 Aloha and welcome to Ehana Kako. We're here every week on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm Keely Akeena, president of the Grassroot Institute. Well you've heard the saying, here today, Gantamawi, what a beautiful island, and in some ways it has rival Oahu in terms of visitor arrivals. It's a place to go. But what can we learn about our state from the island of Maui? It's just an island, but it has major implications for the rest of the state. Not only that, there are people on the island of Maui who don't necessarily feel that their interests are best represented in the state in our centralized government from Oahu. One of those individuals is Danny Pekas, who's throwing his hat into the ring in order to run for the legislative seat in the house representing South Maui. I'm delighted that we get to talk with him, a Maui resident, about what's going on on Maui and why Maui needs better representation he feels in the state legislature. Danny Pekas. Danny Aloha and welcome to the program. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. Well I'm excited to be able to talk a little bit about one of the most beautiful places on earth. They say Maui Nokaoi, which means number one, and you want to make it number one in economy and in government in many ways. Tell our viewers exactly what region on Maui you will be representing if elected to the house. I'm in District 11, which is in the South Kihei, South Maui, it's Kihei, McKenna and Wailaea area, which is a big tourist area and of course tourism is number one in the state so we have a lot of issues here that need to be looked at. Absolutely and it's a thriving area, Kihei, but probably could thrive much more. You're an educator, so right at the outset I want to ask you why is it that you're looking at moving into politics. This is a route that is difficult, it's not easy to win, it costs a lot in terms of your own personal resources and resources you need to garner. You could just sit there behind your desk and podium as a teacher for some reason you've decided to run for government. That's true. Actually I have to take a pay cut to get this office. My mom lived here for about 20 years and I've been coming here since 1969 so I've seen the evolution process of Kihei and this whole area. I've seen things, communities that have done well and I've seen other areas that there's no planning at all and I want to retire here, being able to retire here, it's not what I perceive being a retirement place. Government right now is out of control and way overreaching their bounds in terms of the money spent, administrative costs are way too high. So you're looking into the future, you want a place where your children and their children can live and thrive. Well let's start with education, you've got some strong views there and you're an educator. What have you learned as an educator that would inform you as a policymaker? Well, we're too talk heavy right now. Last year we had 2,200 positions in the state that don't even see students. A lot of those positions, 30% of them went vacated and they couldn't tell me where the money went. So as government you spend it or you lose it. So we have that. That's not counting gardeners and janitors and other people that don't see students. So you're saying that the money that goes in doesn't justify the actual educational result. We're spending too much to get too little in other words. Exactly. I think part of it is we've been behind the curve in terms of the mainland states or a lot of them and this is one of the highest litigious states. I teach special ed and my principals are amazed when they say how come I've never been in a due process hearing and I said we should never be in one. It's a negotiable contract. We're there to benefit the student and the school at the same time. But right now for some reason they don't have those skills. So we're too talk heavy. And it's the only state that I've ever worked in where teachers are working two and three jobs at one time just to pay their bills. The complex I'm in involved in complex 35 percent of all of our teachers for the schools in this area are their first four years. And that's not good for the consistency. Well one of the concerns you have expressed is that there doesn't seem to be enough control or power that the local people, the people of Kihei, South Maui or the island of Maui have over their system and as most viewers understand here in Hawaii we have a unique system whereby the entire Department of Education is run out of the main capital Honolulu by the Department of Education. How does that frustrate your efforts as Maui citizens to ensure good education and good quality schools? I think part of it is you're having people make decisions that have never been what I say in the war room down here with the students. Kihei through three, I don't think you should have more than 15 students. That's the formidable years where you get the basic skills, you learn how to behave and you learn how to have fun. That's not happening and by the time I get them at the high school level as a special ed student we really got to do a lot to turn that around to make them productive self-sufficient citizens. The other thing is the school that they want to build, the Kihei High School. It right now will be one of the most expensive schools in the nation built. I don't understand the rhyme or reason or the lack of logic in just the whole process. They've been working on it for years and yet they put the little golden shovels in the sand up half a year ago but last week they came out with a news article or last few weeks and said it's not going to be done until 2022. Now are you suggesting that that's the result of the kind of central control that exists with regard to education, that the actual residents of Maui, those who are the stakeholders of that school, whose children will go to that school, whose businesses will be filled by employees who graduate from that school, that they're not really involved in the process of making decisions about it? Exactly. And there's other things too. I was talking to the hotel industry the other day, they're not getting qualified employees coming out of this entire area. And we need more training that way. We need more voc ed classes. It seems when you start reducing costs, they reduce it with teachers and they reduce it with vocational educational classes. It's like why are we spending money to advertise 55 by 25 when really not everybody's college bound and we're spending money that could be put back into the system for an advertisement to make what the DOE feel good about themselves? I just think we aren't using the funds in the appropriate area. In other words, the kind of education that might be designed for an urban area such as Honolulu by the Department of Education situated there may not necessarily fit all the needs of Maui with its diverse population ranging from agriculture to rural and so forth. Exactly. Because we're going to have an agricultural burst in a way with the H-E-N-S land not being percane anymore, so we've got to see what's going to happen with that too. Well let's talk a little bit about agriculture because I know that's on your heart and Maui has experienced the loss of 78% of its farmland in the closure of the last cane operation there, H-C-N-S, and it doesn't look as though we see any clear path as to how that agriculture will be replaced and so forth. What is the problem in terms of developing agriculture on Maui and is this also another case of the state government having too much overreach? Well, as part of that and as part of the Baldwin company, you have a water issue and they've been getting water very inexpensively. We've got to figure out what's going to happen with that and then you've got to figure out what kind of crops can you replace it with. Also then you have all that cane workers that are very high priced, high paid, and I don't know if you're going to have another cane type of industry that can fill those voids. So we've got to develop other type of small co-ops I think you need to have a small farmers but then you're going to have to have large farmers because there's 36,000 acres and 27,000 of them are ag land as it is right now. Now one of the things that I understand is that on Maui, according to your city and county mayor, Arakawa, there's a tremendous shortage of people interested in farming. Young people are not leaving the schools with an interest nor with the skills with which to enter the agricultural industry and would you say that's another example of schools that aren't really meeting the local needs? I would say that because there's also when people look at jobs nowadays they look at how much can they make and they don't foresee making the amount of money that they want to make and maybe go in another direction. So that's part of it right there. We do need to have local food to be able to be sold locally but they've got to be competitive too and right now it's hard to compete with the stuff that's coming offshore. Sure. In fact, you're speaking to a much broader issue that I know you care a great deal about and that is the building of the economy itself. The creation of a destination for investment, the opportunity for small businesses to thrive rather than be over-regulated. What are some of your views on Maui economy and how that's impacted by what takes place at the legislature? Well, I think we're over-regulated. Again, like I said, government's too top heavy. Look at the TAT tax, for example, $420 million and $203 million are going to the general fund. You're talking about the transient accommodation tax, which is important for a destination like Maui with a lot of vacation rentals. Right. Well, we have YLA, PTA, we have Conapolly and they aren't even receiving the amount of funds that they put in to maintain it. And originally that was put out there to be able to maintain the lifeguards to clean the beach, the bike ramps, walking paths, the streets. Everything that the tourist tends to wear and tear on, they were supposed to be able to fix that. They aren't able to with the amount of money there. So that should not be going into the general fund. That should be going backwards, generating funds. What you're saying is that money is being siphoned out of Maui and not used for Maui's purposes because of the state's tax policy. Exactly. And then we've got other things that Dylan, in terms of the economy, we've got a lot of vacancies in the strip malls where I live and all of KIA and YLA area. So we need to put a plan together. If these owners, these strip malls are making so much money by having them empty, we almost need to give them some type of tax break to have them full. Because once we have them full, then we generate revenues for the GET. We generate revenues for having people employed, plus the money supply stays within our community instead of going outside of our community. So we have things like that. So we need some anchor tenants, and yet we're still building over there by the airport in Costco for large commercial buildings, and yet we aren't filling what we have. We have a tech park in Kihei that is, we're right in the middle of the Asian Pacific Rim. Why are we not utilizing that between Amazon and Seattle and Microsoft and Facebook and Asia? We should be able to lure those type of companies over here, too, which again now is high-paying jobs, too, which helps the community. Danny, what are some of the policies you would promote at the legislature that would make Hawaii a more attractive destination for investment capital for some of the countries that you're talking about to come in and invest? Well, I think we've got to use the old-fashioned plan that basically Sears and Walmart all used when they would build. They would go build a building, get a 30-year lease at a low rate, but after 10 years it became market value, but then you know you have an anchor tenant there. You get anchor tenants, you get mom-paw stores, and mom-paw stores is what generates a lot of the income within the community itself. So we need to do that. We need to lure large corporations to put offices here. And part of the whole thing for Hawaii, too, is we've got to still go back and look at the Jones Act. The Jones Act is an issue. We've done many programs here on Think Tech of Hawaii and particularly Grassroot Institute shows about the Jones Act, and rather than get too technical about that, I think a good number of people know that it adds to the cost of living and it hinders the ability to ship freely. What would you do as a legislator to address this issue? Well, Alaska got around it, so I don't like reinventing the wheel. We need to go over there and see how they basically circumvented the act and go from there. In other words, in a state where perhaps the draconian measure of absolutely repealing the Jones Act is not at all in the cards, you say that there are places like Alaska that have found ways to deal with it, such as exemptions and so forth, and we should be taking a look at those as perhaps best practices for Hawaii. I mean, correctly, you know, the funny thing I tell my students is a plagiarism is actually good in the world because that's how corporations make better products. Well, that's a good segue to leave a teacher on right now as we take a break. When we come back, what I want to ask you about is a rather bold move our state has taken to attempt privatization with the Maui Public Hospitals. We'll be right back in just a moment, Danny. I'm Kili Iacina with the Grassroot Institute on Ehonokako every week here on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. When we come back, Danny Pekas is going to talk with us about the Maui Hospital privatization from his bird's eye view. Thank you. For a very healthy summer, watch Viva Hawaii. We're giving you the best tips and with our best health coach here. So Viva health coach. Viva la comida saludable. Hello, this is Martin de Speng. I want to get you excited about my new show, which is called Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond, and it's going to be on Think Tech Hawaii from downtown Honolulu on Tuesday after noon's 5 p.m. And we're going to talk about to make architecture more inclusive on the islands, which is one of the definitions of humane, which is being tolerant of many people of nature, of many other influences. So we're going to have some great guests, like today's guest, for example, my collaborator David Rockwood, who is the author of the awesome manifestation of humane architecture in the background. So see you on Tuesdays, 5 p.m. and look forward to. Welcome back to Ehana Kako, and we're here every week on Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. So I want to say thanks to Think Tech Hawaii, to J.F. I. Dell, the president, and all of the terrific staff and volunteers who make it happen. About 35 hours of original content is produced from the studios of Think Tech Hawaii and broadcast across the world, and you can see that at ThinkTechHawaii.com. You can also see more of what we're doing every week here on Ehana Kako at grassrootinstitute.org. Where we say Ehana Kako, let's work together, because think of the terrible alternative of not working together. And one of those people who wants to bring people together to work together for solutions is Danny Pekas, who's the candidate from South Maui for a seat in the state legislature. Danny, let me ask you this, Maui has such natural beauty in its people, in its places, in its culture, in its custom, food, everything, but it's been sad for visitors and residents alike to see over the past many years a growing homelessness problem. And not only homelessness, the inability of many middle-class people to afford homes themselves, and you yourself have some concerns about this. Are we seeing a real problem growing in very big ways? Yeah, we are. We're the highest in the nation, 487, for every 100,000 population homeless. And a lot of them, that is huge. If I was homeless, I'd probably want to be here, too. You know, you're not going to freeze like you would on the East Coast or anywhere else. But the thing is, we're going to have a surplus of some land with HGNS, you know, the cane-leaving and stuff, that I think that there's a possibility to maybe buy some land which is away from houses, away from tourism. That's one of the problems. When I was talking with the hotel industry, the homeless is an issue, because they're gloating around tourist areas. And that does affect our state, because our state number one industry is tourism. Well, homeless... So I think we've got to deal with homes. Yes, and homes. So I think we can deal with the homeless issue. Now, I think... One of the ways to deal with it is to provide more affordable housing. Isn't it true that, despite the number of efforts by developers, by the government in order to build affordable housing, very, very little manages to survive through the permit process, the zoning process, as well as the protests that take place across Maui. What's going on with affordable housing there? Well, I think a lot of it comes down again with a lot of the other issues we have is the administrative costs are way too high. And the process to be getting permits and to follow them through is too long. I was talking to Habitat for Humanity. They take one year to build an 1,100 square foot stick house. That's way too long. And they're still building it for $100,000. I'm $100 square foot, so that's $110,000 for an 1,100 square foot house. And that's not counting. A lot of their material neighbors donated. They said that $50,000 of those houses are fees, which is outrageous. So I think we need to downsize our administration cost in all venues and government, and that doesn't mean firing employees, because we can age out a lot of employees and just not hire those positions. But it might be reallocating those people and retraining them for other portions that we do need as far as a homeless... I think we'd have to, first, because it's going to take a while to build one, is to find some temporary area that we could use for homeless, where busing would be free, where you have affordable bathrooms that are clean daily, and police are coming there daily to make sure that we don't have a drug and other issues concerning that. And that could be a temporary until you build one. That's right. I think if a homeless involved in building it, which international Habitat for Humanity can build homeless, the Habitat for Humanity can only do individual houses, then you have people that have ownership in what they do, and they're a little prouder about it. Maui has had a shortage of medical services over the last many years, and in some cases it involves specialists not available on island. People have to fly off in certain cases to Honolulu in order to be treated. But more than that, those who need the public hospitals have found a real problem with the shutting down of some clinics and laying off of people. Until recently, the legislature passed a law, the governor signed it into law, saying that Maui's able to privatize its hospitals. Is that a good thing for Maui? Well, I've always thought private industry runs more efficient than public as it is. Any time we add some type of new government agency, it's never temporary and it always gets bigger in the long run. So private industries, they've got to be accountable to their stockholders and their bottom line. And that doesn't mean that they lack or lessen the quality of their product, especially in the medical industry. It's hard to do that anyways because of the chance of having a lawsuit for malpractice. So I, myself, I actually had to go to Portland last summer to get a knee surgery because they couldn't do it here. So for the type of surgery that I had to get done. Well, I know that this shift in terms of having a hospital run exclusively by union labor to one that now is run by, will be as soon as it's complete, run by private sector labor with Kaiser involved and so forth, is something a lot of people on Maui have been rallying around and looking forward to. Do you think that this is a triumph for the people of Maui with regard to the state government? I think it can be because I think we're going to see that they're going to stabilize costs. And that's good. Right now, when you don't know what your costs are, then it makes it difficult. Just our medical insurance has gone up so much as far as the premiums. I think what Hawaii was 46% increase pretty much across the board for our premiums. That makes it even harder to live on this island. You were already low paid based off the cost of living as it is. One of your issues that may be a thorn in the side for the government itself is you call upon the government to be more transparent, more accountable. What are some of your concerns about that, especially with regard to Maui government? Well, I mean, I think we've got to be more transparent with just when we do bills and laws. After these bills and laws, the people don't even know what we as legislators are voting on. I think every bill and law should be out there. And if I were elected, it'd be on my webpage. And I would want everybody in my district at least to look at it and get their input. Now, I can give them my input after I read through it, but we need to start simplifying things too. For example, when I'd write a special ed goal for a student, it's got to be measurable. So I write it might be giving 10 fractions with the same denominator. The student will answer 8 out of 10 addition problems correctly. Anybody could monitor that. You look at some of these bills. I looked at one with a teacher just in the middle of last year, 61 pages and we after four pages, we had more highlighted vague words. You didn't know what they were trying to pass. And we got to keep it simple. If we get back to keeping it simple and putting things out there for the people, they're going to start trusting us. Right now, it's kind of like donating to charity. You donate to charity and find out five cents on the dollar is got to where it's supposed to get. You don't want to donate anymore. And that's what people are with taxes and listening to their government. We recently had a primary election and Hawaii distinguished itself, sadly, in the nation as having the lowest primary turnout in its history. Very low participation in the polls. And Maui had some of the lowest participation in the entire state. I've got a practical question for you and then I'd like to hear your insights. How do you manage? How do you think you're going to get elected and most people are going to stay home and not participate in the process? And what are your thoughts about voter turnout? Well, that's a good question. You know, I wish one thing they would do, which I think would help our voter turnout in every state, especially the further west you get and especially on presidential election years. I wish they would say everybody does not announce their presidential vote numbers until noon the next day. And when they do it in alphabetical order. At that point, people are going to start showing up more because people here think that presidential election is over before they got here. There's not enough electoral colleges, votes here to worry about. And unless they have a personal input or something involved in the election, it's just another day off. I mean, we get a day off if they don't show up. So you're saying if they get two hours off, then maybe people would use those two hours to vote instead of, you know, taking the entire day off. Danny, we've got about a minute and a half left. What would you say, what do you say to your potential constituency out there? Well, why should they vote for Danny Pekas? What's he going to bring to the table? I think I have a great experience and background just in life. I've owned companies. I've written payroll checks. I've had 42 employees. So I know how to manage and know how to manage money in a company. I've worked, I was a marketing director for a company. I coach minor league baseball. And then I've taught for 20 years. So I've been involved with private and public sector. So I can see how both sides are running and understand how they both have to work hand in hand. Right now they aren't working hand in hand. Yes. So one of the best things I think I could do as a legislator, because you only have two years in the office, is to get exposed all the spending that we do out there so the public knows. So they can start making educated decisions on where they want their money to go. Very good. In closing, would you let everyone know how they can get a hold of you, a website perhaps? Okay. My email is Danny at peekusforhouse.com. It's P-E-K-U-S-F-O-R-H-O-U-S-E dot com. My website is peekusforhouse.com. And my phone number is 209-3698. I've actually been knocking on a lot of doors and it seems like I get done at dark and then I get emails after that, which is great because I get an input from the public and their questions is one way to get more educated and help music. Very good. Danny peekus, thank you very much for being with us today. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Well, and aloha and good luck to you. Until next week, I'm Kili Akinah with the Grassroot Institute signing off for Think Tech Hawaii's Ehana Kako. We'll see you again. Until then, aloha.