HONOLULU (KHON2) -- Young Brothers, Honolulu's sewer operators, American Water, and Hawaii Gas are all asking for rate increases, with approval still pending from Hawaii's Public Utilities Commission. Governor Josh Green stopped by Wake Up 2Day on Monday to discuss the impact this can have on local residents and what he wants to see the PUC do.
"I think they should modulate downward those, asks. I don't think people can afford everything that's been asked for. Right now, we're still feeling kind of the headwinds of inflation, and we're coming still economically off of COVID where everyone's trying to catch up. There were a lot of costs, and the supply chain costs are high, but people can only tolerate so much. So I hope it'll come in a little lower, and people can then benefit from the tax breaks we're putting in and hopefully over time, lower rents."
Speaking of utilities, Governor Green is considering bringing liquid, natural gas coming into the state to help fuel electricity by transitioning the old oil-burning power plants to liquefied natural gas. It's a consideration that has received pushback from many in the environmental community.
"Just so people understand exactly what I've proposed, I've simply proposed that our energy team look at all the possibilities," Governor Green said. "Meaning, look at liquid natural gas, look at more geothermal, look at more solar, look at more wind. We have to do that because right now, we consume a ton of carbon. I don't know if people are aware of this, but to run our energy, grid right now, we're importing oil from Libya. Now that sounds terrible to most people, and they're right. Because oil is the most dense carbon, it's very, very dangerous for our environment. So I wanna bridge. I wanna bridge to the future so that we can have essentially fully renewables by 2045 like we're committed to. I actually wrote that bill back in 2006. That was our first bill on this topic. And I'd like to see us use less carbon. So what I've tasked them to do is look at all these things, including, like you said, LNG, to see if we could use less carbon and bring costs down. That's my, standard. It has to do both. So any energy source that we do has to bring costs down and bring carbon down. From that standpoint, I hope that people are open to actually studying these things scientifically."
Maui Health and the union representing hundreds of nurses and healthcare workers are heading into more negotiations in an effort to prevent a 3-day strike. This comes on the heels of the Kapiolani nurses strike that needed federal mediation to get across the goal line.
"I have to be a little bit careful because it's not legal for a governor to directly intervene and put their hand right on the scale," Governor Green said. "For Kapiolani, what we did was we recommended mediation, federal mediation, and you saw that the nurses reached a very fair deal with the hospitals and everyone came out pretty good. I expect that if they get to an impasse, I would do the same. Right now, I'm just so supportive of our nurses, but also our hospitals, they deliver the best care in the country. We have the best healthcare outcomes by far. So we have a little bump periodically with the strikes. It worries me because I hate to see people lose 1 paycheck, 2 paychecks, but, this happens between parties all the time. I would say the same thing for Local 5. Very supportive of our workers in the hotels. They need a living wage. That's what they're fighting for. But the hotels also drive our economy, so I'd like them to come together. And I've had very good discussions with both."
Negotiations between the state and lone developer Aloha Halawa District Partners continue in the process of building the New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District.
"We're continuing to seek some additional private equity, and we've had some suitors. So that means extra money could come to the project to help build a more beautiful stadium. As you know, I've traveled to other stadiums in Los Angeles, in Japan. I've looked at these places, and they usually cost a lot more than the 400,000,000 that we have available. If we only have the $400,000,000 available, then we're gonna have to bond out a lot of this, cost or they're gonna have to take on debt, which will make it more difficult to build the affordable housing in the entertainment district," Governor Green said.
At the end of the year, there are changes that are coming to the state. Taxes for certain middle-class residents will fall.
"People will see less money coming out of their paycheck. Gonna be a steep decrease in state taxes each year for the next 6 years. That's so we can afford more rent, so we can afford to buy cars or pay for our kids' tuition. The average family of 4 making $88,000, that's about the median. We'll see about a $4,500 to $4,800 dollar decrease in their taxes over the course of the year once we get there. So it's gonna start going down, down, down."
Meanwhile the moratorium for evictions after the Maui wildfires will sunset.
"I decided to wait until January 3rd after the New Year, then there will be a process where people will be able to get a mediator," Governor Green said. "So it's not gonna be people getting kicked out of their houses, you know, just because people can raise rents. That is not the goal. The goal is to normalize the housing market. We're building housing. That's going pretty well. We're doing transitional housing. But if someone hasn't paid their rent in 8 months, the owner of the house may not be able to pay their mortgage. So we have to make sure everything is balanced, but that will not happen until after the New Year. And I wanted to do that just because I thought it would be a little too harsh to even have to worry about that during the holidays."