Hawaii Reporter

Reporting from Las Vegas - About 3 years ago, I launched the Business in Hawaii series for Think Tech Hawaii.  After 150 shows and becoming one of the most popular business shows in Hawaii, I decided to pass the hosting duties for the show to Ray Tsuchiyama and Dailyn Yanagida. This is the first interview I have done for Business...

On November 28, our state Climate Commission, consisting of 22 county and state government officials, issued a press release affirming that it supports a carbon tax “to achieve Hawaii’s ambitious and necessary emissions reduction goals.”  The climate commission includes three members of the State Senate and three members of the House, so it’s a pretty good bet that a...

We continue with our series about a timeshare association suing Maui County seeking to invalidate its “Time Share” property classification, with the county then striking back. This week, we look at whether the property classification challenged was valid. The circuit judge on Maui’s conclusion was that it wasn’t.  He concluded that under section 3.48.305 of the Maui County Code, the “County...

The Honolulu City Council held its last full session of 2018 on Wednesday. Many, many actions were taken. The session lead off with thanking the current Council Chair Ernie Martin for his six years as the Council Chair and for his 8 years of service to the Honolulu community. Bills Passing 2nd reading: Bill 74: Establishing certain provisions for a person who...

Author’s Note: Jim Mielke has been studying and practicing yoga and mindfulness meditation for the past 25 years. He received his Teacher of Yoga certification in 2003 from the International Sivananda Yoga and Vedanta Forest Academy in Netala, Himalayas, India. Jim recently completed his Advanced Yoga Teacher Training Course (500-hour Yoga Alliance Certification) at the Sivananda Bahamas Ashram. Jim...

We continue with our series about a timeshare association suing the county, with the county then back assessing the association for $10 million. Here we examine:  “Are back assessments of property tax legal?” In most of our counties, the ordinances say that the assessor is to make a tax assessment list each year by a certain time.  The county then sends...

In last week’s article we gave some background about a case working its way through the court system.  Timeshare association sues county; county then back assesses association for $10 million. The first issue for our deep dive is, “Are we in the right court?” In this state, if you have a beef with the tax collector you can’t just go suing...

Kymberly Marcos Pine gives a tour of Honolulu Hale, and the night guard answers the question, "Is it Haunted?" For more interesting stories form around the community, check out: http://www.facebook.com/oahulife  

This is a very, very busy week here at the Honolulu Hale, and not just about policy and procedures. The holiday material has been arriving here at Honolulu Hale all week. The city workers have been installing and placing the holiday characters, plus Santa, all around the city hall grounds in anticipation of the big event this Saturday. Take...

This week we begin a series on a long and hotly litigated property tax case from Maui.  This case isn’t about wind turbines like we wrote about a couple of weeks ago.  This one involves timeshares. Some timeshare projects in Kaanapali were unhappy when Maui County enacted in 2004 a new Time Share property classification, effective in 2006, that was...