Honolulu 3rd-Worst City to Start a Business
Best States for Nurses? Hawaii Ranks 47th
Hawaii Child Support Hearings Now Virtual
Alaska Air reports softening demand, cuts hundreds of flights from Honolulu’s airport, HNL
PBN: … Flight data analysis shows that Alaska Airlines is reducing its flights offered out of Honolulu, even as Hawaiian flight options hold steady….
read … Alaska Air reports softening demand, cuts hundreds of flights from Honolulu’s airport, HNL
A quick look at the top lobbyists during Hawaii’s current legislative session
ILind: … A total of 512 individual lobbyists registered for the 2025-2026 biennium. The list ranked by compensation is very top-heavy, with only 14 (2.8%) receiving more than $50,000 in compensation from their employers or clients during the reporting period (January 1 through February 28). In total, the top 14 highest earning lobbyists represent about one in five of all organizations hiring lobbyists, and accounted for 39% of total lobbying fees paid.
At the top of the list, and far ahead of the next highest earning lobbyist, is Michael Iosua, an attorney with the firm of Imanaka Asato LLLC. He represents clients through his firm, and also through an independent lobbying firm, MK Advocacy Group LLC, co-owned with Kimberley Yoshimoto, also an attorney with Imanaka Asato. The two are listed as partners in the Imanaka firm’s Government Relations Law group. Iosua, a former UH football player, was a member of the Stadium Authority and was required to file a financial disclosure report, which reported ownership of 50% of MK Advocacy Group.
In the second spot, with just over half the lobbyist fees earned by Iosua, is Ann Chung, and her company, Chung Associates LLC. Although using the “associates” label, Chung is the sole lobbyist registered with the company. She reported seven clients, including the client that paid the highest amount of lobbyist compensation during the two month period. That client, Waika Consulting LLC, (misspelled Waikai) reported spending $65,000, (is Roberta Cabral's geothermal scheme) ….
Waika Background:
read … A quick look at the top lobbyists during Hawaii’s current legislative session
June 30 Deadline Looms After Legislature Cuts Aloha Stadium Funding
ASN: … Despite the latest hurdle in building the new Aloha Stadium, a preliminary development agreement (PDA) between the New Aloha Stadium and Entertainment District and Aloha Halawa District Partners, the developer of the project, was signed on March 31. A June 30 deadline between NASED and AHDP to execute a contract remains on track. Sadayasu called the PDA "definitely a step in the right direction."
Sadayasu says the hope is for demolition to begin promptly after the contract between NASED and AHDP is executed.
"We continue to to negotiate the contract documents and we'll do our best to find a way to move the project forward and approach the legislature next year with a project underway, hopefully demolition, which would take 10 months, starting in August," he said. "By the time the next session opens in January 2026, we will have something demonstrable to say OK, we've moved forward to fulfill the intent of the legislature that appropriated funds back in 2022 that there is a project to move forward, and so let's get access to those funds."
In light of the $49.5 million shortage, NASED and AHDP are considering alternatives that could involve making the initial seating capacity 20,000, with room to add more seats in the future.
"We still have to sit down with the developer and figure out what opportunities they can do. We are discussing building a stadium that can be then retrofitted...maybe the seating capacity goes down," Sadayasu said, "and then you just plan for building future (seats) when additional funds come available. So, that's still to be determined."
read … New Aloha Stadium remains on track despite $49.5 million hurdle
What The State Refuses To Say About Fatal Child Abuse Cases
CB: … A federal law requires states to release information about how they handled child maltreatment cases ending in deaths. Hawaiʻi’s reports raise more questions than they answer ….
read … What The State Refuses To Say About Fatal Child Abuse Cases - Honolulu Civil Beat
Here's How Many Kids Are Unvaccinated At Your School
CB: … If a 95% immunization rate is the threshold needed to protect unvaccinated students from a measles outbreak, data from Hawaiʻi public schools paints a worrisome picture.
Roughly two-thirds of public elementary schools in the state reported vaccination rates below 95% last year, though it’s unclear which vaccines those students were missing. At 69 Department of Education schools, more than 5% of students had waivers exempting them from getting any vaccinations at all.
The state’s total measles vaccination rate is 90% — lower than Texas, which reported a 94% vaccination rate for its kindergarteners last year and has seen more than 600 measles cases since January.
Vaccination rates vary dramatically from school to school in Hawaiʻi. At 21 middle and high schools in the DOE, less than half of students were fully vaccinated last year….
read … Data Dive: Here's How Many Kids Are Unvaccinated At Your School - Honolulu Civil Beat
Honolulu EMS Chief Says Medics Aren't Safe In Oʻahu Prisons
CB: … The city’s emergency medical workers will no longer care for sick or injured inmates in state correctional facilities, and instead will require the prisoners be brought outside for treatment, according to the director of Honolulu Emergency Medical Services.
In a letter dated Thursday, EMS Director Dr. James Ireland said the change came in response to recent incidents at the Oʻahu Community Correctional Center and Hālawa Correctional Facility “where EMS crews did not have adequate prison staff in attendance for their safety.”
“Effective immediately EMS will not be entering facilities and will receive patients outside, either at the gate or building,” Ireland wrote.
The terse, two-paragraph letter did not explain exactly what triggered that dramatic change in procedure….
“That’s pretty shocking to me,” (I am very happy) said Wookie Kim, legal director for the ACLU of Hawaiʻi. “From our perspective this very much seems like an abdication of responsibility on the part of the city. The whole point of EMS is to respond to medical emergencies wherever they occur.” (opportunity to push for federal consent decree mandating the release of 100s of hardened criminals onto the streets) ….
HNN: Agreement reached after sources say ambulance crews left alone with inmates
CB: Prison Officials Agree To Make Sure Honolulu Medics Stay Safe In Facilities - Honolulu Civil Beat
read … Honolulu EMS Chief Says Medics Aren't Safe In Oʻahu Prisons - Honolulu Civil Beat
Supreme Court Allows Pearl City tenant back in to public housing after son attacks neighbor with baseball bat
ASN: … A Pearl City woman was wrongfully evicted from public housing after her son attacked a neighbor with a baseball bat, the Hawai‘i Supreme Court has ruled.
In 2016, Blossom Bell moved into the Hale Laulima housing development in Pearl City under a rental agreement with the Hawai‘i Public Housing Authority. Bell remained at that apartment for years, until a violent incident in 2020 shattered the peace.
According to court records, Bell’s son Daniel Lambert was visiting her apartment on May 12, 2020. That morning, Bell’s downstairs neighbor — one Aaron George — was watering plants outside and attempted to spray water near Bell’s window in order to remove a bird’s nest.
The nest “did not budge,” read one report by the HPHA, and George returned to his plants. But Lambert, having noticed the water being sprayed near his mother’s window, peered outside, and shouted at George until he “furiously stomped down the stairs” to confront him.
During a shouting match between the two, Lambert reportedly entered George’s apartment, leading George to grab a metal baseball bat to chase him out. Instead, Lambert seized the bat, wrenched it from George’s hands and swung it at George’s head.
HPHA reported that Lambert then shouted a few more obscenities and left, leaving George collapsed on the ground “surrounded by blood hemorrhaging from the top of his skull.” Eventually, George’s child called the police.
George was transported to the Pali Momi emergency room, and reportedly told police that he had suffered a subdural hematoma.
Lambert was charged with first- and second-degree assault, and burglary. The assault charges were dismissed in 2023, but he pleaded no contest to the burglary charge, resulting in a four-year deferred sentence.
However, because threatening the lives of other tenants is a violation of the HPHA rental agreement, the authority served Bell a notice of violation informing her that her tenancy would be terminated. Bell requested a grievance hearing with the O‘ahu Eviction Board, which found that Bell’s violation was “incurable” — e.g. could not be corrected — and upheld HPHA’s termination notice in Feb. 2023.
Bell challenged this hearing multiple times: first she appealed the matter to the First Circuit Court, which led to a second grievance hearing with the Eviction Board, which in turn led to a second appeal with the Circuit Court. That second appeal reinstated Bell’s lease.
HPHA then challenged the court’s decision to the Intermediate Court of Appeals, eventually bringing the matter to the state Supreme Court.....
read … Pearl City tenant wrongfully evicted after baseball bat attack, state Supreme Court rules
HB212: Homeless ‘Return-to-Home Program’ dies in conference committee at Legislature
MN: … A bill to establish a permanent “Return-to-Home program” failed to make it out of a House and Senate conference committee on Friday as members as the 2025 Legislature sprinted toward the finish of this year’s lawmaking session on Friday.
The amended House Bill 212 would have repealed the current pilot program, which has returned more than 100 homeless people back to their home states. The bill would have established a permanent program with funding for continued operations….
read … ‘Return-to-Home Program’ dies in conference committee at Legislature : Maui Now
Knife-Wielding Homeless Psychos Terrorize Residents
CB: … The campers rarely come into contact with the well-off, but sometimes the encounters that do occur are dramatic, including home break-ins and people discovered sleeping in outbuildings.
Colleen Kelley and her husband, Judd Klinger, said they saw one man stealing a 12-pack of beer on their home security camera.
She also has had to call 911 many times to get the police to evict a man living unsheltered on her driveway, using an area by mailboxes as his toilet.
Klinger said he walked into his yard one morning to find a stranger sleeping in their children’s treehouse. He called up to the sleeping man, “Can I help you?” He said the just-awakened man jumped about 8 feet out of the beach heliotrope tree and chased after him with a long knife.
“He was shouting, ‘I am going to kill you,’” Klinger said. “I ran into the house and slammed the sliding door shut. He began beating on the glass on the door with his knife saying, ʻThis is my house. Get out or I will kill you.’ I called the police. The officers arrived in five minutes, wearing protective bullet-proof vests. They disarmed and arrested him.” …
It makes for what Colleen Kelley’s brother, Charles Kelley, calls “a scary situation.” He said he tried over many weeks to get a mentally disturbed woman to leave his garage, where she would come regularly to bang on the door to be let in, saying she had to help a baby who was in mortal danger.
There was no baby, he said, but the woman kept coming back to urge him to do something….
“We were in complete coordination,” said Mike Lambert, director of the state Department of Law Enforcement. “We have never done anything on this scale before. The ultimate goal is to keep the homeless from returning to Diamond Head. We are hoping to send the message that their loose dogs, the drug use and the fire hazards they are creating by doing things like cooking meth on the crater’s dry ridges as reported by one resident cannot be allowed continue.” …
ASD: Homeless sweep at Diamond Head likely short-lived
read ... Denby Fawcett: 911 Calls Led To Recent Clearing Of Diamond Head Camps - Honolulu Civil Beat
Pharma to Slaughter: Federal Judge Sends Hawaii Case Against PBMs Back to State Court
BG: … The Hawaii government will continue its lawsuit against the country’s top pharmacy benefit managers in state court after a federal judge on Monday determined the issues presented are specific to state health plans and regulations.
CVS Health Corp.'s Caremark has failed to show a causal connection between federally directed conduct and actions taken to shape prescription drug coverage in the state of Hawaii, Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi of the US District Court for the District of Hawaii said in her ruling granting Hawaii Attorney General Anne E. Lopez’s renewed motion to remand the case. This connection is required under the ...
read … Federal Judge Sends Hawaii Case Against PBMs Back to State Court
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