On Dec. 1, Gov.-elect David Ige will take the oath of office and become Hawaii’s eighth governor. The Pearl City Democrat spent a half hour talking in detail to Star-Advertiser political columnist Richard Borreca about the campaign and his plans for the state. 

QUESTION: What did you learn by running for governor?

ANSWER: It opened up a different perspective for me. I was aware of some of the priority issues around the state, but when you are running for governor you need to get below the surface issues and below the surface priorities and really work to get a better understanding of the communities.

Agriculture, for instance, its challenges and opportunities. It just gives you a much deeper understanding of the breadth of Hawaii and a better understanding of the passion of the people for the issues before them.

Q: Did any of your opinions or values or issues change?

A: Clearly it became more vibrant. I met with dairy farmers interested in reopening dairy farms. … it was very hopeful to talk with people who believed it could be economically viable and successful.

Q: Is the debate on GMO going to help or hurt the state?

A: We need to have all sides stop and listen, to have all sides come together about concerns and try to find a way for everyone to come forward. We have 1.9 million acres in agriculture and only a small fraction is actually in production. If we are thoughtful about planning, then we can identify what the opportunities and challenges are to each group of farmers. We know the state needs to pay better attention to the support of small farmers. The flip of that is for the last century, big farmers have made all of the investments in the infrastructure that farmers need, the water systems and such. So it is about finding a balance that all farming can coexist in Hawaii in a way that allows all of them to be productive and viable.

I think there is an opportunity for us to do a better job of planning.

If we need to create buffer spaces, the state has lots of that can be made available. I do believe the state has an obligation to ensure the health and safety of our community, so we need to regulate pesticide use, we need to know where and how it is being used and we need to assure that they are being used in ways that are safe for our community.

Q: You have a detailed grasp of the state budget, so knowing what you know, what is possible in terms of the realities of the state budget?

A: First we need to modernize the tax-collection system, it is so old and antiquated, and I am convinced that hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes already owed is being lost. We need to finish that as soon as possible. …

In my 29 years in the Legislature, you learn that it is not about a whole ton of money being invested; we can make a relatively significant impact with a relatively small investment, as long as we are smart about it.

So it is about having priorities, growing the economy, targeted tax credits, or targeted investments in making risk capital available to innovative entrepreneurs.  

It is about aligning priorities and making sure that all facets of state government are aligned. 

We have talked about sustainability in agriculture for now for at least a decade, about producing more of the food we need. At the same time the department has terminated more of the agriculture programs in the K to 12 public schools … at the same time the University of Hawaii has significantly cut the College of Tropical Agriculture, so there is very little support in the university system for agriculture.

The Department of Agriculture is so focused on supporting "Big Ag" that they don’t do a great job with "Small Ag," which are the farmers who produce the food. 

We need to support 4-H programs; it is about empowering schools to support the kind of programs their community wants. Lahainaluna wants to have an ag program; Lanai High School, Molokai High School want them. I’m pretty certain Kalani High School may not be so involved with it.

 Q: As I understand the powers of the governor regarding education, probably the two biggest are that you can appoint members of the school board, and you have the final say over the DOE (Department of Education) budget. What are your thoughts about education?

A: When positions come up on the board, we would be seeking candidates interested in actively empowering schools and not just talking about it. We would be making sure that board policies and execution walk the talk. The words of empowerment have been in the strategic plan with the department forever. Act 51 talks about it, passed almost a decade ago and the actions don’t mirror the talk; every single decision has been about top-down, not empowerment, so it is about finding board members that believe and support empowerment. It is also about the governor being active and supporting transformation and empowerment.

Q: What do you see as your role?

A: It is about a lot of different things, it is about how we can use the budget working with the department to support empowerment. It is about not expanding the bureaucracy and making sure additional funds are provided through the weighted student formula that gets resources to the schools. It is about ensuring that rather than the department deciding who gets priority investments such as computers, it is about encouraging schools to compete for those additional funds, and part of the challenge is how ready you are to implement those funds. 

Q: Do you have concerns about the Common Core curriculum?

A: My concern is that it has not been supported in its implementation. There has been so much focus on the administrative bureaucracy rather than the schools getting prepared to implement and preparing teachers to implement a new curriculum and the scope and sequence of what should be taught. There has been so much energy on issues external to the classroom it is about trying refocus and get refocused on what happens between the student and the teacher.

Q: Do you think you as the governor can make a difference in that?

A: I certainly will have the opportunity to talk to board members and will have the opportunity to appoint new board members. I would seek to ensure that the leadership and the DOE really understands that I would be looking to support programs that are about empowerment to create opportunities to support excellence rather than equality. It is about trying to make sure that they are focused in supporting schools rather than directing schools. I think that it is about being committed to developing school leaders. I have seen first hand how a having a good leader can truly turn around a school.

Q: One of the big issues has been Kakaako. One of the questions is about the appointees to the authority — will they stand?

A: I haven’t had a chance to consider them. We would consider them and also the other appointees. It is about finding balance. It is about being true to the law and getting diverse groups represented on the board. So it is about finding community members to represent small business, about finding balance on the board.    

Q: Are you looking for a change in what Kakaako is now?

A: Part of it is getting engaged with planners and those who can help with that assessment. I’ve talked with lots of engineers and planning professional who say that the basic planning guidelines were very farsighted and smart about providing height so the footprint is reduced so the ground level is a much-more livable community.

I think those kinds of basic design principles have been good and if they were followed rather than providing for exceptions, we would have a very different environment. 

The flip of that is the current rules really have huge economic incentives for consolidation of properties. The small properties have very low density and your ability to generate an economically viable project on a small property is virtually zero because of the way they award. The bigger the property is, the more density and the more height you can have.

So the rules do strongly encourage consolidation and there are a lot of small landowners that do not want to consolidate.

So those are the kind of things we need to revisit.

I don’t think there should be such an economic incentive to consolidate land. We need to ensure that small property owners have the economic opportunity to be viable as well. It shouldn’t be about forcing consolidation.

If you go to the original vision of Kakaako, it was about the original businesses having space for viable businesses. Those were the guys who support the air-conditioning shops, the small restaurants and small business that add character and depth to Kakaako.

Q: One of the constant dilemmas for any governor has been the inability to build more prisons or expand or change the prison system. What do you think?

A: I have visited all of the facilities and most of them were designed so long ago and are so antiquated that part of the cost of housing prisoners is a function of how poorly designed and how old the facilities are. We need to make an investment in the prison system. I do think it is an opportunity for public-private partnership. We have a private partner on the mainland that we ship prisoners to; if we can find a partner who is willing to make an investment in Hawaii and the state has lots of land, it would allow us to build a modern facility, it would help reduce the cost. There is a way to fashion a win-win that would allow us to move forward.

Q: As an engineer and as someone who has always worked in the digital and IT world, what are you actually going to be able to do to move Hawaii up into a more sophisticated digital age?

A: It starts by leading by example. You know the IT infrastructure in state government is so backwards and archaic that it is where it begins. We have appropriated a lot of the funds already. It starts with Tax Department modernization, enterprise resource management system, financial management; budgeting, human resources are the core state functions that we have already appropriated money.

It is really about accelerating and doing a better job of implementing those projects. I think those are the cornerstones that would allow us to be able to interact with the private sector in a much, much more efficient way.

Beyond that I know we need to do a better job of working with trans-Pacific business interests to ensure that Hawaii is a node on more trans-Pacific cables. The current approval processes are too long …

So maybe it is about the state constructing a cable landing site to the specifications that would be attractive to those companies. I am certain we could recover the investment because it would be easy for the trans-Pacific fiber guys to stop in Hawaii if they didn’t have to deal with the permitting and the delays. I do believe the cables are very important: you know the first generations of the trans-Pacific cables are coming to the end of their lives and if we don’t do something to encourage that investment in Hawaii, all the cables will bypass us. We will be out of connectivity very shortly if we don’t take aggressive action.

Q: After four years in office as governor, what accomplishments do you see running on for reelection, what will your accomplishments be?

A: It will be about a couple of things. It is about public education about really walking the talk of empowerment. I do want to see a system that supports the school, supports the classroom first and foremost and not the other way around.

It is about stopping the pay-to-play activities; it is about changing the environment in our communities that it doesn’t have to be about pay-to-play. It really is about having the freedom to support candidates that you want and not have to make investments in campaign contributions in order to be able to continue to operate in Hawaii.

It is about creating a better business environment, so business can thrive, and it is about state government recognizing that small business is important and we need to do more to support small business because that is where the job growth will come from.