Today kicks off Hawaii’s legislative session.
For the next five months, lawmakers will be hammering out legislation, amending laws, and tackling changes.
While Kauai’s legislators have been solidifying goals and gearing up for the session, community leaders and residents have been formulating their own ideas on what should be paramount on the list of issues to tackle.
Helen Cox, chancellor of Kauai Community College, said that support for higher education, as well as education in general, is a primary need that should addressed.
“Education is the clearest way to create strong economic development as well as an informed, capable citizenry,” Cox said. “Without that, it will be difficult for the state to productively face the challenges ahead.”
Gary Ellwood, marketing director for KCC, said the state should be focused on supporting economic development as well, with a specific focus on supporting existing businesses and encouraging new business growth.
“A plan is needed that provides a focus on what new businesses can thrive on the islands, a way to attract big businesses to work here and hire people on the islands, and include a way that the outcomes of the plan can be measured,” Ellwood said.
“This approach will also stimulate the students in the colleges and high schools to see that their education has value, because the jobs that are available will require specific skill sets, and will pay accordingly.”
Shawn Garcia owns a coffee shop, Java Kai, in Kapaa. He said the number one problem he sees on a daily basis is traffic.
“It’d be good if they could do something about the traffic,” Garcia said. “For me, it’s traffic and then recycling. Those two are the biggest things that need to be addressed.”
Gordon LaBedz, who works with the whale conservation group Kohola Leo, said “the state legislature has paid every little attention to our environment or to conservation.”
He pointed out, the economy of Hawaii is based entirely on the natural beauty and if that natural beauty is ruined, visitors will stop traveling to Kauai.
“On Kauai, we have urban run-off from roads, parking lots, cesspools and septic tanks that run straight into the ocean,” LaBedz said. “The west side is plagued with deadly poisons from agricultural run-off. Our politicians are asleep.”
Health of the island is very important, but so is the health of the people that live on the island, said Thomas Noyes, executive director of Kauai Bike Path. He said he’d like to see the Legislature take a hard line with smoking and teen pregnancy.
“My perspective is what kinds of legislative measures can be implemented realistically this coming session that will have long term impacts on improving the health and well-being of our populations,” Noyes said.
He said he’s hoping a measure will arise banning smoking and smoking devices, like e-cigarettes, from all public beaches and state parks in all of Hawaii, as well as a measure banning smoking in vehicles with passengers 18 years old or younger.
The other issue Noyes said should be addressed is teaching reproductive health in public schools.
“Reproductive health needs to be much more firmly embedded in our early education system, through high school,” Noyes said. “At this stage, reproductive health is being taught, or not, in individual schools based on the view of the principal of that school.”
The board of education makes those decisions, and Noyes said the Legislature “certainly has influence on what’s going on in our public schools.”
Justin Kollar, prosecuting attorney for Kauai County, said there are two main priorities his office has for the legislative session.
The first is to close the loophole in the Hawaii murder statues that “prevents us from charging someone who assaults a pregnant woman and by that conduct causes the woman to give birth to a baby that subsequently dies as a result of the conduct.”
He also said he’d like to see legislation to allow non-resident victims of property crimes to testify via closed circuit video from the Mainland.
Kauai’s Mayor Bernard P. Carvalho, Jr. said he’s looking forward to the start of the 2016 Legislative session and working closely with the legislators toward shared goals.
“Each of the mayors will be doing a presentation on Jan. 25 during a joint hearing of the Senate Ways and Means and House Finance committees,” the mayor said in written statement. “At that time, we will be submitting the county’s legislative package with proposals for their consideration, and will release this information to the public on that day as well.”
