On Politics: Tourism brings in needed dollars for public services and Hawaii economy; if not that, what?

As the Sierra Club of Hawai‘i one year ago said in a news release critical of Hawaii’s promotion of tourism: “All together now, like we have been saying it for 20 years: NUFF ALREADY!”

The environmental protection group fears the impacts of tourism will cause overcrowded beaches, clogged roads, congested trails and damage “our water supplies, energy infrastructure, landfills, and even our housing supply.”

Back in 1969, Joni Mitchell was already singing in “Big Yellow Taxi”: “They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.”

Tourism is a business and as such, is an economic force, not a government program. But now the state is finding that the business of tourism has become a major part of Hawaii’s financial system and actually is defining Hawaii. The result is a resentment for something that cannot be controlled.

Hawaii’s latest tourism figures show that 919,154 visitors came here in July, representing a 92% recovery rate from July 2019, according to state figures reported in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

The report predicts “a full tourism recovery by 2025 with visitor spending reaching $1.94 billion — a 14.3% increase over the $1.7 billion spent in July 2019.”

One person’s boom, however, is another’s bust.

State Rep. Bert Kobayashi has a unique view of how Hawaii has handled tourism. With a Ph.D. in political science from Michigan State University, Kobayashi has served 16 years in the state Senate and now has been in the state House for nine years.

He pointed out that resident satisfaction surveys that were once positive in the 1980s, started to turn negative by 2015.

“I think tourists in general have long been seen as either a nuisance or a blight on entertainment and lifestyle going back years,” Kobayashi said in an interview. “The trend was going south even 20 years ago.”

“Since 2005, a majority of residents have said, year after year, that ‘this island is run for tourists at the expense of local people.’”

After his decades in the Legislature, Kobayashi can be viewed as a reliable progressive Democrat, but he is not a flag-waving radical. If not tourism, Kobayashi logically asked, then what?

“If Hawaii is no longer going to promote tourism, no longer going to grow the tourism economy, what does Hawaii do? Accept economic stagnation, encourage/support out-migration?”

This is the question that was not asked of the candidates in the Democratic primary race for governor. Now Lt. Gov. Josh Green and state Rep. Sylvia Luke, the governor and lieutenant governor team, have to answer that, along with the GOP candidates.

It does no good to let the candidates skate and promise to “grow the economy”; they must explain how they can build a business- friendly, not tourism-based, economy without huge economic subsidies. The question is, if you want to lower taxes or cut them completely, what businesses do you want to encourage, where do you get the money to pay school teachers, feed the poor and run a statewide hospital system?

If Joni Mitchell and Hawaii voters don’t want big yellow taxis and pink hotels, they will have to figure out another way to pay for paving all those parking lots.