 Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of Condo Insider. My name is Jane Sugimura and I'm going to be your host today. And we're continuing along with our series on the 2022 elections, because I think it's really important for the listeners and the viewers to get to know the candidates who affect everything in their daily lives. And I'm so pleased to have with me today as my guest, speaker Scott Psyche. Hi Scott, thank you for being my guest today. Hi Jane, thanks for inviting me today. Yeah, you know, I think it's just really important and you know, there are so many issues that affect people who live in condominiums. And you know, I get people who call me and they grumble and they say, well, what can I do? I say, well, you got to call your legislator or your council member. I mean, that's who you got to do and they got people in their office that do nothing but handle constituent concerns. And you know, a lot of people don't even know who their elected officials are. So, you know, I'm standing on my soapbox and saying, you know, as a concerned citizen and somebody who cares about what happens to themselves, you got to, you know, get to be best friends with your elected officials. So that's why, you know, I'm having, you know, people who, you know, candidates who are running for office on my show, you know, for a series of condo and cider shows. And, you know, so that people can get to know you, you know, because- I think it's important rather than sit back and grumble. I mean, they have to, you know, just become, you know, interested in who their elected officials are, find out what they stand for, find out who's going to support them and actually go out and vote for them, you know? And so I mean, it's really, really important rather than sitting back and letting things happen to you and then, you know, grumble about that and then it's kind of too late. So anyway, tell us about your background. I was going to say, it's kind of funny that you refer people to me because when I received complaints, I always tell them, call Jane Sugimura, she knows everything about condos. See, that's why it's good that, you know, we interact, you know, because now you know, you know, you know to send them to me and I know I can send them to you if they got, they want to grumble about something that, you know, got passed. So tell us about your background. So I was actually born and raised on the Kailua side and then went to the UH and I got my bachelor's degree and my law degree there. And so I do practice a little bit of law on the side but I've been a house member since 1994 and I've been the speaker since 2017. And you know, to let the viewers out there know you were for a good part of your career in the legislature, you were a dissident. Yes, so even though I've been here a while, half of my time in the house was spent as a dissident member of the House Democratic Caucus. So that was actually a great experience because it teaches you a lot about the process and, you know, why you're here and what you want to accomplish if you have the opportunity. So it's actually a great experience. Okay, and you know, your district that you're running, why don't you tell us why you're running for a reelection this year? What are some of the reasons? So my district currently includes the Kakaako area, Makali and the parts of downtown. But with the redistricting, the new district has removed the Makali section. So what's left now is all of Kakaako, the Sheridan, Paba'a area and a portion of downtown kind of closer to Pali Highway. So it's a very condensed district. It's basically a high-rise and walk-up district. But it's just very dense because this is where the population growth occurred on Oahu over the past 10 years. It's basically Kakaako and then also on the Leeward side. But it's just been great representing this area. And over the years, I've gotten to know a lot of people here and being able to work with a lot of residents. And what I found that even in a high-rise district, people are very concerned about the day-to-day issues that affect them and their families. And so we've been able, I've had the opportunity to work with residents on all kinds of issues here. Repairing sidewalks, repairing roads, building a new crosswalk, funding a new dog park. We've just done a lot of projects with the residents here because the bottom line for them is that they want a community that is safe and affordable and that provides them with opportunities. And like you mentioned, you have so many condos in your district. And I wanna point out to our listeners that the many years that I've known you, you've been friendly to us and we haven't always agreed on issues, but you've been very supportive of the condo issues. And I want to tell you how grateful we are to have a friend in the legislature like you. Yeah, well, we really enjoyed working with you, Jane. I think that it's great because you're in tune with the concerns, you understand the law, you understand the practicalities and you also understand that sometimes, especially with these condo issues, they're very complex. And sometimes they take some time to resolve, but everybody is working together to do that. So that's just great. And we had some bills that went through the legislature and that did affect condos. And if you don't mind, I'd like to go through maybe two or three of them. One of them was this emotional support animal that was sent a bill 2000 to 002. And that did pass out and the governor did sign it. And this is something that, and it's very emotional because it involves people with their animals. And a lot, some buildings are no pet buildings because they passed bylaw amendments where the pets are not allowed. And in fact, my building is one of them. We have a no pets amendment. And so I'm always having to deal with owners who are saying, how come we got all these dogs in the building? We're supposed to be in no pets building. And we have to kind of explain to them, well, it's a disability issue and they don't understand. They don't understand about reasonable accommodations and we have a state and a federal law. And so, if you can tell us about Senate bill 20002. Sure, so that law was approved. We did approve that in the last legislative session. The governor signed it into law as Act 154. And it basically is a bill that provides that it is a discriminatory practice to exclude someone's assistant animal. So, this bill was done in recognition of people who do need the support services from their pets. And I think it's particularly relevant to this condo district where, I think there's probably 25% of the units in this district have probably have a pet, whether it's a dog or a cat or something else. And there's a lot of dogs in this area. And I think people rely on their dogs for support. So, I think this is a great bill and it's kind of about time that we approved that. And we didn't have any legislation on it, but you were involved in the medical marijuana bill a couple of years ago. And that's also in that same area of discrimination and making reasonable accommodations. And so, do you wanna talk about that as well? Sure, that's another bill that we approved. The medical marijuana law was approved by the legislature in I think it was the year 2000, it was in the early 2000s. And it wasn't until a few years ago that we approved another set of legislation that allowed for the implementation of the medical marijuana program or the medical cannabis program in Hawaii. And one of the things that we did have to address was the law that would require condos to provide accommodation for residents who do have prescriptions and do need to use medical cannabis. We were running into situations where condo residents were not being allowed to use that bill's prescriptions. So, we had to make it clear in the law that there has to be an attempt to accommodate these residents. Okay, well, and it has worked out pretty well for the... It's just a matter of kind of explaining to the residents that these are bills that relate to disability. I mean, it's not that we're pro-smoking or pro-pets. It's these issues all revolve around disabilities and having to make reasonable accommodations to people with certain disabilities to allow them to have the assistance animals and the medical marijuana. Absolutely, there's basically a medical purpose for both of those areas. And this is to allow them to enjoy, so that they can enjoy and have a peaceful enjoyment of the premises where they live in the event that there's no pets provision. And smoking provisions. I want to talk about another bill. And we had support from many house members on this. It was Senate Bill 2196, which was deferred. This was the electronic vehicle charging station bill. And I think the intent was good. And this is the kind of situation where I know that the state has got a policy to reduce the use of fossil fuel energy and to promote the sale of electric cars so that it would reduce what the carbon footprint is. That's what the word is, the terminology is, right? And there's a policy, there's a state policy. We understand that. But then I think this bill represents a misunderstanding of how condominiums work. Because the first bill that came out was that it was supposed to require condominiums to come up with a plan to put charging stations at every stall in the parking garage. And it was like, why would we do that? Not everybody has an electric vehicle. And the parking garage is a common element. And why would you make the owners who don't have an electric vehicle pay for charging stations that nobody's going to use? And I think it was well intended because the purpose I think was to make people think about, wow, what are we going to do when we have all these electric vehicles and we have condominiums that don't have charging stations? But when we first started this dialogue, the statute changed about when they allowed electric vehicles in condos. I mean, there was a, and I think it's HRS 196 or 197. It says that the condominium association cannot prohibit an electric charging station being installed in a parking stall. But if the owner of the vehicle wants to install the charger, they got to pay for it. The association doesn't have to pay for it. And that's fair. But people who don't live in condos don't understand that it's expensive. It's when they built a garage, the electric cables that they put into the garage are only for certain purposes, to handle the lights and the electric gates. There's not enough electricity going into the building, to what do you call it, to service an electric charging vehicle, electric charger on every stall when you got like 300 stalls in a parking garage. And so the cost of retrofitting that is huge. And when you don't have 100% of the owners or the residents who have electric vehicles, why would you do that? Why would you even plan on doing that? And then what this bill opened up was a whole dialogue saying, okay, but you condos, you got to figure out what to do with the people who have electric vehicles. And so we said, okay, why don't we put, and somebody was saying, well, we could make people put it in their guest parking. But guest parking is usually on the outside of the building. And so what's to stop somebody from across the street to come over to your building and park in the charger that the association has paid for to charge their electric vehicle. Because there's no way you can deny access. So how do you deny access? How do you put an electric vehicle charging thing on association property and still limit it so that only the residents of the building can use it? You don't want the guys across street coming over and using it. And so it opened up a whole big dialogue. But the bill that was introduced didn't work. And then when it got amended, I think the amendment said that as of January 1, 2023, no building permits were going to be issued unless you had charging stations in all the parking, and that didn't even make sense either because why put charging stations in a parking stall when you don't have 100% of the residents having electric vehicles? And when you look at the technology, I mean, HECO has got the chargers, one charging machine that can do multiple vehicles. And who knows? By 2040, we might even be able to do it remotely, instead of having a... And so the technology is evolving. And so I mean, there's a lot of discussion. I think what this bill did was it kind of opened up the discussion and we started talking about, okay, how do we do it? Because a lot of us really, honestly, I know I never thought about it. Never thought about, well, how are we going to accommodate these people who want to do it? Because right now we've been saying, if you want to put a charging station in your stall, fine. Go ahead, do it. You pay for it, right? Yeah. So, I mean, but this bill did generate a lot of discussion. And even amongst ourselves, it raised a whole lot of issues, which I never even thought about, because it didn't... We didn't have to think about it. But I have to say that we were very grateful to the House members who supported us. In defeating this bill because it just wasn't workable. And so I do want to thank your colleagues for helping us with that. Yes, you're right. I think this generated a really good... So no pun intended, but it generated a lot of discussion on this issue that's really important. I think as you mentioned, the state, we did approve a law in the year 2014 that requires a 100%, 100% renewable mandate for the state of Hawaii by the year 2045. So we're looking at every opportunity to meet that requirement by the year 2045. And I think vehicles is... The electric vehicles plays a big role in meeting that goal. And I think for those who live in condos, I mean, there's just... There's so many dynamics about it because some people live in older buildings that never contemplated EVs, right? Some people live in newer buildings where no EV stations were built. And that's why this bill was amended to require that new buildings provide EV charging stations. But I think there has to be... There has to be... We have to really brainstorm this because I think it's going to require a combination of not just some kind of accommodation within high-rises but also outside of high-rises. There should be more charging stations made available to the general public at other venues. The example that I always give is HECO on Ward Avenue, which is part of my district. They have two stations in their parking lot that's available to the public. And I don't understand why HECO can't provide more charging stations at a place like Ward Avenue. There should be more charging stations because a lot of the time when you drive by, both of the stations are being used and it's very popular. So we have to find all kinds of ways to allow people to charge their vehicles. Because I don't think... I think if you had an adequate supply of stations outside of condos, condo owners would go to those stations and charge their cars there. If they're convenient and accessible. So we have to take a macro approach to this issue. You're right. And so I'm leaning towards the thing about if we could secure an area on the condo property in the common areas where outsiders cannot get in. Maybe you put in gates and give fobs to residents to get in because you have outdoor guest parking. And so they can have access. And they put charging stations there and maybe let people use a charge card. Right. And with the advent of technology, I mean, these kinds of stations are going to develop over time. And I think they'll have those kinds of security safeguards built into them so that you can limit access as well. So I think you have to watch the technology as well for the traffic. Because right now the technology, they have technology where you can do a full charge in 30 minutes. Right. So you can get a bunch of them and set them up in a secure area where only residents can go to it. I think that's a better idea than trying to say you've got to put a charging station in every parking stall in the garage. To me, that makes absolutely no sense whether it's a brand new building or an existing building. The cost involved with that is just humongous. You can also cost efficient. And I think with some cars, you can also use a, you have to adapt it, but you can use like a regular electrical cord that you plug into an outlet in the wall. But as you know, condos don't have outlets in the common areas, right, for the most part. So that's, you know, that makes it challenging. Yeah. Well, why don't we go on to another build? There's House Bill 2272. And that was what we called the omnibus bill. And Aaron Johansson, Aaron Johansson did an outstanding job. I mean, he had, he had the stakeholders, we had Zoom meetings, you know, before the hearings. And he asked some really, really good questions. And then he beat us up on some other issues. But, you know, Aaron was just fully involved with us. And that's why we had this one bill. Instead of having all these separate bills, we figured, okay, if you can put it all in one bill, we'll call it the omnibus bill. And it kind of did some cleanup on issues. Like, like, you know, with the kind of collapse that happened in Florida, we had some people who wanted to beef up our reserves. And Hawaii has got one of the best reserves law, you know, reserve study laws in the country. And, you know, and where the condominium collapsed in Florida, it wasn't mandatory. In Hawaii, it's mandatory. Condominiums are required to do reserves, have reserve studies, set aside money. And, you know, it is mandatory. And we beefed it up this time by, you know, expanding the items that are included in the reserve studies instead of 20 years, it's 30 years. Because that way you catch pipes, which was a big, you know, controversy in the last 10 years that, you know, some buildings have to replace their pipes. And there was no money in the reserves. And then people started beating up on their boards. Like, how come you guys didn't know? And how come you didn't set aside money? Because pipes are supposed to last 75 years. Who knew that they would fail in 40 years? Right? And wasn't it Macy Hirono? Macy. It was Macy Hirono who started, and she beat us up back in the early 90s. And it was, she was, because she was getting calls from the constituents who bought into a condo and then they hit with a special assessment for a new roof. And it's like, I just bought into this condo and how come I got to pay $10,000? And Macy said, and then finally, you know, after I think three years, and she would tell me, I want you to tell your people, I said, Macy, you know, they don't listen to me all the time. She says, I want you to tell your people that this has got to be mandatory. It can't be voluntary. Some buildings did it. Some buildings did not. She says, if you guys don't get your act together, I'm going to make it mandatory. And to her word, she did. She made it and it is mandatory. But what we didn't have is we didn't have time limits as to how often you should do a reserve study. These are some buildings would do it. They would not do another one for maybe five, 10 years. And you know, these things, the reserve study is a tool that is used by the board to determine when repairs should be done. And it's also a tool to kind of keep the board in sync with, okay, these are the things that have to be done, right? And so it comes up every year, the reserve study says, okay, this year you're going to replace this, this and this, according to the exploration of the useful life. And we have money set aside so you don't have to do a special assessment. That was a whole purpose for the reserve study. And you know, when it was first implemented, the DCCA, they hired the UH, they came up with a manual. They went, they went to the neighbor islands. They had seminars. I mean, they went all out to teach people how to do a reserve study, how to do, you know, set up a budget to incorporate the reserve study. I mean, it was really an all out effort. And they repeatedly did it. And you know, and CAI and Hawaii Council and the real estate commission. You know, we every year about budget season, we always have seminars about budget and reserves. And you know, to educate board members as to the importance. But with a House bill 2272, we did be, you know, we expanded the cash flow plan to include items, you know, from 20 to 30 years, we did set a schedule that you have to have your reserve study updated at least every three years. And this is an ongoing controversy. So we're going to have to come back next year. We couldn't decide on the language as to what the specialist is called who does the reserve study. CAI, which is Community Associations Institute, has a certification for something called a reserve specialist. Okay, but that's only a certification as CAI has. And so, you know, typically, you know, an architect can do a reserve study, engineers can do reserve studies. And because all it does is you have to look at, they have to go to the building, they have to pick out the components that would go into a reserve study. In other words, things that have to be repaired over, you know, a one year cycle. And then they would determine the useful life and the cost of, you know, those repairs. And so, you know, we really didn't, you know, we really haven't nailed down who is, who can do the reserve study. And that's where the dispute was this session. And we didn't get it resolved. So I'm pretty sure we're going to come back next session. Because that's what I, because I, you know, my suggestion to the proponents is we've got to get this bill out with what we've got. And if we, if the only issue is who is going to be doing the reserve study, I mean, we can come back. We can come back and deal with that next year, right? But, you know, we did get that done. And so we're very grateful to Aaron for his leadership on that. And we did say that, you know, with the developer's public report, it has to include the breakdown of the annual maintenance fees. And it has to include the annual contribution of the reserve based on the reserve study. That's something that was never done, you know, so that when somebody buys into a brand new condo, they have this information, you know. So it's not a big surprise 10 years down the road when, you know, when, you know, they have to, you know, do their first thing. And one of the things that this omnibus bill dealt with is last year, because of the, you know, the pandemic, we have to pass some special legislation because condos couldn't have their annual meetings. There is, there is, you know, statutory language that says boards can have remote meetings. And that was because of the hurricane in Ike and Kauai when, you know, boards couldn't meet. And so we changed the law to say that so long as the board members could hear each other simultaneously, right? The board could have a meeting. So back then the technology was a telephone conference, right? But that applies to board meetings. So during the pandemic, we were allowed to have board meetings remotely, but we couldn't do an annual meeting. And so we got the year before we had some legislation that said we could do annual meetings remotely, and then people liked that. But then the way the law was written, it said only in the case of an emergency, right? Where the governor issues these emergency orders, could the annual meeting be held remotely? So what we did in the omnibus bill is we asked Aaron and he helped us and we got the language in there. But now you can have the annual meetings have done remotely if the owners vote for it at an annual meeting, and they can give the board the discretion. And once that's done, we don't have to have an emergency. You know, if the board wants to do an annual meeting. That's really important because I think a lot of the time when I receive calls from condo residents, a lot of the time they're focused on governance type issues, these kinds of management issues, board-related decisions, board management. So I think we have to, you know, we should, I think this is great to give them flexibility to do something like this. It's, you know, one less set of callers that I have to refer to Jane Sugimora going forward. Okay, well, we're getting close to the end. Can you, I know you were involved with the Chun brothers and you know, the Chun brothers call so much misery to people in Kakaako and apartment owners and small businesses for years. So can you give us an update on, and you were so, you know, so effective in curing that problem? Absolutely. So I haven't always represented Kakaako. I began to represent Kakaako in the year 2012. And you know, about a year after I started to represent this area, I received some complaints from residents about this company that was, had taken over roads and was charging the public to use to park there. And that was the Chun brothers, this Kakaako land company. So you know, was, so I kind of started to look, look into this and what I learned was that how it started was the Chun brothers in 1985 were, had been doing research on, you know, on roads and they stumbled across these Kakaako roads and found out that the original owner of the roads who had left Hawaii in the year 1901 had a granddaughter who was still in Hawaii. So they found the granddaughter who was an elderly woman, an elderly woman who was living alone in a basement in Manoa. And they went to her house a few times to, and finally convinced her to sign a quit claim deed for these roads. And that's how the roads were transferred to the Chun brothers. It's through this quit claim deed, which as you know, doesn't offer any assurance that the person who signed the quit claim deed actually owned the roads, right? So this whole thing was based on a quit claim deed that they secured from an elderly woman, probably under duress, right, in her Manoa basement. So far, you know, going forward, the Chun brothers started to charge for the use of these, of these roads. They would tow cars that were not paying the fees. A group of business owners fought a lawsuit, and I was able to work with the attorney general to join that lawsuit. So a year ago, the court finally ruled in the case. And the court's decision was that these roads belong to the public. They are not private roads. That case, that decision is still on appeal, but I'm pretty sure that the appeal is going to fail and that the Chun brothers are going to lose on the appeal. A few months ago, the attorney general filed a second lawsuit, and this is a lawsuit on behalf of all of the consumers who have paid, over the years, have paid for parking or who have been towed or who have been damaged in some other way by the Chun brothers' actions. And so this lawsuit is basically a class action lawsuit. The attorney general just filed it, so they're working it up. I'm hoping that they'll be successful and also hoping that the Chun brothers have not scrolled away all the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, that they basically stole from people over the past 10 years. Well, thank you very much for that update and thank you for your efforts in bringing justice to the people in Kakak over from the Chun brothers. But we have run out of time, and I'm so grateful that you were on my show today. And so thank you for being here. And I want to thank the viewers for joining us. And, you know, please tune in next week for another episode of Condom Insider. It's the show for people who live and work in condominiums. Mahalo and Aloha. And donate to us at think.kawaii.com. Mahalo.