By Lee Catterall Expecting what its chairman, Richard Kahle Jr., forecast as a solid economy in the coming years, the state Council on Revenues gave state officials a green light in putting together a healthy two-year state budget.
By Vicki Viotti Coral Andrews, the retired Navy captain, is sailing into what can be described as uncharted waters, at least for Hawaii. In physical terms, this translates into folding chairs, card tables and other elements of the temporary offices the new Hawaii Health Connector now occupies.
By Mark Coleman Donna Blanchard says she had always thought, ever since high school, that "there's more to art for me than just performance and entertainment" — and she found it here in Hawaii.
By Vicki Viotti Steven Monder found Hawaii a welcoming community, the door flung wide open to welcome his guidance in forming the new Hawaii Symphony Orchestra. But for the moment, at least, the rooms behind that door are very sparsely furnished.
By Mark Coleman John White has been well known in local Democratic Party circles at least since 2001, when he was president of the Hawaii Young Democrats.
By Vicki Viotti On his first day of work as the new rail project chief executive officer, Daniel Grabauskas said he placed a call to someone on the opposite side of the community divide on the project.
By Vicki Viotti John Waihee thought back to his childhood, when the whole notion of Hawaiian sovereignty wasn't even part of the political conversation.
By Lee Catterall The Abercrombie administration was handed a setback Wednesday when a state Senate committee stripped provisions from a House-passed bill that would follow an ambitious initiative aimed at returning inmates on mainland prison facilities to the islands. But the state’s new Public Safety director retains her goal to revise prison policies.
By Vicki Viotti Stephen Schatz' twin sons will be entering kindergarten this fall — "public school kindergarten," he affirmed — so the stake he has in the progress of Race to the Top reforms is a personal as well as professional one. And those results might not be fully measured for several years.
By Mark Coleman Roy K. Amemiya Jr., 56, has spent most of his professional life in banking and finance, so it was a significant career change when he joined ‘Olelo Community Media a year and a half ago.
By Vicki Viotti The sides taken in the debate over the Ho‘opili project are well defined, and it comes down to how farming advocates weigh the residential and commercial development of 1,554 acres of prime farming land in Ewa.
By Vicki Viotti While Wil Okabe was a football player at Waianae High School (class of 1970), or even when he was getting his degree to teach physical education, he probably figured exertions and strains would be part of his career landscape, but that they'd happen in the gym or on a ballfield someplace.
By Mark Coleman Alapaki Nahale-a became chairman of the Hawaiian Home Lands Commission in January 2011, and says it was "kind of shocking" to learn that he was the first chairman in its 100-year history to have been born and raised on Hawaiian Home lands, near Hilo.
By Lee Catterall Bert Y. Matsuoka did not apply for the job of chairman of the Hawaii Paroling Authority. He was asked by Gov. Neil Abercrombie to come out of state retirement to fill the role.
By Vicki Viotti Dr. Linda Rosen has always juggled multiple functions as chief of the state’s EMS and Injury Prevention System Branch in the Department of Health. But in the last few months she’s added the role of traffic director to those functions, keeping an eye on how well Hawaii’s hospital network is managing its emergency-room workload.
By Vicki Viotti There it is, through the window behind Patricia Mau-Shimizu's desk: the state Capitol building. The former chief clerk in the state House of Representatives left that post after 30 years.
By Mark Coleman
Pamela Burns, president of the Hawaiian Humane Society, says you don’t have to believe in animal rights to care about animal welfare.
By Vicki Viotti The most noticeable thing upon entering the director's office at the Executive Office on Aging is that there's no gray hair in sight. Instead there's Wesley Lum, who looks far younger than even his 40 years but who had accumulated significant experience in elder affairs before his appointment a year ago.
By Vicki Viotti Marion Higa was an A-B-C person in a big way, long before she turned her attention to the 1-2-3 that has become her career as the state's auditor. It's hard to imagine, after almost 41 years working up the ranks of the analysts in her office to the top job about 20 years ago, that she once aspired to be a teacher, and that the bachelor's and master's degrees in Higa's pocket were both in education, specializing in English and social studies.
By Vicki Viotti Some really great gifts don't fit beneath a Christmas tree. Suzanne Case, executive director of The Nature Conservancy of Hawaii, got one of those in the waning days of the year: a donation of a 7-acre parcel on Hawaii island.
By Mark Coleman Stuart Ho wants you to know that Hawaii is likely in for a rough ride: A wave of seniors who will increasingly need long-term care is about to crash on its shores, and a commission legislatively created in 2008 that he chairs believes we are not prepared to handle its consequences.
By Vicki Viotti The best Christmas gift James Koshiba would like to see from Hawaii may be no present, at least not a physical gift. Koshiba, 38, is executive director of Kanu Hawaii, a community-activism nonprofit with a focus on sustainability issues, founded in 2007.
By Mark Coleman Stephan Jost has been director of the Honolulu Academy of Arts since only May but already he has helped plan and implement major changes at the nonprofit institution, which was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke and now encompasses a wide range of collections, programs and facilities.
By Lee Catterall Q: Hawaii health insurance premiums are rising at nearly twice the rate of inflation, which is very frustrating. Can you explain what's causing that and what can be done?
By Mark Coleman Mark Glick moved to Hawaii from Texas in 2000 in search of a "higher quality of life." Now, as administrator of the State Energy Office -- part of the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism -- he's trying to help the entire state achieve a higher quality of life by implementing policies aimed at Hawaii achieving 70 percent reliance on clean energy by 2030.
By Vicki Viotti Dr. Linda Wong does not seek the spot on the business end of a camera but submitted to publicity in pursuit of one result: that people understand what the community will lose if Hawaii Medical Center shuts down.
By Vicki Viotti On the wall of Hermina Morita's office across from the state library, there's a painting by Kapaa artist Sally French, a somewhat unsettling dreamscape of leaning utility poles, desktop computers, high-heeled shoes and yapping mad dogs. It once hung in the fellow Kauai resident's legislative office, where she held the House energy chair.
The past week — the past two years, really — the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, more officially called Leaders' Week, has consumed Peter Ho's attention, given his post as chairman of the APEC Host Committee.
By Vicki Viotti The term "anchor" has taken on a different meaning for Kim Gennaula since she left TV news in 2008; now anchoring is more about bringing stability to Honolulu's nonprofits, which has been her main aim since taking over the top job at Aloha United Way.
By Vicki Viotti ACLU-Hawaii, never an organization to shrink from controversy, is running toward it these days, arms wide open. The event, perhaps the highest-profile gathering in the local chapter's history, is November's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, drawing heads of state and other leaders from 21 nations.
By Vicki Viotti Practically the first place David Gierlach headed after stepping off the plane here 30 years ago was Hale Mohalu, the Pearl City residence for Hansen's disease patients targeted for demolition. Not long after that, he was in Chinatown joining in with the protest against evictions there.
By Mark Coleman Beth Fukumoto is interim chair of the Republican Party of Hawaii, yet she shares something in common with Hawaii's Democratic governor, Neil Abercrombie: They both majored in American studies at the University of Hawaii.
By Vicki Viotti Kate Stanley has never been more than a stone's throw from Hawaii politics, even if it's been decades since her own last election. The hat she now wears -- succeeding Lloyd Nekoba as senior adviser in the administration of Gov. Neil Abercrombie -- is only the latest one.
By Mark Coleman Henk Rogers knows a little something about business, which is why he is among those scheduled to speak at Tuesday’s 2011 Hawaii Venture Capital Summit on what it takes to attract investment capital.
By Vicki Viotti William Aila was a longtime harbor master at Waianae Small Boat Harbor and activist on Hawaiian cultural and environmental issues, best known for the conflict over military training in Makua Valley.
By Vicki Viotti Everything, said Hakim Ouansafi, seems to happen for a purpose. Ouansafi is now 47 and very settled, both in his work as a hotel and condominium development consultant and in the role in which he is best known, as president of the Muslim Association of Hawaii. But it took some wild winds to get him here, and now he’s in the habit of going with the flow.
By Vicki Viotti The Rev. Sadrian "Brother Sage" Chee has endured more loss than most 50-year-old men should have experienced at this phase of their lives. He's pastor of the nondenominational Christian church Uhane Hemolele Piikea in Hauula, taking over the congregation from his father, who died last year.
By Lee Catterall Alvin F. Jardine III was set free recently after nearly 20 years behind bars; he had been wrongly identified as the man who raped a 25-year-old woman at her Maui home in 1992.
By Mark Coleman Dean Okimoto could be considered the godfather of farmers markets in Hawaii for his role in starting the immensely popular Kapiolani Community College Farmers Market, thereby boosting the "eat local" movement that brings locally grown foods to local tables and provides opportunities for many of the state's 800 or so farms that produce food.
By Vicki Viotti Michael Nauyokas, labor lawyer and mediator, points to some of the framed thank-you notes and other keepsakes around his office, symbols of disputes he helped to resolve. People are sometimes so happy to have peace in the valley again, he said, that they send champagne and flowers.
By Vicki Viotti Christy Martin, 42, finds her life intertwined with those of snakes, bugs, frogs, fungi, all manner of terrestrial creatures. Odd, considering that her degree was in marine biology.