An intense focus on Maui wildfire relief and long security screening lines for the public marked the opening day of the 2024 Hawaii Legislature at the state Capitol on Wednesday.
Leaders of the House of Representatives and Senate devoted much of their respective chamber floor speeches to how state lawmakers will address Maui wildfire recovery needs during this year’s 60-day working session that’s scheduled to conclude May 3.
The focus on Maui was underscored in the House by rounds of applause for Maui residents, county officials and members of Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen’s wildfire advisory committee, including Archie Kalepa, a ninth-generation Lahaina Hawaiian, big-wave rider and former head of Maui’s Ocean Safety Department who delivered relief supplies by boat and personal watercraft to Lahaina in the aftermath of the fire.
House Speaker Scott Saiki (D, Ala Moana-Kakaako-Downtown) began his remarks on the House floor with an emphasis on Maui.
“This year, we begin somberly, with gratitude and determination,” he said. “It has been 162 days since the Maui wildfires, and the shock waves have not yet subsided. To quote Archie Kalepa, ‘Lahaina is bearing the burden and all of Hawaii is feeling the pain.’
“We are thankful and indebted to the many people who were indeed the very first responders, whether that was their job or not, and continue to this day to listen to, provide for and advocate.”
House Majority Leader Nadine Nakamura (D, Hanalei-Princeville-Kapaa) later told reporters that proposed House bills to help Maui that came out of six working groups Saiki created in the off-session were supported by both Republicans and the Democrats.
Individually, the working groups looked at: food, water and other supplies; shelter; environmental remediation; jobs and business; schools; and wildfire prevention.
Saiki later told reporters that the “gravity” of the House’s work to help Maui and the rest of the state is “unprecedented.”
In his floor speech, Saiki said that legislators need to look back to the days before Western contact as a road map for Hawaii’s future.
“More than 250 years ago, Native Hawaiians figured out how to manage their needs in relationship to place,” Saiki said. “There are no entries in the wehewehe Hawaiian online dictionary for the word ‘sustainable,’ let alone ‘self-sustaining,’ but that is exactly how decisions were made, food cultivated, population distributed, natural resources managed. They had to have a circular economy because, as far as they knew, they were the only people.
“As it turned out, many of the folks who came to the islands over the centuries were Pacific people with similar values. There are now many people, and many interests outside of Hawaii, who make decisions independently that profoundly impact us. We have encouraged and become more dependent on economies that deplete our resources. The many conflicts in the world affect us, even if they are far away. … We are fundamentally asserting that not only do we have agency and the responsibility to act, we are also questioning the how and the why and for whom.”
Lessons from Maui
The 2023 Legislature welcomed a record 16 new elected members to the House, followed by two new representatives appointed by Gov. Josh Green.
Wednesday’s House session began with the swearing-in ceremony of two more Green appointees — Reps. Tyson Miyake (D, Wailuku-Waikapu) and May Mizuno (D, Kamehameha Heights-Kalihi Valley).
“Some of us are newer to this chamber, and some of us are veterans,” Saiki said in concluding his floor speech. “However short or long our tenure, our responsibilities take on even greater consequence if we are to not only represent the districts we are individually elected from, not only the state as a whole, but also to center Hawaii and truly be the stewards in the public’s trust now and for the future.
“I would urge all of us to internalize the lessons of the wildfire, of the threatened water, of the pain and courage and aloha of our fellow residents in the face of unprecedented challenges. Hawaii requires much of us, and we can, together, do our part.”
Senate President Ron Kouchi (D, Kauai-Niihau) said in his floor speech that fire mitigation, not only on Maui but statewide, is going to be at the top of the Senate’s action list.
“Fire mitigation must be done in each of our islands,” he said.
Kouchi began his opening remarks two days after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday by quoting part of a speech from the late civil rights leader describing how the lives of everyone are interconnected in ways that include “whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Such words, Kouchi said, couldn’t be more timely given the need to assist “our family” on Maui.
“While not all of us are from Maui, each and every one of us has been deeply affected by what happened on Maui,” he said. “We all know people. We have visited, and we know the devastation and the loss of life and how difficult this is going to be to move forward. But we need to take that first step.”
Trying to address the need for more housing for residents on Maui will be part of this effort, as will be trying to increase the supply of affordable housing statewide, Kouchi said.
For the second straight year in the Senate, there was no opening-day speech from a minority leader because the two Republicans in the 25-member Senate — Sens. Kurt Fevella (R, Ewa Beach-Ocean Pointe-Iroquois Point) and Brenton Awa (R, Kaneohe-Laie-Mokuleia) — cannot agree who should have leadership over the other.
A couple of other points of focus for Senate leadership that Kouchi touched on during his speech Wednesday included continued progress on an effort begun last year to expand public pre-kindergarten classes and working to supply the public school system, which feeds 100,000 people a day, with more locally grown food.
Kouchi said getting more locally grown food into schools will help expand Hawaii agriculture, and in turn reduce the amount of fallow former sugarcane and pineapple plantation farmland overtaken by vegetation that poses a threat as fuel for wildfire like the one that destroyed most of Lahaina on Aug. 8 and killed at least 100 people.
“What is the best fire mitigation program that we can have?” Kouchi asked. “Well that would be having the land in active use. The problem is as the plantations have closed, too much of the land has gone fallow and is dry.”
Security screenings
Both House and Senate galleries were filled with guests, including Green, Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, county government leaders, delegations from Japan and Canada, lobbyists, and members of the local general public.
A new security protocol established in December required that visitors walk through metal detectors to enter the Capitol. Because planned bag X-ray machines have yet to be put in place, private security guards doing the screening were manually inspecting bags, which contributed to long waits Wednesday for many people.
Lines stretched and snaked across parts of the building’s open-air rotunda, and Kouchi commented on the situation shortly after calling the Senate to order.
“I got a text that the security screening was going a little slowly,” he announced.
Molokai resident DeGray Vanderbilt, who has been visiting the Capitol for about 35 years, waited about 35 minutes in a screening line and said the procedure was awkward and not managed well.
“It used to be a great experience,” he said about coming to the Capitol. “Some of the longtime people in the Legislature and on the staff say they’ve got to figure a way to clean this up because they are going to have some major hearings with lots of people showing up and it’s just not going to work.”
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