State of stasis: The annual State of the State address from Hawaiʻi governors is a chance to share visionary thinking and propose bold ideas. All of the House and Senate leaders are in the House chamber, along with county mayors and council members and many more VIPs.

But Gov. Josh Green on Tuesday used the opportunity to recite a litany of past accomplishments and reiterate what we already know: affordable housing and cost of living remain our greatest challenges. Meh.

There was no inspirational rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s stunning slew of executive orders, for example. Green left that to his attorney general, Anne Lopez, who announced Tuesday that she and at least 22 other attorneys general are challenging the president’s move to end birthright citizenship, claiming it violates the constitutional rights of children born in the United States.

Green didn’t even say much about his signature policy desire for a climate change mitigation fee to raise $200 million a year to combat rising tides and dwindling natural resources. He pretty much left it up to the Legislature to make the call.

Green told reporters later that he did not want to speak on wonky policy details.

“I kind of thought very hard about what a State of the State speech would be two years in after getting elected,” he said. “And in my opinion, a State of the State speech at two years should be a calibration of what the people have actually asked us to focus on, which has been housing and affordability. And to share what we’ve actually done and to see where we will go for the next decade. So most, I think, valuable is to see what will happen to people’s capacity to stay in Hawaiʻi.”

As for Trump, Green said the state was preparing for possible cuts to entitlements and infrastructure funding.

“That’s, of course, the consequence of an election, right? Policies end up changing,” he said, a point echoed by Senate President Ron Kouchi and House Speaker Nadine Nakamura in interviews with reporters after Green’s speech. The focus must be on Hawaiʻi, all three leaders said, though they may well disagree on the path forward.

Mayor laments new arrivals of the homeless: The county mayors made their annual pilgrimage to the Capitol on Tuesday to brief the House and Senate money committees on their requests for state funding, and Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi took the opportunity to voice some frustration about Oʻahu’s homeless population.

Blangiardi detailed some of his administration’s efforts to get its hands around the homelessness problem.

He described projects such as the launch of the Crisis Outreach Response and Engagement Program (CORE) that responds to crisis calls, and Waikīkī Vista and the Iwilei Resource Center that aim to make a dent in the homeless problem.

Add in the various state kauhale projects around the island, and “now we have places to take them,” Blangiardi said of the homeless population. He predicted the new housing and accompanying services will take 1,000 people off the streets in 2025.

But Blangiardi said the Waikīkī Business Improvement District reported last week that 78% of all the homeless cases it accepted through its Aloha Ambassadors program are “newly arrived individuals.”

Waikīkī and Chinatown “look completely different than they did before, but with this influx of new arrivals, it’s posing a real challenge for us, and you need to be aware of that,” Blangiardi told members of the Senate Ways and Means and the House Finance committees.

He did not make a specific request at the hearing for financial support to cope with homelessness, and the neighbor island mayors were surprisingly short on requests as well.

Change is hard, especially in the Senate: Good-government advocates, The Blog included, are pushing hard for the Legislature to reform itself through changes in the rules by which it operates. These could include, for instance, limiting the draconian power of committee chairs.

Safe to say the House has been more responsive than the Senate.

House members spent the better portion of an hour talking about their rules last week before adopting a new set of them for 2025-2026. The Senate spent a few procedural seconds (attracting zero comments) doing the same.

Before the session began, the new House leadership formed an advisory committee and surveyed all 51 representatives for suggestions on rule changes. While the House took some flak for not granting public access to its rules committee deliberations, its approach generated positive vibes even from reform-minded representatives who were pushing for more changes than they got.

The Senate’s changes amounted to reorganizing some of its standing committees.

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And when the Senate’s top-ranking Republican (OK, there are only three in the chamber) had the temerity to introduce his own resolution calling for a ban on senators and their staff drinking alcohol at the Capitol, it was rejected in a voice vote.

For the record, a search for “alcohol” turns up nothing in the new House rules, either, which might be surprising after reports surfaced of a raucous, after-hours party involving House Democrats in 2023.

The fact is the Department of Accounting and General Services already prohibits alcohol at the Capitol, so what good would a new rule do?

Mic drop: Hawaiʻi House Republicans, who held a press conference last week announcing their legislative priorities, were forced to hold it at 8:30 a.m., thanks to a noise restriction when using the Capitol rotunda.

The Department of Accounting and General Services prohibits the use of sound systems, music “or any other activity considered disruptive” to the conduct of business of the Legislature from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

“We were surprised,” Deborah Zysman, executive director of Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network, told The Blog. She said the restriction will make it difficult to hold its annual rally for island keiki, which has traditionally been held in the morning.

“We can’t wait until afternoon, because that interferes with nap time and when parents pick up their kids from school.”

DAGS, which requires a special use permit to hold events in the rotunda, said the rule has been in place since 2010. Who knew?

Pooling their resources: Speaking of DAGS, noise and the rotunda, there’s still loud construction work going on at the reflecting pools and adjacent areas of the Capitol.

“We made an adjustment to the work schedule that will allow noisy and dusty work to continue after hours and weekends to complete the plaza work by April,” DAGS told The Blog. 

Waterproofing of the ʻEwa pool is about 70% complete. Next comes waterproofing of the mauka and makai plaza areas, and then it’s on to the Diamond Head side. That’s scheduled for completion in June.

The total cost to date for the rotunda-level work is just over $10.3 million, and the project is set to finish in late 2026. When it’s all over, the goal is to have a waterless pool art installation.

Mercy, mercy: The news that President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the life sentence of Native American activist Leonard Peltier was welcomed by U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz. He has spent the past few years pushing for clemency, including as recently as last month.

“If there were ever a case that merited compassionate release, Leonard Peltier’s was it,” the Hawaiʻi senator said in a press release.

Schatz said Peltier, who is 80 and has been behind bars for nearly a half-century, is in poor health.

Peltier was convicted of murdering two FBI agents, but Schatz said “many civil rights leaders and legal experts have called (the 1977 investigation and trial) unjust, including the U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the case.”

BREAKING NEWS
‘It’s finally over’: President Biden Grants Leonard Peltier Clemencyhttps://t.co/0kHo4rHyOQ#INDIGENOUS #TAIRP pic.twitter.com/ybUyDvsAih

— Indigenous (@AmericanIndian8) January 20, 2025