Position Running For

State House of Representatives, District 16

What area(s) of the Island do you call home?

Originally from Wailua, I now live in Lihu’e with my wife Sokchea, and my two young kids.

What is your vision for a thriving agricultural sector on Kauai and how can the State support that vision?

I believe that the high cost of agricultural land and a lack of housing for farmers are the largest barriers to agriculture on Kauaʻi. Rampant CPRs and development pressure on agricultural land are two of the factors driving up the cost of ag land and making it difficult for a farmer to survive. However, by heavily restricting housing development on agricultural land to preserve ag land, we also make it harder for farmers to live on their farms. We need a multi-pronged approach:

1. The state should continue to purchase ag land for ag use and then provide low cost leases to farmers, as we did with the recent purchase of 1,000 acres in Kalepa.
2. We need to solve the housing crisis by building more housing in and around our towns. Bringing down the cost of housing will reduce development pressure on agricultural land.
3. We need reasonable restrictions against CPRs of high-quality, important agricultural land. For example, Kauaʻi Coffee’s existence shouldn’t be threatened by the potential to split that land up and sell it off.
4. We need to reduce barriers for farmers to build housing on their land — provided it’s used for a bona fide farm use.

If elected, how would you engage with the business community prior to your decision-making?

Admittedly, it’s impossible to engage with the business community before every decision during the fast-paced legislative session. But I do my best. Since first getting elected in 2018, I have regularly met with the Chamber of Commerce Government Affairs Committee to provide legislative updates and get their feedback. This means meeting before session to get their input on proposed legislation, during session to highlight important bills moving through the Legislature, and after session to give an overview of what passed and what didn’t. The feedback and dialogue at those meetings has been critical to informing me of the business community’s diverse opinions.

I have been a small business owner for 19 years, and I personally know the deep struggles that come with small business ownership and how the state often puts up unnecessary barriers. While I believe strongly in government’s capacity to improve the quality of life for residents, I am often skeptical of bills that merely add another layer of regulation onto small businesses.

How would you help ensure that working middle class residents can afford to buy or rent a home on Kauaʻi?

This has been the focus of my work for the last eight years. The root of our housing crisis is that we don’t have enough homes. We’ve made it too hard to build, we’ve under-invested in infrastructure, and vacation rentals and vacancy continue to outpace home construction — so we’re literally losing homes every year on Kauaʻi.

1. We need to make it easier to build housing in and around our town cores, through both zoning reform and building code reform.
2. We need to invest in infrastructure — water, wastewater, and road maintenance (see my infrastructure answer below).
3. We need to continue subsidizing affordable housing. On the County Council, I passed a bill allocating 2% of real property taxes to affordable housing. In the Legislature, I created the mixed-income subaccount in the Rental Housing Revolving Fund for families who earn too much for affordable housing and too little to buy on the open market.
4. We need to ensure the homes we build go to residents. I championed the bill giving counties authority to phase out vacation rentals, and last session passed a bill cutting barriers and fees for developments that permanently deed-restrict 80% of units to local residents.

How would you effectively manage budget and operations compared to the past?

I’m not on the Finance Committee. But, the issues are clear and drive my policymaking. We are facing huge fiscal headwinds due to an aging population, slowing population growth, and inefficient development patterns. Every year, there are more retirees than active workers in state and county government — which means that retirement costs continue to go up.

And over the last 50 years, our housing development in Hawaiʻi has predominantly been sprawling, low-density development, with only 0.3% of the land in Hawaiʻi allowing multifamily housing. That form of development costs a lot in infrastructure — mostly roads, water, and wastewater — and a lot to maintain. Now, sixty years after most of our housing was built, the bill is coming due to replace all of that aging infrastructure, and we have no good fiscal plan to make the replacements.

Going forward, we need to build more housing closer to jobs to ensure limited infrastructure money is better spent. That means allowing multifamily homes and smaller lot sizes, and reducing building code barriers. Much of my work on the Council and in the Legislature has focused on making it easier to build that type of housing.

What specific ideas do you have about economic diversification and how would you develop these areas?

Not to bring everything back to housing, but everything does come back to housing. You can’t start a business if you can’t afford your rent. Workers won’t be attracted to new industries if there’s nowhere to live. And residents don’t have discretionary money to spend on goods and services if they’re struggling to pay their mortgage. So step one is to reduce the cost of housing.

I believe it’s also important to make it easier for farmers and manufacturers to start and grow businesses — starting with eliminating the use tax on imported equipment and materials, which taxes local businesses 4.5% just for equipping their own operations — while easing restrictions on home-based businesses and increasing industrial land to support local manufacturing.

What are your priorities for infrastructure investment? How would you ensure that planned infrastructure projects (roads, wastewater, facilities, bridges, etc.) on Kauai move forward in a timely manner?

Procurement and purchasing are administrative functions I don’t control as a legislator. That said, I have been a champion for significant infrastructure funding. Last session we passed a Senate companion to my bill to amend the state constitution to allow counties to float bonds, payable by future property tax growth in an area. This is a key way 48 other states pay for infrastructure, and it’s not currently allowed in Hawaiʻi. I’ve also introduced and championed conveyance tax reform, which would reduce conveyance taxes on 95% of home sales while increasing them on the highest-value 5% (homes over $4m)— raising $40M per year for infrastructure and $60M per year for DHHL. We have no dedicated source of funding for infrastructure in Hawaiʻi, and it’s a major contributing factor to our infrastructure problems.

What is your vision for effective management of the visitor industry so that economic goals are met while ensuring community and environmental concerns are addressed?

Tourism is a fundamental pillar of our economy, and we need to do what we can to support the industry while also ensuring balance. The Kauaʻi Tourism Strategic Plan clearly says that when Kauaʻi exceeds 25,000 daily visitors, resident frustration increases and visitor satisfaction goes down– driving visitor spending down. So I believe we need to do what we can to stay within that threshold. The best tool is to ensure we don’t build any new visitor accommodations on Kauaʻi. From a state perspective, I support ensuring that we do not add additional gates to the Līhuʻe airport, which is a critical pinch point controlling the inflow of visitors.

I also think we can do more to revitalize Rice Street as a vibrant town center. Travel to any visitor destination in the country and it’s the compact, walkable town cores that are magnets for tourists and engines for the local economy. That means building more housing in town, ensuring buildings are built adjacent to the sidewalk, encouraging a diversity of uses, better connecting the Convention Hall parking lot to Rice Street so buildings can be built without a sea of parking around them, and revitalizing Kalena Park as a community hub.

What is your solution to best manage solid waste on Kauaʻi? Please include your views on recycling, landfill site, source reduction, and other strategies.

Solid waste management is a county function, so my personal opinions aren’t actionable on my part. But I have long supported ensuring curbside recycling for every resident. If we can utilize federal funding in the development of a materials recovery facility (MRF), it’s estimated to cost an additional $5 per month per household for curbside recycling. That’s less than the cost savings families could realize by downsizing their trash from 96 gallons to 64 gallons — which they could do when they’re not throwing away all their recyclables. And for anyone already sorting their recycling, the $5 per month is just a fraction of the time they’re spending on sorting and drop-off.

I believe Maʻalo is the best site for a landfill. It’s central, there’s lots of open space for potential expansion, and it’s far from the water and any potential homes.

As an elected official, what steps would you take to mitigate the impacts of climate change on Kauaʻi?

The climate crisis is the biggest long-term challenge we face, and we have a moral obligation to move off fossil fuels. The good news is that many climate goals also lower costs and improve daily life. The biggest levers are moving the grid to 100% renewables (cheaper electricity), building homes near jobs (lower gas costs), and making buildings more efficient (less electricity used). Walkable communities near our town cores cut driving and emissions while lowering both the cost of living and the cost of public services. We should also reduce development pressure along our coastlines and work toward managed retreat wherever possible — while making it easier to build in the safer areas near jobs and infrastructure. On resilience, Kauaʻi County’s new wildfire safety code is a model: minimal upfront cost, significant savings through lower insurance and greater protection.

What else would you like to share with the business community?

I’ve spent eight years in office and 19 years struggling to run a small business, and I’ve learned that a healthy economy and a livable Kauaʻi aren’t competing goals — they’re the same one. The goal is to ensure that housing is affordable, businesses can hire, workers can stay, and families have money to spend in local shops. My door is always open. I’ll keep engaging honestly, showing up for hard conversations, and working to cut the barriers that make it harder to do business here.