How our Legislature protects corporations at our expense

The Hawaii Legislature gave Maui’s water to Alexander &Baldwin by passing House Bill 2501 and sold our neighborhoods to Airbnb by passing House Bill 1850.

House Bill 1850 protects corporations at the expense of our citizens. It authorizes Airbnb and other online vacation rental brokers to collect transient accommodation taxes and general excise taxes on behalf of the homeowner hosts who make their houses and other properties available online to visitors.

But companies like Airbnb are not required under the bill to provide information on their hosts. The legal status of the properties being offered for rent on its website remains Airbnb’s private information: It will never have to disclose to regulators who the taxes came from. This will increase the number of illegal vacation rentals in our neighborhoods.

We are in a housing crisis because homes and rentals are too expensive for our workforce to afford. The “Airbnb bill” encourages illegal vacation rentals and increases home prices by commercializing our neighborhoods. The bill negatively affects the character or our neighborhoods by bringing illegal hotel operations to our residential areas. It also creates improper competition for the legal vacation industry, whose hotel operations are regulated and provide jobs.

Similarly, House Bill 2501 favors industry over people. It ignores the constitutional mandate requiring the state to protect natural resources, including water, and promote the development of such resources in a manner consistent with their conservation.

It also ignores that portion of our Hawaii Constitution that says, “All public natural resources are held in trust by the state of the benefit of the people.”

In the face of their constitutional obligation to ensure that water benefits the people of Hawaii, our lawmakers have astonishingly created property interests in our natural resources for corporations at the expense of the people. When a recent court ruling created a question about Alexander &Baldwin’s right of control over Maui’s water, members of our state House worked to protect the company’s water rights even though A&B no longer had any need for the diverted water, and even though it is highly unlikely that allowing stream diversion to continue will benefit the people.

HB 2501 and HB 1850 expose the true priority of too many of our lawmakers: Protect corporate financial interests despite the cost to our people.

HB 2501 demonstrates that natural resources are for companies, not individuals, by ensuring that A&B has a right to divert Maui streams for its own purpose or for no purpose at all.

HB 1850 proves that the state will allow our neighborhoods to become tourist attractions to ensure that Airbnb’s Hawaii cash flow remains undiverted.

With these bills, our lawmakers rejected the public trust doctrine enshrined in our state Constitution, expressed their disfavor for traditional notions of righteousness and the modern concept of sustainability, and failed to protect the character of our communities by surrendering our natural resources and our neighborhoods to corporations.