 back to ThinkTech, talking tax today, talking tax with Tom Yamachika, president of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii. We're going to talk about keeping cool in the schools and how good a job, or maybe not, we've done about that. Welcome to the show, Tom. Thanks for having me on the show, Jay. We're going to talk today about cool in the schools and how not to do it. Well, I remember David Ige was responding to, I guess it was sort of a community request that the schools be cooler. And my first reaction was, you know, we have an architecture show, and a number of architects have pointed out that Hawaii's best architecture is open architecture, where the trade winds come through, and cool things that way. This is the best thing that we have, that we've done. But now we're going to, I guess, close up the, under this program, we're going to close up the classrooms and put air conditioners everywhere, and not really do much in order to deal with the aging infrastructure of the schools. And he spent a lot of money. Can you talk about the money he spent for that? Well, I mean, open architecture is, you know, fine and all that when their trade winds blowing, but the trade winds don't blow all the time. Sometimes we do have rain, and sometimes we got corner winds. So things work sometimes, but not all the time. And, you know, we want kids to be, you know, in classrooms and reasonably comfortable and not sweltering. Okay, well, I never said we agree on everything though. All right. But I guess what you did point out, and I think what we can work and start is this issue was focused on a lot by, you know, the prior administration, Governor E. Gay, in 2016 under his, I would say leadership, I suppose, the legislature appropriated a hundred million dollars toward heat abatement upgrades, and in 2022 another 10 million dollars went there. And, you know, people in the communities were willing to help, too. You know, there were businesses and people they were willing to contribute. They said, okay. They said their conditioners. Yeah, they wanted to contribute their conditioners. Can I comment on that for a moment? I sat on the neighborhood board for a few years, and they would come to us every year and say, you know, the school don't have enough pencils and pens. Could you people in the neighborhood board, could you contribute your spare pencils and pens to the schools? And my God, you know, the DOE has the largest budget in the state. It's getting hundreds of millions of fund education, and they're coming to it, you know, a dozen people on the neighborhood board for pens and pens. And I suppose when you go out and say, can you give us your tired, your huddled air conditioner units and help us put them in the schools, there's an absurdity about that. What kind is it? What make? What model? How old? Does it work? Does it not work? What kind of electrical requirements does it have? So these guys, you know- Well, you see, there's the thing, because when people volunteer to give their conditioners to the schools, the response was, we can't take them. Because the school's electrical capacity, you know, you plug one or two of those things in, circuit breakers trip. You think that good planning would require a statement of the specifications of the air conditioners or an analysis of that. I guess they didn't make that enough. Well, I mean, once they started putting them in, they kind of figured out the problem. And the problem is that the circuits for, you know, schools built 50 or 100 years ago, wouldn't, you know, couldn't handle the enhanced load. So classroom, you know, classroom circuit breakers tripped out. Sometimes the circuit breaker that tripped out was for the entire wing of a building. So they said, oh, please don't donate air conditioners because the school doesn't have the capacity for it. Okay. Well, so far, that's what you want to call it a stumble point in that initiative. So, but the geniuses at our Department of Education facilities folks, they figured out a way around it. And you know what that was? I'm all game. Yes, what? Solar powered air conditioners. So they put in a bunch of solar powered air conditioners and they started running those at a cost of $122 million. Yeah, that's way more than just that, you know, ordinary air conditioners, which you connect up to your electrical circuit. Oh, yeah, ordinary air conditioners cost maybe $2,000 a classroom. The solar powered jobs cost $138,000 per classroom. I know that if you and I were in the business, we could do it cheaper. I know that. Oh, but that's not the half of it. Because solar powered air conditioners are designed to operate for like maybe four and a half hours. The school day is eight hours plus. So around midday, guess what happened? No more air condition. And the afternoon is hot. The afternoon is hot. The afternoon is very hot. So there was some problem with that solution, as you can see. Indeed. So what happened? I mean, they found out that you can't do that or that it would be too much. And did they start putting solar on the, you know, the roofs of these dated school buildings? Yes. As I mentioned, they spent $122 million on it. They actually spent the money. They spent enough money to wire 800 and something classrooms with these solar conditioners. And where in the process did they find out it was a bad idea? You know, that is the most mystifying thing about it, because if they installed maybe one or two and found out it didn't work, they could have kind of, you know, put the brakes on the plan right there. But no. They went through the, you know, entire process. They bought the $122 million. They wired up 800 and so classrooms and found out the plan didn't work. Let me do the math here. So the legislature gave them $100 million in the first branch, and then $10 million in the second one, but your number of $122 million, I'll go on record about this, is more than $110 million. Can I get that right? Yeah, of course. So there are other facilities funds that they tapped as well. Okay. So let me now tell you how they fixed the problem. Mm-hmm. Because at that point, some other real geniuses from the facilities branch got involved. The schools were, you know, had old fixtures, right, including lighting fixtures. They had incandescent bulbs. So you know these days that you can't even find incandescent bulbs in the stores anymore because you can pick up an LED bulb. And I have one right here. Let's take your word for it, Tom. It's a 100 watt bulb, so it puts out a 100 watt equivalent, but it takes 15 watts. Mm-hmm. So it saves 85% of the energy that otherwise would go to lighting. And provides the same lighting with better than before. Right. So what the schools did was they swapped out their lighting fixtures. They could plug in the air conditioners and they worked. But what about lighting? The lighting's fine. They have LED bulbs and they have light that's as good as or better than before. Okay. It doesn't sound like there's a downside, except the cost of swapping out the bulbs. Yeah. But with, you know, the swapping out of those light fixtures. You mean the fixture or the bulb? I'm sorry, the bulbs. Okay. The energy consumption from the lights went way down, thereby freeing up the capacity in the aging wires so they could accommodate the air conditioners. Got it. So they took the solar powered air conditioners, they disconnected them from the solar, they plugged them into the wall, and they worked. Problem solved. Well, the problem that wasn't solved is $122 million. That had already been spent. So there's all this solar equipment on the top of the schools that really isn't doing anything now. Plus the air conditioners are getting the power from the regular power system, the non-solar power system, right? That's right. They're plugged into the wall. They get the power from the regular grid. Send it back, send all the solar cells back. I think they wish they could. So how many schools were involved in $122 million of solar? 880 classrooms. 880 classrooms. Is that everything? I'm not really sure what you mean by everything, but... Every school, every classroom? No, no, no. No, we have quite a number of schools and classrooms statewide. But 8 or 8 was a big dent in it. But now, I get this right, the solar equipment is sitting on the roofs of 800 schools doing nothing. 880 classrooms, I don't know how many schools that is, but it is doing nothing. Well, has that been in the newspaper? Because that's really scandalous. Yeah. It did break on Hawaii News. Now, Rick DeSog broke the story. He's been following it for some time. So Rick DeSog has been a reporter at the Hawaii News now for some time. Unfortunately, he's leaving that part of the industry. He's going to join the governor's office in his policy team. He's an excellent reporter. Oh, he lost. Well, I lost there, but I think it would be a good asset to the governor's policy team. I agree. Yeah. So there are a lot of questions that I think need to be asked in this debacle. Let's ask them, yeah, again, what are they? The big one is, why didn't they test the dam plans before ruling it out to 800 state 880 classrooms and spending $122 million? I doubt there's an answer to that. I mean, when the question was put to one of the assistant superintendents, his answer was, oh, we got schooled on that. Because classrooms operate more than four and a half hours. I guess they didn't know. I mean, wouldn't there have been technical specs on the solar power air conditioners that say, oh, these are designed to run for four and a half hours? You know, it sounds like this was done by people who were not qualified to make those decisions or who were not motivated to make them even identify them. I mean, I don't hear the sound of engineers, for example. I don't hear the sound of electrical people weighing in on it. I'm not sure that the solar people weighed in on it. They were happy to have the contact. Well, we need people who can read the damn specs. That too. And by the way, I know you're not going to completely agree with me, but they probably didn't talk to architects either. I have no idea if they did or not. I mean, if they did, I would imagine that somebody would have figured out that this was going to be a colossal failure. So where are we now? I mean, I certainly agree. It has been a colossal failure. It was a query whether it was a good idea to start with. But let's assume there was value in the idea, at least in keeping the kids cooler because they study better and listen to teachers better and so forth. And $120 million would have bought a whole bunch of pencils. So where are we now? So the air conditioners are working. The solar is vestigial. And what's the plan? Now, is the initiative done? Is it finished? Where are we going from here, except to lick our wounds? Well, the DOE has deployed a new program. And what they say is that they have a new process designed to more quickly deploy air conditioning units in buildings that can accommodate the increased energy use. So it's up to the school to get an electrical assessment from the facilities folks, which will use no additional money because it's already paid for by state and federal funds. And then the school will have a range of options to move forward. So they're trying to kick it back to the schools and kind of like cover up the fact that the central facilities administration just immediately screwed this up. Well, okay, they should be criticized for it. Maybe heads should roll even. But the larger question is, how are we managing education in this state? Not to say that she was right or wrong, but Linda Lingle's initial platform position was, we should put the schools out in the counties, like in most other states. That didn't happen. And now we continue to run the schools through an enormous bureaucracy that costs, as I mentioned, hundreds of billions of dollars, hundreds of... No, it's huge. I forget the exact number, but the budget of the schools, huge. I think it is over a billion dollars. Over a billion dollars. It's the largest single item in the state budget. Are we doing a good job in managing education through 12? Are we growing up other parts of the educational system and overspending for them? Are we handling the teacher issues and the book issues and the computer issues and the maintenance issues the way we should? Is there enough money there? Well, I mean, before you talk about money, you got to talk about basic competence. I mean, you can throw a whole bunch of money at whatever problem, but if the person on the other doesn't know what to do with that money, then nothing's going to happen as we see here. Well, I hear what you're saying is a connection. That is, if they can't manage what appears to be a relatively simple program, how are they managing the more sophisticated ones, all the other ones, where Hawaii needs to catch up? How are we doing? How are the grade points for the kids doing? How are they doing on national scores? How are they doing in the marketplace? Can they tell you who the vice president is? All that stuff, civic education, which is so important. I suspect that the answer is on the educational level and on the other aspects of the facilities level, you know, we is not doing very well. Yeah, I mean, there have been studies on some of these things. I mean, we at the foundation have been writing about some other aspects. Like, you know, a lot of resources went toward mental health. You remember the Felix Consent Decree from some years back. One of the things that we've written about before is that there's some federal money to be pulled down for giving students the mental health support that they need. They just need to submit certain information to the feds, and then they can pull down a bunch of money. And we haven't been doing that. So, you know, my point is, well, look, how much does it cost to hire a couple of coders who can, you know, get the medical records into the shape that the feds can understand and submit those so we can actually get some money for this that we taxpayers in Hawaii don't directly have to pay for. So, you know, I think it's a good idea to do that. And so far, nobody's given me an answer for that. Well, let me just throw a question at you. You said mental health. Mental health, yeah. Is mental health an obligation of the Department of Education? We have a health department with well over 3,000 employees who go out into the field, and they do lots of things, including, you know, things that we don't have to pay for. Lots of things, including, you know, family health, family social health. Isn't that where mental health should be handled? Well, actually, it's in both places because if you're talking about students in the classroom, the DOE has some responsibility. So both departments do have obligations to deal with the issue. Redundant, you will agree with me. Redundancy is generally not efficient. Right. Okay. So, you know, who spots this? You know, I'm really happy that we're here together and that the Tax Foundation of Hawaii looks at this and reports on this and expresses concern about it. But the auditor, is the auditor involved? Other committees in the legislature, like on education, a billion-dollar business in the state who are involved? Who sets up the guardrails on waste? Well, the last time we talked about the auditor and the legislature, they were fighting each other. So, I mean, it's unfortunate that, you know, we, the taxpayers, have to pay both sides of the people on the fight. And when they're fighting, they're not really producing anything that's usable for, you know, for us in the state of Hawaii. I mean, somebody should just kind of get in there and lead on the law and say, look, you know, you guys, you guys behave, otherwise we'll take the sandbox away. Well, what about the governor? I mean, let's assume he's listening to this show. Let's assume he is aware one way or the other of what happened. I mean, Josh Green now. Let's assume, you know, as a good governor, he would look at what his predecessor did and see if there's anything he ought to do to tune it up. What could he do? What should he do about this? Well, what I hope that he can or would do is make sure that the people in our DOE who are dealing with this kind of issue are competent folks and the ones who aren't should be, you know, given other jobs. That's a problem. If it's a civil service job, it's not like you can say, take a hike. You know, then they'll have to deal with something about civil service. I mean, we as taxpayers in Hawaii need competent work by the people we do hire. I mean, it's not just, you know, putting any warm body into a spot. They have to be able to do, you know, the job that's asked of them. What about the education committees in the legislature? I mean, somebody comes in front of them. Lord knows they deny enough requests for funding. Lord knows that, some of which arguably are very good and better than solar that doesn't do anything. But what about the legislative committees? They're there to examine. They have staff. Sometimes a lot of staff. They're capable of doing research as much or better full-time as you and me. And somebody appears in front of them and says, we need $110 million. How about it? And they, and they, they, they agree to that. And query whether they should have dug a little deeper on this. Well, I think they certainly have that power. The, the legislature, I mean, we have in the legislature several examples of recent clashes between the legislature and the administration that, you know, that the legislature won on, HTA being, you know, a very recent example of this Hoy-Tourism authority. The, they are certainly capable of putting a lot of pressure on, on that point so that the people who are there decide it's not worth for, not worth it for them to stay there and they get the heck out. And, and hopefully that means somebody, you know, somebody else in somebody competent gets put in the job. Hmm. Yeah, but what, what about actually, you know, researching these kinds of questions themselves? Is the legislative, legislator able to do that? I mean, if I'm a legislator, say I'm the chair of the education committee in one house or the other. I said, wait a minute, you know, that's a lot of money. I want to be satisfied. I want to report. I want an engineers analysis. I want an electrical analysis. I want an architectural analysis. Forgive me for mentioning that again. Why can't, why can't that person, that legislator ask and get an answer? Do that in Congress, or at least they should. Well, they, they, they do, but then, then you have an equal, equal number of detractors saying, you know, we're just, we're just going to study the issue. Come on, we need action. Yeah, the kids, the kids are burning. Yeah, the kids, the kids are burning up with, with temperature. Yeah. I mean, the kids are roasting in the meantime. Come on. Can't you be more compassionate than that? Yeah. And what's so complicated about air conditioners anyway? That's right. You know, you know, Tom, this is, of course, this is the largest element in the state budget, but it strikes me that if we find this kind of, we want to call it, decision-making problem in DOE, and it certainly lies in DOE. What about other agencies? Is this kind of all across the board? Are there other agencies that operate in the same way where they make a request for funding they really should not have made? Where they, where the legislature gives them that money without really delving into it, asking all the right questions. Is this something, is this a phenomenon that exists in other agencies and other initiatives the same way? Actually, no. A lot of other agencies are, I mean, and DOE to some extent is, is hidden by special funding. So you don't have the kind of scrutiny in the appropriations committees that, that you would if it's a normally funded agency that if that's funded by general funds. Because in a special fund, basically it's up to the department head to decide whether the money is consistent with the objectives of the special fund and if, and if it is, you know, it can, you know, the money can be spent. Well, that's the answer to the question then. It doesn't go in front of the legislature because it's tucked away in a special fund. A process you and I have talked about many times and the decisions about whether to spend it, how to spend it, the guardrails, if you will, there are no guardrails because the executive in the agency can make those decisions without a whole lot of vetting or analysis. And so the answer is, you know, you and I have actually been talking about this for a long time. We've been talking about management in state agencies, which is spending money without making good decisions. I think that's what I hear. That's right. There are two problems involved. Number one, you have an agency with a lot of special funds, which DOE has. Two, the agency is too big. There are several layers of bureaucracy, you know, bureaucracy and public bureaucracy. Then it goes up to an elected board and decisions by committee sometimes you have people under the committee that kind of really make all the decisions and just kind of go to the committee for rubber stamp. You know, you need to have clear delineated lines of responsibility and when incompetence happens, that's got to be corrected. Well, it's easy to say it. You know, one other big factor in Hawaii education, which is not known the world over for excellence is the University of Hawaii. And my recollection is we give the University, we give the University a lot of money, a lot of money. Could it be even more than DOE? And what about the decision process there? Is that any better? Or is it worse? What is it like? How does it compare? Well, there are a lot of similarities. You have an elected or appointed with confirmation committee that is at the top of it, the Board of Regents. And you have a Chief Executive, President of the University and lots of bureaucracy under it. But I don't think it's quite as bad as the DOE. At least there's more transparency, at least as in my experience there is. Presumably the Board of Regents that come from other places, they're not stuck in career patterns that require them to just buy into a program. They have the opportunity to say no, hopefully. So yeah, I agree there's a difference there. But in general, I guess I would ask you as a matter of policy, how important is education to us? How important is it that we provide schools that are comfortable, that we provide all of the things that give our kids excellent education? How important is that in the larger picture, in the picture of looking forward? I think it's a very critical thing. We start in the schools to learn to be productive members of society. If we can't do that job right, then how can we expect our kids to be productive members of society? And can you compare for us the process that we have identified and discussed today over air conditioning in the schools of the public schools and DOE as against the private schools of which there are several in Hawaii? Well, in the private schools, usually you don't have governance by committee. Usually there's a chief executive, so there are definite lines of accountability. And there are competitive pressures because there's more than one private school. And a school has to demonstrate its value in light of the fact that parents in Hawaii can send their kids through the public school system and not pay for it. Yeah, well, they write checks to the public school and they are their own control. If they write checks and they see the public school, I'm sorry, they write checks and see the private school throw the money away as here, they're going to say something and they can vote with their feet. Yeah, they can pull their kids out, which is something that DOE can do. And one other thing comes to mind is in the middle of all that, there's the charter schools. Did the charter schools fall in the public school category here for this kind of discussion? Yes, charter schools, employees are all DOE. How about the air conditioner? That I don't know. Really wonder. Well, let's go back to my point over architecture just for a minute. Okay, let's assume that you can build a school that is open to the trade winds in a way that it's sustainable. I mean, so that if it rains, it's not going to rain into the classroom. And I think any good environmental architect will tell you that you can do this. And if there are no trades, well, you can still open it up well enough so that there's refreshing air going into the classroom. And you can do that with residents, as I know. We've had many shows about this subject on our architecture show. So it leads to the whole question of the infrastructure. If you want to provide kids in this state with an enviable environment where they can feel good about their schools and you mentioned schools that are what? 60, 70, 80, 100 years old in this state. Isn't it good to refurbish our classroom and include air conditioning and or open air architecture? Are we doing that? Are we going around saying, this one's old. We have to redo this one. My understanding is that we have backlog deferred maintenance not only at the schools, but also at the university and at several other agencies, like the legendary problems at the airport. That's some department of transportation. Yeah, I mean, we have a deferred maintenance issue. Yeah, deferred redevelopment issue. I mean, I mean, I've seen schools look that they were built in 1900. Have they probably were? Yeah. I'm sure if you went to a modern city, a well-funded city in the U.S. or Canada or even Asia or Europe, you would find that the schools are considered a treasure by the community. They are a statement of the future. They are a statement of the way the community feels about their children. I'm a little concerned that our schools are not a pretty statement about how we feel about our children. Yeah, I think it's a valid concern. Yeah, but then all of that is a, again, it goes back down to getting our priorities right, getting our priorities reflected into our budgeting and not bypassing our budgeting with special funds and other artifacts like that. I mean, we have to have a line of accountability between the people who our government is supposed to serve and the services that our government, in fact, provides. Well said. Tom Yamachika, President of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii. A very important discussion. I hope we can carry it forward. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Check out our website, thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.