At times, an article for Politics Hawaii with Stan Fichtman comes together because of a question from a friend. In this case, an email asking about the recent “retirement” (or resignation) of Hawaii State Senator Gilbert Keith-Agaran, who represents Maui.
What is needed to respond to a crisis of this unimaginable magnitude is a big, bold, and outside-the-box idea to both protect Lāhainā from speculators and, in turn, protect those who call Lāhainā home and want to rebuild and return.
With the 2022 election, the generational ratio of leaders in Hawai‘i changed, dropping the sole millennial and putting the majority of power in the hands of the X-Generation.
About this time of year in most states, the administrative and fiscal year for most governments flips on July 1.…
The “formal end”, therefore would be May 11, 2023, and if one day a politician wants to make a new holiday for Americans to celebrate, that would probably be the date it’s pegged to. This is the date that all other rules were removed, and formally reverted to “full normal”.
In the category of “turn down the political volume and maybe you’ll hear something interesting,” this blogger has found it thought-provoking to see how our current spate of leaders in Hawai‘i and Honolulu are revamping their public messaging.
Hawaii’s new governor has no problem calling out what he feels is bad behavior, naming names on who has behaved badly and using the mechanisms of both the press and the system to extract action. On the Senate side, it should be clear by now that whatever rulebook was used to “hide the dirty laundry” aint going to work too well with this administration.
So if Governor Green thought it was going to be a cakewalk to outline and implement a vision of Hawai‘i, it only took 27 hours for him to find out it might not work that way.
With the new year now here (2023), the governmental entities that make laws and influence the making of those laws are hard at work. One of those tasks seems to be putting out lists of priorities, based on what they see as important.
And maybe, in the end, that is the way he wanted it to be, anti-dramatic, no emotional upset, nothing that could rile up people one way or the other.