This year’s Legislature has produced some unique proposed solutions to deal with our housing crisis. Senate Bill 2216, introduced by Sen. Stanley Chang, chair of the Senate Housing Committee, proposes an “empty homes tax.“ If you own residential real property … Read More
Two years ago, we as voters were inundated with impassioned arguments on both sides of a proposed constitutional amendment (“ConAm” for short). The amendment would have given the State the power to impose a surcharge on real property tax, ostensibly … Read More
After going through the hundreds of bills introduced in the 2020 Legislature, a few themes appear to be emerging. One of them is that there are a plethora of requests for “special funds.” Special funds are pots of money that … Read More
On January 8, OHA Trustee Brandon Kalei’ana Lee wrote an op-ed in the Star-Advertiser entitled “OHA has right to attorney-client privilege.” In that article, Lee was reacting to State Auditor Les Kondo’s insistence that the OHA trustees turn over unredacted … Read More
Following a major U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2018 (South Dakota v. Wayfair), many States, including ours, enacted “economic nexus” legislation, which means that we consider any business that transacts $100,000 or more in Hawaii sales or 200 or more … Read More
Happy New Year! It’s now 2020 and talk already has begun about raising our minimum wage. $10.10 an hour is not a living wage, some say, so we should be hoisting our minimum wage to say $15 or $17, which … Read More
It wasn’t long ago that, in response to numerous complaints of students sweltering in their classrooms, Governor Ige proclaimed that he would commit $100 million to cool 1,000 classrooms. At the end of the 2016 legislative session, he signed Act … Read More
A recent, eagerly awaited independent financial review of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) has been in the news lately. The review, conducted by the California-based accounting firm CliftonLarsenAllen (“CLA”), made several observations and recommendations, including the flagging of 32 … Read More
Recently, the website howmuch.net, a financial literacy website with interesting visualizations about various financial topics, came out with a comparison called, “This is How Long You Need to Work to Live Comfortably in Every State.” Those folks tried to calculate, … Read More
Piling on, for those of you who aren’t football fans, happens when a player or group of players jump on top of a runner who already has been tackled, just to make sure the runner is not going anywhere. The … Read More