Posting courtesy of Laura Thielen.

Please read this, and if you are concerned about what is happening, cut and paste the email addresses at the bottom and send an email to the Legislature TODAY.

The Legislature is poised to pass two bills that will eradicate more high quality farmland than Ho’opili.

SB 2341 allows vacation rentals on agricultural lands, including the highest production lands.  Even worse, vacation rentals can be the primary use, no farming is required.

SB 2350 doubles the number of houses permitted on agricultural lots with one ohana dwelling for each farm dwelling.*

The House just keeps the hits coming. It’s naupaka zombie land over there. You’d think they would get the message that the public wants more transparent government, a clean environment, safe buildings to live in, and less sprawl and development along the shoreline. But, no, instead they cowardly took a bill, SB 755, which was about a general excise tax exemption for retail sales and changed to be about gambling, gutted all of that, and proposed replacement language with a greatest hits of bad governance and misguided attitudes about the role of environmental protections in the economy. It even tries to make the Office of Planning process all Special Management Area permits, which OP itself opposes!

This bill is an egregious abrogation of the House's duties. Please tell the House to stop these shenanigans.

SB 755 SD 2 Proposed HD 2 will be heard, tomorrow, March 21, at 11:15 am in Room 325. Share your concern about this unethical approach with all the Representatives at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , not just the Chairs of the Committees, and maybe even let the Senate know, too, at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Here are some questions worth asking the House:

First, where is the evidence that these exemptions will expedite projects? We haven't seen or heard anything convincing to date that proves this is so. No one has any facts or lists of projects, only anecdotes. If anything, real world experience would support the argument that considering the impacts brought to light by following public review of environmental impacts saves time and money in the long run. Having to implement mitigation later rather than earlier is more costly, and having to deal with impacts for which mitigation measures were never put in place could be doubly so, and could irrevocably harm the environment in the process. Presenting these bills as a choice between economic development and thoughtful planning/environmental protection precludes the idea that there could be more proactive and well thought out solutions that could address the concerns of all parties.

Second, are these exemptions really temporary? For the section that deals with Chapter 343, environmental review, they aren't. The power of the governor or mayors to create exemption lists would sunset, but the exemptions list themselves would remain in effect. As we well know, sunset dates are often a foot in the door, and more often than not get extended down the road.

The following is a list of the original bills that SB 755 reproduces in part or in whole. If you submitted testimony already on these bills, feel free to submit the same testimony. Just change the bill number to SD 755; that’s all the House did, too.

• Part II, aka HB 530, temporarily makes the office of planning responsible for the issuance of special management area permits and shoreline setback variances for state projects.
• Part III, aka HB 2154, temporarily exempts airport structures and improvements from the special management area permit and shoreline setback variance requirements when the structures and improvements are necessary to comply with Federal Aviation Administration regulations.
• Part IV, aka HB530 (in modified form), temporarily authorizes the heads of the department of land and natural resources and department of transportation, with the approval of the governor, to exempt department projects from the special management area permit and shoreline setback variance requirements.
• Part V, aka HB 2613, exempts all work involving submerged lands used for state commercial harbor purposes from any permit and site plan review requirements for lands in the conservation district. This part does not sunset. Also temporarily reduces the deadline for challenging the lack of an environmental assessment for a state project.
• Part VI, aka HB 1893 (modified), temporarily authorizes a more streamlined process for exempting state and county projects from the environmental review process of chapter 343, Hawaii Revised Statutes.

Regardless of the merits (or demerits) of the proposed changes in this bill, the stated purpose reflects a misunderstanding at best and a calculated deception at worst. The outcome will be that it has little effect in accomplishing economic stimulation and to boot we get a bunch of poorly planned projects that provide the same jobs that would have been there anyway, all while creating more environmental and planning problems for future legislatures to then misuse to justify even more environmental and planning exemptions. Even if there are misguided but good intentions behind SB 755, these good intentions are unlikely to be realized through this approach.

Our food self sufficiency bill is still alive, thanks to you. Now we need one more push to get to the final stretch and we really need your help!

Last month many of you testified in support of HB 2703, a bill to require the state of Hawaii to double its food production by the year 2020.  The bureaucrats and the developers hated it.  But thanks to your support it survived in the House of Representatives. Now it is going to be heard on the other side: in the Senate Agriculture Committee - and one more time we need you to testify.

The “Bag Bill” SB 2511, which would place a small fee on throwaway checkout grocery bags and generate funds to preserve and protect Hawaii’s watersheds has its second to last committee hearing this Tuesday, March 20 at 8:30 a.m. with the House Committee on Economic Revitalization & Business in conference room 312.

SB 2511 has widespread support from consumers, retailers, and environmental groups alike, and has been one of the hottest legislative topics in recent Hawaii news! Hawaii would be the first State in the Nation to have statewide legislation addressing pressing the problem of plastic bags in the environment and the heavy environmental footprint of both paper and plastic bags. Be a part of what is sure to be a historic moment, not just in Hawaii but also in the Nation!