 Aloha, and welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii. Talk story with John Wehe. Today we have a most interesting guest as for those of you who might be familiar with my political career, you would know that I ran and held office as a Democrat, but some of my best friends were on the other side of the aisle. And what I've learned over the years is while we may have different perspectives on things, we all seem to end up in the same place, which is doing something good for the people of Hawaii. So today I'm very pleased to welcome as our guest representative Jean Ward, who is the Minority Leader Emeritus. And what the title of our subject is, the other side, the Republican viewpoint, getting past platitudes. So welcome, representative. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you, Governor Wehe. It should be a talk story with Governor Wehe, because first, John, I wanna tell you, thank you for all your service to Hawaii, not only as governor, but when you started out in the legislature, no, even before that in the Constitutional Convention, you were a pioneer on Hawaiian issues. And I know we still got a long ways to go and we're working together on DHL to get those 28,000 housed, but thank you for all your service and you're still now on the public eye. So... Yeah, I'm trying to be on the public Zoom, but not too much in the public eye. But anyway, representatives, thank you so much. I wanted to begin by, and I want to be depth into what you're doing for Hawaiian hope. But before we start, well, let's start there. What are you doing for Hawaiian hope? We, you know, after, you know, okay, okay, I've been in for 12 sessions and like the first eight of those, all I heard on the floor for Hawaiian issues were, Pablo, we'll get back to you. Well, that's good. And so it was like anything that had to do with social, cultural or protocol issues, the Hawaiians were first up and running. When it came to political and economic issues, it was like, well, you know, we're not really ready for you yet. You know, help us sit up. You're not at the table yet. And it got to the point where, hey, hey guys, come on, this is the whole, whole sculpture. What, why are we giving all this lip service? So what I started doing was looking into what was going on with the promise that was made a hundred years ago under the Hawaiian homeland. By Prince Coheal. By Prince Coheal. Who when, when you do visit my office, that's going to be the first four by four photo you're going to see and beautiful framed portrait of John Coheal in my office. It was having looked at what was going on in paper. And then what I did, and this is probably the most enlightening part of it, I interviewed every living director of the Hawaiian homes department. Oh, wow. Every one of the people who I interviewed, totally dedicated, totally loved the idea. But they said, you know, the way that we've been funded and organized, it's just not working. So I was very disappointed, but in the process of writing this book, well, handbook actually called Broken Promises, it pointed out some of the things that we should be doing. Have you got a copy you can show us? Just hold it up. If I can pull back a second, I've got one right here. Your initiative is very worthwhile and to have somebody who is committed as you are, who even went so far as to put his findings in a handbook would be, it is a very positive thing, you know? So, people can pick up, pick this handbook up at your office. At the office that they can call, we can mail it, but it's called Broken Promises. And basically it's what's going on for the last 100 years of promising, because there was 23,000 acres that were given, that Prince Cahill wanted to put the Hawaiians back on the land. And I don't want to get into the sovereignty issue, but you know, this is a promise that was made because the Hawaiians basically had lost their land. And this was to put them back and rehabilitate them. But what happened when the statehood came, the Congress, which was initially responsible, turned it over to the state of Hawaii. And you know as governor, if there was not a whole lot of money that came for the Hawaiian Homes Commission, but now after a hundred years, we've got 28,000 on the waitlist. And the sad thing is after a hundred years, when he put 9,800 on the land. The sad thing is that you've got other statistics, you got 9,000 plus people on the Hawaiian Homes state land. And you've got 28,000 people on the waiting list. You know what the silver lining in that is though? I was thinking about it. And I was thinking to the extent that you can call it anything, that the fact that you've got 28,000 people who are qualified, still. And that says a lot because as you know, when the act began, most of the, not Kohio himself, but a lot of the people who went along with him in putting it together, just thought of believe that this was going to be a short-term measure. Eventually, nobody would qualify and hence the blood quantum of 15%. No, Kohio wanted zero blood quantum. I mean, if you're Hawaiian, you're Hawaiian. He didn't want to have all of this 50%, which it is now and as you're noting, it's being diluted to quite an extent. But we still got 28,000 people who qualify. Well, that's amazing. And it is in 2000 and 2021. The projection is there's probably 50,000 qualified, 28,000 are on the list. There's probably another 20,000, some thousand that are out there. But the point is we are so slow at getting at it and in any hearing, and I'm on the Hawaiian Affairs Committee, Judiciary Hawaiian Affairs, I asked Bill Eila, the director, I said, Bill, what, give it, or was it the deputy director? When given what you've said you can do, when will we clear the wait list? He won't believe what he said. It was 2288. And I said- Oh God. By that time, hopefully we'll have 100,000 people who qualify. They mean my goodness. So- You know, I know you put together a pretty good committee of individuals who've been working on this. I know that you got some, oh, well, you got a good cross-section. It's a steering committee actually, Guff. It's with the Astoner, Peter Apo, Peter Savio, who, you know, Peter Savio, he's a holy guy because his heart is more Hawaiian than some Hawaiians. I'm talking, he's so dedicated. In fact, he's almost done his own private, I don't wanna say DHHL private, but he's gonna do, if he gets the land in Makaha, have it only for Hawaiians, only for 50% Hawaiians, and show how easily you can do a development if you get all the leadership and the variables lined up and you can do less than $200,000. So Peter's got a great heart for the Hawaiians and people say, hey, what, you're a holy guy, right? I said, well, I got a little bit of Chinese Jewish and other, how these things are needed. Why are you doing this? And I said, you know, I'm an old JFK Peace Corps guy, and I used to quote him saying that, you know, we're not in the villages of the world because the Russians are there, we're trying to make friends for America. We're doing this because it's the right thing to do. Well, I was gonna actually start with this, you know, and begin with, I don't think a lot of people out there know that when you're talking about JFK and going into the villages of the world, you're an old Peace Corps volunteer. And that was Peace Corps trained in Hilo, Hawaii, Waianui Nui up in Waikiuka. And I'll tell you, that's a life-changing experience, but you go to those villages because it's the right thing to do and doing these issues with the Hawaiians because it's the right thing to do. I, okay, I'm a faith-based guy, but I'm telling you, Liliu Kalani's prayer, governor, are still active. They never had shelf life that has expired. So there's gonna be, at some point in the future, justice and equality and housing and all the other things. I don't know when it is, but look, we're just trying to push the ball and advance it. And I knew you have been an ex-official member with Aus Tender and Peter Apo and Peter- Well, I have been privileged to be able to drop in from time to time and get briefed. And I've gotta say, I appreciate your commitment. I appreciate your willingness to try new ideas. And just come full circle on that. And anybody who wants it, they ought to take a look at broken promises, which is your handbook. And your office seems to be wide open to receiving any kind of input. So people, if you got it, take it to representative Ward. I wanna tell you though, before we get too far down on this, that I'm sure the people that are on the homesteads appreciate it. But you started out as a Peace Corps in Malaysia, right? Yes, and you were the honorary council of Malaysia. Yeah, but I wanna know where you met your wife, who is also Malaysian. She is a Malaysian. And because of the East West center of which you and I sit on the board of directors, there's more intermarriage because of the East West center than probably any other institution, at least in Hawaii that I know of. I think already 50% of the people who go to the East left center end up married. Oh, you're at the East West center. At the Japanese garden. We actually were Obama's parents met. If you over, that's beautiful place, Jefferson Hall, the Japanese garden. I met Felid Love and that's been decades ago, quite frankly. So it's where those kinds of causes, if you will, I think are on the right side of history and Gub, you helping and kicking this off with an oh-ha as you are the progenitor of getting the Hawaiians, getting, as Peter Apu likes to say, getting more political muscularity in the Hawaiian. And the Hawaiians do for office. Gub, it's true. Yeah, yeah, it is it. I wanted to talk to you really, and this is good segue into that because what is interesting to me is as a member of the loyal opposition, you are not only talking about what's wrong with a program, you're actually doing something about it. And I'm sure people appreciate that. And you're doing it about it in a non-partisan way. I've never heard you try to take credit for any of this stuff. In fact, most of the time you're passing it around. Love you very kind in your comments. But look, we're Americans first, we're Democrats second, or Republicans second, or third, or whatever. It's that, we're supposed to be problem solvers, not for what you can get out of it, but what in effect when you're serving the people, what is the better direction to go? And we got a lot of problems. We've only mentioned one with the Hawaiian community and the housing and the other issues, but there's so many problems we keep kicking the can down the road with that partisan politics doesn't really have much of a say or a sway even though we're a super majority. We want to get one party rule in Hawaii basically. Well, that's true. And I think one of the weaknesses about, and this is me saying this as a Democrat, and as I said to my Republican friends, unfortunately not my job to increase their party, but I wish that somebody would. I mean, really, I really wish that somebody would, that we would create a much better opposition party. I mean, we're small, we're not dead, but let's face it, in the beginning, 100 years ago, we owned everything and ran everything. All we've done is basically flip it around and now the Democrats own everything and run everything. It's not- Well, let me ask you this question though. A couple more questions. We'll get ready to answer this question because we actually got to go into a break real shortly, but you just came, and this is a little bit of a curve ball, but you just came back from looking at the mass transit system. Yes, just a few minutes ago in retrospect. Yeah, and I was gonna, when we get back from the, from the commercial break, I was gonna ask you whether or not you had any ideas as to how that could get big. And if you don't, that's really- Is this a two-hour program, is it a two-hour program or what? No, no, I need the short version. We're gonna take a break right now and we will be right back. Welcome back to Talk Story with John Wahee and my very special guest, Representative Gene Ward, who is Minority Leader Emeritus at the University. There you go. You got a PhD. Well, you're getting another PhD. So you just came back from visiting the rail. Tell me, just off the cuff, you know, I know that you could take up the next week talking about all the intricacies of that project, but just off the top of your head, what is your gut feeling about it? You know, it looks better on the ground kicking the tires than it does on all the stuff on paper. One of the reasons why I wanted to go out was to see what in effect they had actually there and being that I rode the metro in Washington, DC when I worked at USAID under the Bush administration, I got to know pretty much how the ins and outs and the flows of the parking. I see, let me start with some of the good impressions. The good impression I had was you can't fall in the tracks, you can't jump into the tracks in front of the train. Most of the places have no guards. This is kind of like a tramway at the airports. When the train comes, these doors open up and it lets you into the doors that are open in the train. I thought that was impressive. Also, you can't jump over the turnstiles because they have also opening and closing glass doors. I thought that was impressive. And the other thing inside of the train, you can see from one end all the way four cars to the other. It's not like the old trains where you got to open the door to get into another car. They open the door to get into another car. So it's really, it gives the impression of being very spacious. But I have a couple of problems. And one of the things I pulled out of my pocket, it was what you read and I read on Sunday's paper, David Shapiro wrote about a million dollar contract that was going to Miss Hanabusa. I said, enjoy, a good friend from the legislature before he did an excellent job. He and his guides said, Joey, is this true? You got a million dollar contract? Well, we only got an opener now for the first 18 months. So it's kind of like not as bad as it was made out in paper. And I think that's my overall impression. You go there, it looks like a very professionally well-organized thing. It doesn't look like the crazy history that we've been giving and know about. But when he handed out the budget, it's still got a 3.4 billion dollar red ink on the projection. That is scary. You know that Frank Foster and that I work hard to bring mass transit to Hawaii many years ago? It was the result of a bipartisan effort. And it didn't, with Frank, it didn't matter what party you belong to, just working with him would be bipartisan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. And I wish we had done it then, but unfortunately, we have to do it. You guys have the money right. You had the whole timing, but now, but what seems to be the other problem is I didn't see enough parking incentives for people from the West side to drive to a place to be able to get parking or sufficient number of parking in order to get on the train to actually be incentivized to use it. So ridership is a concern. And then the last concern I have, which I was not assuaged of in any way whatsoever, is that the operational costs are gonna be about 145, 150 million a year. And there's no way that that's gonna happen. And I said, Joey, you know, it looks like without saying it, you guys are probably gonna come back to the legislature and say, don't lift that 0.5, 0.5, yeah, 0.5% of a GT tax that we have. Oh, I believe that's gonna be permanent, don't you? Exactly. And I think it's gonna be dedicated to keeping that thing running. And that's probably what they made. But, you know, my suspicion has always been that even if we didn't have a real, I have never seen. I'm in go. Yeah, at least not yet. Hey, you're suspicious as I am. But, you know, but again, I remember when Frank and I talked, you know, thought about the 0.5% and which was way back when, but, you know, at that time we were funding at best 10% of the real and the rest was, you know, federal money. Now, one of the things we have been having, one of my, I've been having a series of guests who are kind of unhappy with the public participation in the session. Now, some of that had to do with COVID. You know, guests and some of it. But some of it have to do with just the fact that they felt that issues were just being shut out. What's the Republican viewpoint on those kinds of issues? In fact, one of my guests, Jim Sean was talking about putting together a convocation of citizens to not deal with issues, but to deal with getting more daylight into the convention set. I mean, not the convention set, the legislature. But, you know, Jim Sean is an old Peace Corps volunteer also, so we're all idealistic and very kind of aspirational. I can see how we could do that power of convening to get more sunlight. I found the great irony when we didn't allow anyone into the Capitol unless they had a special invitation and mostly they were lobbyists. But I don't know if you know that since speakers say we have invocations, we have, you know, a prayer at the beginning. So I had to ask Kahoo Kurt Kekuna. Yeah. I was suddenly told that, oh no, he can't come in. I said, wait, you let lobbyists in? You can't let a pastor in? I mean, come on, give me a break. What do you mean? They wouldn't let a pastor? They wouldn't let anybody come in to say the invocation in the House of Representatives. Now, you know, CDC has got contradictory things that they've talked about. We've got it from the, why hate? I mean, yeah, the governor's administration. See, I still see you as a governor. We don't have consistency all the time. So when they say, you know, if you're a lobbyist, you can come in as long as your name's on the list. And I'm thinking, I mean, there's not no pure human being in maybe- Well, you know, that's, for me, that's, I, you know, that's bad optic that- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. Now nobody knows- And I think it's, I think it's just bad politics, period. Because, you know, the legislature actually is a place where you could have a fake-based ceremony and not run into trouble, because it's kind of the responsible for its own procedure. I know you're putting your legal hat on now, but remember there was a guy who was the head of the atheist who would cry out, when there would be a prayer, you're offending my constitutional right, or you're trampling on that. And one day he did that in the Senate and he got tackled by a guy and the Senate got sued for $75,000. And now the Senate has, the Senate doesn't have an invocation. Only speakers say when, I think it was Impine and myself made sure that we stayed with an invocation. And look, if they're not evangelical or they're not, what do they call it? But, you know, you can also have somebody like Pono, like Pono Sham, talking about the values of universal values that are underlying, you know, our society. But I hope that that issue gets worked out. I mean, if you're gonna let lobby- Since the council doesn't do it with the only guys who did it, but up to your general question about should we be opening up more? I think we have to be a model at the legislature. We should have slowly let things open a little bit more. I mean, we even closed the gates. You gotta have a card to get into the parking lot. So I think if we show that, look, we're vaccinated, everybody's vaccinated, everybody feels a little bit more comfortable. We still had to wear our mask on the floor, even when we were speaking. And sometimes that was really hard to hear much of the debate. So I think we have to be role models and get ready for what otherwise it's gonna be a tough session. I mean, we panned ourselves on the back when we did CNADA. We did have the budget balance, but you know who's money that came from is from the federal funds that really saved the day. Right, right. We got people in check and I think we did a, we're doing a pretty good job in terms of promoting the public health. I really feel bad. We didn't do more on small businesses. We kind of threw them a lifeline. It was a bit short, filled with red tape. We're still kind of wrestling with maybe 30 to 40% of our businesses not going back and hiring people. As we speak, we got 70,000 unemployed. We're gonna have a 10%. Next year is gonna be a real trial. Well, let's hope that next year we'll have better news coming out of the legislature for small businesses and for employers. But in the meantime, one of the great people out of know that you were just recently appointed to the East-West Center Board, where I happily serve. Where you happen to be, yes. Yeah, and we've had a few meetings. Well, give me like a two-minute version of what you feel Hawaii could do that would be a benefit to the greater Pacific, not just the state of Hawaii. You really wanted me to get in my Peace Corps idealism. Yeah, I want to show that under that Republican veneer, there is a lurking activist, you know? But those who remember when there was an advertiser and there was a buckbook wall, and I forget the other guy who said, in the year 2000, we should have a ambition for making Hawaii the Geneva of the Pacific, where we solve conflicts, where we bring people together. We share with O'Ponopono and do the things that we can do at the East-West Center. To me, the East-West Center is the epitome of mutual understanding between whether or otherwise 190 countries, multiple languages. And it's a great place for students in their young intellectual phases of development to know who America is and what America's about and then what other countries are about. So I think we've got it in Hawaii, it's kind of a well-kept secret and it's an honor to be in the Board of Governors with you, Governor. But it's where we got to get more known and more engaged in our community. I mean, at the legislature, I would think more people probably in Palau know more about the East-West Center than we do here. Well, you know what was shocking was that statistic where we used to have 4,000 people on scholarship and now we only have two. And you know, I think that's something both you and I feel that needs to be worked on. Can I underline that one? Do you know how many China has of the Pacific alone? No. I think it was 1,000 or 10,000. One of the other State Department appointees said that they have, we have two and they've got either 1,000 or 10,000. I mean, huge, we're not carrying our own, we're not carrying our weight at all. So it's rather unfortunate that we have this great study, live together, work together and we just don't seem to get, as compared to the Fulbright, for example, they get a budget, Governor, of 120 million. Yeah, and we were changing that. We're changing that. I think we got to have you back for another show. So I'll tell you, maybe committed to this. I talked too much. No, it's, we are done. And I want to thank you so much, Representative Ward, for agreeing to be here, to talk to us about what's going on, not only in the legislature, but about Hawaii's role in the Pacific Asian Rift. So thank you, Aloha. Aloha.