 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. I'm Marcia Joyner and we are navigating the journey. Navigating the journey is dedicated to exploring the options and choices for the end of life care and to assist people to talk about their wishes. It is time to transform our culture so we shift from not talking about dying to talking about it. It is time to share the way we want to live at the end of our lives and it is time to communicate about the kind of care we want and what we don't want. We believe that the place for this to begin is not in the intensive care unit but together we can explore the various paths to life's endings. Together we can make these difficult conversations easier and together we make sure that our wishes and those of our loved ones are expressed and respected. So if you're ready join us as we navigate the journey. For those of you that have been with us over this time we know that we have met with people of various religions and cultures to talk about their wishes the way they feel the way they believe. And today we are going to talk with Representative Jarrett and I'm sure I'm going to screw up his last name but he is the representative from the Wyant, Wyholy, Wycani, Connie always side of the island and he was one of those that introduced the bill of medical aid and dying but we will talk for a minute about medical aid and dying and we are going to talk about with the representative about his district because that's one of those areas that we know precious little about all the news is about what happens in downtown Honolulu no one and then if it's wrong it's Wyonite we just don't know about that part of the island so greetings Aloha representative it is such a pleasure to have you now pronounce your last name so we get it right yeah hi Marcia thanks for having me on the show I'm Jarrett Kyohokalole I grew up in Canyoha you know there are a lot of people on my side of the island that like that people like you and folks in town don't know what's going on on the Honolulu side it's crowded in town it is some people like the feeling of being in the country and not having everybody from town come over and cause a bunch of traffic well yes it is yeah just getting there is the issue you know that one lane road that highway that goes out that it's a beautiful place it's lovely so tell me the names of the different communities in your district yeah sure I represent the 48th house district which is actually 6 Ahupua'a in the Kolaupokal area of the windward side of Oahu so I have parts of Canyoha, Heia, Kahalu'u, Waihe'e, Kaalaya and Waiholae so the majority you don't have Waiholae actually no it's right on the boundary of Waiholae but that's the same it's the neighboring valley and the same watershed the majority of my district is the Kahalu'u temple valley area which is actually pretty rural most of the voters live in Canyoha but most of the land is actually the sort of the beginning of the country you know on up the Kolaupost it is so beautiful out there it is so lovely I have been out needless to say lots and lots of times and it just it feels good it's the aroma that just I I guess I'm old enough to think of what old Hawaii was and that this when you drive through it just has that same feeling or at least to me I don't know but you work that's your whole life is there so there's a different so tell us about you tell us all about growing up in this beautiful beautiful environment and then what okay yeah so I I grew up actually when I was a little kid we lived in Kailua on Waiholaepa place which is near the Pizza Hut and Taco Bell sort of right in the middle of Kailua and I went to Kailua Elementary until the first grade and then I moved to my auntie's house in Canyohae where the rest of our family lived which is on Waiholae road right right near the police station even that's even right in the middle of Kanyoha too and our family actually has been from that area for a really long time if you follow the genealogy we're in the chance that go back hundreds of years but in that area we've been there for seven generations and so I grew up there I went to Ben Parker Elementary School right on Waiholae and then King Intermediate and then I came into town for high school went to St. Louis and UH and then my wife and I moved away we went to the mainland and lived in New York for a couple of years and she went to school and I worked in the city and then when we had our when we had our first son we decided to move back because we wanted to live in Kanyohae we wanted him to live in Kanyohae it's cold on the East Coast for most of the year and we wanted to raise our kids around the family my wife is from Kanyohae too she's a Miashiro they live right by Castle High School so you know everybody was here our roots were here so we wanted to come back and what we found pretty quickly was you know doing that coming home and raising a family on the windward side and anywhere in the state really is really difficult to do there's not a lot of housing available that's affordable it's just the cost of living in general is difficult and it's hard to get a job that pays you enough to cover those costs lots of people want to do it and struggle to do it and you know those things are getting harder and harder and so that's part of the reason why I decided to get involved in public service and and run for office and I I think I'm really lucky that I get to represent the place that I grew up in and that my family's from I talked to lots of old-timers and people in the community who know my aunts and uncles my grandmother so it's a privilege did you go to law school yeah I went to the University of Hawaii oh great Richardson School of Law and I graduated in 2013 so that means that in your community they all know you and you all you know all of them is that did I get that right so I know I know lots of people I know lots of faces of aunties and uncles who know me since you were a little boy yes I was a little kid I don't necessarily know them I've knocked on door it's funny I've knocked on doors where you know that people who've grown up with my aunts or uncles or cousins and so they immediately know who I was but I didn't know who they were I've had kupuna tell me stories about my grandfather who drove the first taxi over the mountain over the the old poly road back in the 50s and he passed away before I was born he used to drive the the glass-bottom boat and do tours on uncanny oh he bae in the 60s and so it was really interesting when I ran and I went door-to-door and people would tell me stories about my family and and so it's part of that is you know our responsibility lots of people know who I am and so I got to make sure that I'm doing a good job behaving myself well what what are the issues in in that part of Oahu yeah I think it's some of the things I talked about there's not a lot of housing available for young families on that side and part of that is on purpose we don't want to you know over develop the winward side of Oahu and so that makes things difficult makes it difficult for young families it makes it difficult for seniors we're trying to live at home and retire and age in place when costs continue to go up and you have a fixed income like I said before it's hard to get a job to cover the difference you know a lot of people are willing to continue to just try and make it work here in Hawaii but if you're not making enough money to make it work then you're forced to move elsewhere or for folks on you know on the bottom of the income spectrum a lot of them are being pushed into homelessness so homelessness is another issue education and also we have we have real environmental challenges and it's getting crowded out there we have that Bay that has sustained that community for a really long time and so I focused since I got an office on trying to make sure that we're managing our resources in that area in a responsible way and really that it's we're leading with the community we're letting the community take the lead role on how to manage those resources and what exactly we're going to do to you know to protect things you still have fishponds in the bay yeah we do there used to be dozens now we have a handful of fishponds in the bay that are still in operation I actually passed the law my first year in office that restructured the way we regulate fishponds nowadays if a community group wants to get together and restore upon you know fix the wall up so that they could start doing aquaculture and farming fish yet to go to this agency in this agency and go to the feds and the county so what we did was we restructured the program you go to one office now you fill out their information and they make sure that you're checking all the boxes that everyone else needs checked so that you can go in and just start fixing that up a streamlined yeah we streamlined the process and made it easier for for people in the community you know for these these community groups to go and and just get the work done you know as opposed to spending all the time going from this office to that to front papers do you work with your city council person to do since he's permitting and whatever what is it yeah they don't even permitting and and all that kind of stuff yeah do you well not just you but all over the island do you the representatives work with the city council people to make sure that you're on the same page yeah the I get along really well with my consulman we work together you know we have different responsibilities the counties are responsible for things that are really I think in front of people top of mind things the roads right police fire and land use so we need to coordinate to make sure that the state-level laws taxes education all that stuff really works together work together yeah I saw just last night on the news about the cesspools yeah what what is going on with this do you have you have a lot out there yeah we do in the in the Kahlua area those those valleys out in Temple Valley all the way to why holy there are over 700 cesspools and a lot of them are old family lots that have been there you know for a really long time and the Department of Health recently released a report I think yesterday actually that we required them to do last year to go in and actually study the issue and see what are the impacts of these units on our water resources on our marine resources and the environment and what they determine is we have 88,000 of them statewide more than any other state in the country and we have 14 different communities around the state where there are measurable impacts where these cesspools are contaminating either groundwater or streams or or the ocean and you know regardless of how we got to this situation because it's it's been a long-term problem that that's finally got us here the biggest thing for me is it's time to take leadership it's time to acknowledge that there's an issue that it's having a negative impact on our environment and then from there figure out how we're gonna fix it where do we start what do we need to do to get this problem taken care of it's not gonna be easy it's really expensive to convert a cesspool into a septic system in the rural areas or even to just tie into the city infrastructure a lot of the neighbor island communities don't have you know county sewage service so they're gonna have to we're gonna have to figure something else out and the main thing is understanding that we have a problem figuring out what the scope of it is so that we can figure you know tailor a solution that's really gonna be effective well we need to take a break and we'll be back in exactly one minute and then I want to talk to the representative about some other issues including medical aid and dying so we'll be back in just one minute this is think tech Hawaii raising public awareness welcome to Hawaii this is Prince Dykes your host of the Prince of Investing coming to you guys each every Tuesday at 11 a.m. right here on theme tech Hawaii don't forget to come by and check out some of the great information on stocks and vestings your money all the other great stuff and I'll be your host see you to see he's been good about it he loves that area so we are back and I am talking today with representative Jarrett Keohokalole don't you just love the way he just rolls off of his time took me a long time and he is from the 48th district of Oahu which is the windward side and they are busy keeping the country country which is wonderful when you drive through downtown Honolulu you say didn't anyone think of keeping this like old Hawaii no okay that's a different subject a couple of years ago I went to a workshop at right next to the ripun farms and the issue came up about the schools and my question was with farms this close to the schools why aren't the children eating fruits and vegetables from the farms and then there was this whole long story about the bureaucrats and about it out on the feds so tell me what it have we fixed that yet are the children eating from the farms yet not just that one but all over yeah so what you're talking about is the effort out in Kahlua and Kahlua elementary school in particular and it's an effort that's actually the original person who took the lead on it was Eldin Kukahiko who who's left us but he was a community organizer and and a really good man and he started with an after-school program where they palm poi and eat taro from the low eon up moka from the school and in the valley and he came to see me after I got elected and asked for us to help you know get the poi into the schools because those farms are right there in the community and it just makes better sense and so we folded the that school into the larger farm-to-school effort that's gone along statewide and really the most progress has been made on the big island up on the Hamakua coast and the real big difference has been there's been a change in the leadership within the Department of Education food service program and those folks are much more willing now to to try and work with the farmers the vendors and the schools to figure out a way that we're we're delivering food that's safe and healthy and locally sourced and so I've been since Eldin got us started on that effort we've been meeting with farmers in the area and we're actually going to put together a meeting pretty soon here with the state farm-to-school coordinator to see how we can replicate what's going on on the big island similar situation but they have they have even more ag you know along that Hamakua coast than we have on Oahu and again the main thing is it's easy to say no to efforts when you're trying to feed thousands of kids statewide but if you just take one school at a time that are in areas where you have really good access to agriculture and and to crops that are food crops right that people eat we have a lot of value added we have a lot of flowers all all the ag in Hawaii is great but to have areas where you have food production that you can source to the schools is really important so we're not quite there yet in terms of kids eating locally sourced food on Oahu in Kahlua every day but we're getting there you know and the more we try the more we we just try to find ways to navigate the system effectively the more success we're gonna have part of the the reason why we don't have locally sourced food is because we haven't tried for a really long time I was gonna say did but do we even try to do this no you know I mean budgets get cut and and agencies and departments work with what they got and and oftentimes the easiest route to take is the only answer if you're not trying to find another way and so we've changed that perspective not only within the DOE but I think just across the state food security is a major issue now and that has to go back down to supporting the local farmers and giving them a market to sell their their products to and coordinating for them again it's we don't want farmers going into the DOE administration offices and filling out forms and making sure they're compliant with everything we want to make it easier for them to keep farming and find ways for for you know it's it should be our responsibility right at the state level to connect the dots for people to make it all work and so we're headed there well yeah because you know we have children that are going to bed hungry and that that shouldn't be when we can feed them that that's just that that's just wrong and when we are growing crops even if it isn't next door but we can move crops to to the schools and to the vendors that prepare the food and whatever that's yesterday's technology come on we can do this but we have to try I don't want to belabor the point but you know a lot of the work that I've found that is really important in the legislature comes from issues that people just haven't been paying attention to for good reasons and then for bad reasons get distracted there's so much in state government that we have responsibilities for and there's so much to do but when you identify a problem it's easy to just ignore it or kick the can down the road sometimes the solutions are easy if you just dig in and meet with people bring people together and try and find a way to work things out so and that's what's happening now with with farm to school and it's been successful good I'm glad I'm like I've told you before we have been supporting medical aid and dying and since you were one of those that initiated signed on to introduce the bill and as you know and our audience knows that it passed the Senate with flying colors and then it got stuck I guess is what you call it in the house and so I want to know what it will take our audience to get it unstuck to move the bill we have a new house chair representative John Mizuno and they combine health and human services into one committee which makes sense it should have been one committee to begin with but anyway no one asked me so what do we have to do tell our audience what do we have to do to get it unstuck to move it across the finish line this okay legislature opens what in three weeks yeah about that so what do we what do we need to do in January yeah so I signed on to that bill as a co-sponsor in part because of my my own personal beliefs on this issue and that stems from the way I view the Constitution and and how we treat folks in other contexts for example we all have our individual right to refuse medical treatment the government cannot force medical treatment on any individual now there are good aspects and bad aspects to that we have a homeless situation now that's out of control in part because we have folks on the street who need help and we're where they're not able to access them or they refuse services but at its core the Constitution protects individual individuals from having the government force medical treatment on them so you know my own perspective on this is if you can refuse medical treatment then it doesn't make any sense for you to for the government to prohibit you from ending medical treatment that that prolongs your life or for allowing you to end your life if you're in pain I don't see any justification for the government having some sort of authority on whether you get to live or die we don't want to encourage people to you know to pursue suicide or to pursue these avenues when it's not you know when they're not in pain but when when people are in pain and and ultimately it's your own decision you should have the right to I don't think the government is allowed to make that decision the bill that made it to the house from my perspective often these issues even when you have broad-based support in the public come down to how you implement the program and exactly what you're gonna do in those situations when you're not exactly sure what the what the right thing to do is how are we gonna have the doctors navigate situations when it's hard to communicate with people who want to end their life when there are family members involved in this conflict we gotta make sure we get that right if you look at what's happened with the marijuana dispensaries as an example it's been a very cumbersome process because we've fallen short on implementing the program it's one thing to say yes it's a medicine people should have access to it it's another thing to say this is how we're going to regulate the industry so that we don't have diversion to kids so that you know we're not running a fall of the federal government's part to play in this and so there are the states where aid in dying works and there are states where it doesn't work because there's we don't have good implementation you know my understanding is that some of those issues came up but ultimately you know if the public wants it then the public should get involved in the process and demand that we put more effort and energy into working out these issues we may not get it perfect but that's the main thing is you got to engage you got to come call and let people know in the legislature that's a priority yeah and so much of it is misinformation for instance this is in this build there's nothing for old age trust me old age is not a terminal illness I'll be 80 in May so I know that's not a terminal illness so that's one of the things it is not to get rid of grandma it is not to get rid of the handicapped and it bill bill is very clear the biggest issue for me is an antiquated bill legislative law the state has so if you're the doctor and I'm the patient and I say I want to do this you can write a prescription but you can't help me because then that becomes manslaughter and now you are the problem you as you know John Ratcliffe went to court to protect his doctor from manslaughter so that while that gets rolled into this that's another bill we need to look at a legis milk law we need to look at to protect the doctor but the best way to protect the doctor is for him to write the prescription and say if you want to do this then you can that's all this bill says I got sidetracked with manslaughter but the bill clearly says that the doctor has the right to do this but if he's not comfortable he doesn't have to do it nothing compels the doctors so that's part of the misinformation that people they're all you know all the scary tactics but anyway so again we want people to tell us exactly what they need to do now to get it over the finish line so again it's it's not about the for me it's not about the whether we should do it or not it's about how doing it in a way that protects everyone involves ultimately again for me it's it's that I don't think the government is allowed to let people continue is allowed to make people continue to suffer if they've made a decision on it and it's a sound decision and and they have some access to good advice based on based on medical expertise on on whether it's a good decision for them I don't think the government should be involved in that ultimate decision it should be an individual person's decision and you know the other troubling part of it is if you don't have this is the same thing as it's very similar to marijuana if if you don't have a program that accounts for this reality in our population today people do it outside people do it anyway anyway and that's unsafe and and that's not what we should be encouraging and it it's the reality it's the it's the present day it's we're not talking about a future issue this has been going on for a long time you can access that information you know you can get any kind of information you want online to make any decisions you want and that you know that's not the type of Hawaii that I want we're people are going you know through you know unsanctioned channels to go and make these decisions on their own well you have been absolutely marvelous and promise me you will come back I'd be happy to thank you so much for having me and we want you back in the midterm so that we can see how things are progressing if that works for you sure okay well aloha and thank you all for coming and we'll see you next time