 Aloha and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. This show is the state of the state of Hawaii. And I'm your host, Stephanie Stoll Dalton. This show brings you newsworthy topics and issues affecting Hawaii. And it does so through conversation with guests whose expertise and viewpoints can inform us even beyond other media resources. Today's show guest has deep experience in public service for Hawaii and at highest levels, including the US Congress. So as we all read and hear, Hawaii's economy is emerging from the depths of the pandemic. And of course, we all want to know how it's going and how it's managed and how our leaders are serving us and how we're gonna see us get back and get better. But today's show guest, Colleen Anabusa, has deep experience in public service for Hawaii and she can give us glimpses and backstage looks at how the benefits of what has occurred recently that you may have heard about, which is the $1.9 trillion package known as the American Rescue Plan Act has brought enormous amounts of resources, funding, federal funding into the country and into each state. And so we're interested in this act, we can call it the ARP for short, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 ARP for short. And we would really like to know how it is that the leaders and the policy makers who are gonna be making decisions about the disposition and the allocations of these funds and how that's gonna ensure benefits to Hawaii and to all of its citizens. Welcome, Colleen Anabusa. Thank you, Stephanie, thank you for having me. And Mahalo for joining us today and for sharing your insights and thoughts of how this is all gonna work as you're not one of the people actually doing it right now, but you may be as you move into your new position, you'll probably have to do with some of the transportation side of the funding that's coming from the feds. But why don't we start by having you just give us a little update or a little precy of what you have done in your service for Hawaii at the national and state level and how that public service has been your life and continues to be and will again be public service for you with the heart. Well, thank you, Stephanie. And I gotta tell you, I didn't begin as, if you look at many of my colleagues who still serve in my state like for many of them, it went from undergraduate to law school or graduate school and they're into service by getting an elected position. I was exactly sort of the opposite. I'm a lawyer by training and I was in my 40s before I actually ran for office. And the reason why is I'm fourth generation of the Waianae coast. And it's always been an issue for me as to why it seems like everyone forgets that there's a Waianae after Kahi power plant, as I say. And as a result of that, I decided at one time that, you know what, I'll throw my name in for an election and the worst it can happen is that I'd be in the same place, I'd be back practicing law and nothing else would change, but maybe I could make a difference. And that was in 1998 when I ran and I took office in 1999. And as some may know, I served in the Hawaii State Senate for 12 years. The last four, I was president of the Senate, first woman to lead either chamber and the first Asian woman in the United States to lead a legislative house like that. But the other interesting thing is for, with the exception of two years, I think for the whole 10 years, I held various leadership positions within the Hawaii State Senate. And in 2010, I ran for the US Congress. And that was a very interesting election to say the least. And in the end, in the general election, won that position and has served a total of little over six years in the Congress of the United States. And in between, I've run for various positions unsuccessfully, but with each one of those adventures, lack of a better description, it's made me even appreciate more what we have as a country, but how special Hawaii is. So I'm always gravitating back home and running for office here. But what my stand in Congress has shown me is it's no different whether you're in the Congress of the United States or you're in the legislature here, it's all based on relationships. And many of the relationships that I developed in Washington, they're still there, many of them are still there. Some have moved on, we've got a governor among our ranks. And but it really is important to always stay focused on what is important and it's important for us because we're so far away and people tend to forget about us and some people just think we're an exotic place to go vacation. And so they don't think about us as having the same kinds of problems or the challenges that everyone else. Well, we're in paradise. That's how it is, we don't have a challenge. That's right, no, it is true. Even when you like, for example, nationally you hear the hate crimes that are occurring and of course, black lives matter. And then you have the focus on Asians and then recently on the people of who would be considered or consider themselves Jewish. And that's something that I didn't think we'd see, especially in big cities like New York and Los Angeles. I didn't think you'd find that because that's not the way you expect people in urban cities, especially big cities to act. But instead we're finding that and it makes you wonder what's going on? What's happening to our country? We do need to talk more about that. And I mean, it's a very pleased and proud Maisie Hirono, our Senator, that have that role with that Asian act. That was very, very good work. And we need to hear a lot more from her about that. And Hawaii needs to be seen as more of a resource for how to get as far as we have here and how we're going forward with the lo-ha for everyone and how that works. But that's another topic for another time, so to do. Yeah, I just think that your service at the state level and then also at the federal level with the Congress, that just gives you such a broad view and such a big oversight of how all of these things work. Am I exaggerating what has- No, what you are saying is and thank you for saying that but what Congress did for me personally is that not only do you have the opportunity to develop the relationships, but it also makes you understand the process that the country goes through. Because like I tell people, there is no greater legislature in the world than the Congress of the United States. And to watch how issues get developed and even with the lack of bipartisanism, I think that's the best way to put it. Even with both sides of the aisles, sort of digging in and not coming together, it still manages to address certain things. Like for example, you started with talking about the American Rescue Plan, but remember there are various versions of how we would come out of COVID or how we would help people health-wise or the business-wise all before ARP. And I'm talking about what we call CARES Act, and which was in March a year ago, 2020. And then in December, remember I call it CARES Act II because CRRSA is a mouthful, but that was in December. And both CARES Act I, as I call it, and CARES Act II were under the Trump administration. So you know that you have that. And of course, we have the majority of the two branches of government, but it was still a situation where one majority. And then, but it was still to show you how even in that situation, people could come together and people could begin to look at things. That's a wonderful point to make. That really is given our dividedness now. I think it's so good you brought up the history of those other federal funding packages because Hawaii already has received a big chunk to solve some of its tremendous challenges, which were gonna be very hard on people in terms of layoffs and furloughs and just not being able to meet those payrolls given our dependence on the way our tourism and the way our economy works. I mean, the state can get so close to the bone so fast, which is a little bit disturbing. I mean, there are other states like us. I mean, Alaska kind of is due, because they desert, they take tourists too and depend on that trade, but to get so close to the bone so fast. And then for you to say how wonderful it is to be at that federal level with those resources and that capacity to come to policymaking decisions that are beneficial to the country, but to be able to draw on the resources of that, to be able to put together a 1.9 trillion bill that is gonna take all this money out and distribute through the country is just enormously, incredibly wonderful. And that's one of our part of the greatness of the country is that it has been productive enough to have that kind of capacity, financial capacity. So I would imagine that that was pretty awesome too to see it all work like that and to feel like there's not the bottom. I mean, like here in Hawaii to get so close to the bottom with people not having enough to eat is very disturbing, but to know that we're in the bigger picture with health like this ARP or ARP Act maybe it is called the ARP. I haven't heard it said as many times as I should have, but it's, well, I wanted to bring down that 1.9 trillion which is of course going to many categories of me throughout the country and the purpose is of course to combat COVID-19 itself and then to also ameliorate the impact of the virus and the pandemic on public health and the country's economy and all the state's economy. So all of the categories of the states have been given portions of this 1.9 trillion package. But just for example, to bring it down to earth, I feel pretty high. I mean, like the education was given for the country 122 billion and that's still just a huge, huge amount with further our 50 states and territories. But for the state of Hawaii, the education portion was roughly about 552 million. So almost half a billion dollars to go. Stephanie, the other thing that you have to focus on is the fact that when we had CARES Act one, it was like 2.2 trillion and CARES Act two, if I remember correctly, was just under, it was about 900 billion, so just under a trillion. And in each of those bills, there were education components but only in CARES Act one and in this ARP, that was passed to March of this year, do you have any grants directly to the state and counts? And so the first one, I believe Hawaii received in March of last year, 1.25 billion dollars, of which though, 380 some odd went directly to the city and county of Honolulu of that. So it was about 800, some odd million that went to Hawaii. In the second bill, in CARES Act two, there were no direct grants and that was a major point of contention between the Democrats and the Republicans and basically President Trump who said he's not gonna give any more monies directly to the state. This recent ARP with President Biden, Hawaii got about 1.6, Hawaii directly, got about 1.6 billion dollars. And that's, and when you add everything together with the states, the other counties, I think it adds up to about 2.2, Honolulu, I guess, getting the other lion share almost $400 million. Having, the reason I bring that up is because what I think a lot of people don't realize is education is a separate category. So it's not in that. Education had its own. So education, for example, in what we call CARES Act one, was about 45 million. CARES Act two, it went up to about 120 so long million. This is just elementary education by the way. And in ARP, elementary education, which is called ESSER, the ESSER funding went up to about 412 million. This does not come out of the state portion. This is just in education. And when you were talking to me earlier about it, you said, how is it that, you know, Hawaii is able to survive with education? And the reason is definitely because interestingly, in CARES Act one and CARES Act two, and ARP has a different version of it, there were specific provisions written in it about education. One was called continued payment. In other words, when you receive the funds, it requires not only the education, well, actually for us, it's the Department of Education. But remember, we are unique because we're the only state-run education system in the whole United States. So they have to do a certificate, basically to sign to the Department of Education nationally and said, okay, we agree to these terms. And the terms that they want, and by the way, the governor also have to agree because governor was given discretionary funds in education as well, and also the university system. But we're just talking about elementary ed now just because those numbers are fresh in my mind. They have to agree, and the one and two version to what they call continued payment. In other words, you have to agree that you would make every effort, an extraordinary effort to make sure that you don't cut anybody's pay. And in addition to that, they have what is called a maintenance of effort, which says that the state, in order to get these funds have to agree that they will continue to fund the Department of Education. The state will continue to fund the Department of Education at basically the same level, which is one, and two, in a proportionate level. And by the way, that's also found in ARP. Yes. Yeah, and ARP has an additional condition, which is very relevant for Hawaii, and that's called maintenance of equity, which is to ensure that, for example, Native Hawaiian education continues to benefit. And of course, on the mainland there, we're talking about the Native Americans and the Alaska Natives. So when you look at all of that, education had a different life cycle, so to speak. And that's why, yeah, we was able, you were able to see what education managed to do for everyone else. As I, I don't know if you recall, initially, the governor said he was going to insturlose and cutbacks and layoffs, remember that? Yeah, I mean, that was getting down to the bone and trying to put to perspective. When this came in and with education, and then he said, there'll be no furloughs and layoffs. So as a result of this funding source that came in, I attribute that to the reason why all of the public sector employees did not get the technically the layoffs and didn't do this because of the fact that not only did education have this huge amount of money that came in directly for education, but in addition to that, the governor had his funds and he could use that for the other employees, not specifically covered by the, by ESSA, Education. Well, I think that with that, what is it that the education has like a 2.1 billion budget each year, but it's mostly coming from funds that weren't lucrative during the pandemic. I mean, clearly an example of the impact of COVID so that that was gonna be a dire straight situation without this influx of money. But I think that there were, like you say, there are these conditions on the money. And so the, and then there's lots of them for those ESSA funds. I mean, like you go directly to public schools and 90% of that money has to actually be put into the field and reported that way. So I think, you know, they're certainly considerable. I don't know if these are not necessary, are these regs already or they're just coming right out of the statute? I don't know, but I think that there are lots of interesting conditions. Now, do you think that the department and is, I'm sure they're ready to do this. What do you think about how this process is gonna move? So you talked about that earlier in understanding, you know, more about how these decisions are made and how they work. So how do you see that this department so dependent now on this, these funds and the state not having the, you know, the resources to handle that. But do you see them being able to manage all this? Cause isn't this like a new assignment? Do they have the staff? Do they understand how it works? How long is it gonna take? And will the public be able, is the public gonna be informed and will they see? So can you comment on how you see that might go? You know, what's interesting is that, for example, because it's government funding and it's government, it's a government entity and it's a law, technically the agencies are to implement rules, which helps you understand them. And it's, you know what, it's the federal registry and it's the CFRs and they're supposed to do that to sort of give you guidance. What happened in CARES Act one is that the state of Washington, and I just noticed because I served with Governor Inslee, he sued then the Betsy DeVos, Secretary DeVos, cause she interpreted the first CARES Act one, I think of giving almost 50% of the funds to private schools. And he sued saying, you can't do that, we need all the money. And then they stopped and she did it by a rule. And he sued and he said, you can't do that because you have a rule. That's interesting. Because that certainly would be an issue, it could be an issue here in Hawaii. Oh, definitely, because we have such a high percentage of students who are actually in private school. So you can imagine, I was curious because I was beginning to watch the private schools and wondering if one, they understood that this was Betsy DeVos's interpretation or two, whether they would say anything from that. But it was really a fascinating thing because now there is an interim rule, interim final rule implemented in April for how you would do ARP under education. And this is what's causing some of the issues now because I think the Department of Education here is saying, we got to do surveys, we got to do all of that. But if you really, if you read it, what they're saying, what the feds are saying is, okay, we're giving you two thirds of the money. But for the final third, you have to show us how you're complying with all these different conditions. So it's in the rule and whether or not or how the DOE actually implements it, we have to wait and see. But to me, the way it's written is two thirds of the money is out there. And I don't believe as of this date that the Department of Education has expended even CARES Act two monies and definitely not ARP monies. And I think they still have some leftovers from CARES Act one. So that's why there's a huge chunk of money out there. Which is a very positive situation to be in, especially me. But like what you're saying, in one of the Publication Student Department of Education, with the LEAs or the local ed agency schools returning to in-person instruction, the public schools, there has to be a plan and it must be within 30 days of receiving the funds. All these rules have these specifics in them. But they have to get public comment before... Well, that's the latest rule implementation. But Stephanie, remember Hawaii is unique. We don't really have LEAs. We only have a SCA, a state education agency. Because we are the... Yeah, so it's... And so I know for the Department of Education it's always been a matter of going to the DOE and saying, hey, this doesn't apply to us. We don't function like the rest of the United States. So we should have an easier time because it's on one level. And everything is uniform. In other words, it's a policy that's implemented throughout the state. So I would like to think that that's something that makes it easier and we're able to do it. And I think the Department, if my information is correct, has sent out surveys and done that. But the question is gonna be if you read it, the Department said we're giving you two thirds of the funds but for this final third you have to show us. And we'll see. But I think it's not as great a situation as somebody make it out. Well, I mean, I think that it is stepping up to a challenge that they may not be even staffed for this given circumstances and the money decreasing. We've been in this crisis for a year. So I think that this is a challenge, which is, and yes, and I agree, it all falls what you're saying because we are just an SEA. It all falls on the Department. And so I wonder, do you see that there's gonna be any remedy here to help them through it? Or what do you think? Are they gonna- Oh yeah, Stephanie, I think it's because like I said earlier, if you haven't expended all of CARES Act one and you haven't expended CARES Act two, I think that's a huge hunk of money yet that they can expend for specific purposes. And arguably you could say, two thirds of the other money. So I think they would be able to do that. It's just a matter of deciding, I think this is more of a jurisdictional issue between does the legislature decide how you expend these funds? This was my next question. There's no superintendent. Yeah. That is the, is that gonna move then? So is the department gonna be working more hand to the glove with the legislature? It gets even more complicated than that because under our constitution, the policy makers for education is the Board of Education, which isn't the Department of Education. So you have all these different layers of who to deal with and, you know, the legislature is always gonna say, we're the ultimate policy makers. And we were talking offline earlier, that's where if you look at Bill 613, which the governor may decide to veto or whatever, you know, that bill is set out so that it says from CARES Act one, basically, these are what's gonna be funded from CARES Act two, this is what's gonna be funded and from ARP, this is what's gonna be funded. So arguably, this plan or the survey doesn't apply to anything else other than the last third of the fund. So of ARP. So, you know, there's, I would assume the legislature would say, we have the right to determine everything else. And that's gonna be the issue. That's, there you go. Well, we are out of time and I'm- Amazing. Sorry, because we're just getting down to the meat of it. So we might have to talk more again as things develop and we are apprised of how this is gonna be managed because that's really the basic question here for this show is does that 613 Bill solve the problems or? So anyway, you've been most generous to come and share how it works and give us that a little handle on what the challenge is for the people that are making these decisions. So thank you very much, Colleen and look forward to having more talk with you about it in the future. But this is the Think Tech Hawaii show that is the state of the state of Hawaii. And we have been speaking with Colleen Kanabusa who is the former Congresswoman and will continue with her public service work here in Hawaii shortly in another role. So thank you very much. I'll see you again in two weeks on the next state of the state of Hawaii. Mahalo for your attention and big aloha.