NEWS ARTICLES
Photos: Lawmakers, lobbyists and citizens kick off the 2025 legislative session
Hawaiʻi Public Radio
Jason Ubay, Mark Ladao, Ashley Mizuo, Sophia McCullough
January 15, 2025
Senators Mentioned:
Senator Ronald D. Kouchi
Senator Chris Lee
Senator Dru Mamo Kanuha
Senator Jarrett Keohokalole
Senator Lynn DeCoite
Senator Herbert "Tim" Richards, III
Senator Troy Hashimoto
Senator Henry J.C. Aquino
State representatives and visitors attend opening day of the 2025 legislative session at the Hawaiʻi State Capitol on Jan. 15, 2025. Jason Ubay/HPRNew year, new legislative session.
Lawmakers, lobbyists and engaged citizens gathered at the Hawaiʻi State Capitol in Honolulu this morning to kick off the 2025 session.Some of HPR's news team spent the day alongside attendees. Here's what they saw.
Live mele and hula kick off the 2025 Hawaiʻi House of Representatives on opening day.Jason Ubay/HPR
Visitors to the Capitol are required to go through security screening.Jason Ubay/HPR
Community members gather in the open-air Hawaiʻi State Capitol courtyard on opening day.Jason Ubay/HPR
Members of the United Public Workers union attend opening day.Jason Ubay/HPR
From left to right: House Republicans Garner Shimizu, Diamond Garcia, Elijah Pierick, Lauren Matsumoto and David Alcos III on opening day of the 2025 legislative session. (Jan. 15, 2025)
Jason Ubay/HPR
First-year Rep. Matthias Kusch of Hawaiʻi Island, center, with Gov. Josh Green on opening day. Green appointed Kusch to the position after the death of former Rep. Mark Nakashima.Jason Ubay/HPR
Rep. Nadine Nakamura addresses the state House as speaker for the first time on Jan. 15, 2025.
Nakamura said investments into more affordable housing will be top of mind for lawmakers as they try to address the cost of living.Mark Ladao/HPR
First-year Rep. Kim Coco Iwamoto cast the lone "no" vote against new House Speaker Nadine Nakamura on opening day of the 2025 legislative session. Ashley Mizuo/HPR
Hawaiʻi House Speaker Nadine Nakamura speaks to the press. She is the first woman to lead the chamber. Mark Ladao/HPR
Attendees wait to enter the House and Senate chambers at the Hawaiʻi State Capitol on opening day of the legislative session on Jan. 15, 2025. Senators and representatives have their offices on the second, third and fourth floors. The governor and the lieutenant governor are housed on the top floor. Jason Ubay/HPR
Senate President Ron Kouchi addresses senators and attendees on opening day of the legislative session on Jan. 15, 2025. Kouchi said many of the state’s problems can be traced back to one thing: housing. Mark Ladao/HPR
Senate Minority Leader Brenton Awa addresses the chamber on opening day of the legislative session on Jan. 15, 2025. Awa called for more support for locals and Native Hawaiians. He also criticized local leaders, pointing at Gov. Josh Green’s offer to house Los Angeles fire victims in hotel rooms, the Honolulu City Council’s recent 64% pay raise, and Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s “ownership” of local media. Mark Ladao/HPR
Senate President Ron Kouchi, flanked by Senate Democratic leadership, speaks to the press on opening day. (Jan. 15, 2025) Mark Ladao/HPR
Representatives and senators usually open their office doors and offer food to community members roaming the hallways. Mark Ladao/HPR
The Hawaiʻi State Capitol building from across S. Beretania Street. Jason Ubay/HPR
Tags
The Sunshine Blog: Here’s When It Pays To Be A Doctor — And A Governor
Honolulu Civil Beat
The Sunshine Blog
January 10, 2025
Senators Mentioned:
Senator Lynn DeCoite
Senator Jarrett Keohokalole
Senator Chris Lee
Senator Donovan M. Dela Cruz
Senator Henry J.C. Aquino
Senator Troy N. Hashimoto
Senator Donna Mercado Kim
Dr. Green goes to Washington: Hawaiʻi Gov. Josh Green has become the leading voice — at least for the moment — opposing the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Our very own Dr. Gov. Green was all over Washington, D.C., this week, lobbying senators and telling anyone who would listen about the time in 2019 when he led a medical mission to Samoa to fight a raging measles outbreak only to find Kennedy and his anti-vax campaign had gotten there first.
The country had experienced a drop in vaccination rates before the outbreak, driven in part by fear after the death of two infants in 2018 who had received a measles, mumps and rubella vaccine that had been improperly prepared.
But Kennedy has also been blamed for exacerbating the problem.
In 2019, just months before an emergency was declared, he traveled to Samoa and met with prominent anti-vaccination activists on the island. And then during the height of the outbreak, when children were dying, he sent a letter to the prime minister questioning whether it was the MMR vaccine itself that had caused the public health crisis.
By the time the outbreak had run its course, thousands of people were sickened and 83 died, many of them children.
Green, who is passionate and articulate about the problems that come when people refuse to get vaccinated, had an op-ed published in The New York Times this week and was featured in a Washington Post story and on cable media including CNN and Fox News. And he was trending on social sites.
“I have no personal animus toward Mr. Kennedy on a lot of his policies,” Green told Civil Beat’s Washington correspondent Nick Grube, who caught him as he was sitting on a plane waiting to take off back to Hawaiʻi. “I just have an absolute objection to having the secretary of Health and Human Services be against vaccines, and he is. He can say what he wants to try to mitigate the damage, but everyone knows about his vaccine skepticism.”
Green met with nearly a dozen senators from both sides of the aisle, including Democrats Dick Durbin of Illinois and Ron Wyden of Oregon. He was reluctant to name anyone else, he told Grube, because they were worried about political fallout.
And besides, Green told Grube, he was really there on official state business like checking on federal cash that could and should be headed our way and other things of interest to Hawai‘i.
While in town he worked with two different advocacy groups, 3.14 Action and Protect Our Care, to push his message and coordinate meetings with lawmakers. Already 3.14 Action has featured the governor in one of its advertisements opposing Kennedy.
Green, who The Blog has heard would really like to be the country’s health secretary himself one day, told Grube he anticipates returning to D.C. in the future to crusade against Kennedy, including testifying before Congress if the opportunity allows. He’ll even talk to Donald Trump.
Check, please: Wednesday is Opening Day of the 2025 Hawaiʻi Legislature, so that can only mean one thing: state legislators will rush to hold campaign fundraisers before the opening gavel falls because they’re prohibited by state law from holding organized fundraisers during session.
The Blog is referring specifically to Sens. Lynn DeCoite and Jarrett Keohokalole, who asked for donations at Capitol Modern Tuesday night. It’s conveniently located right across Richards Street from the Hawaiʻi State Capitol.
On Wednesday night Sens. Chris Lee, Donovan Dela Cruz, Henry Aquino and Troy Hashimoto passed their hats at Bishop Museum.
Aquino, DeCoite and Keohokalole are planning ahead — they’re not up for reelection until 2028.
House bills proposing to end the acceptance of all campaign contributions during legislative sessions (not just at organized fundraisers) passed that chamber unanimously in the 2023 session but were not heard by the Senate.
Civil Beat opinion writers are closely following efforts to bring more transparency and accountability to state and local government — at the Legislature, the county level and in the media. Help us by sending ideas and anecdotes to sunshine@civilbeat.org.
The mysterious making of the rules: The rulebook dictating how Hawaiʻi lawmakers conduct the public’s business is a big deal. The Blog has long contended that many of the most urgently needed legislative reforms could be accomplished with simple rule changes.
With the start of a new biennium Wednesday, new rules must be adopted. Actually there are two rulebooks, one for the House and another for the Senate. And how they approach the task says a lot about the differences between the two chambers.
The House formed a four-member Advisory Committee on Rules and Procedures that has been reaching out to representatives for their suggestions regarding the rules.
The Senate, meh, not so much. Here’s how Senate Judiciary Chair Karl Rhoads puts it:
“I think the Senate tends to be a little more, what’s the word I’m looking for? You’re a senator. If you have a problem with something, you need to raise it. We’re not necessarily going to go look for you to solicit your concerns.”
Rhoads says he’s heard nothing about possible new Senate rules in the lead-up to the new session.
Which, come to think of it, is not so different from what the House is doing. Its advisory committee is meeting in private, much to the consternation of reform advocates like Gary Hooser.
The former senator writes in his own blog that current House rule No. 20 requires that the committee’s meetings be conducted openly:
“Every meeting of a committee of the House … held for the purpose of making decisions on matters referred to the committee shall be open to the public.”
But House Judiciary Chair David Tarnas points out that this House advisory committee is just that — advisory.
“They’re not making decisions,” Tarnas says. “They’re recommending and they’re advisory. The decision-making itself is when we vote on it.”
That will presumably occur soon after the Legislature convenes. That’s when we’ll know if either chamber is serious about limiting the power of conference chairs, preventing the money committees from controlling non-fiscal matters, eliminating anonymous bill introductions and so forth.
Hope springs eternal: And speaking of being serious about reform, a hui of good governance groups gathered at the Capitol Thursday to launch what they called “Good Government Lobby Day.” The goal of the Hawai‘i Alliance for Progressive Action, Our Hawai‘i, Common Cause and Clean Elections Coalition is to advocate for government reforms that will strengthen transparency, accountability and fairness in the legislative process.
“Welcome to your House of Representatives,” Rep. Della Au Belatti said as she welcomed some two dozen folks to Conference Room 325. She said she had not seen such a level of reform activity in her 20 years in the Legislature, adding that a revived Good Government Caucus at the Legislature is already working on bills.
Rep. Kim Coco Iwamoto said the new energy for reform began in 2022 when two lawmakers were arrested for and later convicted on bribery charges. There had been a culture, she said, that allowed Ty Cullen and J. Kalani English to get away with corruption. But there’s a lot of new blood in the Leg today.
The groups, which spent half of the day meeting with other lawmakers, are pushing for a range of reforms including making public testimony on bills available early, doing away with anonymous bill introductions, taking non-financial bills out of money committees, enacting term limits and establishing full public financing of campaigns.
Women of the house: One-third (or 32.43%) of the total number of state legislators in the 50 states and territories in 2025 are women, a slight increase from just a few years ago.
The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada are at or above the 50% mark of women state legislators, the highest representation nationwide.
How does Hawaiʻi do? Compared to many other states and territories, pretty good at 40.8%. Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia, for example, each have legislatures with less than 20% women members.
The Hawaiʻi House of Representatives now has its first-ever female speaker, Nadine Nakamura. Two women have led the state Senate, Colleen Hanabusa and Donna Kim.
County, state lawmakers to talk priorities during next Waimea Community Association town meeting
Big Island Now
Big Island Now
January 8, 2025
Senators Mentioned:
Senator Herbert M. "Tim" Richards, III
A new Hawai‘i County Council was seated and got to work in December 2024 with a few new faces at the table, including one who represents Kohala.
Opening day of the 2025 session of the Hawai‘i Legislature is next week on Jan. 15.
Waimea Community Association invites residents of the Kohala and Hāmākua communities to come learn about the priorities of their elected local and state government officials directly from them during its next town meeting.
The meeting is from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday in the Jerry Nelson Conference Room of the W.M. Keck Observatory headquarters, located at 65-1120 Māmalahoa Highway, in Waimea.
State Sen. Tim Richards, who represents Senate District 4 (North Hilo, Hāmākua, Kohala, Waimea, Waikoloa, North Kona), and state Rep. David Tarnas, who represents House District 8 (Hāwī, Hala‘ula, Waimea, Makahalau, Waiki‘i, Waikōloa, Kawaihae, Māhukona), will speak about policy issues and priorities, their committee assignments and how the community can participate in the state legislative process.
Two members of the Hawai’i County Council are presenting as well — Hāmākua Councilwoman Heather Kimball and newly elected Kohala Councilman James Hustace.
Hustace will speak in person. Kimball, chairwoman of the Hawai‘i State Association of Counties, will attend via Zoom from Washington, D.C., where she is participating in briefings with presidential and congressional leadership.
There will be time for questions and answers.
Community members are urged to submit questions prior to the meeting by email at waimeacommunityassociation@gmail.com.
Questions can also be shared in person or on chat by those watching the livestream on Waimea Community Association’s Facebook page and will be be addressed as time permits.
The spotlighted nonprofit organization for January will be Hawai‘i County 4-H Equine Council represented by Kohala educator and horsewoman Fern White.
Also participating in the meeting will be South Kohala police Capt. Roy Valera and Community Policing Officer Justin Cabanting with an update about public safety news and events.
Community members can attend in person or watch the meeting livestream on the Waimea Community Association Facebook page or YouTube channel.
A recording of the meeting also will be available on Facebook and YouTube for later viewing.
2025 Waimea Community Association leadership
Waimea Community Association recently elected new leadership for 2025.
Former vice president Mary Beth Laychak was elected president and former president Nancy Carr Smith was selected as vice president.
Other officers for the new year include newly elected secretary Makela Bruno and re-elected treasurer Victor Tom.
Board members are Patti Cook, David Greenwell, Lani Olsen-Chong, Riley Smith, Ryan Ushijima and Chris Wong.
Email Waimea Community Association President Mary Beth Laychak at waimeacommunityassociation@gmail.com or click here for additional information about the upcoming town meeting or the association.