Council remembers colleague and friend who served with grace and kindness

News Release from Maui County Council, Oct 27 2025

WAILUKU, Hawaiʻi (Oct. 27, 2025)— The Maui County Council, while still mourning the loss of colleague and friend Councilmember Tasha Kama who passed away last night, must now consider the process of filling the vacancy in her council seat to meet legal requirements that allow only a short time frame for council action, Chair Alice L. Lee announced today.

Under Section 3-4 of the Charter of the County of Maui, the council has 30 days to fill the vacancy or leave it to the mayor to fill. Lee, who was at the hospital yesterday prior to Kama’s passing, is assured her colleague wanted the council to fulfill its duties to residents.

“Tasha was a quiet force and a woman of deep conviction and limitless compassion who led not from ambition, but from aloha,” said Lee, who holds the seat for the Wailuku-Waiheʻe-Waikapū residency area. “She believed that service to others was a privilege, and she modeled that for us every day through her steadiness and humanity.”

Given the limited period for the council to act, Lee said she intends to schedule a special council meeting for Nov. 3 to reach agreement on procedures for the replacement process. The meeting will only be to discuss the process and not potential successors, she said.

A later special council meeting would be scheduled for next month with the goal of adopting a resolution to fill the vacancy for Kama’s seat in the Kahului residency area. The process would closely follow steps taken by the council in 2002 to replace Council Chair Patrick Kawano, who passed away while in office.

Qualifications under Section 3-3 of the County Charter require a person must be:

• a citizen of the United States,
• a voter in the county and
• a resident of Kahului for at least one year.

Also, HRS § 831-2 states that a person sentenced for a felony, from the time of the person’s sentence until the person’s final discharge, may not hold public office.

The Maui County Charter provides for a special election to fill a council vacancy only when a councilmember’s unexpired term is at least 15 months. In this case, just over 14 months remain in the 2025-27 council term.

Kama was in her fourth council term and chaired the Housing and Land Use Committee this term while serving as the council’s presiding officer pro tempore.

For more information, call the Office of Council Services at (808) 270-7664.

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