Outer limits: So here’s something that caught The Sunshine Blog by surprise: Tommy Waters announced Tuesday he’s going to run for the City Council again in 2026. That would be his third election to the council in a county where voters have not once, not twice, but three times made it very clear two terms is the limit.

Waters, the City Council chair who represents East Honolulu, Kaimukī and Waikīkī, used his appearance on Hawaii News Now’s “Spotlight Now” show to announce his campaign plans. He insists that the City Charter clearly allows two consecutive four-year terms and he will have only been in office one and about three-quarters terms when it’s time to run again.

That’s because he won his seat in a special election in April 2019, defeating the incumbent Trevor Ozawa who had squeaked through in the regular November election by 22 votes. But after complaints of ballot irregularities, the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court threw out the November results and ordered a do-over.

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So Waters will not have served two consecutive four-year terms when his current term ends Jan. 2, 2027. If he wins reelection, “technically, that would be my second full four-year term.” Which would end January 2031.

Waters did not return a call to The Blog on Tuesday.

But “there is precedence for this,” he explained on the TV news program. “Remember Ann Kobayashi, she actually served almost 20 years in the City Council, but when Duke Bainum died, there was a special election.”

Kobayashi won that race, completed Bainum’s term and then served two more terms. She previously had held the same City Council seat for six years but resigned from office in 2008 in an unsuccessful bid for mayor.

Waters said other council members have also managed to work around the law, including Carol Fukunaga replacing Tulsi Gabbard when she was elected to Congress and Ikaika Anderson replacing Barbara Marshall after she died in office.

Waters says he decided to run for the City Council again because he’s still got a lot to do. He cited protecting farmers in Hawaiʻi Kai and guarding against overdevelopment, keeping streams clear in ʻĀina Haina and Niu Valley, battling excessive noise and street performers in Waikīkī, and building a pedestrian bridge across the Ala Wai Canal. He also wants to refurbish the fabled but shuttered Queen Theater in Kaimukī.

Ultimately, the voters of District 4 will decide who represents them and for how long, of course. They may not be so agreeable considering that in 1992 they voted overwhelmingly to limit mayors and City Council members to two consecutive four-year terms. In 2016 they voted overwhelmingly to reject extending those term limits another four years. And in 2020 they voted overwhelmingly to limit the city prosecutor to two four-year terms, too.

Joshin’ around: NBC News appeared to be having a slow news days Monday or perhaps a pakalolo moment and ran a lengthy report on people named Josh who are making waves these days. Of course, Hawaiʻi’s No. 1 Josh, Gov. Josh Green, was heavily featured with his usual quotable quotes.

“It’s the golden age of ‘Josh,” the news report gushed. “In politics, sports and culture, Joshes are hot. It’s a sign of generational change.”

The Blog will let you read it for yourself but the short version is that apparently no one of any importance was ever named Josh until about 1999 when a couple of baseball players named Josh hit it big in the Major Leagues. Josh Brolin also seems to be a turning point for Joshness about that time.

“Multiple Joshes who spoke to NBC News pointed to Brolin, born in 1968, as the first famous Josh they recalled. But the Josh era truly began in earnest in 1999, when Josh Hamilton and Josh Beckett went No. 1 and No. 2 in that year’s Major League Baseball draft; a third, Josh Girdley, was taken sixth overall. That same year, Bradley Whitford starred as Josh Lyman in the new hit TV drama “The West Wing.”

And this from our Josh:

“Josh was a rare name when I was born in 1970,” Green said, noting that his father is Jewish and mother is Christian and they decided to name him from the Old Testament. “Someone read her fortune and told her that I was going to end up challenging major institutions once I became a man, and so they named me Josh because of the Old Testament passage, which was kind of interesting given where I ended up landing.”

The Blog isn’t really sure what any of this has to do with anything so let us know if you can figure it out.

Les Kondo embraces AI: The news release from Hawaiʻi’s Office of the Auditor last week — on how the Department of Education’s multimillion-dollar effort to cool school classrooms fell woefully short of its goals — was widely reported. Less noticed was that the AC audit can also be consumed as a podcast available over Apple Podcast, Amazon Music and Spotify.

The Audible Audit, as it called, is a brief summary of the office’s reports generated by artificial intelligence. Les Kondo, the state auditor, said the first installment is on the failed heat-abatement effort but more are planned.

“It’s just another way for us to try to get people to be aware of what we’re doing, the reports that we’re issuing,” he said, adding that the cost of production is minimal.

The Blog listened to the audit report, which is just 6 minutes and 37 seconds long — a much quicker digest than reading the entire 50-page audit. It opens and closes with a little ʻukulele music and features a man and woman discussing the audit’s highlights in a conversational, NPR style.

One minor gripe: The pronunciation of Mōkapu Elementary School is clearly an audio splice. Smoothing out the ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi is no doubt something to improve on. But the Audible Audit is a lot more realistic and useful than The Garden Island newspaper’s video newscast (since discontinued) starring fake people named James and Rose (or Kai).

While computer-generated, the Audible Audit is based entirely on the office’s reports. Staff also carefully reviews the podcast to ensure accuracy and consistency.

Kondo said the feedback he has received has included folks telling him that listening to the podcast made them want to learn more about the audit.

“I was worried people would be bored,” he said. “And the feedback we got is no, they were very engaged.”

Let’s look at the data: The latest version of the State of Hawaiʻi Data Book is out and if you’ve never seen one you’re missing out on a wealth of information. This is the 57th edition, having been updated regularly since 1962, and here are just a few factoids that caught The Blog’s eye:

• In 2023, there were 280 centenarian deaths, most of them women.
• The percentage of multiple jobholders in Hawai‘i increased from 7.2% in 2023 to 7.6% in 2024.
• The average annual cost for an infant in a Hawai‘i child care center was $24,115. Costs in other states ranged from a low of $7,696 in Mississippi to a high of $26,343 in Massachusetts.
• The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 2,603 complaints, a 33.2% increase from the previous year. The number of complaints has been steadily increasing since 2021.
• The percentage of people in Hawai‘i not covered by health insurance was 3.2% in 2023, the third lowest in the United States.
• The Hawai‘i Audubon Society spotted over a thousand Pacific golden-plovers last year, 67% more than in 2023 and a promising sign for a species that is threatened by climate change.