Senate Floor

Members of the House and Senate. Members of the audience, please be seated. Members of the House and Senate, please be seated.

Will the joint session of the 33rd Legislature please come to order? Before receiving the governor's message, I would like to recognize some of our honored guests. Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Luke, Senate President Ronald D. Kouchi. Chief Justice Mark E. Recktenwald, Chair Kaialiʻi Kahele, Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Other distinguished guests joining us in the House chambers this morning.

Jaime Green, wife of Governor Josh Green. Michael Luke, husband of Lt. Governor Sylvia Luke. Former Governor John Waiheʻe and Mrs. Lynne Waiheʻe. Former Governor Neil Abercrombie and Dr. Nancie Caraway. From the Hawaii Supreme Court, Associate Justice Sabrina McKenna, Associate Justice Todd Eddins.

Associate Justice Lisa Ginoza, Associate Justice Vladimir Devens. And I'm going to get this right this time, Mayor Rick Blangiardi, City and County of Honolulu. Mayor Kimo Alameda, County of Hawaii. Mayor Richard Bissen, County of Maui. Mayor Derek Kawakami, County of Kauai. Had to mess up sometime. Admiral Samuel Paparo, U.S. indo Pacific Command.

Admiral Stephen Web Koehler, U.S. Pacific Fleet. Rear Admiral Stephen Barnett, U.S. Navy, Region Hawaii. Lieutenant General Laura Lenderman, U.S. Pacific Air Forces. Major General James Bartholomees, U.S. Army Pacific. Major General Mark Hashimoto, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific. Colonel Stephen Toth, U.S. Space Forces Indo Pacific.

Commander Anna Dixon, 14th Coast Guard District. Council Chair Tommy Waters, Honolulu County Council. Council Chair Alice Lee, Maui County Council. Council Vice Chair KipuKai Kuali'i, Kauai County Council. Mr. Mike Ketchen, Consul-General of New Zealand. Mr. Yoshinori Kodama, Consul General of Japan. Mr. Seo Young Lee, Consul General of the Republic of Korea.

Ms. Greg Wilcock, Consul-General of Australia. Mr. Glansay Enos, Consul General of the Marshall Islands. Mr. Jerry Chang, Director, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office. Ms. Annie Kaneshiro, Dean of the Consular Corps. The Chair hereby appoints the following legislators to escort the honorable Josh Green, Governor of the State of Hawaii, to the rostrum. On behalf of the House, Representative Sean Quinlan, Representative Lauren Matsumoto. On behalf of the Senate, Senator Michelle Kidani and Senator Dru Kanuha.

The Chair hereby requests the following legislators. To present lay to the Governor on behalf of the House, Representative D. Morikawa, and on behalf of the Senate, Senator Lorraine Inoue. Esteemed colleagues and honored guests, please join me in extending our warmest aloha and welcome to the Governor of the State of Hawaii, the Honorable Josh Green.

Thank you, First Lady, Lieutenant Governor, Madam Speaker, Senate President, Oha, Chair, Chief Justice, colleagues, Members of the Cabinet, distinguished guests, and all the people of Hawaii. Aloha. First, let me say this, Jamie, I could not do this job without you. Your support, your thoughtful perspective, your hard work, you're truly valuable to me. Thank you.

Thank you on behalf of all the people of Hawaii. I love you very much. Sylvia. Thank you for your tireless work to improve Hawaii, specifically, your extraordinary efforts on early education and broadband technology. You've proven to be a great teammate, and I truly appreciate you.

Nadine, I'm so excited for you to become our first woman speaker of the House. Let's give her a crazy round of applause. You've already shown me that you'll help lead the House in a thoughtful way and you'll bring your own style to this important leadership role. Mahalo for being here.

Ron and Kai, we serve together in the Senate together. I have so many great memories from that era. Thank you for being here. I look forward to resuming our work together this year in ways that will improve the lives of all the people of Hawaii. Thank you, guys. And then, C.J.

we honor you today for your years of distinguished service to our state. I'm really going to miss you as you head towards retirement. We have a great love and affection for you, C.J. thank you, brother. So here we dive in. Legislative colleagues, thank you for being such great partners these last two years.

In our work for the people, I see new faces join our ranks, and it reminds me that we were all new once. Sometimes a fresh perspective leads us to even greater progress.

I want to thank all of our Cabinet Members, too, to my left, and all our Executive team, led by my chief, Brooke Wilson, who have done so much to advance our top priorities.

Mahalo to all of you for your leadership, for coming together to take on our biggest challenges and to address the most important issues our state faces. We have been through some extremely difficult times in the recent years.

The fear and uncertainty of the COVID pandemic, the devastating losses we suffered in the wildfires on Maui, our long road to recovery and healing from that day, so many things. By uniting as one Ohana, we found in each other the faith, the hope and the strength we needed to keep going and to rebuild.

So today, I'm incredibly proud of our state and our people for the way we've come together to support each other through these enormous challenges. Today, I'm proud to report to all of you that the State of Hawaii is strong. Now.

Two years ago, I came into the governor's office after attending hundreds of talk stories, community meetings all across our state, having thousands of conversations with people from every walk of life. The people of Hawaii spoke very clearly.

They wanted to see real results on a number of issues that our state's been facing for years, but only seemed to be getting a modicum of progress, or maybe even getting worse. To my colleagues in the Legislature and across the state government, we're privileged to serve the people of Hawaii and to work for them every day.

As we start this new year and begin a new legislative session, we'll reflect on the progress we've made together over the past two years and look forward to ask this question. What do the people of Hawaii want us to accomplish for them now and in the coming years? Now, first, let's talk about affordability. Affordability.

This is the cost of living question in our state. It's too high, the highest in our country. There are too many families struggling to make ends meet. Too many people are forced to consider leaving the places they grew up in and love.

And too many families have already left our state in search of a cost of living that's much lower on the mainland. Two years ago, the people of Hawaii told us loud and clear that they wanted us to find ways to make living in our state more affordable.

From day one, we made this a top priority and we took action. We lowered taxes in our first year. We worked with the Legislature, all of you, and what we did was we doubled the Earned Income Tax Credit and the food tax credit.

We increased the existing child dependent tax credit, and this saved Hawaii families about $88 million per year in taxes. Then last year, you, the Legislature passed, and then I signed into law the largest income tax break, the largest income tax cut for Hawaii families in our state's history.

For everyone out there, this tax cut will take effect in steps over the next seven years. It provides an estimated $5.6 billion in total savings for our people. It reduces taxes from between 10% to 71% for working families, depending on household income. It moves Hawaii from having the second highest.

The second highest tax rate to the fourth lowest tax burden in the country. This is something you should be proud of and thank you for doing that for the people of Hawaii. So people feel this and understand better.

A family of four making the median income of $88,000 for that family in Hawaii will see its take home pay increase by more than $3,600 per year by 2031, when the tax form has been fully implemented and these tax cuts are already going into effect now.

And by 2031, the number of Hawaii households that will pay zero state income tax will rise from 25% to 40%, keeping more money in people's pockets. And it will also stimulate our statewide economy and our economic growth. Now, over the last two years, we also made careful budgetary decisions.

Together, we reduced spending by 500 million in 24 and a billion in 23 without cutting needed services. We did not cut services. We also maintained the $1.5 billion Rainy Day Fund for future challenges that we have.

And our goal continues to be that we make the state more affordable, as I mentioned, and also so that families can all live in Hawaii for the next generation and have a future here in the coming years. We'll continue to find new ways to lower the cost of living. Again, thank you for your partnership in this endeavor.

Next, let's talk a little bit about housing in Hawaii. We face the highest housing costs in the nation. The people of Hawaii also asked us to make housing more affordable and all and available to all the people across our state. Housing is the single largest expense for Hawaii families.

It accounts for up to 38% for household spending on average, 38%. And even before fire destroyed nearly 4,000 homes on Maui in August of 2023, we faced an estimated 50,000 housing units short statewide. Now, Hawaii's building regulations have really driven up the cost of condominium development.

They've driven it up 58%, making this the highest cost of housing in the country. And because of our lack of affordable housing, we face a shortage of teachers. We face a shortage of Health Care Workers, which has plagued us for years. And more native Hawaiians now live on the mainland than in our state.

And I know that that was mentioned passionately in other speeches. So again, together, we took action. We immediately approved 10,800 new units of Low income housing for struggling families. And over the past 18 months, the exemptions established in our two emergency housing proclamations have helped approve or accelerate nearly 7,000 units of affordable housing across our state.

We also work closely with you, the Legislature, on this issue. And over the last two years, you've delivered the most significant housing regulatory and zoning reforms in over 40 years. It's cut red tape. It's helped update and improve our rental laws and it's increased the affordable housing inventory statewide. Your work.

So our combined efforts are now paying dividends. Affordable housing measures we passed over these two years are now fueling a surge in workforce and Low income housing all across our islands.

Right now we're tracking more than 62,000 units, over 257 projects being built by state and county agencies with the private developers in the private sector over the next decade. With 13,000 new units to be completed this year and 10,000 more next year, this includes 46,000 new units of affordable housing. Thank you everyone for this incredible work.

Now let's talk about what we're putting in the budget for this year on housing for the next two years.

We've requested over $500 million for housing initiatives, including $250 million for the rental housing revolving Fund to develop more affordable housing, $30 million for phase two of the 99 year leasehold program on Oahu, and $62 million for the University of Hawaii West Oahu infrastructure development for the University Village near the rail.

We've also requested $68 million to transform. Mayor Wright, this effort will add more than 2,000. You got it. There you go, brother. Thank you, Senator. This effort will add more than 2,000 housing units for the district's working families. So Carl, thank you for leading us in this way.

With the same sense of urgency, the Department of Hawaiian Homelands and its chair Kali Watson are tackling the affordable housing crisis for Native Hawaiians, which of course overlaps with our housing crisis for all of us.

More than two years ago, you, the Legislature approved Act 279 which appropriated a historic $600 million to DHHL to reduce its decades long wait list which has swelled to over at that time 29,000 kanaka maoli. Since then, DHHL has embarked on a bold five year plan which you have vetted.

A bold five year plan to deliver more than 7,500 homes and lots for native Hawaiians. Again, thank you for that incredible work. This includes projects like Puhona, which is a homestead project in Wailuku. This is the first residential DHHL project on Maui in nearly two decades which when completed will have 137 turnkey homes and 24 improved lots.

It also includes, and many of you were in attendance at this groundbreaking recently, the 23 story Hale Moili project at the former Bolodrome site where Ed Case lost his bowling shoes. As he told us very eloquently in his speech, the bowling shoes are returned.

And now we're going to put up 278 much needed apartments in Honolulu's urban core, with rent starting as Low as $657 per month. So innovative projects like these will help provide new affordable housing for native Hawaiians who have long been on the wait list and have actually died on that wait list.

So thank you everyone for this work. But building alone won't solve the housing crisis in Hawaii. We have far too many short term rentals owned by too many individuals who live on the mainland. There are tens of thousands of housing units across this state, our state, that should not be short term rentals any longer.

They should be homes for our people. So why does this happen? Well, short term rentals make on average four times what they would make if the property were rented just long term to a local family. And here's the additional challenge. 52% of these short term rentals in Hawaii are owned by Non State residents.

27% own more than 20 units. So you can see so much housing is being taken out of our market, and we saw that terribly on Maui after the wildfire. Currently, an estimated 75,000 of the 89,000 units in Hawaii's short term rental market are not legal based on the definition according to our existing laws.

So last year, after listening to community activists like Lahaina Strong on Maui, and I thank Lahaina Strong for speaking up in this way, we passed legislation together to empower the counties to reform short term rentals, returning thousands of these housing units to the local market, increasing supply and bringing down prices.

So in just two years, we've made significant progress on housing. But there's still so much more work to do to meet our pressing needs. I can commit to you that we will absolutely work to create more affordable housing in our state for all families, including Hawaii's nurses, teachers, firefighters, every single family that needs a home.

Now, let's talk about homelessness. The people of Hawaii also asked us to take on and reduce homelessness in our islands. When we started together in 2022, we faced the second highest per capita homeless rate in the nation. 43 out of every 10,000 people in our state were homeless.

More than double the national rate of 18 per 10,000, with a total of 6,223 individuals that were homeless when we started. Now, as many of you know well, homelessness is a very complex and challenging issue. Many people who are homeless suffer from mental illness, addiction, or both, with some developing PTSD for just being on the streets.

Many can only get Medical care in our emergency departments. That's when I first became very familiar with this issue where the cost to care for a homeless individual in Hawaii is an average of $82,000 per person per year. So when they're discharged, they don't even get better.

They go right back to the streets where they're sick or get injured again. So instead of conducting sweeps that just move homeless people from one place to another without offering any help or hope, we saw an opportunity for a new approach that's both more compassionate and more effective.

By adopting this approach, the approach that housing is health care, we began to break this vicious cycle by putting people in inexpensive, as you know, tiny homes after their discharge from hospital emergency rooms. We did this first right across from Washington place.

So when I took office two years ago, there was only one kauhali, in our state, a village that we created when I was lieutenant Governor. Immediately, we signed an emergency proclamation on homelessness to cut through the red tape that was preventing us from building more of these kauhali villages. Now, for people's recollection, Kauhali are communal villages.

They offer tiny homes for the homeless. They offer shared space for cooking, eating, recreation, growing food, community activities, even job training. And studies have shown us that providing housing for chronically homeless individuals not only improves their health, but also saves taxpayers millions of dollars in health care costs.

A recent report by the University of Hawaii center on the family found that six months after individuals were placed into permanent housing kauhali, their health care costs dropped 76%. And that drop was from about $8,000 a month down to $1,965 a month.

So today, we've built these 17 kauhali across our state with an ambitious goal of finishing 30 villages by the end of next year, the end of 2026. This will provide 1,500 housing units for the homeless. If I may just.

I'd like to take a second to recognize all the mayors for their collaborative work on homelessness, especially Mayor Blangiardi, who all single out with his team led by Jim Ireland, we work day and night together where homeless has. Homelessness has been concentrated on Oahu. And I thank you, Mayor Blangiardi. You've been extraordinary.

I'd also like to recognize John Mizuno, who some of you guys know from our homeless team, who I found a great partner, and all the service providers who are helping us to build these kauhali initiatives in our fight to end homelessness in Hawaii.

In our Executive biennium budget, we've requested $50 million each year for the next two years for kauhali development to continue to provide these critical services. Wraparound services, social services to care for people and overall lower their cost of the State of Hawaii.

We've also requested $10.8 million to support family Assessment Centers, the Housing First Program, the Rapid Rehousing Program, Homeless Outreach and Civil Legal Services. All of these services help us address one of our greatest social challenges.

So with these innovations and investments over the next five years we project a net savings a net savings after all cost of over $450 million for Hawaii taxpayers at the same time that we're reducing homelessness and caring for people in need.

And we're well on our way to achieving our goal of cutting homelessness in half in our state by the end of next year. Again, thank you for your support. A few comments about Health Care the people of our state continue to ask us to make healthcare more accessible and affordable for everybody.

So over the past few years we've made greater investments to strengthen and extend our healthcare system to help those in need. One of the ongoing challenges, as you know, is to attract and maintain enough healthcare providers in our state.

The Hawaii Physician Workforce Assessment Project's December 2023 report estimated we've had an unmet need of 757 physicians or healthcare providers statewide. To address our statewide shortage of healthcare professionals, we launched what's called the Healthcare Education Loan Repayment Program or HELP, which is the acronym.

It's state funded, it's been a great initiative and it's provided $30 million of education loan repayment to to more than 900 providers licensed or certified already who practice in the State of Hawaii.

Now, in exchange for a two year commitment of service in our state, a diverse list of healthcare professionals has been able to get these loan repayments for up to $50,000 a year. Keep in mind some healthcare professionals have loans of $400,000 when they exit medical school or their training.

We've offered 600 scholarships in our first year and another 600 in the second year year. And what does HELP prioritize? It prioritizes primary care and behavioral health specialists with deep ties to our state.

Kids who went to high school here, kids who went to medical school and college here, who did their residency here, who are committed to practicing in their communities.

We're placing this extra emphasis on mental health and addiction treatment because we have to address the heightened concerns that have arisen since the Covid era and the Maui recovery where we all know people have faced great challenge.

And so we're asking you humbly, please fund an additional $30 million over the next two years cumulative to continue help with generous support also coming from benefactors outside. Salesforce.

For example, co founder Mark Benioff gave us $10 million, additional 5 million last year and an additional $5 million this year in 2025 to support the program in our first two years, we also invested improvements across the state to our facilities all across the rural spectrum of healthcare on neighboring islands, especially on Big Island, Maui and Kauai.

And frankly, our nursing facilities also needed an upgrade. For the next few years, we've requested $25 million for the KL Outpatient center, for a new urgent care facility, primary care and specialty care plus imaging centers, and a behavioral health center.

We've asked for over $40 million for improvements to HHSC in General, including renovation of Kona's emergency Department over on Big island as they get ready for their new hospital in time. And we've requested $27 million for additional Hawaii state hospital beds to help us with our psychiatric challenges and adult mental health.

All of this will help get chronically homeless people off the street and help our families get care where they need. In the last two years, we've dedicated more state and federal funds to raising Medicaid rates, which was a very smart move by the Legislature because it came with basically a dollar for dollar match from the Federal Government.

And this has improved the care for the 450,000 individuals, one out of three in our state, who have Medicaid and are vulnerable. Let's talk about public safety a bit. Over the past few years, we've lost too many loved ones and endured too much gun violence in our neighborhoods where our children should be safe.

So we've taken action to prevent gun violence and make really our schools and communities safer. You guys passed two new gun safety laws designating sensitive places where firearms will be prohibited statewide and provide active shooter training in public school and charter schools. And even though that's scary, it could prepare us against a tragedy.

We've held two successful gun buyback events this year these two years, collecting approximately 500 firearms each time and taking them off our streets for good. We collected assault rifles, semi automatic rifles, handguns, revolvers, shotguns and ghost guns. We gave people $100 foodland gift card in exchange for each firearm.

And this incentive program, which is an amnesty program, doesn't require identification. We don't ask questions. We just want to get guns off the streets. But these gun buyback events, which are going to continue to go on in our Administration are really just part of a larger effort to combat gun violence and promote safe neighborhoods across Hawaii.

I'm proud to be working with law enforcement agencies to expand these programs statewide. But there's much more work to be done on public safety than just addressing gun violence.

Three weeks ago, we all witnessed the horrific fireworks explosion in Salt Lake which took the lives of several four of our Ohana and it critically injured more than two dozen people.

If we're going to prevent deadly incidents involving legal fire, illegal fireworks like this one, we're going to have to make a collective decision as a society to allow only safe and legal fireworks in our state going forward. Let me pause here for a moment.

The tragic landscape of that explosion was something I had never seen in my life. Not years in the hospital, not years in training, not even the pictures we see on television. It was unbelievable. And no matter what laws we pass, I fear they may not move the needle enough.

We will try all the things that we can come up with to help keep people safe. But I'm speaking to you all now. The people of Hawaii, please strongly consider. Please strongly consider moving away from illegal aerials. Because no matter what we try to do as a society.

If they continue to go up, people we love are going to continue to get hurt. So I'd humbly ask you to make that change for us now. In 2023, we established the Illegal Fireworks Task Force to identify and disrupt supply chains of these fireworks. The task force did extraordinary things. They seized 227,000 pounds of illegal fireworks already.

But incidents like this remind us of the ongoing challenges we face. The this year, I will continue to work with our friends in the Legislature to further curb illegal fireworks, as I said, so that children and families in Hawaii can enjoy beautiful fireworks display safely.

Our efforts to expand the healthcare workforce, stop illegal guns, take fireworks off the streets, reduce overdoses, they all help ensure that we have a healthy and safe society. But it really does come down to the decisions that we make as people. That's how we get healthy and safe. So please join me in this initiative. We're consistent.

Thank you, guys. I was simply going to share that already we're ranked as the healthiest state and the safest state in the nation. But we still see these tragedies. So let's work together to keep it that way. Now, climate and environment, another key issue for all of us.

The people of Hawaii want us to protect our environment and do our part in the global fight against climate change and reducing carbon emissions. In our state, we took immediate action. Together in our first year and six months ahead of schedule, we made sure that the 104 million gallons of fuel at Red Hill were safely removed.

That was an important accomplishment and we're shutting down Red Hill forever for good so that it never poses a threat to our health or the safety of our water again. That was only part of our challenge.

Last year we joined youth plaintiffs from across our islands in the Navahine vs Hawaii Department of Transportation case in announcing a resolution to the world's first youth led constitutional climate case that sought to address transportation emissions. In other words, young people sued Governor Ige, who we love, and we settled that case, but it was overdue.

And what we did was we did the following. We took action with them in that basically that settlement to make sure that the climate emergency is addressed for our youth for the next generation so we can transition Hawaii to a climate safe zero emissions transportation system.

And I'd like to recognize these young people from the Navahine case today for their passion, their commitment and their bravery to creating a healthy and sustainable future for their generation and for the generations to come. Thank you. Last year we also formed the Climate Advisory Team led by Chris Benjamin.

And what that's done is it brought together the best of our climate science experts, our business and our financial advisors and our legal professionals to tackle the challenges of climate related disasters. This team has provided a comprehensive roadmap for all of us for the state strategy to mitigate the severe impacts of climate change in the coming years.

And I urge my friends in the Legislature to pass landmark legislation based on their report which takes all the ideas we've been talking about for many years. Take those ideas into account and pass landmark legislation this year to fund our critical efforts on on climate impact.

It is in that report where they outline that we have $500 million a year of climate impact that we have to somehow address. And we give a series of possible recommendations, a menu if you will, to look at it. That's where we talk about climate impact, TAT questions and so on.

You lead us, let us work with you completely to find some solution. This year we must take action on science based recommendations from experts like this climate advisory team before it's too late to protect Hawaii from the advancing climate crisis. I'd like to turn my attention now to the Maui wildfire and our recovery.

On August 8, 2023 wildfires swept across Maui, claiming the lives of 102 of our beloved friends and neighbors and family Members. These fires, fueled by drought, fanned by hurricane force winds were an unprecedented tragedy for Maui and for our entire state.

Since that day, the people of Hawaii have united in showing care and support for the survivors and all of their families. I want to take a moment right now to thank Mayor Bisson for being an incredible partner in the recovery effort. Thank you. Thank you, Rick.

In the 17 months since the wildfire disaster, we've continued to lead the coalition of state, local and federal agencies in an enormous effort to clear debris, which took just under one year to clear basically all the debris in residential and commercial areas to restore infrastructure, build temporary and long term housing and local schools.

We've supported survivors with food, food, housing, medical care, mental health services and financial resources. But they still struggle. A year ago, we announced the Maui Interim Housing Plan Together, a $500 million initiative from Emergency funds to create a pool of more than 3,000 housing units for displaced families.

This partnership included the Hawaii Community Foundation, CNHA and so many other generous philanthropists. So in this moment, I'd like to really acknowledge Micah Kane and Kūhiō Lewis for their critical help and leadership in this whole process. I encourage everyone to go to Maui and see the recovery firsthand.

But currently, the state and our partners are building more than 1200 temporary housing units for survivors on Maui, in addition to providing direct rental assistance aid for more than 5,000 displaced people, 5,600 displaced people. And working together with our congressional delegation and mahalo to all four of our congressional delegation, the White House, Maui County.

We will now have over $2 billion of federal disaster relief money from the Federal Government to invest in building housing and aid the full recovery of Maui. By leading this effort all together, we've been able to reach also some global settlements and the global settlement and financial settlement you've been well updated on. What did it do?

It helped us avert a financial collapse of Maui County and Hawaii's energy system, sparing our state years of economic hardship and higher energy costs. And last year we began to build or built a total of 810 new units of permanent housing across four projects on Maui.

We're finishing the 1044 units that have been approved through emergency services of the transitional housing to meet the community needs right now until we can fully rebuild Lahaina the way the people want it. Now, we've moved more than 99% of those who were displaced by the fire into long term housing. And it was a great challenge.

And we'll be able to keep working day in and day out to make sure every survivor has a safe and stable place to call home. But it requires these resources. As Maui continues to rebuild, I with you will do everything possible that we can to ensure everyone has the resources they need.

So in the budget these next two years, in addition to the global settlement and thank you for helping these people heal, our people.

We've requested over $350 million for other projects on Maui to aid in their recovery, to fund new schools, to make sure that housing is updated to improve wildfire prevention and that's a statewide initiative by the way, to prevent a future disaster.

The wildfires on Maui have four forced us to confront the risks that we face as a state from from climate related disasters. So working with the counties, we've updated and improved our emergency siren protocols. We've also re established the state fire marshal. Thank you for that.

That includes a request for $2.2 million for their team and funding which will help us regulate buildings and our codes, help with fire safety standards, guide the state's wildfire prevention education efforts, which is very important. Develop and coordinate with all of our state agencies and with the help of the Federal Government.

We've also deployed 80 wildfire and 16 wind sensors across our state to provide an Early Alert System with 24 hour sensing and alerts capable of identifying changes in conditions before wildfires start and to continuously transmit information and send electronic notifications when problems are detected.

We are a much safer state from fires than where we were two years ago. But the tragedy in Los Angeles validates the urgency of this effort. I've also proposed that the state create defensible spaces around homes, develop mapped out evacuation plans statewide and engage in community wide preparedness initiatives to mitigate the impact of any fires.

And even with all that, there's still so much work to do. We'll continue to work with our federal partners for resources, nonprofit organizations and local communities to ensure greater resilience to climate related disasters and to prevent them in the future. Now since the fires we faced enormous challenges, but we've emerged stronger.

We've been united and we're determined to support our Maui ohana and help them rebuild. Now, much of our work has been driven by the housing crisis. As I shared our state's pandemic, the recovery that followed it, the Maui wildfires and more recently the New Year's explosion. We're also constantly thinking about the future.

We as a team will continue to dream big in our state, pursuing major transformative projects and initiatives in the years ahead, such as building a modern stadium for our people, pursuing restorative reforms to our justice system, which also meet our needs for new, more humane correctional facilities.

And finally, we will develop a statewide food security plan to address childhood hunger, which the first lady and I have been working on together. In conclusion, over the last two years, working together with our partners in the Legislature, our team's taken action on the biggest challenges facing our state.

And, and we have made real progress on the issues that matter most to the people of Hawaii. Again, I'd like to thank everyone for coming together to help Maui recover and for making possible the results that have been achieved. We've made progress, but there's so much more to do.

There are still too many families searching for affordable housing. There are still too many families struggling to make ends meet. And there are still far too many people living on the street.

But if we stand together as one Ohana like we have over the past two years and continue to put our values, our values into action, we will reach our dreams and together we'll build the Hawaii our children and our grandchildren deserve. Mahalo, aloha, and much love.

Thank you, Governor Green. I shared on Wednesday in my opening remarks in the Senate that month ago I had right cataract surgery, got a new lens where I can see far last session. I couldn't make out faces in the gallery with the light coming in. And I can see everybody now.

So I'm not going to put my glasses back on. I only need them to read things that are close. And I'm going to ask your indulgence, Governor, this is your day. But I want to go off script in Nadine's house and say that I met Speaker Nakamura when she moved back, moved to Kauai, marrying a Kauai boy.

And she had educational background as planner and also as a community facilitator. And it's primarily in that role as a community facilitator, I engaged with her. Land use issues were the most contentious back in my County Council days on Kauai.

And she had an incredible skill of coming in, listening attentively to all perspectives, having an ability to take the temperature down in very contentious public hearings. And it became clear when the speakership opened up how quickly her colleagues got behind her that she had brought that same skills of listening and facilitation. And it was acknowledged and respected.

And I'm incredibly thrilled to see my former colleague on Kauai elevated to the speaker of the House, being the first female speaker. And Kauai was blessed in the 80s to have a Speaker whose tenure was cut short, tragically, just months into his service, when we lost him to heart attack.

Representative Richard Kawakami, Mayor Kawakami's uncle and so I wish you a long and healthy, prosperous career here in the House.

In concluding, I'd like to begin by mentioning something that my pastor often says in church and others have said it, so I'm not trying to attribute the quote to him, but he always says human beings, we're not designed to see eye to eye.

All of our life experiences are so different and the impact that those experience have in the way we individually view the same thing and often come out with a totally different perspective of what we just saw. But if we look heart to heart, then we will find a pathway forward. Forward.

Along with that, Governor, I found a quote that I think sums up what I hope the relationship will be. By Adam Grant Strong relationships don't need agreement, they need alignment. Agreement is having identical opinions. Alignment is having shared values.

I will guarantee you today we are not going to have agreement all the time because we have different ideas. But I believe that we are aligned in what we want for the people of Hawaii. Agreement is taking the same path. Alignment is heading in the same direction.

And we need to take all of the ideas, especially with the amount of new people have come into the House to figure out where we get to and not be on the same path and not in lockstep. Closeness is a matter of commitment to get the job done, not consensus. And I do have one to close.

And usually I would do a Martin Luther King, but I use two of his quotes on opening day in the Senate. And so I'm trying to get to my last one here so that I can let you guys go to lunch. Gonna make it big, Judy Blume said.

And this is my aspiration for us in the Legislature and with the Governor, the lieutenant Governor, 'Our fingerprints don't fade from the lives we touch.' With that, I declare this joint session adjourned.