 I'm Marsha Joyner, and this is Community Matters. We at ThinkTech are doing a series of shows. ThinkTech is introducing our public to the candidates that are running for the various offices in Hawaii. From the tip of the big island all the way to Nihihau and everything in between. And today we are visiting with Senator Donna Ricardo Kim. Aloha. Aloha. Nice to see you. Donna is, well, what can I say? She is a big part of Hawaii for as long as I can remember anyway. And so she has decided to desert us. She wants to go to D.C. And so she's running for the House seat that Congresswoman Honobusa is giving up to run for governor. So, welcome. Thank you. Welcome, Senator. Thank you. I just want to say that I'm not deserting you or my district. I told my district that I'm just expanding the boundaries and that I will always represent them and everyone else. I'm thinking of D.C. in the cold. It is a bit much. Yes, it is a bit much. I went to school in Washington State University on the east side of Washington where it snowed a lot. And so I have some experience of living in the snow. Well, okay. Not that you get used to it, but. Hanna was born in Kali and Donna Kim has served the people of Hawaii for 34 years. She has served every level of the state and local government from Honolulu City Council, Hawaii State House of Representatives, and currently the Hawaii State Senate. And you just told us you were a graduate of Washington State University and. Barrington High School. Absolutely. And Kali. Go governors. He loves. I have so much school spirit and so much aloha for Farrington High School, and you know the motto there is enter to learn, go forth to serve, and obviously I absorbed it all and I went forth and served. Oh, wonderful. Well, you have been a very strong voice at every level that you have served in. And in this day of the Me Too movement and women of showing, there was a time when women didn't show the strength. But now we appreciate, we honor that strength. And so I am. Thank you. Very proud to have known you all of those 34 years, oh my God. Let me just interject right there if I may, Marcia. You know, four years ago I did run for Congress as well. And at that time my team and all of my advisors said, you know, you're too tough and a lot of people feel that you need to soften, we need to soften you, and all of that. And they tried to make me something that I wasn't. And so this time around I said, you know what, I have to be me. I have to be authentic to who I am. And you know, and it's not so much that I'm tough, but I am just so passionate about the issues and about helping Hawaii and seeing the frustration on people and the hard times that they have that it really makes you want to get to the bottom of why we can't fix things. And so that's what drives me. Well, there's a, the state government, not so much in the legislature, but the state government, there's a lethargy. You know, oh, we'll get it done. And go along together. Yeah. Right? It's whatnot. So to have you and people like you in the legislature that get things done, that don't have it sitting on their desk and, oh, we'll get to it kind of thing. But then you get labeled with the B word, right? I mean. Well, yes. We understand that. Yes. But you know, when I first ran in 1982, it was a time when you really didn't talk about women issues. There weren't a lot of women role models back then. Patsy Mink was my role model. But there weren't a lot. And so it was difficult because you didn't talk about women issues. You didn't talk about reproductive rights, even though Roe vs. Wade had passed about eight, nine years prior to that. You still never talked about it in public and even in your families. Your families didn't talk about it. And so it wasn't, it was a difficult time because to be accepted and to be successful with your male peers, they didn't want to hear about a whole lot of women issues. No. And when you mentioned Patsy Mink, that was the strongest woman ever. And I think that's what people loved about her, that she refused to take a seat behind. You know, I was so fortunate because when I went to the City Council in 1985, Patsy was on the City Council. Remember, she had lost her race for Senate and then she was out of it for a while. And then she decided to come back and she went on the City Council. And so I ended up being one of nine with Patsy and I ended up being in committees with her. And I really learned a lot. I watched her and I would watch how she would read all of the testimony and underline it with this black ink pen and how she would vigorously battle and fight for things. And then when it was done, it was done. And she put it on the side and moved on to the next issue. And she never hold it and pout it about it. She just handled it with so much professionalism. And that's something that I learned from her. Well, I think, yes, of course, and that's, well, she was just dynamite. And I think of you in the same light, this strong dynamite. Thank you. Because now you were president of the Senate. How did you get to be that if you were strong? Well, part of being Senate president is working with everybody. And I always feel that the president is not the one that is supposed to be front and center. You need to prop up your committee chairs. You need to support them. You need to support the majority. And I remember saying that if you want to, because in the City Council, I never wanted to be council chair. It's because you have to set aside your own agenda. You almost have to set aside even your district's agenda, because you need to then support and represent the agenda of the collective body. And it's not always easy. As Senate president, I had to stand on that podium and vote yes on every single measure that came out of committee from my committee chairs, because that's my role, to support my committee chairs, even though I may not have liked or wanted any of those measures. But before that, you were what, Chair Ways and Means, for anybody that doesn't know, tell us what Ways and Means. Ways and Means handles the budget, basically. And so the entire state budget has to go through the House for approval, and have to come to the Senate for approval, and then we have to meet, and we have to have the meeting of the minds, and it goes up to the governor. It starts off with the governor's budget. And so the House works it, and they take things out and put things in, and then they take it over to us, and we put things in and take things out. And I was Ways and Means at a time where the economy, we had a downturn, and we had to do a lot of cutting. Now, it's very easy to be in charge of the budget when you have a lot of money, and you can be Santa Claus and say yes to everybody. But when you don't have a lot of money and you have to cut, and you have to say no to a lot of people, people got upset. And that was the time we had Furlough Fridays, remember? And we had all kinds of cuts going on. And didn't you have a Republican governor? Yes, we did have a Republican governor. You had a Republican governor. We did. But we tried to look at the budget and how we balance the budget. And mind you now, none of the legislators are experts in every field, and clearly we're not experts in budget. But you have to understand, you have to study, you have to do your homework. And I put in a lot of time. It was more than full-time and on weekends and late into the night to make sure that I understand the budget, that I knew what we're doing, that I could see where the cuts can come from, where the overtime, where the vacant positions are, how do we balance everything together. In the meantime, you have your members in your house that want certain things in the budget. They want certain bills. They want certain CIP to take back to their district, they're out for reelection. And so you have to balance all of that. One of the things that I'm very passionate about is government transparency and accountability. And so I want an incentive to be more transparent. I want the public to be able to see our worksheets, to be able to see our decision-making and understand why we're doing it. I even did not like gut and replace. And we passed a measure for our rules to say that all new things that are put into the bill after certain readings need to have a public hearing, that you can't just enter it. And you can't gut a bill, put something else in you, which they tried to do this past session again, even though it's in our rules. Because the fallacy with our rules is that you can waive the rules. If you have the majority of the members, you can waive the rule. Oh, my. Well, you can waive any rule. How long did you have 13 members? Is that in the Senate or the House or both? Both. The House would need 26. And so a lot of times go notwithstanding the rules or notwithstanding whatever it is that a law, as long as you have the majority, you can do it. So you could pull a bill out of... Yes, the majority can do almost anything. Oh, okay. Do you know that? No. No, but who knows the rules? Well, that's one thing I learned when I got into city councils. You have to know the rules, read the rules backward and forward so you can understand that. Yeah. Now, here's the question that comes up almost with every candidate, because they're from different parts. Right. And you served in tourism. Yes. What is your take? How do you feel about where tourism is now? What can we do? What should we do? Have we reached the tipping point? Can we take more people? What do you feel about that? That's always been the perennial question. What is the carrying capacity of our islands? What is the carrying capacity of Oahu? And I know Senator Hemings used to always say, you know, and introduce measures to do a carrying capacity study. When I came to the Senate in 2001, I had my choice of committees. I had supported Bobby Bundy. He became president. So I had my choice of committees. And I said, I want a tourism committee. And they said, why tourism? Because it was like economic development in tourism or public works in tourism. It was always like a stepchild, I called it. And I said, I want committee on tourism by itself. I said, because tourism is so important to our state and it needs to have the focus. And someone said, well, you know, they only get like two, three, four bills a year. You don't do very much. And I said, you don't need a bill. I said, you can have hearings and you can have any kind of forum to bring out the issues you don't necessarily have to have a bill. And so I was given the tourism committee. And back then it was Hawaii Tourism Authority and it was the Hawaii Visitor Bureau. And there was a lot of issues there. But to make the story really short was that I did a lot of oversight. We overhauled Hawaii Tourism Authority. We cut the budget. And I made sure that they were accountable before we raised the budget again. But back in those days they had a strategic plan. And one of the plans was that we're going to attract a higher spending visitor. And we had, we had 7 million visitors back then. The higher visitor, higher spending visitor and the business visitor. That way we would still have the same amount of money coming in or more, but not as many people and it wouldn't tax our environment. It wouldn't impact our beaches and impact our local residents. And somewhere along the line that strategic element got put on the side burner. And now we're just all about numbers and we're up to 9 million plus visitors. And Waikiki looks like any other big city. The charm of Waikiki and the beauty, the magic is gone. And that's one of the other things that the industry did not like about me. In fact, I have to tell us a little story, is that when I became the chair of tourism I started making all of these inquiries and passing audits. They went to the president and said, you need to take her out, you need to take her out. And of course Bobby didn't take me out, Senator Bunda didn't take me out. Then they threatened and said, well we're going to campaign against her and we're going to, you know, in the next election and take her out. Because they did not want change to take place. In the industry they wanted that way. And I said, no, you know, we need to make these changes. This industry is just too important to the whole economy of Hawaii. Well, it is and yet it's lost its beauty, it's lost its charm. And the budget, you know, the budget, the majority of the budget went to marketing. And I kept saying, you need to put some of that money into the experience, into the environment. So I mandated a million dollars that went from the HTA funds, special funds, into DLNR. And over the years it's now, I believe, three million or five million near that amount. Because you know, I said, you're going to market this place, people are going to come and they're not going to have a good experience and they're never going to come back. So I don't care how much you market, you have to take care of our island. You need to take care of our environment and our island. Well, we need to take a break and we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark and every Monday at one o'clock I'm the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Munna. And at that program we bring to you a whole range of new scientific results from the university ranging from everything from exploring the solar system to looking at the earth from space, going underwater, talking about earthquakes and volcanoes, and other things which have a direct relevance not only to Hawaii, but also to our economy. So please try and join me one o'clock on a Monday afternoon to Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Munna and see you then. And Aloha, my name is Calvin Griffin, the host of Hawaii in Uniform. And every Friday at 11 o'clock here on Think Tech Hawaii we bring in the latest in what's happening within the military community and we also invite all of your response to things that's happening here. For those of you who haven't seen the program before, again we invite your participation. We're here to give information, not disinformation, and we always enjoy response from the public. But join us here at Hawaii in Uniform, Fridays, 11 a.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner and today we are talking to Senator Donna Ricardo Kim who is running for the seat that Congresswoman Colleen Honabusa has resigned from. Well, she hasn't resigned yet. Oh, she hasn't resigned yet. No, because she is at the end of her term. So she just terms out, ah, very good, okay. And so you want to go to Washington. Well, before you go, before you go, let's talk about education here in Hawaii and what do you think we can do to keep our students and our people home? All of my sons went away to school and haven't come back. What you, you were part of or are part of the higher education. Yes. What do you think that we can do? Well, first Marcia, let me just say that I am a product of the public school system, you know, from elementary school to high school. And if it's not for public school, I don't believe I would be where I'm at today. I want to save all children a winter public school. Yes. And, you know, my family, there were five kids and I'm a middle child and there wasn't enough money to actually send me to college, so I had to work my way through college and get scholarships and do whatever it is that I needed to do in order to graduate from college. And subsequently had a child and put him through college. And so I understand how difficult it is that college tuition costs have just skyrocketed and many families cannot afford. Well, you know, we didn't go to an Ivy League college. I went to a state college, but it was still very expensive. And so I would like to see us have affordable college tuition. I'd like to see the federal government give grants or tax credits to colleges that will keep their tuition down. I'd like to see us give more support. I'd like to look at how we can cap the interest rates or zero interest rates for student loans so that people can go to school and then pay back their loans, but not have the escalating interest rates that cause things to just, you know, be paid back for the lifetime. Forever. Forever. And then get in the way of them. Yes. But what can we do about creating an industry or several industries here other than tourism and, you know, the federal government, of course, that children can grow into right here? Well, we need to attract the businesses. And that's the problem. Hawaii has a bad track record. We are often rated that we are not business friendly, that we have a lot of government regulations on small businesses as well as big businesses. And so we need to look at how do we, you know, other states will look at businesses and attract them and give them tax credits to get them to come to their state. But Hawaii, you know, we're a paradise and so the land prices are so high and businesses have a hard time getting start up as far as bricks and motors. It's very expensive. And then you lay the tax burdens and you lay all of the regulations on businesses. And it's very hard to sustain oneself here in Hawaii. Well, now we have to assume that you're going to go off to D.C. Now, I have something that I think everyone in the Congress should be looking at and that includes Hawaii and that is rural health across the country, not just us, but, you know, when you get out of urban Honolulu and you look at the neighbor islands, tell me, once you go to the Congress, what is it we can do to deal, not just having an Obama card, but the facilities, the ambulance, all of the things that go in to what can we do with rural health? First of all, we have to be able to attract the doctors and the physicians into these areas. A lot of times there is a shortage because these physicians or these doctors don't want to live there. So there has to be some kind of incentive to get them to the rural areas. And then once they get to the rural areas, then we need to supplement their income or supplement maybe not that so far the income, but their practices and how it is that we can enhance that. It's always a challenge when you look at how much we actually put for health care. And that's what the legislature has to look at. Where are our priorities? And I tell that to everybody, Marcia, that comes to see me, that government can't be all things to all people. And so we need to really prioritize and see what are the mandates, K through 12, health care, human services, there are certain things that should be our mandates. But, you know, the legislature love to add programs and we add on so many different programs that we cannot sustain over the years. Healthy Start was one of them. It started at 3 million. Then it went up to 21 million. And during bad times we couldn't sustain it, it's back down. So you know, we want to put on these feel-good type of programs and yet we can't sustain that. So we really have to look at sustainability. But across the country, I'm assuming that you're going to be one of the 218- 400? Okay. 435. Yeah. Well, we're not up to 218 yet. Just in case, the best step you don't understand, that to get a bill on the floor of the Congress, you have to have 218 people. So the Democrats need 218. Right. Anyway, that's a side track. But to look at the facilities for rural health and all of the things, I saw a documentary on West Virginia and it was so sad because they don't have the facilities. They don't have the doctors. They just don't have. And you know, if you try to take an ambulance up to the Hunter Road, what, wow. So that's what I'm looking at overall. But you know, those things fall under the counties and then the state. And so a lot of times, as far as the federal government, they would become in the form of grants to supplement these programs. But the actual program itself, it does fall under the county government and the state government. So we're always talking about home rule and more control at the local level. And so those are the kinds of things that local government has to start to prioritize these ambulances. In fact, I just signed a letter asking for ambulances in our area. And on the other islands? Well, I mean, you know, I represent the Moana Loa Salt Lake, so the legislators there got together and we need one in our area as well. So each of the legislators are looking after their district as to, I know, Kalani English for Maui has requested that as well and health centers and so forth. So each legislator, look at their district and see what are their needs. Well, I would imagine now the Big Island has lots of needs. Oh, absolutely. We want to support them. And Russell Ruderman, my colleague in the Senate, certainly we are looking at him for guidance as to what we can do. Well, now, OK. So we know that with you, the state is in good hands. Now, why do you want to go to Congress? Well, I want to put our country in good hands as well. That's a start. And you know, I can't stand and watch anymore, Marcia, the partisan gridlock that's going on in Washington. It's really threatening our communities. It's threatening our fundamental rights and it's threatening our future. And I really believe that we need somebody strong to go there and represent Hawaii. Someone that doesn't have a political agenda or a political will to want to climb the political ladder. I'm done doing that. And I just want to go there to fight for Hawaii. And I feel that I have the qualities and I'm able to bring people together. And that's the key, Marcia, that we in Hawaii only have four members in the whole Congress. And in order to get anything passed, we need a majority. And so you have to have people that are able to communicate what it is Hawaii needs, communicate that to your colleagues, so they will support you. And then you have to be a supportive as well of their programs. And so it does require alliances like Senator Inouye had with Senator Stevens from Alaska. And you need to be able to work together and bring people together. Then you need a delegation that is also unified and there's continuity. And unfortunately, since Senator Inouye and Senator Akaka passed away, our delegation has not gotten to that point where they're completely cohesive and there's unity. And I certainly want to be that unifying... Just four people and you can't get... I want to be that unifying force. And one of the problems I think is people are afraid that somebody else is going to run against them. So I have told each of the members that I have no intention of running for Senate, no intention of running for any office. I will stay in the House for as long as the people allow me. And so I want to be able to work with the members so that they don't feel like, you know, someday I'm going to come out to them. And that's a reality. You know, people might be watching and say, what are you talking about? But hey, everybody's human and that's always a factor. And it's happened in the past. You've seen House members run against, you know, Congressman Case ran against Senator Akaka. I mean, so you have those things going on. Oh, I remember that. Yes. Let's don't. So you have my commitment on your show that I will not do that. And I will not go back on my word. And I say something I hold true. This is, well, you know, I'm not, I can't take sides, of course, but I want strong women yes across the board because, like you said, given what we have going on now, it's only when women stand up, take a stand and take back the country. So I would like very much for you to look right over here and tell us why we need to vote for you. For all of the reasons, Marcia, that you said, I think that a woman's perspective on women's issues and it's not just women's issues because women's issues are everyone's issues, family issues. And that is so important in our country today. Until the fact that I believe that women have the ability to be more civil, that we do things but civil discourse, and that's exactly what is needed in Congress today. I am been a fighter for women's rights, for our KK, for our seniors that are so important. They need us so much for veterans. And so we need to be able to support all of these issues and come together. And you need someone there who's not just going to fight all the time, but bring people together. So it's important that when you need to fight, that you can fight, and at the same time when you need to come together and you need to work together with your colleagues that you can do that. And that's the only way that we're going to be able to get Congress to start to be moving forward and come up with some common sense reforms to what it is that we need to get done. And we need to do it now. Thank you. And for everyone else, the primary is August 11th. Please vote. You can begin to vote on July 30, and there will be in the mail. The ballots may be dropping this weekend, or Monday, yes, so watch for it. Yes. And on August 4, there will be a march to vote, and it starts at Alamoana Beach Park and walk to Honolulu-Hawley for early voting. Oh, wonderful. So there's no excuse, absolutely no excuse not to vote. And in Hawaii, the primary is more than the general. Exactly. It's more important. So we're asking you, obviously, to vote for our guest, and everybody that you are interested in, this is how we preserve our democracy is that you must be involved. Thank you so much, and we'll see you next time. Thank you, Masha. Aloha.