 this seminar on some of the policy issues and legislation that will be discussed this morning. I'm Bob Toyifuku of Pacific Law Institute and I'll be the moderator for this morning's seminar. Before I introduce the speakers, let me mention some preliminary matters. There are four segments that will be discussed this morning. The issues arising out of the Maui devastation, climate change issues, budget and the economy, and various health issues. 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 time permits. If you need to utilize captions, press the CC button at the bottom of the screen and you will be able to access the captions. Lastly, please take a moment to fill out a poll at the end of the seminar for future legislative forums and seminars. Let me go over very quickly some basic information. The legislative website capital.hawaii.gov contains all of the general information and frequently asked questions. I recommend logging on before session to get familiar with the various areas and so you can take a look at the schedule, the timetable, important deadlines, committees, legislators, including their email and phone numbers and office numbers. The public access room also has created a guide which you can access on the website and I suggest that you do that because there's a lot of good information on their guide as well. Okay, let me take a second to introduce the speakers for the seminar. Scott Psyche, Representative Scott Psyche is the Speaker of the House and Senator Koi Hashimoto recently appointed as a Senator from Maui to take Gil Agaran's place who will be doing the first segment on the Maui situation. Next we have Senator Carl Rhodes who's the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Representative Nicole Lohan, Chair of the Energy and Environmental Protection Committee in the House who will be discussing the issue of climate change. The third segment is on the budget, fiscal issues and the economy and we have Senator Chris Lee who is a member of the Ways and Means Committee in the Senate and Representative Scott Hashimoto who is a member of the House Finance Committee. Lastly we'll end with health issues and we have Senator Joyce San Buena Ventura who is the Chair of the Health and Human Services Committee in the Senate and Representative Dela Al-Baladi who is the Chair of the Health and Homelessness Committee and I'll be introducing them before each segment. Lastly there's some changes in the 2024 legislature. As I mentioned Representative Troy Hashimoto now Senator Troy Hashimoto was appointed by Governor Green when Senator Gil Agaran retired. Also in the Senate Senator Sherrod Moriwaki will be the Vice Chair of the Ways and Means Committee. The governor also appointed Tyson Miyake to take the place of Troy Hashimoto in the House so he's a new representative and lastly Representative John Mizuno decided to retire from the House and was appointed by Governor Green to be the homelessness coordinator. Lastly procedures basically there are no changes you will still need your ID to get in and you're going to be walking through some metal detectors otherwise testimony is hybrid and all other aspects that were in place in 2023 will be the same for 2024. Lastly the focus on the four segments is what will be done during the session what legislation may be introduced to address the various issues rather than going over a lot of the issues that have been covered in the media. So without further ado let's start off with the first segment and it's to do with the Maui situation and the devastation that occurred and we have Speaker Scott Psyche and Senator Troy Hashimoto from Maui to discuss this. There has been much media attention to date so we're not going over all of the details but I wanted to let you know that Speaker Scott Psyche immediately after the fire created a working group in the House and it is referred to as Laulima Maui and was comprised of six working groups are environmental remediation, food, water and other supplies, jobs and business, screws, shelter and wildfire prevention. For those of you who are interested the report includes a summary of the facts and recommendations and can be found on the legislative website under House special committees. So now Speaker what are the two or three major issues and what recommendations hopefully will result in some legislation or the legislature to help the Maui situation. Hey thanks Bob thanks for inviting us this morning thank you to you and the Pacific Law Institute for sponsoring this annual event and thanks to all of the participants who have joined us this morning. Happy new year and happy year of the dragon that's coming up in 2024. I want to add one other deadline Bob I think you may have missed it because I know this is important for nonprofit organizations. The deadline for legislative grant and aid applications the GIA application is January 19 at 4 30 p.m. The application and the procedures are on the capital website. I want to give a really big caveat about the GIA process this year which is that it is contingent upon state finances and availability of revenue as we work towards through the session. So nothing is guaranteed this year with GIAs but we do want to give nonprofits the opportunity to submit applications because we know that there are some needs out in the community. So thanks Bob. Thank you Speaker I think Representative Hashimoto I mean excuse me Nishimoto when he talks about the budget we'll go into a little more detail to remind everyone about the GIA. Okay thanks. When it comes to Lahaina as you mentioned following the wildfire we did form working groups in the house and Senator Hashimoto who is then in the house was a co-chair of one of our working groups and we created those groups because after the wildfire many of the house members asked how they could help they wanted to help in some way. So we formed these working groups and basically the task that we gave them was to go in and assess what was happening on the ground to learn what could be done to mitigate those problems and then to apply them on a statewide level because we know that so many of the issues that arose as a result of Lahaina apply not just to to Lahaina and Maui but also to the entire state. So the members worked you know for two and a half months from August through late November they did their own research they drafted a report that is over 200 pages so if you have time please review it on our website. So I wanted to just go over a few of the top concerns that arose from the report. Basically there are three buckets that I wanted to summarize. The first is on wildfire management and there's a couple of interesting facts in this in this category that I learned from 2006 through 2017 there are almost 1,000 wildfires that burned on average 20,000 acres a year and in some years that that burn rate was 45,000 acres. The other other thing I learned was that there are large fires that large fires greater than 1,000 acres have occurred on all of our islands and have happened multiple times throughout our state. We know that there are other areas in Hawaii where the wildfire conditions are similar to Lahaina. This is a serious problem that we really need to address and hopefully we can do that this session. So there are some recommendations pertaining to wildfire management. The first is in the area of reducing ignitions and this is going to be through increasing sanctions, regulating fireworks and forcing fireworks laws, holding utilities to best practices for down power lines. Second, we need to reduce conditions that lead to wildfires. This is basically through land management clearing brush grazing maintaining areas that are susceptible to fire. Third, we need to engage the community. Government cannot do this alone. We need the help of the general public of community organizations. Everyone needs to be part of the solution to help take preventative action. We want to find ways to engage the public in our efforts. The fourth area is in wildfire suppression and this is basically through hiring more personnel and purchasing new equipment. There's a shortage of tractors and other heavy equipment that we can be used to manage wildfire areas. We also are looking at creating a state fire marshal which unfortunately Hawaii is the only state that lacks a state fire marshal. And in the fifth area of post-fire response, in the event of a fire, we need to be prepared for erosion control, forest restoration, and environmental assessments. I think the second bucket that arose from a report was in the area of land use, basically in the area of land use and housing. And Lahaina really illustrates the predicament that we find ourselves in when it comes to housing, that we lack housing for ordinary people and we have been slow in building it. Over the past few years, the legislature has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars for housing construction and infrastructure, but that hasn't really been enough. The emphasis going forward in my opinion is that we need to really take a look at regulatory barriers that have inhibited housing development for ordinary people. And a lot of that begins at the county level where county land use policies, county land use rules may or may not facilitate housing construction. I want to give a couple examples of that. One is in the area of short-term rentals or what are known as transient vacation units, TVUs. We need to address the proliferation of TVUs because we all know that TVUs take housing inventory away from ordinary people. And a further illustration of that is about a month ago FEMA sent letters in an attempt to place displaced people in homes. FEMA sent letters to owners of TVU units to see if they were willing to participate in this program. FEMA sent 13,000 letters to TVU owners on Maui and that's just what FEMA was able to identify. I'm sure we all know that there are more than 13,000 TVU units on Maui. And then when you add that up throughout the state, there are tens of thousands of units in our state. The conversion of these units to long-term housing will meet our demand for housing for ordinary people. The second example is when it comes to building codes. So currently we have building codes that are not consistent because they are developed on a county-by-county basis. We need to have a consistent standardized building code that will promote resistant housing, alternative housing, other kinds of forms of housing and also that will allow us to have better opportunities at financing and meeting federal requirements for housing projects. So the third bucket is in the area of disaster preparedness and management. We have unfortunately we have different layers of disaster response at the state and the county levels. The lines of responsibility need to be clearer because counties ultimately are the ones that need to take the lead when it comes to disaster management on their respective island or within their respective county. On Maui, the state took a larger role because at that time Maui County was not able to do everything that was needed with respect to the line of wildfire. So we need to take a look at our existing state laws to clarify the roles of the state and county agencies that are responsible for disaster management. We want to reduce confusion and we want to reduce the number of cooks in the kitchen. Troy, any, excuse me, Senator Hashimoto, any comments? You were on the shelter working group and being from Maui, you know, you are right in the midst of all of the discussion and concerns of especially the citizens of Lahaina. And so if you can make comments, I know it's a complicated issue, but what, feel free to make any comments you have, especially as a legislator from Maui. Yeah, so thank you, Bob, for hosting this. I think it's great to have all these wonderful speakers and thank you to the speaker for giving me that great overview. I think he has shown tremendous leadership in this area of the Lahaina recovery. And as a member from Maui, I appreciated the steps that he took as soon as the fire ended. As he's previously said, I did help have a hand in the crafting of the report and we were working very, very hard on our aspect of it before I left for the Senate. And I think I will continue to try and implement some of the things that we put in that report. I was a part of the shelter working group and as you can imagine, when you look on the news, a lot of what people are complaining about is housing. Housing is the biggest issue right now, likely for short term at this point, but at some point we're going to face a crisis of long-term housing. And so I think when the speaker talks about short-term rentals, I think that is what's going to get us over the short-term issue. But at the end of the period of when FEMA is going to assist us, we need to be really thinking about what we are going to do post FEMA leaving us and having a long-term housing because the reality is we already had a housing crisis and this just really exacerbated what happened. To put in perspective, 60% of the structures that burn were rental units. So we are going to be a lot of people who without a place to live because I think let's face it, rental units are going to be a little slower to be rebuilt rather than your typical homeowner unit because it's not going to be a priority sometimes for the owner because you're not living there. So we're going to have to face that reality. And so there's a lot of strategies I think this session that we're going to have to employ. I think speaker talked about some of them, but I think the bottom line is that we're going to have to invest money into financing some of the longer-term solutions. FEMA will be here for the next 18 to 24 months. Beyond that, we're going to have to reinvest in our low-income housing tax credit projects that are in the pipeline. We actually have about 800 units that are being teed up for Maui, but we're going to need more than that. And of course, a lot of the housing that's needed is above that 60% area median income threshold, which then doesn't qualify for low-income housing tax credit. So we need that working-class affordable housing. And so that's why I think this year we're going to try and reinvest in our Tier 2 program, which will take care of that 60% to 100% area median income. And I think that will be a big push in the legislature. The other big piece of legislation that I'm hoping that we will pass this session is we have a transit-oriented development council for the statewide. Mainly it's for rail, but it goes to the neighbor islands as well. But I think we need to have the same type of body that will focus on long-term housing for Maui. And so I think part of the working group alluded to this, but I think we finally figured out some legislation that will start to bring together all the key stakeholders who look at housing production, and we need to put them in a room and we need to figure out what we're going to do. And it will serve as a model. If this can work well, then we can replicate this throughout the state. I think the governor kind of started that through his emergency proclamation of trying to bring all the key stakeholders together, but as a legislature, we really have to figure out how do we put that into statute to make sure that it can last beyond this governor to make sure that it's something that we continually do to bring best practices. Because I think the speaker is correct. A lot of the regulatory barriers must be broken down, but the first step in breaking down those barriers is you've got to have people talking to each other. And the fact is that sometimes a lot of our agencies don't talk to each other and they like to point the finger. So a lot of these things will take time, it'll take a lot of effort, but I think we will have to refocus on housing this coming session. I think it's two components. We will have to invest big dollars into our rental housing revolving fund to keep that pipeline moving. And then, of course, we have to work on the regulatory side as well. I think you have to keep shipping away at it or things like state historic preservation division. Building code is a big one, like the speaker said. I think the water code is the one that is a big barrier as well. And so we have to really find all these things, but I think coming around on all these things, but I think, of course, the counties, counties in that permitting, that's a key one that we're going to have to figure out and speed up just a little bit. Speaker and Senator, there's been a lot of media on the fact that this 2024 session will be primarily a Maui-type issue session. So what about, have you looked, and I know Speaker had mentioned to me earlier that a lot of the recommendations in the working group report may end up as legislation. So we'll see if that is going to happen, or maybe Speaker can mention that. But what about appropriations for other issues? And I know the other panelists will talk about that, but what is the concern there? Because a lot of the money, according to the governor and the media will go to Maui. Sure. I guess I'll start with just more of an overview. And I think when we discussed the state budget, we need to also look at what is happening with our state economy. And the report that we're getting now from the economists is that the report is basically, I guess it's bittersweet, because although we have seen significant job loss and a significant number of unemployment claims on Maui, the recovery is growing at a greater pace than what was anticipated. We're not really sure yet what the impact of Maui will be on the remainder of the state or on a statewide basis. But so far, the numbers seem to be tracking in a positive manner. And that's really important because what happens in the economy does impact the legislature when we work on approving the annual state operating budget. And as you know, just for some background, the legislature relies upon the revenue forecasts that are made by the Council of Revenues. The Council of Revenues meets four times per year and gives us a projection of what they believe the incoming tax revenue number looks like. And we are required to follow those numbers when we set the state budget. The next two meetings for the Council are actually next week, and then there's another one in March. And so we'll be using those projections when we work on the budget. We approve the state budget a year and advance. So in this coming session, which begins on January 17, we'll be revising the budget that we already approved for the fiscal year that begins on July 1, 2024. And just to provide some macro numbers, when we approved this budget last year, we appropriated $9.9 billion in state tax and state tax revenue expenditure. So $9.9 billion. As of today, the Council of Revenues forecast tells us that we'll have $100 million less than that amount. So we are already short $100 million in this upcoming budget. In addition to that, the governor has asked us to approve additional spending of $320 million. He's requesting tax relief in the amount of $58 million. And our read is that we have Maui expenditures that are total at least $186 million. So when you add all of these numbers together, this means that we are now $664 million short going into the next budget. And that is going to be the task before all of the legislative members, but particularly the money committees, the finance committee, the ways and means committee, they'll need to balance those numbers. Thank you, Speaker. I think there was a question that you partially answered already. Where is the funding for long-term housing for Maui fire victims going to come from? And you basically partially answered that, but there's an issue. I have one question either for a speaker or a senator. Short-term rental owners are willing to convert to long-term, but they want assurance that they can resume short-term rental on a date certain when the long-term rental period is over. We have not been able to get this assurance from the county. Can the state assist? Well, I think for short-term rentals, that's going to have to. So essentially, I think what you're going to have to take a look at is there's different buckets of programs. So the main program that FEMA will be embarking on is they're going through a direct lease program. And so I think that's the main entity that will be doing that first step for the conversion of short-term to long-term. You do the long-term housing, you can direct lease to FEMA. FEMA will be essentially your landlord. And I think when you are in that negotiation process with FEMA, hopefully you can figure that out. And so I think I would encourage you not necessarily to talk to the county, but talk to FEMA if you're interested. But there are going to be potential levers that the governor has said that he may pull if he doesn't get the stated number. I think the legislature is contemplating that type of bill to make sure that the counties actually have all the powers that they need to regulate short-term rentals because at this juncture, they don't. Obviously, the governor can do emergency proclamations, but I think there is some longer-term contemplation that the legislature has to embark on and how we do regulate short-term rentals by giving the counties the appropriate power. So I think that's the conversation that we're likely going to have this legislative session. But it's going to be a push and pull because we understand that people, there is a lot of money in these short-term rentals, both as a owner of a short-term rental and as the taxes that we're collecting, both from the county perspective and the state perspective. And so we understand that we have to strike that balance. But I think the speaker is right in his opening comments that there is a tremendous amount of them that are is kind of holding up the housing supply for local residents. So that will be a very big issue this legislative session. But I think the time is right for us to have this very deep discussion about this issue. Thank you, Senator. Any speaker or senator, any last-minute brief comments you want to make about the Maui situation? I just want to again thank all of the participants. Thank you for being here this morning. We look forward to working with you through this next session. It's going to be important that we all participate because we have some really tough issues this year. But I think it'll be positive in the end. Thank you, Speaker, for your time. Senator, anything? No, thank you again, Bob, for this opportunity. I think it's a long road ahead, right? It's not this budget that we need to only focus on. It's going to be the next few years budgets and beyond to make sure this recovery goes well. I think there is a lot of moving parts to what's happening on Maui. There's a lot of community input that needs to be taken. I think there's a lot of discourse going on in disagreements, but I think that's to be expected. But I think I agree with the Speaker. I think we have to look at it in a positive manner and we have to keep moving forward and work towards a very, you know, methodical recovery. So thank you again. Speaker and Senator, thank you very much for your time. We're now ready to move to the second segment on climate change and we're fortunate to have Senator Carl Rose, who's Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Representative Nicole Lohan, who's the Chair in the House of the Energy and Environmental Protection Committee. Both have been involved with climate change for many years and I know that you are all in the audience aware of the issues that we are faced with. And so I will start off with Senator Carl Rose on the question of the rising sea levels and what can be done with regard to this problem because it's already happening. Senator Rote. Thank you, Bob. Thanks for including me in this panel. I would just segue from your previous segment and say, you know, what happened in Maui is exactly what scientists have been predicting for the last 20 years. So, you know, global warming is not some theoretical thing that we have to worry about 20 years from now. It's happening now and Maui is, you know, there's no way to prove that that's exactly what it was, but it does fit in with all the modeling. More intense storms, longer droughts, and I think we're unfortunately starting to live on global warming. With regard to, you know, what to do about rising sea level, I mean, there's, it's, it's difficult, and there's really only three options. You can either harden the shore and stop the waves where they are, or you can adapt by raising structures so that the waves either go around them or go under them, or you retreat. And that's pretty much the only, the only choices you have. I think if you look at Waikiki, that's probably going to be one of the toughest problems we have because Oahu is, Oahu is going to be disproportionately affected by sea level rise just because of the geography, but Waikiki, of course, is already basically at sea level. If we decide we want to harden, it's going to be very difficult. We'll have to build dikes all the way around the peninsula. And even then the geology of the area is such that the water will seep in underneath and you'll have to keep pumping the water out to keep it, try to keep it dry. And if that's the choice that we decide to make, you know, we decide to harden as opposed to adapt to retreat, there's a big question of who's going to pay for it. So those are the three general things that we can do and it's not going to, it's not going to be any fun. And any one of those isn't going to be any fun. Senator, I talked to someone at the Department of Transportation over two years ago and asked about what do you think will happen or what do you think is necessary as the sea level rises? What is going to be done with the roads, especially when you look at the roads on the North Shore as the water keeps coming up? And the only answer was that, well, we may have to move them, but it's going to cost billions of dollars. So any comment on that either Senator Rhodes or Representative Lowen? Go ahead, Representative. I mean, just to backtrack a little and provide some general comments, I think there's kind of two sides to the climate change question. There's mitigation, which is reducing the carbon emissions that lead to it. And then adaptation, which is sort of what you're talking about here. How do we adapt to the changes that are already happening and that we know will continue to happen? And some of the things the state has done in recent years include establishing the Climate Commission, which helps facilitate collaboration between agencies and between the state and county, which is really critical to adaptation efforts, because it's very multi-jurisdictional. It's not just state or just county or those efforts can't happen in silos. They need to be coordinated. And so, when you talk about the roads and highways, I think that's part of that discussion. We have at the state level, and I think the county's done similar work, funded efforts to just do an assessment of critical infrastructure that is in the sea level rise area to understand what will be impacted. And I think a big part of climate adaptation includes thinking about post-disaster recovery planning. So as Carl mentioned, there's the options of hardening, adapting, or retreating, for example. But we typically, for better or worse, as humans, tend to be more reactive than proactive. And as long as everything's kind of chugging along and working okay, we don't go in and change things. But when you have a big disaster, it's an opportunity to build back and do things differently and better and more resiliently with climate adaptation in mind. And I think going back to talking about recovery from the Maui fires is a key example of that, because it's a terrible tragedy, but now we also have an opportunity to look at the Lahaina area and look at how we can build back better with climate adaptation in mind and things like looking at if the positioning of the road is correct or looking at doing some restoration of coastal areas that used to be wetlands that would provide more resilience, for example. Thank you, Representative. What Senator Rhodes was just mentioning is part of the discussion in various articles, both nationally and locally. And that's the fact that climate change impacts all of the residents of Hawaii. It impacts agriculture, the production of food, disaster preparedness. And what Senator Rhodes was talking about with the Lahaina wildfire, I think that by reading the articles, it does seem that it is at least a factor in causing more storms, wildfires, flooding. And I think both the Senator and Representative talked about that. But you know, the problem is for climate change to rectify climate change results, you need just millions of dollars. So what is your comment with regard to appropriation? Senator? Well, yeah, I mean, I think the Department of Transportation who I don't always agree with, but I think they're correct about that. I mean, if you're, they've actually been talking about not having a discontinuing Kamehameha highway on the windward side and just having it so that you come up from Kaneohe or partway around maybe to Kahuku and then you're just cut off. I'm not sure that's really a viable option considering how many people are there. But if you take that, that my assumption that it's not a viable option, then you have to move it inland. There's nowhere else to put it. And that will be a very expensive proposition. So I, you know, just to set a marker down basically last year, I put in a bill that asked for, I think I asked for $500 million to start the process. But I doubt seriously, that's enough. And, you know, it's a big challenge. It's, and it's something that, you know, there's a lawsuit to a number of young people filed recently against the Department of Transportation and the state in general, saying, you know, you're just, we have the right under the Y state constitution to have a livable climate and a livable future. And that, and we're, and the state is fighting that lawsuit. But I'm not really sure why, because even if we win the lawsuit, all the stuff we've just talked about is still going to happen. We're still going to have to move the roads in. We're still going to have to harden, adapt to retreat, and it's all going to cost a ton of money. So why are we, you know, why are we wasting our money fighting with people who are going to, with the kids who are going to be most affected by this of people who are alive today and not just start working on the problem? You know, Representative Lowen and I have talked about environmental protection and the environment. And she's been involved with this for many, many years, even before she became chair of the Energy and Environmental Protection Committee. And we did talk about appropriations and the need for a tremendous amounts of funding. And I know that she's a little frustrated because there's so many issues that need to be covered by funding. But Rev Lowen, I'd like you to just mention that in terms of your feeling about the need for more appropriation. Yeah, I mean, as I said before, there's just, there's a lot of competing interests at the legislature when the budget is being considered. And the kind of most immediate urgent like things that impacting everyone in the short term tend to, you know, be the ones that get attention. And a lot of the environmental issues are sort of slow burning disasters. And it's not until the impacts become real, when often it's a little bit, you know, almost to the verge of being too late to, you know, do things better that we end up putting money towards them. So, you know, that is a frustration. I think part of it is just human nature and the nature of politics as well. So I'm not really sure the solution to it. But, you know, when you think about things like protecting our native forests and reefs, it's so important to the economy. It's important to our drinking water supply, which makes it important to housing. It's important to quality of life, protecting those kind of natural resources helps increase resilience to the natural disasters that you mentioned earlier, for example. So it's really worth the investment, but it's sometimes hard for the results to be well understood in the short term or to the general public. And so I think it tends to get deprioritized. And, yeah, it's unfortunate because that those funding those efforts is really, really important. Do you think either Rep. Lohan or Senator, do you think that at least there will be some appropriation to look at the situation with regard to wildfires in different parts of the state? Yeah, and during this session. Yeah. I mean, last year actually, we did have, you know, a bit of a watershed year in terms of increased funding to DLNR, not as much as we had like originally hoped, but, you know, still it was progress. But yeah, I mean, I think as Speaker covered well with the interim working groups from the House and all those recommendations that there's proposals coming out of the wildfire mitigation working group, which I think was chaired by Rep. Ichiyama that include increased funding for DLNR's efforts for wildfire prevention. I think those are really important. And if there was ever time to take it seriously now is the time it's definitely been underfunded in the past for too many years. Senator, any other comments on the money situation? And the other question I wanted to ask both of you is you both have been involved in various legislation over the past years. And they're more long term solutions. So I'd like you to touch upon that in the few minutes that we have left for your segment. Yeah, I mean, I think that the focus I've had in recent years, in terms of climate mitigation, that side of reducing emissions is more what my committee focuses on, you know, have to do with the energy transition. And I think transportation as well, because those are those two sectors energy and transportation are our biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. And in more recent years, we've really focused on trying to dive deep into energy efficiency, which is a really like win-win solution. That is a key part of any decarbonization strategy. And this was supported actually by a recent report that came out from the Energy Office that we funded a couple years ago to do, you know, large scale decarbonization study to see what it will take for the state to reach its 2045 decarbonization goals. And then also I've spent, you know, a fair amount of done a fair amount of work focusing on the the transportation transition, but mainly in terms of ground transportation and building out electric vehicle infrastructure, there's still a lot of work to be done to tackle aviation emissions and shipping and that those are tough nuts to crack, but that's really big. And then, you know, in addition, there's things that we might not think of as being related to climate change, but are actually really important for increasing resiliency and protecting the natural resources that are so critical to helping us be more resilient. So, you know, one example of that is wastewater issues and dealing with all of Hawaii's cesspools that have a huge impact on the reef and are basically slowly killing it. So, you know, that's another thing that I think we'll be continuing to focus on this session. And then another one I've looked at is waste management and looking at trying to create systems that work us towards a more circular economy. So just I think all those efforts that make us more truly sustainable as an island where we're importing less and, you know, relying more on ourselves to the extent possible and being responsible with how we use resources, all those things contribute to our ability to adapt effectively in the future. Thank you, Representative. I know, Senator, you have been a proponent of a carbon tax. And if you wanted to just touch on that very briefly. Sure. Yeah, so I agree with everything that Nicole just said. There's a whole panoply of things that we need to do. Some of them are easier done than others. And there's no silver bullet. I think however, well, I think it's pretty clear, however, that a carbon tax is as close to a silver bullet as there is in the global warming context, because even if you take even if you raise the tax on carbon and then give it all back to the exact same people in the exact same amount, they will still tend to avoid spending money on carbon intensive products or services. And so if it's implemented evenly across the whole economy, it will drive carbon usage down. And that is that's the ultimate goal. We have to get carbon emissions down to zero. We really need to go below zero for quite some time to get the situation under control. Global warming has been caused by human activity. And the one bright spot that I feel in this whole situation is that if we created it, we can figure out a way to take care of the problem too. And I think a carbon tax is, I mean, it would be better if it was a national tax or an international tax, or if it was just a national tax, where you had duties on carbon products that came or products that use carbon coming in to offset the fact is cheaper, cheaper in the short run. I mean, you're just borrowing. If you don't reduce carbon, you're essentially borrowing money from the future. And if other countries continue to do that, you can make money. But it's just a loan from Mother Nature that she's starting to ask for us to pay back now. So in any case, it's, it would be the tax, the Tax Review Commission made it their number one priority in 2021, the Climate Change and Adaptation Commission supports it. Numerous Nobel laureates and economics support it. It'll work. But it is a difficult political lift. And people don't want to sacrifice. And I think that would be the final point I would make. If we get away with just a financial sacrifice and get through global warming, that would be a huge victory. There is going to be a price to be paid. And unfortunately, in many cases, with more intense storms, bigger hurricanes more frequently, some people are going to pay with their lives. Yeah. A quick last question. Do we know how much ocean encroachment will happen each year so we can adapt accordingly? I don't know if you have any answer to that, but that was a question that came in. I think predictions are always just predictions. But there was a pretty comprehensive like sea level rise study funded by the legislature and undertaken by the Climate Commission. And that's our, and there's an online tool as well where you can look at it. So I mean, there's a lot of work being done to try to determine that. If you go to the Climate Change and Adaptation Commission website, there's a link to, you can set it at one foot, two foot. I think they only gone up to three, which is starting to look like a pretty conservative estimate. But you can see what floods at those levels all across the state. Senator and Representative, thank you very much for spending the time. We have a lot of questions in your area as well as others. And I'll tell the audience we'll try to take a look at all the questions. We can't get to them all, but we'll see if we can answer them and send out a question and answer sheet to all those who have registered. But Senator Rhodes and Representative Lloyd, thank you very much for your participation. We're now ready to go to, you know, an area that I know would be of interest to all of you. And that's the third segment on budget, fiscal issues, and the economy. And we're fortunate to have Senator Chris Lee, who is a member of the Ways and Means Committee in the Senate, and Representative Scott Ishimoto, who's a member of the House Finance Committee. And I want to thank them both because the Ways and Means and Finance Committees are having informational briefings as we are doing this seminar. And they're taking the time off to make their presentation on the economy, the budget, and what can be anticipated. I'll go with Senator Lee first. Speaker and Senator Ishimoto talked about a lot of the money going toward the Maui issue. And if you could talk about what about the appropriations for other issues and other problems that the state faces, and, you know, your general concern over the budget and the economy. Sure. Yeah, I speak to touch on this and Senator Ishimoto as well. You know, coming out of the pandemic, even before Maui happened, we were still not back to full recovery. And it was sort of a slow, steady kind of rebuilding, you know, with jobs and unemployment going down and visitors returning. But even before that, we were still not back to where we were in 2019. The good news is, I think as they had touched on, you know, things were looking up coming into this. And particularly right now, national, you know, inflation is down, inflation reduction act and other measures have been really trying to change things. The Fed is hopefully going to be addressing interest rates pretty soon. And so I think there's widely expected broader recovery in which Hawaii is a microcosm. But here locally too, you know, visitor arrivals are still not even pre-Maui back to where they were before. The vast majority of the folks coming into the state are from the mainland U.S. right now, it's about 75% or so, which is actually more domestic arrivals than we had pre-COVID in 2019 at our peak. But downside is our international arrivals are still way down. Japan's at like 40% or something like that. And that's due to a number of factors, like, you know, really weak yen right now. But overall, there was a slow return and Maui definitely put a kink in that. And as I think the speaker had mentioned, the good news is, overall, we're making a quicker recovery than I think was previously expected. So there's not going to be as much of a collapse in the state tax revenues as I think we had feared in the days immediately following the situation. But there are some things to your point that can be done. I think when we look at how do we have enough money to run government, provide the services everybody expects and all of that. And, you know, already this has begun and I know Scott can speak to some of this as well. The legislature has made a bunch of appropriations over the last few years for all kinds of stuff. Sometimes it's bond financing, sometimes it's direct cash that we put into things. There's been an effort to look at what cash do we put out there into projects or into programs that we can plow back and replace with financing so that we're basically creating more liquidity for the state today. Secondly, you know, we're looking at, I guess as Carl had mentioned, are there ways to raise revenue? You know, the reality is this is a rough year for a lot of that. It's an election year and you get a lot of stuff going on. But I mean, there was a trend last year for the legislature to look at raising revenue specifically to reduce the burden on local residents and local businesses by shifting that burden to visitors coming into the state. So there is, you know, some of that discussion that's been going on the last few years. And so there are opportunities for addressing this in a way that isn't going to be as painful as just simply losing a bunch of the budget. So let me stop there and Scott's quite got a lot more experience on the appropriation side. I'm sure it can speak to it a bit more. Revnish Imoto, comments? Yeah, well, Chris covered a lot there. I will say this, Chris and I were both on the finance committee in 2007-2008 time period when we were going through the Great Recession. That was really tough times on finance. I think in those two or three years, we might have cut 25-30% of the overall state budget. We're not in that situation now, which is good. Maui, like Chris said, did put a crimp in our financial outlook. But we're not in the kind of situation we were in 2007-2008, where we had to make massive cuts. We rated a lot of special funds just to make the budget balance. But I don't foresee us having to do things like that. The council on revenues, which we use to base our budget on, is going to meet next week. I think people are optimistic that they'll come out with a positive outlook and that when the house makes our budget, we'll have a better number to base our budget on. You know, I assume that because the surplus is down and there's going to be a tremendous effort to look for other sources of money that Senator Lee mentioned. I don't know if either WAM or Finances identify any of the sources yet. But if you want to comment on that, and the obvious question, which I'm pretty sure I know the answer to, is that is there any chance of increase in taxes? Sure, I'll chime in. You know, one of the things that we had been looking at as the state generally is figuring out how we can finance things differently. And I know right now there's a number of big projects out there. There's the stadium project. There's potentially prison project and some others that are big dollar projects, hundreds of millions of dollars and a whole bunch of other things like schools and libraries and roads and all that. But one of the options that has been looked at more recently is instead of just spending money up front for these projects as we normally do or even financing them as we normally do, can you do partnerships, public-private partnerships with specific partners that can help develop and pay for some of that infrastructure? Or in some cases, can we do lease buybacks where we'll lease the whole property to, you know, a project developer who will not only develop it, but then manage it and maintain it properly and all of that. And at the end, it just comes back to the state anyway. So it's not a loss. But what that means in the short term is all of the money we would normally have to invest doing the actual building and due diligence and all of that goes off our balance sheets. So it provides more flexibility to finance projects over the long term. And given where we're at now, you know, I think as others had mentioned, there's a great need in Maui for a lot of brand new infrastructure to replace what was lost. So I imagine there will be opportunities to look at some of that kind of thing. And then when it comes to tax increases, you know, I think there's been a, we don't want to increase taxes unnecessarily, I think when, you know, especially on specific demographics and things when people are hurting. And right now, you know, we're in the midst of a recovery. So I don't expect there'll be great things. There will definitely be discussion about different elements. You know, there have been talk about legalizing cannabis and getting revenue from that. As Carl had mentioned, there are green fees and that kind of thing. The state has looked at assessing residents, not residents, keeping access free for residents, but assessing visitors when they enter our state parks, which has been able to generate revenue in ways that we haven't before. So there are opportunities, but I don't expect there will be a large, you know, swath of tax increases or things like that. Yeah, there was a question that just came in, any new taxes in the pipeline that is raised tobacco tax, alcohol, you know, which is the normal areas that people look at. I mean, I think those bills always get introduced. I don't, just personally, I don't see the legislature having an appetite to do those things, but that's just my personal opinion. But one thing, when you talk about financing, if you look at the governor's budget. So last, last, last session we had a surplus. So we put a bunch of cash into projects, particularly for affordable housing. And if you look at the governor's budget this year, he replaces some of that cash funding with bond funding. It'll just free up cash, particularly for Maui, is why he's doing it. But there's a lot of that in the governor's budget. Rep Nishimoto, like, because you've been on the finance committee for many years, and you have dealt with granting age over the years, can you expand on that? Speaker talked about the deadline, which is two days after opening on January 17 session opens, and the applications for granting age GIAs have to be in by Friday, January 19. And I know in the past, not-for-profits have missed that. And then they were out for, because it's a hard, hard, hard and fast rule. So can you expand on that a little bit? It will help the not-for-profits, especially. Yeah. So the granting age program is the state's non-profit grant program. It aids non-profits in a variety of fields. We do it pretty much every year. The application is currently online on the capital website. Like Bob said, the deadline is January 19th. That's a hard deadline. All applications need to be in by four o'clock on the 19th. We don't know how much will be appropriated for it yet. A lot of it will depend on the council and revenues projections next week and then again in March. But from my experience, we've only not done granting age twice in my 20-plus years in the legislature. And both were COVID years. So I think we didn't do it in 20 and 21. So I'm optimistic. We're going to have money for it. There's definitely a need for it. We're seeing more and more applications every year. It's getting more and more competitive. Some optimistic will have something for it. I can't tell you how much, but I'm hopeful. Senator Lee, I'm not too sure. Senator Gil Lagerrand was in charge of GIAs for Ways and Means. Do you know often whether Senator Moriwaki, who is the vice chair, will be in charge of grant NAs for the Senate? Generally, yeah, it's the Ways and Means chair and vice chair that worked that out. I think, you know, with a brand new vice chair for the Ways and Means Committee, Senator Moriwaki, I don't know if there's going to be any specific procedural changes as to how that process works. But I think it's expected. Those two will definitely be in the driver's seat when it comes to that working with the House. Any of you, we have some time. Let me see. We had some questions. Hang on one quick second. Let me see. Oh, is there a government office still in place whose mission is to look for federal grant opportunities? I'm not aware of that. But do any of you, are you aware that we have a government office? I don't know that we've had an office per se. I know that, especially coming out of the pandemic, when there was a lot more federal money available and with IIJA and the IRA funding bills coming down from the feds, that there's, you know, a plethora of new grant opportunities that Hawaii can take advantage of. I think the governor had appointed a lead, a point person for the administration to work on that. I wouldn't consider it, I think, an office, at least not that I'm aware of. But they're supposed to be looking at maximizing all the opportunities that we have out there and making sure that we have applications in. And I know I'm in particular DOT, which has got, you know, a huge chunk of that federal funding for infrastructure has been making a pretty considerable effort to try and draw down every single opportunity that's before them. And they've hired or brought on through contract, a handful of folks to help grant rate. Replenition mode. Any comments at all? So there was a lead person in the IGA administration. I'm not sure in the current administration, but there was a lead person that was supposed to coordinate all the federal grants and go after and coordinate all the going after federal grants. I'm not sure now. You know, I do know from being involved peripherally that a lot of the agencies, too, can apply for federal grants. But you need somebody who is within the agency that's a grant writer. And I just don't know which agencies have anybody that's really very qualified to write grants or not. But there's money out there that can be recovered, you know, but we'll see whether, especially going forward this year, whether that's an option. Yeah, I will say. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, Senator. I was going to say to that point, for a lot of the federal money that's currently available, you know, with this new administration, the Biden administration, I mean, there's a new focus on equity and, you know, climate and energy and number of issues that Hawaii relative to other states has been really aggressive on. So we should be qualifying for more than our usual share of federal dollars. And those opportunities are out there. So I think that's probably going to be where we're trying to poke around this year in the budget to make sure that we have capacity in place to make sure we get those dollars that we ought to be getting. Yeah, and when we get to the next segment, which is the last segment this morning on health issues, there's a lot of money that needs to be allocated for health, mental health shortages, you know, homelessness. And it's a real problem. It's complicated because Maui is going to take a lot of the money that's available, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens. Rep. Nishimoto, did you want to mention something? You know, Joy and Dela are going to be in the next segment about health, but as far as federal funding goes, there are a lot of opportunities to draw down federal money in the health and social services fields. But I'm sure Dela and Joy are going to go over that. Good, thanks. Senator, Representative, any last comments before we go to the next segment? No, just generally, I think, you know, there's a sort of cautiously optimistic approach. I think it's fair to say I think for folks, given where we're at right now, we're not expected as a state, according to our economists, to make a full recovery till past, you know, 2026 and beyond. But, you know, Maui is showing some good recovery more than people expected and construction in particular for government projects is really driving a lot of the difference in what's coming up in revenue for the next, you know, a few quarters. So I think there is some silver lining to all of this and a good outlook. Thank you. Rep. Nishimoto, last comments? Yeah, I mean, for me, you know, no matter what the budget outlook is, and it changes year to year, it's always about the legislature prioritizing projects, right? So, you know, we're going to be doing the same thing with the House budget and the Senate will do the exact same thing too. They're going to, we're going to prioritize what we think is important. But it's an opportunity for the public to weigh in and tell us what's important to them, help us make the decisions on what we prioritize. But, you know, whether we have a lot of money or where we have a little money, you know, it's still the same. We're still prioritizing because there's never enough for everything. Yeah, I think that people that will go before Ways and Means and Finance, they just have to advocate and do the best they can to convince the members that they need the money for a good purpose. But Senator Lee, oh, go ahead, Rep. No, you're absolutely right, Bob. Yeah. Senator Lee, Rep. Nishimoto, thank you very much for taking the time off from your informational briefings to present this segment. And we now are ready to go to the last segment on health issues. For this last segment, we have Senator Joyce San Buenaventura, who is the chair of the Health and Human Services Committee in the Senate, and Representative Bella Albalotti, who is the chair of the Health and Homeless Committee in the House. And I think, as we all know, there's a tremendous need to appropriate funds and to look at the various issues in health because it affects all of us. And so I'll start off with Senator Joyce San Buenaventura, and maybe we can talk a little bit about shortages, not only with physicians, but generally across the health care scope. Senator? Thank you. Aloha, Bob. You know, this last session we did quite a bit. We are the only state in the country that actually do loan repayment programs. And I have to thank Governor Dr. Green. The MD shows really and how he implemented the program by sending out like $30 million. And that is not only for doctors. That's people in the entire health care field. Again, we are also one of the four pioneers in the country to also have a preceptor credit. What's preceptors? Preceptors are clinicians. These are working doctors who have to take away from their time as MDs to teach new doctors to be able to service their patients. And we have a shortage of preceptors. And again, we are the first in the country to actually give them tax-printed credits, incentives to help prepare for our health care professionals in this field. So the legislator has like a four-prong approach to dealing with the health care shortages. The first one is growing. And that's what we're talking about, the loan repayment. Let us help grow our own. The second, of course, and again, we're in the forefront of that because we're in an island state. We want to be able to keep our people here. The second one is recruiting. Last session, we passed a compact legislation. We joined part of the interstate compact for a number of states so that we could recruit doctors from other states, especially in those states that have banned abortion and for which the obstetricians are now in fear of being criminally prosecuted. We want those specialists to come to Hawaii, right? And we have passed SB1 last session, which basically protected our health care workers who perform abortions. So we want to make sure that we are protecting our health care industry here, and we want to be able to recruit them. So compact legislation. I introduced a number of them last session. We passed only one. The industry has called that a game changer as far as recruitment. And hopefully DCCA will be up to a pass so that hopefully in the next few sessions we will be able to pass more compact legislation such as the APRN and the others so that we will be able to recruit other health care workers in. Third one is we need to support our current medical providers. How do we do that? By hopefully decreasing their expenses. We came really close to at least exempting GEPACs for Medicare, Medicaid, and TriCare because those are the lowest reimbursement rates. Hopefully we will be able to pass this coming session. But what we did pass last session, which helped a lot of the medical care providers in treating those who are poor, is we increased the reimbursement rate of Medicaid to that of Medicare levels. So it's not much, but hopefully it shows support to our health care providers who help those who are very poor. And the fourth way we try to address the medical shortages is to expand the scope of care of our existing professionals. So you're going to see like people don't quite realize, but if you remember years ago Bob, you and I are old enough to know that at the time we went to like long drugs. We were only able to get the drugs prescribed, but now you start seeing them actually doing vaccinations, COVID testing. So you're going to start seeing more of that. We're starting to realize that a lot of our medical professionals, especially when they are in consultants with other specialists, have the ability to do more. And we're seeing that also in our schools. Our school programs, our school health programs are far more robust now than they were back when we were kids found. You're going to see that we have APRNs that do psychological training. And you're seeing far more school-aged children who normally would not have had basic health care are able to get it in our public schools. So we're expanding the scope and we're going to see more of that. And hopefully, I'm going to let Della address some more because I don't want to monopolize. So we are approaching. I just want to be a shorter public that we are fully aware of the medical shortage in the state of Hawaii. We are addressing them. We've done a lot this last session and we are continuing to look more at the tweak more of that. Thank you. Thanks, Senator. Just a real quick comment. I remember legislation in years past to try to increase the availability and scope of practice for physician assistants, PAs. So that's another legislation that can be looked at. And we have, frankly, we've allowed them with SB1 along with a consultant to be able to provide abortion care services. And that's the reason when you go to urgent care clinics, it's usually physician assistants who help you and not MDs. So we have expanded it. So long as it's with a consultant with an MD. Thanks. I'll turn it over for comments to Representative Bellotti, who is the current health chair. And she was the health chair years ago before she became majority leader and really was responsible for pushing a lot of positive legislation in the health care area. But Rep Bellotti, do you want to comment on the shortages and other things like mental health and funding? I wanted to comment on the workforce shortage and just expand a little bit on what Senator San Buenaventura said about the exciting initiatives where we grow our own. I think one of the things that we've seen in partnership with many of our hospitals and service providers is the partnership between the Department of Education and our service providers and the academies that we're seeing. Again, there's lots of jobs in the health care industry. There's lots of shortages from nurses to doctors to technicians to respiratory therapists. And there's a lot of places where we can grow our own by creating pipelines and glideways, glide pathways to various certificate programs. So I just wanted to mention that because there was a great partnership that I think we're going to see grow out of this session. I hope we're going to be having that conversation as well. You know, Rep, is there going to be any other legislation and Senator submitted this year with regard to shortages or other areas in the health area like mental health? We left a lot of bills on the table last year. And one of the things, one of the bills that we were looking at was provisional licensure for psychologists and practicing social workers and those types of things. So we're going to be looking at revisiting some of those kinds of legislation, the nurse licensure compact. So there's still many things that we are going to be looking at to address the workforce shortage. And I'll pass it off to Senator. Yes, we are addressing that you're going to see more compact language. I think right now the bottleneck is in DCCA actually getting the licensing out because there is such a demand. And from what they're telling me that the application is 400 times more than they had anticipated, I mean, coming out of COVID. So hopefully we can address that bottleneck and then that way we'll be able to push some more. And I agree with Representative regarding the academies. You know, Superintendent Hayashi has done a wonderful job regarding the academies over in Waipahu. He had assured me that he's going to expand it over to the big island to include childcare workers because childcare workers are one of the most underpaid and it's super easy really frankly to train high schoolers who have no intent of going to college into these types of service industries, especially when they're being supervised. I'm a human services chair. Sorry, Bob. But those are the two critical shortages. It's basically long-term care workers. And everyone who has to deal with aging parents know how difficult it is to get long-term care. And it's affecting regular people too because frankly if you start looking at the hospitals they don't have enough acute care beds because they have a long wait list of long-term care people who they need to find homes for. So that's another thing that's going to be addressed next next session. Hopefully we'll be able to address that. And I thank Superintendent Hayashi for creating these academies and expanding them. Senator, just to make a point that a lot of my colleagues and friends my age we do discuss long-term care because it's not that far away. Hopefully we stay healthy. But there is such a shortage that you know anybody is late 70s early 80s have to think about what's going to happen. But anyway, thank you for bringing up that issue. One quick question and then I'll turn it back to Rep Bellotti. And I think you touched on what legislation if anything is under consideration to improve neighbor island access to health care. And Senator, because you're from the big island I thought if you have any answer to that I'm not sure. Okay, so one of the things I looked into during the interim is how the various hospitals are able to access their health care needs. And that's the reason why I was super jazzed that Superintendent Hayashi already has this glide path of increasing academies and that Straub and Queens have already had this partnership with Department of Education, I mean with Department of Labor through their vocational rehab to increase this flow of workers because we need more lower level workers as well as we need the specialist. So how do we do it for the neighbor islands? What I realize frankly is you know I'm from the big island is when I started asking them questions as to how are they able to get their nurses, nurse supplies because after COVID a lot of our nurses have been burned out. They really have been overworked. They've been traumatized because of what has occurred. They do not feel supported so we were losing a lot of nurses. But frankly, Hilo Hospital, Hilo Medical Center seems to be adequately supported. And apparently it's because they have this good working relationship with UH Hilo as well as the community college. So I asked Kona Hospital. Kona Hospital has the highest locus work. They do not seem to have the kind of pathway. So what we really need is from their problem is the high cost of living, which is basically also the problem over an Oahu and Maui. They can't seem to be able to pay enough. So basically what they have found was they're becoming more of a teaching hospital. They're creating more preceptors of growing their own. And from what I'm hearing it's happening. Okay, so we're supporting our neighbor islands by doing these academies and by creating these pathways. And like I said, sometimes you just got to wait for these programs that we have started, like the loan repayment program just started. The preceptor credit program just started. In fact, Kona Hospital, who is increasing their preceptors, did not even know about their credits. And they were super jazzed when I told them that this is something that they can incentivize and use. So we're working on it. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Senator. Rep Bellotti, because your committee is in also a health and homelessness committee, can you touch on and the homelessness is a huge problem? So can you touch on that issue and whether there can be any legislation to help the situation? And of course, funding. Thank you, Bob, for that question. But before I pivot to that question, I just want to add one more thing that we're doing for Access for Neighbor Islands. This past year, we passed our telehealth bill again, updating our laws pre-pandemic. And during the pandemic, we actually led on telehealth laws. So I think that's another really important thing that we're doing to address access on the on the neighbor islands. And it's not just the actual telehealth, but also creating hubs. So there's a very exciting pilot project happening with the library state system, where there are actually trying to place telehealth hubs and services at libraries to help access more rural areas. So I'll leave it at that. On the question of homelessness, Bob, thank you for that question. I think I want to tie a couple of threads together that's been going throughout this entire program. You know, you first started off with the question about Maui fires, what's the recovery like? And I think it's good to hear that the recovery is progressing better than most people have thought. I want to jump on to what Representative Nishimoto said that, you know, whatever the budget outlook is, it's always about priorities and how we prioritize. And I think as we remain hopeful that there might be a better, brighter outlook, I think what we have to push to the top is social safety net funding. When we talk about what we need to fund for government, what is critical for government to fund, for me, it's social safety net infrastructure funding. And that ranges from the things that is in my Kuliana and Senator San Buenaventura's Kuliana, which is health, human services and homelessness. But I also want to throw a shout out so that it also means protecting our natural resources, right, because there are just the basic things that government has to focus on. Shifting to what our focus is, Senator, and my focus is health, human services, homelessness. I think what we're going to see and what we left off in conversations last session was the important need to address mental health and the funding for mental health. And in mental health, I want to go and reign, it's all of mental health, right? It's the mental health of children and individuals who are just struggling and might just need to be reached out to and have someone to talk to, alleviating the stigma of mental illness. We have that help through the 988 CARES line that we have funded. But I'm also talking about the serious mental illness, behavioral health issues that we see afflicting so many in our community. And this is where we need to do a little bit more strategic investment. And I think we need to have the conversation, one of the gaps we identified at the end of last session, through the work of the governor's mental health policy team with Dr. Champion, with the leaders in adult mental health, you know, Director Fink and Marion Suji, with the prosecutors and with the judiciary, we have identified that there's a gap for crisis intervention. So I think there's going to be a real focus. I'm looking at where those gaps are in the mental health system to treat those who are really have serious mental illness and are oftentimes justice involved. And that's where the intersection is with homelessness. So I think we're going to be talking about how do we fund, and it's not going to just be on one island or two islands. We're going to focus some of the crisis intervention work in pilot programs. But there is funding discussions for mental health and community centered based mental health centers on all islands. We see conversations happening about how are we staffing up the CCPCH on Maui? We are having conversations with what's happening on the big island to address both substance abuse and the intersection between substance abuse and behavioral health. And it's going to be the funding of all of these critical projects that I think we're going to have conversations about this this session. Thank you, Repolati. Let me just mention there's a statement that one of the attendees addressed to you. I'll read it. Repolati, modular housing is being used in Canada to provide hundreds of units for homeless persons. We have our first such project in Hawaii and I'll forward this to you, Della. Please consider expanding this with support for mental health and substance use disorder treatment. So that was a comment by one of the attendees. And I'll forward that to you because it has a website that or a let's see oh no it was an article I think on Hawaii news now on that. So any as we close out senator and representative any last comments on health care? This is a really really major issue facing the state. So any last comments and then I'll I'll say thank you and close out program. So I just want to mention a couple of things on Bob and that is touching on 988. I went to the 2020 in 2022 I went to Atlanta CDC basically at a time when 988 was being rolled out because it was considered one of the leading causes in fact the second leading cause of death for anyone under the age of 34. The problem as as I realized when I went to Molokai last last month where where there was a high suicide rate and where there was a 988 isn't working in Hawaii. Okay and what we really need and not only the whole behavioral health centers that Rep the Lottie is talking about we really need to support 988 because and hopefully you could get more funding. What we found out in Molokai was we we thought we had only part-time workers doing dealing with 988. So when we tried to actually call 988 no one answered. So it's not the lifeline that we were hoping it would be that the CDC and the federal funding was hoping it would be and to integrate with chairs but I just want to make sure people know that it is not the panacea we had hoped for it is one of those things that you need to do because suicide is a lead it's a second leading cause for ages 34 and under. Okay so it's a huge problem so thanks for this. Rep the Lottie any last comments before we close the seminar. I would just say Bob that I want to invite everyone to be engaged in the conversations that are going to be happening at the legislature. We have a great public access room where people can see all the bills signed up to be part of the process participated by providing testimonies. This was a great forum to kick that off. So I just want to thank you Bob and all of the attendees and I'm looking forward to a very productive session with my counterparts and with all of my colleagues. Thank you very much all of you who attended the seminar. I hope it's been helpful. For those of you who asked it will be replayed on ThinkTech next Friday January 12 at nine o'clock and it will also be available on YouTube. I'd like to thank all of the panelists for spending the time in presenting their views on the various issues and again thank you all for joining and there's a brief poll that will pop up and the question is whether you might be interested in a midterm session to see what has happened so far sometime in early March but thank you all for logging on and and the questions and we'll try and answer all of them and send them all to the people who have registered. Thank you again.