The Star-Advertiser’s Sept. 22 article, “Nonprofit’s handling of OHA funds scrutinized in bid for contract,” cites a 2020 contract breach-of-terms dispute between the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) and the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement (CNHA), which reportedly violated contract terms in its distribution of emergency financial assistance funds.
The OHA records are filled with disputes, including government audits of OHA itself. This dispute is apparently being weaponized by a prominent tourism consultant, closely associated with the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB), as an example of CNHA incompetence in the contentious face-off between the two for a Hawaii Tourism Authority marketing contract worth millions.
For decades HVCB and its predecessors have shaped the industry to where we are today. It’s unfortunate that Hawaii’s growth model ended up being wallet-driven, predatory, heavily influenced by corporate continental thinking, with little attention to preserving Hawaii’s sense of place.
Support CNHA in empowering Hawaii’s communities to have a voice in the restructuring of Hawaii tourism.
Peter Apo
Aiea
Realize that air travel is disastrous for climate
The Sept. 18 Insight section was ironic. That Sunday section cover featured sobering discussions under the banner “Climate Impacts” that coastal erosion is worsening. Horrendous wildfires, floods, mega-droughts and heat waves are killing or displacing millions of people. And there on Page E2 is the Star-Advertiser editorial cheerleading for airport upgrades to cater to 10 million tourists arriving by air. This is the irony: Air travel causes climate impacts.
Roughly 200 jets fly to Hawaii every day. Each emits more than 100 tons of carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere. Each flight. Every day. Combined, that’s more than 7.3 million tons per year.
The editors cheering for air travel chose to put the “Climate Impacts” articles front and center. I sense they do care about climate disruption’s intolerable human cost. But how can you care about climate disruption and not connect the dots? The travel industry needs to look in the mirror. Our journalists need to help it see.
Frances Patton
Kaimuki
Recycle abandoned vehicles for needy folks
Instead of just hauling away the abandoned vehicles scattered around our islands, why don’t we give them away for free to persons who are interested in fixing them, to sell or to give away to needy families?
Many of the abandoned cars and trucks we see in Kona by the side of the road are newer models than the vehicles we drive. I’m sure that there are many retired or amateur mechanics who would welcome the opportunity to fix them up. The counties would need to provide the prospective owners with a clear title and let them take them away.
David Kwiat
Kailua-Kona
Hawaii law already preserves abortion right
Josh Green’s political-pandering promise to “issue an executive order ensuring that women in Hawaii have access to abortions” is the worst straw man yet (“Stand on abortion issue thrown into governor’s race,” Star- Advertiser, Sept. 20). There is absolutely no need for an executive order on abortion to preserve the legal standard from Roe v. Wade.
In 2006, when Gov. Linda Lingle was in charge, she signed into law House Bill 1242, House Draft 1. Entitled “Intentional Termination of Pregnancy,” the law prohibits the state from denying or interfering with a female’s right to choose or obtain an abortion under the Roe v. Wade standard, and further repealed the residency requirement for abortions and legalized performance of abortions in clinics and physicians’ offices. That is still the current law.
An executive order on abortion is futile except for crass political motives. Before an executive order could be needed, the membership in both houses of the state Legislature would have to change that statute. In Hawaii?
Jim Hochberg
Downtown
Women’s health-care access will take all of us
James “Duke” Aiona should not be let off easy on abortion with a statement like, “This is a mainland issue that he’s (Josh Green) bringing to Hawaii — a very divisive emotional issue that plays on a woman’s emotions … the laws in Hawaii have not changed”; or in implying this is up to the state Legislature, not the governor, to determine the future of abortion in Hawaii (“Stand on abortion issue thrown into governor’s race,” Star-Advertiser, Sept. 20).
Protecting women’s reproductive health care is a kakou thing. It takes all three branches of our state government to ensure Hawaii women have accessible and safe reproductive health care services, and it will take all of us to help ensure the same for our mothers, sisters and daughters on the mainland.
To characterize the reversal of Roe and the criminalization of medical procedures — which is pushing many women and girls on the mainland to seek expensive and potentially unsafe alternatives — as an issue “that plays on a woman’s emotion” is insulting and demeaning to women.
Mina Morita
Hanalei
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