September 19, 2025 News Read > Hawaii Free Press

Hawaii Daily News Read

Friday, September 19, 2025

September 19, 2025 News Read
By Andrew Walden @ 5:05 PM :: 1275 Views

HMSA: AI Robot will be 'Single Source of Truth'

UHERO: How Do Industry Views of Tourism in Hawai‘i Compare with Residents and Visitors?

Green Signs Executive Order to improve traffic safety

Retaliation Cost: $1M in Back Pay -- Prison warden wins 10-year legal battle to get job back

HNN: … Kulani Correctional Facility warden Ruth Forbes was fired after being accused of management misconduct, but now she is being restored with potentially more than a million dollars in back pay.

This will be the second time Forbes has won her job back, and her attorney, Ted Hong, said the 10 years it’s taken to fight her way back will be expensive for taxpayers….

Forbes was an award-winning manager when she was picked to be warden of the Kulani minimum security prison in 2013….

But Hong said the department leadership wanted to get rid of her.

“And they kind of, and I’ll say, they railroaded her,” Hong said, “based on questionable facts and circumstances.”

The complaints … began in December 2014, and the department fired her a year later.

But in 2017, the public workers Merit Appeals Board said termination was too harsh and reduced her punishment to a 60-day suspension and she was rehired.

The state then appealed and won in the Circuit Court and fired her again in 2018. Her appeal was rejected by the Intermediate Court of Appeals last year.

But in its ruling Wednesday, the Hawaii Supreme Court reversed the lower courts.

Forbes is getting her job back and entitled to seven years of back pay.….

One justice, Lisa Ginoza, dissented from the ruling writing: “I conclude that given the extensive and serious twenty-one charges that were substantiated, justified Forbes being discharged.”

Hong said during the decade-long fight the state never hired an official replacement at Kulani, so she should be able to return to work soon….

HTH: High court rules that former warden was wrongfully terminated - Hawaii Tribune-Herald

BACKGROUND:

read … Prison warden wins 10-year legal battle to get job back

State makes progress on getting working fire alarms in all public schools

HNN: … At a Board of Education (BOE) meeting Thursday, officials said there are now just two schools across the state whose fire alarm systems are “malfunctioning,” but still operational.

Both schools are on Hawaii Island, Hilo Intermediate School and Pahoa High and Intermediate School, are now on the BOE’s fire watch system. They’ll rely on witnesses to spread alerts about fires.

It’s an improvement from 18 months ago, when 22 public schools statewide were without working fire alarms….

“Many of the fire alarms in the schools are older. The average age is about 24 years. All of these alarms, even though they’re all working, except for those two that require physical presence, to see if they’re on fire watch, even though those systems are there and working, they’re gonna need some repair and maintenance over time,” said HIDOE deputy superintendent of operations Jesse Souki.

There are 18 fire alarm replacement projects in various stages of construction across the state….

read … State makes progress on getting working fire alarms in all public schools

Red Hill Victims Claim Navy Destroyed Evidence In Fuel Contamination Crisis

CB: … The U.S. Navy had samples of the fuel that contaminated Pearl Harbor’s drinking water in 2021 but withheld that information from the impacted families who could’ve used the evidence in lawsuits against the federal government, plaintiffs’ attorneys allege.

Now, it’s too late. The samples from the Navy’s Red Hill storage complex have since been contaminated and are expired, according to attorneys for two victims who filed a motion for sanctions this week. …

After the November 2021 fuel leak, some fuel-water mixture remained in the pipeline for some time and was later drained into barrels for disposal instead of into clean sample bottles, the filing states.

The plaintiffs’ legal team only found out about the samples because Wilson came across a letter online from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency referring to the samples and told her lawyers. …

The Environmental Protection Agency told the Navy in early 2024 to collect the fuel from the pipeline and preserve it, the plaintiffs’ motion states. But Guy Frearson, an employee of AECOM, the Navy’s lead technical contractor and a defendant in the current lawsuit, told the team “we will not be collecting sample [sic] directly from the (aqueous film forming foam) retention line as requested in the EPA correspondence.” …

Instead, the fuel was drained into drums that were not certified clean, meaning the fuel may no longer no be representative of the fuel that leaked in 2021. Making matters worse, so much time has passed that the samples can’t be relied upon anymore anyway. …

read … Red Hill Victims Claim Navy Destroyed Evidence In Fuel Contamination Crisis - Honolulu Civil Beat

Sales Pitch to Legislature: Another Story About What Trump ‘Might’ Cut

HNN: … Partners in Development Foundation (PIDF) serves thousands of keiki and caregivers, but its president and CEO, Shawn Kanaʻiaupuni, said Hawaiʻi nonprofits are bracing for $45 million in potential cuts next year.

(TRANSLATION: This is the 2026 Legislative Budget sales pitch. Stay tuned, there will be many more.)

PIDF said the Family-Child Interaction Learning Funding in Hawaiʻi comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s Native Hawaiian Education Program which has been “zeroed out” by the Trump administration’s proposed budget….

PIDF gets $15 million from the Native Hawaiian Education Program while 72 percent of its funding comes from the federal government.

The nonprofit has funded 38 education programs, like the Tutu and Me traveling preschool, in communities across the state, and it also does workforce development and career training for youth….

Kanaʻiaupuni said the funding is safe this year and its programs are running without disruptions, but with next year’s uncertainty, it’s trying to become less reliant on federal support and may have to consider fees for its free programs if the cuts go through.

Green said the state can help with appropriations for two to three years and use rainy day funds if there are deep cuts to Medicaid or food stamps…

read … Nonprofit warns Native Hawaiian education funding program could be ‘zeroed out’

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