Your editorial on the expansion of the transient accommodations tax noted, “Supporters maintain that … SB 2699 could add upwards of $10 million a year in revenue to the state budget … ” (“Don’t expand reach of TAT,” Star-Advertiser, Our View, June 17).

Taxing online vacation rentals such as Home Away and Airbnb would be a fairer approach, and would surely generate more revenue. Concerns about “legitimizing” the sharing economy fly in the face of reality. That cat was let out of the bag long ago, and there’s no getting it back in, just like Uber.

Let’s apply the TAT, collect the revenue from the online platforms, and get serious about homelessness before it further undermines Hawaii tourism (where TAT revenue comes from in the first place).

Brendon Hanna

Manoa

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HGEA leader supports members

As an educational assistant and member of the Hawaii Government Employees Association’s negotiating team, I feel the record needs to be set straight (“Union leader should support membership,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, June 19).

Our leader, Randy Perreira, always supports our members. The fact is, the employers, including Gov. David Ige’s representative, never offered to raise our lowest-paid members’ pay to $15 an hour. During contract negotiations, despite a huge budget surplus, the offer was zero.

Eventually it was upped to a 1 percent bonus each year for two years. A bonus is nice for the moment but doesn’t increase salaries in the long run.

Meanwhile the cost of everything continues to increase. Fact: Our union rejected the offer of zero and the 1 percent bonus. Neither of those offers would raise pay of the lowest-paid HGEA members to $15 an hour. We had to fight in arbitration to get modest salary increases of approximately 3.5 percent per year for two years.

I realize it’s an election year, but come on — tell the truth.

Joy Ring

Foster Village

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Protest treatment of migrant children

I am embarrassed and ashamed at what self-proclaimed despot President Donald Trump is doing with the children of migrants.

Akin to detention camps, it is despicable what is going on with tearing apart families.

Wake up, America. This is not what we stand for. We all need to take action against this inhumane treatment of families, especially the children. A generation of traumatized individuals will soon be adults in the free world, until it’s not free anymore.

Mary J. Culvyhouse

Kaneohe

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Families separated in Hawaii as well

During the 1980s, while enrolled in an immigration law class at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii, I learned that there were numerous tragic stories about families trying to come here who were separated, especially families from Southeast Asia, due to America’s immigration laws.

A few years after that, a welfare fraud case that I handled involved a single parent of five children, one under the age of 5, all left in poverty. Seeking a better life for her children, she fraudulently failed to report income from a job. She was imprisoned and separated from her children. There were no loud protests over these situations.

Outrage over the separation of families due to existing laws requires egalitarian scrutiny, not concern for just one ethnic group. The “huddled masses” weren’t all admitted.

Where are the protests for separated families living in our own state? Outrage should begin here, and not be political.

Kahala Motoyama

Manoa Valley

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Transportation laws should apply equally

It is, indeed, unfair that companies like Uber and Lyft are permitted to compete with taxis like Charley’s without abiding by the same rules and regulations (“Taxis do more than provide rides; they serve communities,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, June 18).

The fault lies, so far as I can tell, with authorities at several levels of government. They should establish the same laws for all these transportation companies and then enforce those laws.

Ben Kerkvliet

Kaimuki

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Vehicles, homeless haven’t been moved

As I drive home under the Nimitz viaduct every day, I see three abandoned cars that were to be removed at a later date.

I guess that date will never arrive for those derelict vehicles. Additionally, those abodes suspended under the bridges not far away from there, were to be removed but had to be studied first.

They are still there, still inhabited and no effort has been made to remove them. I would think that whoever is responsible for this department should realize that some of us read and remember and know either incompetence or indifference when it is displayed.

Jacob Vinton

Foster Village