Candidates clash over Paradise Park

The Paradise Park redevelopment plan in Manoa is emerging as a flashpoint in a primary challenge to House Higher Education Chairman Isaac Choy, a Democrat who has represented the state House district that includes Manoa since 2009.

Choy, 62, is probably best known for some of his pointed public criticism of the University of Hawaii system, which he says must become more efficient. He also wants the university to “rebalance” to focus more on its teaching mission. Today there is too much UH emphasis on other missions such as research and community service, he said.

“I think we need to be student focused,” he said. “We need to find our way back to our core mission of educating students.”

Choy, who grew up in Manoa, also attracted attention this year for his support of a bill that would have allowed the UH system to hire members of the state Legislature. That measure would have effectively reversed a university ban on employing lawmakers that has been in place at UH since at least 1966, but the bill died near the end of the session.

The University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, the faculty union, is endorsing Choy’s opponent, Dale Kobayashi. Choy, who leads the House committee that oversees the university system, said he doesn’t know why UHPA endorsed his opponents in both 2014 and 2016 because the union hasn’t spoken with him in two years.

Kobayashi, 55, was raised in Manoa, and is a Punahou School graduate who played schoolyard basketball with Barack Obama during his high school years. Kobayashi is the son of Honolulu City Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi, a longtime Hawaii Democrat and politician.

Dale Kobayashi earned an accounting degree at the University of Southern California and worked for the Arthur Andersen accounting firm in Los Angeles before obtaining a master’s of public and private administration from Yale University. He went on to become a bond trader in New York, London and Tokyo before returning home to Hawaii in 2002.

Kobayashi said he sees local and national politics as being driven by the wealthy and powerful, and is concerned about worsening income inequality. He also contends that Hawaii has had “our foot on the gas pedal” when it comes to development and creating a robust economy, but many have been left behind.

“I think if we don’t do anything, eventually it’s just going to be a playground for wealthier people from the mainland and Asia to live in, and we’ll be a footnote in history,” he said.

Kobayashi is married to Dawn Kaneshiro Kobayashi, and they have two children, Erica, 22, and David, 19. After watching his mother make her way in Hawaii politics for many years, Dale Kobayashi said he had mixed feelings about running himself.

“I’m not doing this because I really want to, in that sense. I don’t think it’s going to be personally enjoyable. … I feel compelled to do this,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that are important to me in Hawaii, in our future going forward, and I just really need to have a seat at that table. I want to be part of our future.”

Kobayashi, a Democrat, is now a financial adviser with Morgan Stanley, but said he expects to leave his job before the campaign is over. He is also chairman of the Manoa Neighborhood Board, and said he was propelled into the House race in part by a neighborhood issue.

Kobayashi says Choy supported a $15 million redevelopment of Paradise Park in the back of Manoa Valley as a “Hawaiian cultural center” on conservation land owned by the Roman Catholic Church. The park was first created in 1966 as a recreational botanical and zoological garden, but the site is now mostly unused.

Kobayashi describes the project as “a large tourist development in the back of Manoa Valley.”

“That was something that the neighbors and the community here in Manoa were extremely opposed to,” he said. Kobayashi said he formed a group called Save Manoa Valley in 2015 to stop the project, and the state Board of Land and Natural Resources last month refused to extend a 2014 permit authorizing redevelopment of the site.

When asked about those concerns, Choy said he supported the Paradise Park proposal only if the community concerns are resolved. He described Kobayashi as a “one-issue candidate.”

“There’s a process for that, I support the process … public comment is a part of that process, but at the end of the day it’s the Land Board that’s going to make the decision,” Choy said. He added that as a state representative, “there’s very little that I can do to influence this particular process.”

Choy is a certified public accountant who owned his own accounting firm called Manoa Consulting Group for about 30 years until he sold his interest in the business about five years ago. Choy and his wife, Laurie, have three children, Isaac Jr., 36, Michael, 32, and Ashley, 24.

As a lawmaker Choy has focused much of his effort on tax policy, and is especially critical of state tax credits and exemptions that he describes as “special interest” legislation. For example, in 2001, lawmakers passed Act 221, which offered very generous tax credits to encourage investment in high-technology enterprises in Hawaii, an effort Choy contends was a failure.

That law cost the state more than $1.3 billion, “and we didn’t get a return for it,” Choy said. Act 221 has since expired, and Choy said the state has more recently shifted to the tactic of using grants to try to support new business activity. He believes that is a better approach than offering tax credits because there is more accountability.

Four years ago Choy became chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, and began asking questions about the UH’s large maintenance backlog. Upkeep of the Manoa campus has improved since then, Choy said, and he maintains he deserves some of the credit for that.

Choy is concerned that state financial support for public universities is eroding across the country, and UH has tried to offset its loss in state support by raising tuition. That forces students to take on more debt, he said.

“Basically, the funding scheme of the university has to change,” he said. “They have to look internally at ways to economize, to be more efficient.”

He has also been demanding that UH be more efficient in the area of research. Choy said he understands the need to fund startup research at the university, but contends that as each research program matures, it should generate its own funding through grants or other sources without relying on state subsidies.