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>>beth-ann: coming up next oninsights on pbs hawaii, a midtermlegislative update. [intro music] >>beth-ann: aloha and welcometo insights on pbs hawaii. i'm beth-ann kozlovich.from hawaii public radio sitting in tonight.we're about halfway through the legislative session, andlawmakers have just decided which bills they'll send fromthe house to the senate, and vice versa.the transition is known as

crossover and this year,measures that survived including bills that helphomeless people find shelter and other types of support.other surviving bills call for increase in fuel tax tobenefit operations of state department of transportationand still other legislation would impose a new tax onvacation rentals. so, what does all of this meanat the midpoint of the legislative session for youand your wallet? we'd like to hear from you duringtonight's show.

so call us with your questionsand comments at 973-1000 if you're on oahu, or800-238-4847 if you're on a neighbor island,you can also watch insights streamed live atpbshawaii.org just click on title of tonight's show, orfind us on twitter @pbshawai'i.nowto our guests. senator will espero is vicepresident of the senate and vice chair of public safety,intergovernmental and military affairs.senatorespero also sits on the

committee that oversees billsrelated to commerce, consumer protection and health.he alsorepresents the district of ewa beach.representative marcus oshiro is former choir of housefinance committee. since 1994, representedcentral oahu district that includes wahiawa and whitmorevillage. majority leader.2012, he was endorsed by then speaker calvin say to succeedhim as speaker of the house. led to another faction led bysouki.

also joining us is tomyamachika president of tax foundation of hawai'i,private nonprofit organization dedicated toinforming taxpayers about the finances of our state andlocal government. tom is also a tax attorney inprivate practice. we would like to you know thatmembers of the house majority leadership team includingspeaker joe souki declined to appear.lets get started. here we are.mid point of this session.

and as sessions begin to takeon a character, usually by this point, i'm curious whateach of you sees as you look out at the session.i'll start with you. marcus oshiro well, halfwaypoint right now, i think we're focusing upon the mostimportant issues of the day. and that's homelessness.one of the key issues that's going to be do define whetherthis is a successful or unsuccessful session.how we deal with homelessness.one of the most importantish

use of the day we're wrestlingwith right no. primarily budget drivenissue. how much money to do weallocate to honolulu service. housing fund.to house the homeless individuals.that's one of the most important issues today.>> i'll have to agree with the representative.senate passed over to the house over half a dozen billsthat deal with homelessness, service to the homeless orfunding the resolving fund or

hawai'i housing authority.certainly, this is the top issue for the majority of thelegislators and even the public.this issue is impacting and affecting every community,every island, and certainly, we need to put our, put themoney where our mouth is and provide some results.i don't see too much in terms of a lot of tax increases.this is session, especially since it's election year.the state did pass over the gas tax, the weight tax andregistration tax.

it was the very contentiousduring our third reading on that bill with eight senatorsincluding myself voting against that measure.>>beth-ann: surprised you're not included in your listanything having do with police reform and occc.we'll talk about that in a little bit.i want to get to yamachikaings.as you look at the session and having just watched almost$14 billion budget being passed over p from the houseto the senate, what do you

think about this session as wehave now come to the midpoint? >> well, we're still reallyjust kind of holding our breath to see what comesthrough. and what kind of threats facetaxpayers wallets. all of these things thatrepresentative oshiro and senator espero talked about,are valuable, but they do cost money.money has to come from somewhere.it won't be just their pockets.it will be with all of us.

we try to be vigilant.watch what's happening and make sure that taxpayers stayinformed about what the legislature is doing or isproposes to do so they can be informed and let theirpoliticians who represent them, know what's going on andknow their feelings on this issues.>>beth-ann: you brought up homelessness first.top of the list for many people.watching some of these bills more of and change and lookingat one of them in particular

that says, well, our goalshould be to create 22,500 units.but this idea of defining a goal and having it amount to,well, let's study it some more.that seems to be wrangling some people.>> it should. crisis, short 22, 25,000homes. need to build at least 2500over the next ten years. no need is to study it anyfurther. the question is right now, dowe have the will to fund the

programs.governor asked for 75 million.we gave him 25 million. he asked us to give him31 million or 31 million or so for the public housingrenovation. we gave him 3 or $4 million.he asked for us to lift the cap on the conveyance fee to goesto build affordable housing. we didn't even hear thatmeasure, consider that measure.these are sums of money that the private sector is askingus to make available so they

can get in there, leverage thepublic moneys, and build these housing units forpeople. permanent units for people.that that's going to help us address the crisis facingtoday. being number one in thecountry embarrassingly for homelessness.>>beth-ann: you're on the other side on the senate.you just heard from represent oshiro had to say.how do you look at some of these measures where theylook to be, maybe there was

going to be some money therebut nothing what the governor asked for.each year, we have to look at the total budget from thegovernor requests to senate priorities, housepriorities, and then the bills that are introduced byall of our members. and it's quite a task to comeup with plan that everybody likes because at the end ofthe day, our revenue stream is only this big, but the desiresand the demands and wants of our constituents are thisbig.

and so we're at the point nowwhere we're trying to provide a little more focus on the keyareas that we can all agree upon.and then make that decision on how much we can provide thesenate now is looking at the house budgetment and therewill certainly be change, i know that.schools, for example, was a big item for the governor withhis plan to provide ac for a thousand classrooms.that would impact my district significantly.it doesn't look like he's

going to get full100 million, but that's still an area that we're trying tosee what we can compromise and come up with.but certainly, it's not easy when you look at total budget,statewide, and what everyone is requesting.>>beth-ann: we're already getting some questions in.some of them i'm sure are going to be directed directlyat you, tom. this one in particular,looking at senate bill 2938, would increase voterregistration, weight and the

gas tax.why would the legislature do this when the department oftransportation has hundreds of millions of unspentfederal funds. spending money wisely andwell, and being assured that we are ever the money that'scollected from taxpayers will go will be spent well seems tobe what's behind all of this. i want to talk to you aboutthat fuel tax though. mcaleer we are in an electionyear and people have gotten really used to going to thepump and not feeling such a

sting and along comes thisbill. >> this kind of a couplethings going on here. one is that there is part ofthe fuel tax law that kind of died at the end of 2015because it was part of the 2012 law, end of 2015, revertback to what it was for that particular law was enacted.and the effective it was dropped the tax down, droppedthe fuel tax down one cent. ied diesel down one cent anddid a number of other things that i guess department oftransportation didn't know

was going to happen.so now they're oh, my god, we had this money was we thoughtwas coming to us and it's now going down the tube.also doesn't help that the price of gasoline kind of shotdown so any, fuel tax is based on gallonage rather thanvalue, but certainly demand kind of a fit.now, in terms of how the department spents its money,i know senator tokuda this past summer, had hearings, anumber of departments to task for, okay, you have all ofthese federal grants.

are you spending them down.in most instances the answer was no and they were gettingin trouble with the feds for having all of this money thatgrants to them, weren't spending it and the federalfeds were starting to say, if you can't spend this moneythat we're giving you, why should we give you any more?i think the caller who gave that you request he is kind ofthinking the same for this this particular tax measure,one of the departments that was on the hit list or the hotles, past summer was

department oftransportation. because they have what iscalled federal backlog of about, i think it's down to$600 billion.which is basically they start afederal project, federal money get encumbered.but can't spend them all at once.so there's a normal and a expected level of backlogthat you expecting for a department of our size.feds told us $450 million. quite a bit of differencebetween 450 million which is

where the feds which theyshould be, and where we are, which is like 600 i believe.so the question then becomes, why can't we spend the moneydown? you know, there he delays,.>> let met interject. with the federal funds,usually, there is ceremony amount that's state needs tomatch as well. it's not like we have600 million that we could spend anyway we want.sometimes like 80, federal, 20, state.and then you're talking about

not only roads and freeways,but when you're talking transportation, for example,you're talking harbors, airports, and freeways.for example, lower south road when it was built in kapolei,that cost $155 million. so depending on a size of aproject, that money could be spent down quickly.the senate, vote on that bill was 10 were yes.six were with reservations. which means they weren't toosure, but they'll pass it at this point in time.and eight of us said no.

one reason why we felt thatthis was not necessary at this time because d.o.t. does somegood work, but they've also been criticized for beinginefficient. for example, conveniently,when governor ige came on board, there was $14 millioncontract that he canceled with the department oftransportation. it was financial accountingcontract. because of the just the factthat it was going nowhere and it was a waste of money.and then i can recall five or

six years ago, we had a groundbreaking or a pm zipper lane that would assist and helpcentral oahu, and west oahu, and millions of dollars werespent on that, and then couple years later, canceled that.so there's been cases of inefficiencies and evennational report that said, the state, per highway mile isspending $90,000 in admin costs compared to other partsof the nation that are spending $10,000 or less.and 1,000 or less. >> which is still 10,000 orless.

>>beth-ann: considerablyless. >> i think it's going tochallenge. from the rule of thumb, wedon't want to raise taxes in an election year.it doesn't help your reelection.number two, i think people need to understand the reasonwhy proposed that, these are the funding sources to matchthe federal dollars, requiring the federal drawdown, you need to have to the state match, for highways,freeways, by ways, all of the

improvements that peoplerequest. we get calls from.repeatedly day in and day out. eighty-four dollars a car, ayear. so break it down, 12 months,about seven dollars a month. 350, about 25 cents a day.if you spread it out over entire year.that's additional cost per vehicle.and given the price of gasoline today, where it isright now, record low i think the lowest it's it's beenseveral years now.

i can understand why thegovernor proposed this. this also the factor thatcongress recently passed some highway expenditure billthat's good for five years. so the governor wants to makesure we have access to all five years of drawing downthat money. but again, at the end of theday for all of these good reasons, i don't think we'llbe able to muster the votes to get it out.very challenging election year.unless you can make the case

that the monies will be spentappropriately, cut the overhead and we can deal withthe backlog of federal funds. but it's a tough go aheadright now. >>beth-ann: thanks very muchto sam from kalihi for the call.lots of questions here for u someone says, love the show.nice to know. rapid transit growth ofillegal vacation rentals have devastated coastalcommunities pushing out local families what areas theymoved in.

spectators are moving in,speculators are moving in. can't afford to rent.more vacation rentals in ko'olau and other areas.horrible housing crises as we're facing now, why is itstill being put forth. another question asking aboutthe air b and b bill. collects those funds.a lot of people concerned about the transient.>> i have concerns with the bill.i think the idea is intention is to generate the revenuesthat's being lost by this

illegal rental.the concern that many people have is you're going tosanction, condone illegal rentals that shouldn't beoperating in the first place. by allowing private collectorof taxes, might not be getting right now, might provideillegal screen for those illegal vacation rentals.that's kind of the dynamic going back and forthrightnow. >> what we're really talkingabout is just an alternative collection mechanism.for example, if senator here

goes to work, he gets paid bythe state, but he doesn't get all of it directly.he gets part of it with help because his employerwithholds tax because employer has the money, canpay it over to the state, much more efficient fashion thanjust paying it to willie and hoping that he'll pay thestate. now, at some point, you haveto look at a withholding mechanism.you realize it's more efficient the.that's why we all have

withholding if you're anemployee. there's several kinds ofwithholding. including there's scheme formultiple level marketing already in law.and that's what's being proposed here.now, the issue then becomes, all right, are you going touse this withholding mechanism to, quote, sanctionillegal behavior? so it's like, somebody going to anemployer and saying geez, shall i be asking all of myemployee, are you current on

credit cards, current on themortgage? if not, shouldn't i be paying the mortgagecompany, and credit cap? if i just pay the employeedirectly, am i sanctioning illegal behavior? at somepoint, you have to say, look, these employees, peopleyou're paying money to, did adults, business people, haveresponsibility for what they're doing.that's where the responsibility lies.then the part about collecting the money is just,and mechanism to collect and

pay it to the state moreefficiently. >> we heard the bill today inconsume protection and how longing.it would allow the brokers to collect the money from peoplethat are renting the rent transient rental units andbed & breakfast. >>beth-ann: agentings likeairb&b. >> exactly.they would be able to collect the t.a.t. tax, generalexcise tax and from that perspective, it's good idea.is there a way that we can have

the broker check on whetherthe unit that's being rented out is legal or illegal.if it's illegal, they wouldn't be able toparticipate within that program.and. >> not only to be collectingthe fees but also having to be that gatekeeper for whetherit's legal or illegal. >> they have to put an addressup. next to that address, puttheir tax number verification to show that, yes, we arelegal.

so that's the discussionright now we're having with these brokers.and that will probably help decide whether to bill movesforward or not. >>beth-ann: we going to talkabout honolulu ea homelessness and that touchedoff a number of calls from people.a will the off calls, seemingly have very similarsentiments. this one, i read where ittakes $40,000 to support houselessness.we have a job fair to support

themselves.how many of people working poor are driven into homelesswhen the state spends millions of dollars onhomeless people. why does the state have tofund homeless people that come from the mainland.you hear same things. some might be more myth thanbased in reality. level of understanding abouthomelessness seems to be one of the battles thatcollectively we've been fighting or hearing aboutcoming through the

legislature as well as justgeneral conversations about social services and thosepeople who providing them. how do you answer some ofthese questions to people who see clearly that there arehomeless people in our communities but really, don'tunderstand some of the ways in which they weave into thehealth and well-being of them.>> well, thank you. i think first of all, there isan urban myth or urban legend out there that we havethousands of folks from the

mainland flying over herefrom their respective state on the mainland.the facts are, majority of people are homeless are localresident. people born and raised here,families here, went to school here.that's the majority of the people.another fact that pointed out, majority of them willhave some sort of income. either through some type ofjob, employment, but they can't afford to pay rentalhousing or the other type of

housing.another fact maybe half of these individuals arerecently homeless. these are ones that because ofloss of jobs, catastrophic illness, something going onin the household, have lost their housing.so we can back into rental housing or some kind ofpermanent housing. but that's half of them.>> where rapid rehousing. >> giving them the first monthrent, helping them with 3, 4, 5 months rent.social services, mental

health service, drug plan,food stamp, et cetera, also those out there who havesevere mental challenges. mentally disabled.that's where we need to put more time and money into it.lloyd pendleton, he is the guru, best rock star, bestpractices called housing first.if you provide shelter, clean, dry or sober,providing shelter. other things will be broughtto them. mental health care, jobtraining, ged, domestic

violence kind of situations.but you need to start with housing.>>beth-ann: which is what they did in utah where theytook about a 20 people who were as lloyd pendleton justsaid, worst of the worst and put them into housing and ayear later, they still had most of them there maybe justa few who had dropped out. >> extremely successful rate,not having the recidivism that you might otherwisethink. it's kind of intuitive aboutthank you works.

good policy.with good spending, best policy and success.that's where we're going right now.to answer some of the concerns that have been raised.>> at the end of the day, if we need to provide moreaffordable housing, the sad thing is that housing is veryexample expensive in hawai'i. especially when you compareto the mainland. and the fact that many inlarge majority of our homeless are underemployed isan issue that we need to help

in terms of rentalvoucherses, and helping them find full-time permanentpositions for all members of their family.but if we don't provide and aren't creative working withthe private sector and nonprofit it's, theultimately, build some low cost affordable housing andrental, we're never going to fix this problem.and i don't see this problem getting fixed for minimum offive years at the very least. but we need to work togetherand many of us are hoping with

the rail system andtransit-oriented development, we'll be able tobuild high density communities around these railstations, microunits that they're looking at in kakaakofor example, and look at other ways to provide housing thatour residents can afford. >> unone. things that we maywant to think about is that right now, the way our taxsystem set up, very very different from how it is inany other state, we tax rent. so our general excise taxapplies to rent, so somebody

who is renting out a unit for$100, has to pay $4.50 into our state general fund.now, the question is as a policy matter is itappropriate across the entire spectrum? you would think itwould be appropriate for maybe higher end rentals, butwhat about the lower. >> i think the legislature isrying to address that right now.several years ago, we passed out a low income renters taxcredit. it was good for two years.provided $7 million in relief

to low income renters outthere. bill in the september rightnow that will tie that to the cpi.over several years. that's part of the solution tooffset the g.e.t. being plied.but certain class of low income renters out there.we're trying to address that. >> interesting thing thoughis that when you give people that credit through the taxsystem, you're making them file a very, very complicateddocument.

not everybody does that.>>beth-ann: that puts a barrier in front of them wherethey could have access it to it but perhaps don't know theycan or simply don't file the paper work.along the discussion that we've had talking about thevarious populations within those who are homeless,nobody mentioned veterans. as of the end of last you're,we were getting very near functional zero for veterans.theological would still apply to us where we are now, butbringing up the issue of how

much g.e.t. someone who atthat low end including a veteran would have to paymakes it more difficult to get somebody housed.>> obviously, veterans are important w he have to look ateverybody. whether you're a veteran or not a veteran.single parent, or elderly individual or unwith mentalhealth problems, drug addiction.we need to look at all the community.there are certainly others out there, nonprofits helpingour veterans and they are

several bills actuallyhelping veterans in other ways.certainly, that is an area that's being looked at.>>beth-ann: all right. tonight we're talking aboutbills that survived the legislative crossover.would like to hear from you. call, e-mail or tweet yourquestions and comments. call us at 9 73-1000 or800-238-4847 if you're calling from a neighborisland. we want you to know thatmembers of the housing

majority leadership teamincluding speaker joe souki, declined to appear.we're going to get back to it. lots and lots of calls andquestions coming in. a lot of them about housingand about homelessness. this one specifically goingback to housing, windward side, because of vacationrentals. adding to shortage because hehave rentals for fair rental price.some of the reasons why i don't approve the growingamount of rentals forced upon

our community every year.susan yamada sent that in. how would you answer her?>> first of all, regulation of illegal is with the city &county. that's their kuleana rightnow. as far as the political heentity, should be the city & county enforcing it.means of taxing it is what we're trying to bring as asolution. for the t.a.t. and the g.e.t.that we're not collecting right now.as far as enforcement, what's

appropriate in thatparticular district, or area, on the north shore also.that's also a problem there. but it's primarily with thecity & county. >> zoning issues are countylevel. so.>>beth-ann: this brings up a point.every time we have an issue that comes up, everyone runsto someone they feel is going to listen their case about it.do we expect too much from state government?>> do we expect too much from

city government?>> i don't think so. what's unique about hawai'iis we're the largest population of 1.4 millionthat's the furthest from any other land mass.and we are in a very unique situation in that ourpopulation is continually growing.next 50 years, i project there could be another 500,000people living on oahu. and as our populationgrowing, our land just finite, that's not changing.so sadly, it looks like the

cost of living is going tocontinue to grow and we might turn into a state of have andhave nots, if we don't address some of these major policyissues today in terms of land use, in terms of growth anddevelopment, housing issues, agriculture, they're all tiedin to transportation to our growing population.and we're going to have to make some very difficultdecisions at the city level as well as the state level.because that's what our job is in government.and we don't always please

everybody because one issuecould have three or four points of views.that's where it's difficult that we try to come up withwhat is best for everyone. >> let me, i guess challengeone of the prefaces behind that.seen a study, says over the past 7 years from kind of acrash to present, we've on average, lost 2% of ourpopulation a year. so there are starting here,they're going to other states.and this is something that

perhaps you would expect whenyou have a high tax system. people start voting withtheir feet. every ten years, ourpopulation has increased. there are dips and we do havea lot of residents leaving but we have a lot of immigrantscoming here as well, whether they're from the mainland,canada or asia. population wise, every tenyears, it's increased anywhere from 11 to 17,000every ten years. >>beth-ann: we're going tohave a little bit more concern

about how we use the land thatwe do. already, we've seenagriculture being front and center in all of in with a lotof the controversy where we're taking ago land turningit into housing or how we're going to feed ourselvesbetter. we're not going to be able todo it 50% perhaps. something do the move the needneedle. a lot of calls asking aboutwhen are we going to see support for agriculture.slowly disappearing.

that's sad.from honoka'a. dan from hilo, withagriculture disappearing in hawai'i, is it not a waste tocontinue funding the department of agriculture.others asking the question, how do we create a streamlinedand integrated plan for keeping ag in hawai'i.what's going to happen with hcns.they're going to be taking about 36,000 acres out ofsugar cultivation. this is a and b.alexander & baldwin property

on maui.the question there is what it's going to happen to 675employees within the next year or so.what the going to happen with the water on the east mauiirrigation system that's currently going to thoselands, that could be repurposed for diversifiedagriculture. that's one of the big issuesfacing us right now. it's highly controversialbecause you have a court ruling that declared fourwater permits to be in

violation of the law.they're not temporary. that was like a license.go for ten to 12 years. what happens in the meanwhiledepartment until department of land and natural resourceswater commission to figure out a procedure to addressuses and other use us of this water.shut the it tap off? what happens to all the lands outthere? that's been cultivated for 140 years.but the same time, you want to recognize the rights underthe constitution of water

being a public resource.public trust. exactly.you have the taro farmers. you have the nativehawaiians, storing their streams.flood plains and estuaries. all legitimate valid reasons.we're hoping the parties can come together and find somekind of understanding and common ground.there's a lot there. we all want to be foodsecurity, safe. we want to be able to grow ourown food.

>> some of our own food.talking about growing our own food.we have to remember we only have a certainly amount ofland and not be able to feed all of ourselves.>> if we can do 10, 15% locally, if we can do that,that's material difference of what we're currentlyexporting out of our state. >> we have been supportingagriculture in the wahiawa region and central oahu.looked at purchasing some of the private agriculture landsand make them public lands

that we could lease out to ourfarmers. we've looked at low interestloans. we've looked at supportinginfrastructure like irrigation systemsespecially on the neighbor islands.one of the major problems, however, is that our youth donot want to be farmers. everything is technology.and other areas. nothing we talked to some whoare very clearly looking at that and farmers trying tobring them in.

even richard haas saying withhis farm, love to see some new young farmers.trying to to that. >> not looking at agricultureas a career. farming land is tougher anddifficult. and if we can provideincentives for our young people in our youth to getinvolved that, could help as well.but organic farming is doing really well in hawai'i.and i know that larry jeffs, he has 3,000 acres on oahu,and he sells out.

he doesn't have a problem.so it can be profitable. but it takes a certainindividual. one area we're looking at a inproduct for us is hemp for example.and that's something that -- >>beth-ann: that bill isstill alive. >> yes, it is.that's something that we're hoping that can be a benefitto us because of literally thousands of uses that helpcan provide. >> part of broaderdiscussion.

here you have hawai'i.limited amount of land. limited amount of naturalresources. what do you put in oureconomic engine to make it run? right now, the onlything that's providing any significant output istourists. and the question becomes, dowe want to try to stimulateel agriculture.the manufacturing? kind of what being pushed last year.do you want to get a really big put a big push on hightechnology? let the market

desaid.what do you want to do? that's very good questions.>>beth-ann: speaking of questions, we have many morecoming in. thank you very much he forgiving those to us. asking you to please commenton the idea of home owners renting to people who arehomeless for a tax break. what are the pros and cons ofthis proposal? >> i don't believe there's abill considering that. but that's something we canconsider.

>>beth-ann: would you seeanything from a tax perspective where this wouldbe a good or not such a good idea, tom?>> i would have to kind of look at it further.>>beth-ann: talking about specifically.we're going to leave that one going.in from your percent peck defensive, do you seethe-perspective, did you see owner occupied rentals andrenter occupied. between of the disparity.equal or unfair.

people who have second homes,should there be a different tax structure.how do you assess that? that's what i think drivingthis question. >> right now, you have torealize the county issue because we don't own theproperty. and the state does not own theproperty. we used to.but now, that decision is driven back down to thecounties since 1980s. what the city & county ofhonolulu did was created this

secondary propertyclassification called residential a, which was like70% higher in terms of tax rate.property assessed over a million dollars is notqualifying for the owner, homeowner exemption.and there have been like growing pains with thatbecause certain issues have come up over the first becauseof couple of years, that that's happened, and peoplewere doing can all kinds of hand wringing trying tostraighten those issues out.

one way of dealing with that.>>beth-ann: we're going to move on in the interest oftime. here's the question that ithink is very much in your bailiwick.what is the status of negotiations for the state tobuy federal prison? >> right now, i'm not awarethat the federal government wants to sell that prison forstarters. because they need a federalfacility. it's really not a highpriority at least not at the

legislature.if anyone were to initiate those talks, it should be thegovernor and maybe reaching out to our congressionaldelegation. but that's nothing that we'renecessarily dealing right now with the legislature.>>beth-ann: we have been talking about occc.yes. >>beth-ann: what about moneyfor that which doesn't look like it's going to comethrough this year? >> right.that was priority for the

governor to move occc, maymake it more modern, more efficient and take it fromkalihi. the governor was looking athalawa where our prison is now.and the cost of that prison was the excess of$400 million. governor came in with aproposal that would have exempted the state from ea oreis and that got shut down quickly.i think the house wanted the governor to relook at kalihisite and see if they could

make a facility,, jail inparticular on a smaller foot print.honestly, right now, i'm not too sure where thatdiscussion is going to go. we still have to take up thehouse measure in the senate. but certainly, it's apriority. but we need to have same thingbetween the house, senate and the governor and we're not yetthere. >>beth-ann: what about issuesof overcrowding? because we have heard very often thatthere are two, three,

sometimes four times theamount of people who should be in a certain footprint.and glenn from hawaii kai would like to know, who makethe decision to decide how and when prisoners are releaseddue to overcrowding and what plans are in place?>> right now, there's no plans to release any inmates in thenear future because of overcruding.but that's always a possibility.if the federal government looks at stepping in.the director, there's a bill

where the director wants torelease those that have been sentenced to misdemeanors,low risk, nonviolent, and pretrial.and he's got a bill that address about 300 ininmates.but i have always been a strong advocate of electronicmonitoring, go. ps, 24-7, device, and puttingmore emphasis on rehabilitation and re-entry.because that's where an inmate is within our domainand if we can stop that inmate from going back to a life ofcrime, that means one less

criminal in our systembecause right now, the recidivism rate is about 50%.and at one point, used to be 60, 70.we're trying to get it down to 30, 40.and if we could just reduce the recidivism rate, we canreduce the overpopulation and prison population.>>beth-ann: we're talking about all of this, putting iton the side, look at hpd for reform.several bills including the body cam about i will.including of creating overall

panel looking at issues ofstandards and able to investigate properly, somesay that's really missing. there aren't any teeth in anyof this. >> we have three bill from thesenate that went to the house. one has to do with bodycameras. and providing standard onbody cameras in terms of the video and the film.and making it standard across all counties because rightnow, it's each county doing things individually.we're hoping that will move

forward.two major, independently review board in the case whereofficer is involved in a shooting or a death incustody, and serious bodily harm.and the third one would be the standards and training board.we're the only state in the nation that doesn't have thestatewide standards and training.post professional officer standards and training.and it's done at the county level.but we have bills that are

alive.we think those bills can still be amended.and we're trying to work with the law enforcement agenciesas well. we're not only talking aboutcounty police. we're talking about statesheriffs, harbor police, airport police, conservationpolice, department of taxation have policeofficers. prosecutor had policeofficers. you may have heard about thatgun that went off within the

prosecutor's office.we're hoping that statewide, we can make some positiveimprovements. >>beth-ann: now that's overon the house side, wait and see what happens with that.>> that's correct. >>beth-ann: one of the thingsthat everyone is concerned about and not just in a yearwhere we're going to be casting votes, about youlooking at income tax. last year, we watched thosenine, ten, and 11% rates sunset.and it looks like they're

coming back.>> at this point, there is a bill alive senate bill 2454,looking at willie's cheat sheet here, that wouldretroactively bring those tax rates back.to january 1 of this year. so that is supposed to be arevenue neutral bill. so i call it a robyn hood bill.basically takes from the rich and gives to the poor.and again, i think the technical probable almostswould come in because it's retroactive.but we, you know, looked at

bills like that last year, andwhat we said at that time was, okay, you guys in 2009promised the taxpayers that this tax increase would betemporary. five years and that would beit. taxpayers believed you.if you're going to do this kind of thing, retract it tothe beginning of the year, isn't that breaking apromise? maybe not you, about you your predecessorsmaybe. >> just to be clear, we'retalking about single

individuals who are makingover $150,000 a year. and couples i believe, it'seither 250 or $300,000 a year. and it's a lot about taxequity. with this bill, manyindividuals, the lower income residents, will not have a taxburden and right now, it's about 45 million of bothways. 45 increase and 45 millionless of a burden on low income and poor.>>beth-ann: there are still going to be some costsassociated with having to

switch other and having itactually happen. it's not go just going tosimply be totally neutral. >> there's always costinvolved. but i mean, that's, you justhave to do that if you're going to make these changes.>> but even with top tax, quarter% i think kicks in at100,000, maybe less, you've still got one of the top taxrates in the nation, around number 15 or so.when we adopted 9, 10 and 11, we became number one andcalifornia since knocked us

off the top spot, but that'sreally not a place where you want to be.>>beth-ann: what would be a better way? if it were toaccomplish the same things that those in the ledge aretrying to by reinstating this?>> you really need to ask yourself what is the moneybeing spent for. is it being spentefficiently. spent for things we reallyneed to have as opposed to what we want to have, or somepeople want to have.

it's about pry orders. youhave to decrease-priorities. take the scarce dollars thatpeople have, you're making them part with it and i thinkthe in general, make wise use of those funds to get themdeployed efficiently and to do good work.>>beth-ann: common criticism comes across as well, stateisn't spending my money well and i don't like this and idon't like that. you hear a lot of that.certainly, you get that too when you're down at thelegislature.

looking at how you're going tospend taxpayer dollars. and looking at how it's goingto be, looking at what just came over from the house tothe senate. doesn't look like we're goingto have a year where we're going to run into deficitspending. >> this is going to be theyear. both the governor's financialplan and his budget requests tell us we're going to bedeficit spending this year and the next fiscal year.so '17-'17, i think we're

going to be deficit spending.fortunately, we're coming out of record increase in fundbalances going back to 2013, 844 million.2014, 664. 2015, 820 million.these are high level fund balances.i finance committee, when i chaired, we had about$500 million. talking about that was a bigbudget back then. let's not forget, greatrecession, 2008-2012, barely skipped by.i think prudence dictates

that we spend our moneycarefully, budget appropriately and take a goodclear, honest assessment what we need, what we can pay for,and how do we get the most bang for our buck.real quick. i think what chair tokuda islooking at is should be a little more progressive.carry a higher burden for our taxpayer, pay for essentialservices. that's why she's pursuingthis. i don't know about the retroactivity, i think that's

problematic.generally notions i think is a fair one.i think it's legitimate one. as far as who can best bear theadditional cost in our society.>>beth-ann: one more thing to ask you p.when we talked to carl about the u.h. economic researchassociation. this may be as good as it getsthis year and last year. at some point, we're going tobe looking at another recession.how much are you concerned

about that as you're look atpossible deficit spending this year and what may happenas we go forward?. i think carl is right on.i think if you look at what's going on in the stock market,price of oil right now, what's going on in europe, look atwhat's going on in japan, look at, interest on this willmonetary front, something is going on out there.i think the caution approach, is the better approach, moreprudent. and watch these trends rightnow.

every seven years average,economy goes into a cycle of a recession or somethingclose to that, definitely a marketplace disruption.and there are signs out there right now.signaling that we might face come fall, or early part ofnext year. >>beth-ann: what would haveto go in just a moment. certainty will espero, i wantto have you answer that. how concerned are you aboutdeficit spending. >> always concerned aboutdeficit spending and the

revenue.constituents request eye demand.we're in our 56th, 57th year as a state.since statehood and a lot of our infrastructure built inthe sixties and seventies, even eighties, they'regetting older. and much need to be repairand/or replaced. and so like i said, the costof a new prison alone would be $400 million.so the last thing we want to do is raise taxes.but then the last thing we

want to do is also cutgovernment services. and that's the delicatebalance that we have in government.and in the legislature. every year.>>beth-ann: tom, deficit spending as we look at thisbeing the potentially the one of better years we're going tosee. >> one of the things we haveto consider is that we are obligated for billions andbillions of dollars for our state worker he benefits.unfunded liabilities.

we have tons and tons ofthose. numbers that are less thanwhat we have now. took down a big city inmichigan. we really have to be carefulabout what we do and how many demands we think we cananswer. because we have to berealistic when we look at this.>>beth-ann: thank all of you for joining us tonight.good to be able to talk to you. we're going to see whathappens as we go into the

second half.certainly, we weren't able to get to all of the questionsthat people gave us tonight, although many ex-many of themi must tell you that we didn't get to, had to do withhomeless and people saying you need to do deeper into theissue of homelessness. couple people thinking it wasclueless at this point. we know that this is anongoing conversation and we hope that we're going to behave able to have more of them with you and with others.so thank you very much for

being here.i appreciate your time. before we go, we want to letyou know that members of the house majority leadershipteam including speaker joe souki declined to appear.next time on insights on pbs hawaii, we ask what's it liketo age out of hawai'i's foster care system at 18.you'll hear from former foster children and we'lltalk about a new program that extends foster care.what do hawai'i's foster youth need to transition intoa successful adulthood?

thanks to pbs hawai'i forletting a colleague from hawai'i public radio sit intonight. i'm beth-ann kozlovich.aloha.