Get to know your legislators
Rep. Dee Morikawa
Dee Morikawa represents House District 16 at the Hawaii State Capitol, and has been a state Representative for five years. She’s 59 years old and currently lives in Waimea. She was born in Honokaa, Big Island, and was raised on Oahu.
She is the chairwoman of the Human Services Committee and also serves on the Health, Housing, and Judiciary committees.
What are your main priorities in the upcoming session?
I have been involved in various work groups to tackle new legislation that may be needed to make policy better. These include the Medicaid buy-in task force, which tries to allow employment for the disabled without penalty of losing health insurance; the Identification working group, which looks at barriers for citizens in obtaining valid documents to get a legitimate ID card; the care givers committee to address hospital discharge policies (also known as the Care Act); long-term care sustainability, marijuana dispensary rules; and easier access to substance abuse treatment.
Another priority will be housing and homelessness. In addition, Kauai has two state hospitals, Mahelona and KVMH. State funding for all state hospitals has fallen short of what these hospitals need to continue services at current levels. We need to assure that our hospitals can continue to provide quality health care, so there will be a lot of discussion about this.
What are the issues that you see as critical for Kauai?
Our drug problems are not getting better. Rehab services and facilities are very important. We need to provide easier access for those wanting to get help and continue or do better in cracking down on drug dealers.
Are you planning on introducing any bills in the upcoming session?
Yes, human services related bills for Housing First subsidies and funding for homeless youth outreach to help these youth find safe housing alternatives which will prevent them from becoming homeless adults. I may also introduce bills to address our long-term care facilities and possible funding for long-term care.
What is your career outside of the Legislature?
Prior to being elected, I was a 36-year Kauai County employee. Therefore, my government service continues in the state Legislature. I don’t have any other career outside of being a legislator.
What made you want to get involved in state government?
Serving the people, through county and state government, is my whole career, and is what I enjoy doing.
What’s the most challenging aspect to doing what you do?
Trying to please everyone is the biggest challenge.
What’s the most rewarding aspect to doing what you do?
A simple “thank you” from a person or group is the most satisfying feeling, because I know that I’ve just accomplished something that has made a persons’ life better.
Rep. Jimmy Tokioka
Jimmy Tokioka represents House District 15 at the Hawaii State Capitol, and has been representing the district for nine years. He began his public service career with a 10-year tenure on the Kauai County Council before beginning his career as a state legislator in 2006. He is 54 years old and currently lives in Lihue. He grew up in Waipouli.
He is currently the vice-chairman of the Veterans, Military, International Affairs and Culture and the Arts committees and is also a member of the Agriculture, Economic Development and Business, Finance and Tourism committees.
What are your main priorities in the upcoming session?
It has always been one of my top priorities to listen and respond to my constituents on Kauai. In addition to that, I will be working on getting Capital Improvement Project monies for our highways, schools and state operations in Kauai.
What are the issues that you see as critical for Kauai?
We have a growing aging community in Kauai. I want to make sure that they have access to health services, housing, and the care that they need. Besides having access to services, we can also look into other things that they need like requiring hospitals to provide instruction and advice to designated caregivers of discharged patients that could reduce the cost of patient readmissions. (House Bill 490)
Are you planning on introducing any bills in the upcoming session?
Over the history of my legislative career, I’ve always worked hard to make sure bills that would be detrimental to Kauai are deferred. It is especially important to our communities for government to continuously look for innovative solutions. This year, I’ll be working with the higher education chair to introduce a bill that will offer free education to Kauai residents at Kauai Community College during their first two years.
What is your career outside of the Legislature?
I work for Oceanic Time Warner Cable as their new development business manager. I specialize in hotel and new development projects.
What made you want to get involved in state government?
After serving 10 years on the County Council, Rep. Ezra Kanoho retired and suggested I run to fill his seat. It was an honor to be asked by Rep. Kanoho and I’m appreciative for his blessing. I felt like the state government was a great opportunity to help the residents of Kauai.
What’s the most challenging aspect to doing what you do?
As much as I love serving the public, being away from my family has been challenging.
What’s the most rewarding aspect to doing what you do?
When I’m out in the community and people come up to me telling me things that they appreciate, it means a lot to me. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been shown a lot of gratitude from people that were thrilled to finally have movies with open captioning. Little things like that make this job well worth it.
Rep. Derek Kawakami
Derek Kawakami represents House District 14, and has been a state representative for four years. He is 38 and currently lives in Kapaa. He was born in Hilo, moved to Kauai at the age of 7 and graduated from Kauai High School.
Kawakami currently serves as the Chair of Economic Development and Business. He also sits on the committees on Agriculture, Veterans, Military and International Affairs and Culture and the Arts, Tourism, Consumer Protection and Commerce, and Judiciary.
What are your main priorities in the upcoming session?
As chair of the House committee on Economic Development and Business, our top priorities for the committee will be to further support small, local businesses, job creation high-technology, innovation and entrepreneurship. This year we will look at ways to further stimulate and diversify our economy.
As the minimum wage gets increased, some of those that may be affected are our workers with disabilities and for our kupuna who are still active in our workforce. As an incentive to employers who choose to hire individuals with disabilities or our kupuna, we will try to provide a temporary tax credit to ensure that this often overlooked sector of our community can remain gainfully employed and appreciated.
We also continue to work with all levels of government including our county and federal officials to continue to improve the overall quality of life for our people. An additional top priority that I didn’t cover previously is to continue to support our HHSC hospitals that provide critical access care to our rural communities out east and north, as well as our Westside residents. These two hospitals contribute significantly to our public safety and quality of life.
What are the issues that you see as critical for Kauai?
For Kauai, specific projects we will be focusing on will be IT infrastructure improvements for our schools as well as supporting our educational system and our teachers.
We have also identified a concern with emergency response times in certain areas on the North Shore that exceed the acceptable limits so we will be trying to address that gap in service by requesting an additional ambulance unit and to add a rapid response unit that could serve the entire island in moments of crisis.
One of the biggest issues that has plagued the 14th District is traffic and once again we will look at ways to support identifiable solutions to this problem. There are many more priorities that I look forward to advocating for and I find it an absolute joy and privilege to be able to work for all of you.
Are you planning on introducing any bills in the upcoming session?
We are currently working on bills to be introduced and are currently reviewing bills that other representatives will be introducing that may come through our committee. Some of the bills that we have finished drafting are two appropriation bills to address emergency service needs on our North Shore by requesting an additional ambulance unit and a rapid response unit to address the delay in service to some of our more remote areas. We currently have county life guards servicing a state beach park in Ke‘e whose indemnification will be sun-setting so we have a bill to address that.
We are requesting a staff member for the Small Business Regulatory Review Board. This board provides the eyes, ears and voice for our small businesses and they do tremendous work and having an additional staff member is warranted to effectively advocate and consult with other agencies and departments on how their actions impact the heart and soul of our economy which is our mom and pops.
A bill of special interest to myself and many other colleagues is a special innovative procurement bill that would create the infrastructure to be able to bring locally grown food into our public schools. Currently our procurement code makes it very hard for local farmers to engage in contracts and partnerships with the state. We have identified specific language and amendments to the code which would open the doors for our students to be able to receive food that is grown and raised at home.
Another initiative that we are working on is creating a game commission that would advise the Department of Land and Natural Resources. Currently many decisions are made that have unintended consequences for our outdoor enthusiast, hunters, and fishermen and fisherwomen. A game commission would be able to address many potential conflicts proactively instead of the state having to fix things reactively. These are just a few bills that we are currently working on.
What is your career outside of the Legislature?
My former career outside of the Legislature was in operations for Menehune Food Mart which was sold to Aloha Petroleum in mid-December. I currently sit on the board of directors for Eleele Shopping Center, Rice Shopping Center and Kapaa Shopping Center.
What made you want to get involved in state government?
I have been in elected office since 2006 when I was elected to the Board of Directors of KIUC. In 2008 I was elected to the Kauai County Council and in 2011 I was appointed to fill the seat of our former Rep. Mina Morita as she went on to chair the PUC. It’s not so much that I wanted to get involved in state government, I was more interested in being actively involved in our community and being able to make a positive impact in the future of our island. Going from serving on the board for KIUC to the council, and then the Legislature is an evolution of that desire to serve. That being said, I absolutely am honored, privileged and tremendously excited to be doing the work that we do for our community.
What’s the most challenging aspect to doing what you do?
The most challenging aspect of the job is being away from my family from January through May.
What’s the most rewarding aspect to doing what you do?
The most rewarding aspect is being able to give back to the community that has given so much to our family.
Sen. Ronald Kouchi
Ronald Kouchi was appointed to the 8th senatorial district in September 2010 and has been representing Kauai and Niihau since then in the Hawaii State Senate. In May 2015 he became the president of the Senate.
He was raised on the Westside of Kauai and graduated from Waimea High School in 1975.
Kouchi highlighted three issues that he said he believed would be critical to Kauai in the 2016 legislative session.
The first is preserving Mahelona Medical Center and Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital “to ensure delivery of appropriate medical services to rural areas, insuring that people in need are able to receive the care that they require.”
Secondly, he said he will be addressing “infrastructure issues in our schools — including heat abatement and having operational photovoltaic panels on schools, wireless and internet connectivity, advocating for pre-K early learning and bolstering Kauai Community College to prepare and train their graduates.
Kouchi said he also will be “supporting agriculture and continuing to work with Kauai County on transparency and dedication to applying best practices in these endeavors.”
