the wildfire millions and hundreds of millions will be raised and yet the story seems to be at the end of the day the end user the survivors are like what you know I mean there's no direct continuity to them what happens is these giant non-profits will seed other non-profits that will conduct activities and while beneficial they go beyond the scope of the community number one and number two is this not what the community needs I think one of the more key points is a thread is you really in the end of the day have a very small population of impacted people here which huge huge resources are being put into which begs the question would we be better off just giving direct aid to the survivors themselves and cutting cutting a definitive end to state support because that's what seems to be happening is you have all these programs and things going on one of the good bills I want to touch upon and that is a senator delegates it is a travel report bill to look at how much the state is spending on sending people over to Maui back and forth and back and forth and back and forth with the lodging of mental cars and costs and all of that right this is a kind of bleed out so when this comes back to this is that with the charitable giving you have all of this money being raised it's not getting into the impacted area housing we need it there we could use it for wraparound services for non-foundation then you have the revealing fact of foreign governments being directed to give donations to nonprofits and so when that happens with that kind of money being raised the givers in the community see how it's being used where it's being used and that the money is getting directed to help government and assisting individuals in their different situations and right now you know a lot of this funding to be honest with you if it were to be able to be directed into the pipeline maybe the legislature could look some special assessment just for disaster this disaster or something to pull the money down like housing we could sure use that for wraparound services we could sure use that to creating better housing solutions now needed but we're so far behind the timeline right now but also it also the main thing is when you give money for a disaster you want to know that your money's actually going to help real families and when it doesn't happen what people then turn it directly giving through you know some of these apps and you know that and unfortunately what happens if this proportionate amount of benefits being given to certain people over in a senator I someone asked the question whether some of the survivors there can access the private donations but my understanding there's no system yet set up as to how people can access that there's no there's no there's no there's no someone unwillingness I mean one of the executives for one of the huge nonprofit fundraisers are basically advocated against giving direct aid you know from a from a benefactor don't argue against it insinuating that the money would be wasted on things like clothes oh I'm sorry I didn't realize kids grow you know and so it but again it somebody from one of the fires in the mainland you know told me in the very very beginning the state is such a unique purpose because remember Lahaina was a thriving middle-class community many of the people were affected in this place now you know though yeah it was challenging they had many streams of income and were doing pretty well so all of us all need to now look at them as homeless or that they're I don't know an income challenge population doesn't fit what really could have happened is this again the more autonomy you have given it I think PPP would have been the best model you have accountability you have auditing and then what happens is in agreement for that you agree to not seek any more services from the state people can if this happened in the beginning people could have self-situated they could have done their own secure their own situation they could map out how they could have stayed in West Maui instead of being to relocate it out which is the case right now which comes at a cost to the economic recovery it comes at a cost you're trying to get out of phase two and hopefully phase three you know senator maybe you'll I don't know if you can address this but is there any idea of what the timeline is for the recovery in Lahaina I mean both you know new housing temporary housing a better rental situation it's what kind of timeline are we looking I'm making pessimistic I'm going off of past disasters in the current track regular this one and again the voluntary you know the relocation out of West Maui people you know it's coming in and that is one of the impacts it's coming at but this is why we really really need to stress and that's why the landways needs me to try to do it this granular housing plan how many units for how many families which bucket will it address and you know will it be something that they will actually buy into and will it help I think one of the immediate reclaim areas is within Lahaina town itself your condominiums front street apartments for instance if the county and the poor can coordinate with the state to clear that area they're ready to move to rebuild those units and add more which could be potentially 400 units coming online we have of course the Keavan street apartments up there by Keavan street the developer there is interested in continuing to build out and so we need to encourage that but we also say okay this amount of units will be done it'll be ready by this date it's going to cost this amount of money and these are the people who will be eligible to do it whether it's DHS or we're going to work with FEMA and if FEMA can hopefully start to join the state in the county and try to develop a solution that allows us to create this housing we can get more of this online within Lahaina quicker but this is why we need that granular housing strategy for the rental market as well as you know for those who are displaced and their homes due to under insurance and that's a whole other topic that is also an isolated recovering and rebuild so there's a lot of factors working against us but I think having that granular strategy by all the entities that are being charged with this is critical to making sure we can keep this some sort of a timeline what about the cost of the infrastructure rebuilding the infrastructure and someone that told me senator I don't know how accurate this is that it's going to be very difficult to rebuild on the existing area that was devastated especially right off front street and because of climate change they're looking at different things whether they have to move further north north of Lahaina town to rebuild and I don't know how accurate that statement was well I think that was and I think that could have been you know I'm just assessing based on what you said a convoluted the economic development of the county I thought it's a pretty good idea was looking at one point and creating a you know temporary front street if you will of the shops that were there up between the two time shares on north beach and that bacon area right there it didn't happen for for what I can assume very many as reasons but the point you bring up Bob is an important one this is an issue that I've been talking to people in the community on both the business side the residents and others this is a battle that has to happen now is what will be the future of front street to your point many of the areas that were there were grandfathered in now they're gone they're within the nation zone and you have questions of whether they could even get national flood insurance anymore because they're in the nation zone right and there's the issue of will the state in the county now adhere to those setbacks and their work there by initiate combination if that happens obviously it'll be very different front street there are ways to be able to bring back I think some of those you know what was there before I mean the way that's harmonious with both planning insurance protocols and other things but it's going to be a very I'll be honestly even emotional and tough conversation because there's a good chunk of the community that would like to see that preserved and protected in some sort of an open space each community cultural type of open mark you know type of atmosphere and as well so but this is these are the conversations that need to happen and I think that a lot of what is occurring is on the county level but there is a desire the community I think to try to see if there's any way they can get more empowerment in this critical decision but they're critical decisions of climate change inundation versus you know what was lying up front street and part of the history because before there was chemo's etc many of these places were owned by our Japanese American families and use the fishing markets you know didn't you put in a bill if I recall I can't remember the title of it senator Lahina something to look at whether you establish some kind of task force or organization to look at rebuilding the cultural aspects of Lahina yeah it was no really that was some more of a you know a I guess a conversation self-determination it's come up every 20 years I don't think this generation next generation has had this conversation I was a staffer when it happened last time in the state senate all in up when there was a an instrument floated to create a township of Lahina and it stemmed from the very same issues that Lahina feels like it gives you know so much through this Maui County Honolulu and all the decisions and resources are taken and done there and same with the disaster decisions being made especially in these critical things like front street like setbacks like are being done and can be done currently in Waikū and Honolulu and Washington DC so the idea is possibly could you use the community development authority to create a community authority that would give the community through nine people that are elected the kind of ability to control the vision of the zoning the rebuild some greater more harmonious line where you have a vision-based zoning and not ad hoc based on but it's very contentious there are a lot of side effects to it it's a discussion in democracy I've done a lot of fan mail from it but you know at the same time I respect all that those off those concerns and things are legitimate but it's an exciting conversation to have and no matter how it turns out of the fact that he had it is good and you know like I said it's been 20 years since we've had this in every 20 years West Maui government officials launch this conversation and I wouldn't be surprised if we'll look at people like hey you know what we could use one of those uh senator thank you very much any last comments before we move to the homelessness uh issue uh no I just want to say again to really stress that you know the people behind our industrious hardworking local families that but for the disaster would still be going so they're not a they're not a they're not a pop district population with a hand that's out it's asking for a hand up and getting concrete answers and timelines basically not only makes a sense we behind it doesn't want to bring the rest of the state down because of unending spending but at the same time having a very concrete detailed plan on specifically responsible to everybody out there but it's also most responsible survivors and want to be able to chart away forward as one of them said and I'll end with this we haven't haven't even had chance to thank you thank you for taking the time to address the audience and uh good luck moving forward okay we'd now like to move to the last segment of the seminar this morning and uh we decided to focus on homelessness which is a huge issue in the state and uh representative Della Albelotti is the chair of the health and homelessness committee in the house so uh representative this has been a major issue for many many years so what type of legislation has been considered and uh if you can elaborate on that you know because I know there were bills with regard to funding and treatment so I'll let you uh educate the people on the on the webinar thank you I want to thank first think tech kawaii and there are over 180 participants who are still hanging in there uh yes we have passed many bills uh homelessness continues to remain a hot topic it feels like we've been in a homeless situation emergency for the last 10 years or under some kind of emergency proclamation for a long time so yes we have passed some bills in the areas of funding treatment and prevention um I really want to thank bob for you setting the context about the budget and the conversations about the budget because I'm going to frame my my comments about bills in the context of some of the things that we have to consider in the budget so one of the main priorities for the house has been increasing the base budget for homeless programs offices these are for programs that do basic outreach care coordination when you see an individual on the street under a bridge a constituent calls to get help our offices are often calling department of human services to do the outreach and to reach these people um funding in for that line item has not been increased for over a decade for over a decade when we've been struggling with homelessness um for for that long and so the house has made the position of increasing and boosting that that budget item uh by by five percent to twenty percent now the governors in his proposed budget also increased uh suggested that boost so we're really just tracking what the governor wants but now with the conversations about um you know budget concerns now that we're looking at possible budget cuts from the senate being proposed or looked at and understandably so given our economic situation it's going to be these kinds of um measures that and line items that we're going to need to track very carefully so that's something to look for both in the budget negotiations as well as in bills such as house bill 1834 which is our vehicle in the house for that line item another example of budgeting and and funding that's really critical and it may not seem related is um requests from the department particularly the department of health uh amhg adult mental health division for quality improvements for the state hospital as well as program improvements for community based treatment now the governor yesterday delivered his um supplemental message governor's message number five to the legislature and what we're seeing is um a lot of requests across um departments and we've seen um i believe over 14 million maybe 10 million requests um from the department of health to address many of the things that are happening at the state hospital in light of the recent tragedy that we saw happen we need to improve the security um of the campus we need to improve the staffing of the campus but we also have to make sure we're funding both inpatient residential treatment in the hospital as well as community based treatment outside because that will relieve the census in in the hospital and i raise this is an important issue for two reasons one you know we know that there is an intersection between homelessness incarceration mental health and so this is a really important safety net area we need to fund if we're going to address the homeless homelessness problem i also raise this because in the bill that's moving from the state house uh is house bill 1941 that's looking to fund and it makes the recommendation to fund many of these uh requests that are coming from the department from um a special fund that in particular it's the um let's see it's a it's a special fund uh for mental health services now i i raise that because one of the things that i appreciate that the senate is doing and that um i believe senator delacruz has done is really ask the department look at all of your budget look in total at your special funds look at where you might be able to sustain cuts look at at all of your federal funds as well and so i think when we scrub the budget we need to ask ourselves where can we find funding so we don't necessarily need to tap cash revenues so for example in this special fund that um uh department of health has access to and for which they've previously paid for these types of requests that they're asking for i believe there's about nine to ten million unencumbered as as of the last time i checked with the department of budget and finance and so there are places within all of our departments special funds that we need to look at very carefully as well as do the due diligence which i believe the senate is engaged in in asking what is the plan from the governor to address the wildfires recovery and one last funding uh bill for your um folks to track is house bill um 2884 this is a vacated homeless encampment task force bill that comes from my colleague representative lechica one of the things that we've learned over the last decade or so is that so much of what we need to do with homelessness is interdepartmental so this is a smaller bill with a smaller subsidy that's really um looking to fund and encourage the department of of transportation to continue in with its intergovernmental work when they and it's because the department of transportation has so many lands where we see so many homeless encampments pop up we we're asking in that bill for the department of transportation to really engage in interdepartmental task force working with not just the county agencies that are important but also the federal agencies such as the the U.S. army because we see federal lands also where there's a lot of encampments and we really want to encourage that coordination so that as these hot spots develop we can be responsive to government so bob that's just that those are just three bills related to funding that all address you know rep a lotty i have a question uh you've been health chair for several years you know throughout the years and the homelessness chair for at least the last two uh two years uh do you feel that um and and homelessness it still persists and whether it's growing do you feel funding is one of the lack of funding or if i want to say fund the funding aspect is that a major reason why uh we can't get grips on this situation i think we are apart we are at a point in time that funding is becoming critical because we have failed to keep up with the pace of inflation and so the people that we're asking to really engage in the difficult work of transitioning folks moving folks from homelessness to supportive housing we need to fund that critical safety net feature in our system you know there's a lot of people in the community through the true cost coalition government relies on social service contractors to do much of the work with homelessness homelessness so you know last year when we were looking at like you know huge budget surpluses there was a conversation going on and continuing to go on about what is the true cost of all of these services so to answer your question bob yes funding at this point in time has become critical we have seen the point in time count only increase and so we have to make a commitment and that's why in these budget negotiations it's going to be critical that we commit to protecting the social safety net it's these social service programs that are helping us just manage homelessness at this point in time if you want to do more we're going to have to look at boosting these services you know with listening to the two majority leaders and talking about the economy and the impact of the maui disaster uh funding is just going to get tighter and tighter and that becomes a larger problem for the homeless programs and and uh issue and you know part of the homelessness issue too representative is the fact that you also need to fund more mental health treatment and that's part of the whole situation and uh i don't know what percentage of the homeless individuals need mental health treatment but that's another i think big concern well let me let me comment on that bob and like you know i think it's important that we can do more than one thing in the legislature we can focus on more than one priority so i really think that you know homelessness afflicts all counties and let me talk about some other bills that you know require only strategic investments and that will make a difference yesterday in evil a there was a tremendous um a milestone that was reached um the governor and the city and county of honolulu opened up their first behavioral health crisis center in the state this is going to be a place where we do provide more mental health treatment for folks who are experiencing behavioral health crisis um crises many of them who may be within the homeless houseless population and so this is a collaboration it was a whole of government approach it involved the judiciary who in 2019 began to to discuss what did we need to do with our entire continuum of care for mental health from mental health to the state hospital right from mental health folks experiencing mental health crisis we're going to the er's and then maybe not finding real help and then advancing to a place where there where we find them in the state hospital well there is a bill moving house bill uh 18 31 and there's a similar bill house bills uh 2309 as well as senate companions for these these these places these hubs where folks can get treatment um not necessarily in the year but they can receive treatment and maybe they just need 24 hour stabilization and then they they might need um a 10 day stay at um uh for further stabilization and then we can transition them to more supportive housing so house bill 1831 with behavioral health crisis centers looks at a strategic investment um in uh for the next two years that's that's under nine uh under 10 million dollars for two pilot programs that could continue to fund what was just open in evil a as well as another behavioral health crisis center on another island um the homeless triage center is detox facilities that are needed we know that on hawaii islands um through the use of their opioid settlement funds that hawaii island is opening up a detox center and again we know the intersection between substance abuse mental health issues and homelessness so these are all strategic investments that we need to make and and so i i really encourage um your um participants to follow these bills about homeless triage centers the behavioral health crisis centers um so that so that we we can you know really find the priorities uh that we have to fund the gaps we have to fund and strategically um invest in those areas you know representative let's hope that some of what the bills that you're mentioning and the senate companions and other senate bills uh um pass at the end of uh the session this year and you know there i said at the beginning there are about 750 bills uh house and senate that are still on the table and uh usually at the end of session there are less than 300 bills that actually pass the legislature uh but if some of your some of not your but some of the homeless bills pass do you feel it'll make a dent in uh the homeless situation i do believe it will bob you know in addition to some of these funding bills that we've discussed we also have bills that just look at uh policy reform changes that don't cost money so for example from our near from our new homelessness coordinator um john nizuno my former colleague who is now the coordinator on home homelessness he asked us and we're moving a bill that creatively looks at um um community care foster homes being able to house an additional Medicaid individual who is facing housing instability now that doesn't cost anything to the state um uh because what it's doing is it's just making sure that we have about treatment beds spaces along the continuum of care for folks who are either at risk uh for homelessness or facing home housing instability so yes in addition to the funding bills we have we have also policy reform changes that will not um you know increase the budget but really will help us be able to move folks to the various places but where they need to go to to get help so that they're not simply languishing on the streets so i assume that you feel that uh providing shelter of some sort uh is as important as mental health treatment yes and it's that kind of so the homeless programs um budget line that i talked to you previously about that that is is uh the funding that also helps um fund our just the immediate shelters that some folks need representative any last comments before we uh end the seminar this morning no bob i just want to thank you and thank thank tech again and all of your participants i think it's really important to be engaged to understand what bills are moving how these bills interact with the budget and really like you know holding um us your um elected officials accountable to make sure that priorities for all of the state um are addressed in this legislative session thank you very much representative uh i'd like to thank all of the members that have participated uh uh as registrations uh increased over the last few days and uh i would like to thank all of the panel members senator kanua represent Nakamura senator mckelvey and of course uh representative balady uh who ended it with uh the homelessness uh issue um the there will be video replays over the next two fridays uh at think tech and i think that it uh the replay will also be on on youtube uh i would appreciate if the people that have signed up for this webinar can fill out the brief questionnaire to give us an idea of what type of areas you might be interested in for future legislative seminars again thank you very much for participating and uh my thanks again to all the panelists who spent a lot of time in preparing for this seminar thank you very much and a mahalo to think tech for uh helping to produce this uh seminar thank you