Senate Floor

Members of the House and Senate please be seated.

Ali. Have it. Haika. Yeah. O nakai. Aloha. O. Am.

Will the joint session of the 33rd Legislature please come to order. Thank you. To Kumu Hula Tatiana Tsea Fox of Naleo Kaiviha Ikalani for that beautiful Oli. Before receiving the governor's message, I ask the Chief Clerk to please introduce some of our honored guests. Mr. Clerk, please proceed.

Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Luke, Senate President Ronald Kochi, Acting Chief Justice Sabrina Mckenna, Office of Hawaiian Affairs Chair Kai Kahele, Jamie Green, wife of Governor Josh Green. Congressman Ed Case and Mrs. Audrey Nakamura. From the Hawaii Supreme Court, Associate Justice Todd Eddins, Associate Justice Lisa Ginoza and Associate Justice Vladimir Devens. Former Governor Neil Abercrombie and Dr. Nancy Carraway.

Lieutenant General Laura Lenderman, U.S. Pacific Air Forces. Lieutenant General Joel B. Vowell, U.S. Army Pacific. Major General Christopher Farrett, U.S. Indo Pacific Command. Retired Major General Mark Hashimoto, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific. Rear Admiral Brad Collins, U.S. Navy Region Hawaii. Colonel Stephen Toth, U.S Space Forces Indo Pacific. Commander Jacob Paarlberg, 14th Coast Guard District.

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. Council Chair Tommy Waters, Honolulu City Council. Council Chair Holeka Goro Inaba, Hawaii County Council. Council Vice Chair Yuki Lei Sugimura, Maui County Council. Mr. Rana Sakar, Council General of Canada.

Mr. Glasne Enos, Consul General of the Republic of the Marshall Island. Mr. Greg Wilcock, Consul General of Australia. Mr. Armand Talbo, Consul General of the Philippines Mr. Uchel Rayleigh Naito, Consul General of the Republic of Palau. Mr. Hideaki Chotoku, Consul General of Japan. Mr. Henry Shrew, Consul General of the Federated States of Micronesia.

Mr. Jerry Chang, Director General of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office. Mr. Jun Kim, Acting consul General of the Republic of Korea Mr. Aaron Sampson, Acting consul General of New Zealand.

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 and Representative Lauren Matsumoto and on behalf of the Senate Senator Michelle Kidani and Senator Drew Kanuha.

The Chair hereby requests the following legislators to present lay to the Governor on behalf of the House, Representative Dee Morikawa, and on behalf of the Senate, Senator Lorraine Inouye. 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 Chief Josh Green.

From my heart, mahalo for that. Mahalo for welcoming me. You're extraordinary people and I'm grateful to serve. Aloha and good morning, First Lady, Lieutenant Governor, Madam Speaker, Senate President, Oha Chair, Chief Justice, Associate Justices, mayors, colleagues, Members of the cabinet, distinguished guests, all the people of our state. Aloha.

Before I begin, I'd like just to take a moment, share a moment really of silent reflection, to honor those who have lost their lives as a result of the domestic conflicts on the mainland, especially those in Minnesota in recent days.

No matter what our political ideology, I believe we should all pray for and work toward peaceful engagement in our nation. So please join me in a moment of contemplation. Thank you for that. Again, so much gratitude for all of you. Kumutati, thank you for the beautiful oli.

This lei was put together by my daughter and her friends, so it's special. It provides me a great sense of comfort to know that she participated. And my family participates in an event like this, and I'm just grateful to see all of you.

First, let me start by saying thank you to the people of Hawaii for allowing us to work for you, for allowing us to fight for you, for trusting us to serve you. I also want to thank my colleagues in the Legislature for working together to accomplish so many things for our state over the last three years.

Today, I want to share with you our vision for Hawaii. What's in our future, what's ahead for us, what we can hope for, what we can achieve together as a state in the coming years if we keep working together.

Three years ago, we came into office with a commitment to take on our biggest challenges as a state and the issues that Hawaii families care about the most. The high cost of living, the lack of affordable housing, and the problem of homelessness. You told us what really mattered to you, and we heard you.

And after the devastating wildfires on Maui, we came together to begin the long road to recovery. Now it's time to look forward toward a vision of the future that lies ahead of us, but remains firmly rooted in our history and our values.

A vision of a future where Hawaii families can afford to live, raise our children and care for our kupuna, and where we protect our Aina, today I want to share that vision with you. First, let's talk about the cost of living.

When we came into office three years ago, too many families were having to make heartbreaking decisions like choosing between paying rent, buying groceries, or between staying in the islands we love and leaving for the mainland.

Too many young people didn't see an economic future for themselves in our state, so we made affordability our top priority and we acted quickly.

In our first year together, we doubled the earned income tax credit and the food tax credit and increased the child and dependent care credits, leaving Hawaii families $88 million less in taxes to pay in that first year and making our state just a little bit more affordable.

Then, working together with you, the Legislature, we delivered the largest income tax credit for Hawai'i families in our state's history. And we did all of this while protecting the state's long term fiscal health. We reduced spending by $1 billion in 2023 and by another $500 million in 2024 without cutting any needed services.

And we grew our rainy day fund and this is important to $1.5 billion. That's what responsible government looks like, lowering taxes for working families without cutting services and spending very carefully. We also took important steps to ensure food security for families in need.

We protected Hawaii SNAP benefits during the Federal Government shutdown by providing a $251 time temporary benefit for every recipient that was eligible within 10 days. To ensure that our local families were not affected by food insecurity over the holidays, we launched the Sun Bucks program to provide summer food benefits to eligible children statewide.

At this point, I'd like to recognize the First Lady, Jamie, for her work and leadership on this issue that touches thousands of families every single day, making sure our keiki don't go hungry at school. Thank you, Jamie. I love you. Because of that work, more than 11,000 students in need now have their meals covered.

And next year that help will reach families earning up to 300% of the federal poverty level. That means more kids will come to class fed. They will be focused and ready to learn. It's a small investment that will truly help these students and our entire state.

I also want to take this moment to thank the Lieutenant Governor for her important work on expanding preschool access statewide, which will help bring down the cost of childcare for everyone in Hawaii. Thank you, Sylvia, for being such a great partner. These policies have made a real difference in the lives of our young people across the state.

But we also have to consider ways to help our kupuna. Many Elderly individuals have told me that they live alone and they live on a fixed income.

They've sometimes had to skip meals not because they weren't careful with their money, but because grocery prices rose faster than their budget and they had to choose between paying for their medication and buying food. Those SNAP enhancements help and we put them into place.

They finally were able to be connected to a stable food support system and even were able to be provided with prepared meals through a community partnership. Now they have food security, a better health outlook, and no longer have to ration meals in their own home like was shared with me.

That's the real measure of what we're doing here. Security, health, dignity for our kupuna and all of our most vulnerable citizens. But let's be honest with ourselves. The the cost of living in our state is still too high for too many people.

So in 2026 and in the coming years, we will keep finding ways to make living in Hawaii more affordable. In 2025, the Federal Government's severe cuts and other actions took $3 billion out of our state's economy, leaving us with an unforeseen budget shortfall.

So to meet all of our responsibilities and our commitment on affordability, I'm proposing the following. First, there be no changes to our tax cuts in 2026. These and all previous tax cuts will be completely preserved. But. Thank you, brother. But that we pause the tax cuts plan for 2027 through 2029.

Let me explain what this proposal will do. This proposal will bring back $1.8 billion for critical services. 600 million of that $1.8 billion I will propose we use for food security and child care needs for those who need it the most.

What this amounts to is the fairest, most responsible and most compassionate approach to dealing with the challenges that the feds have created. And this approach will fulfill our pledge to cut taxes without cutting needed services. And it will protect the historic tax reforms that we passed together for those who need them the most.

We'll expand SNAP benefits in the matching programs to make sure local produce is more affordable. We'll increase affordable child care support for working families so families can work and still be there for their kids. And we'll continue to strengthen our statewide food security plan like the one that Jamie's been working on.

Expanding regional kitchens, new food hubs, and improving emergency preparedness for disasters and our supply disruptions. By making responsible decisions like these, we will continue to build a Hawaii where families don't just get by, but hopefully thrive. And where our kupuna can live out their days with dignity and security. Now I want to talk about housing.

In December 2022, Hawaii was facing the highest housing costs in the nation, and they're still very high. We had a shortage of an estimated 50,000 housing units statewide. Too many of our young people and you know, these stories couldn't find rentals. Too many working families couldn't buy homes.

And native Hawaiians were still waiting, sometimes for generations, generations to receive the land that was promised. And we knew that the problem wasn't just too few housing units. It was a system that had become too slow, too complicated, too expensive.

A maze of permitting and bureaucracy and outdated rules that made building housing harder than it has to be. So we took action together. I signed an emergency housing proclamation to cut red tape, move projects faster. So we immediately approved over 10,000 new units of low income housing over the past 18 months.

Those exemptions helped approve or accelerate nearly 7,000 affordable units statewide. And then working with the Legislature, we delivered the most significant housing regulatory and zoning reforms in over 40 years. So we can keep building at the scale our people need. So today, these actions are finally paying off.

We are building new housing in Hawaii at a scale not seen in decades. We've entitled over 5,500 affordable units. And more than 6,500 affordable units have come online since we took office over the next decade. And this is what we can expect over the next decade. More than 20,000 additional homes are planned on state lands.

And we're tracking over 62,000 housing units across more than 250 projects statewide, including 46,000 affordable homes. The Department of Hawaiian Homelands has also seen historic expansion with more than 2,500 homestead leases that DHHL granted in 2025 alone. That is the most that were ever awarded in a single year in our hundred year history of the program.

In 2026, the number of new leases awarded will grow to more than 7,000. But housing is not just about the number of new units as I've been talking about. It's about individual lives that are impacted. Like Jade Mapuana riley, who spent 37 years on the Hawaiian homelands wait list. 37 years.

And when Jade found out she was finally getting a homestead, she cried. And the team cried with her. Like many families, she had tried to build a future elsewhere, even buying a home on the mainland, but her heart was here. Today, Jade has a 5 bedroom DHHL home supported by a low interest loan.

And her family has the financial stability to plan, save, and build a future here at home in Hawaii. That's what it means to honor a promise. But we know that building these homes alone won't solve the entire challenge.

We also have to return more homes to local families, including short term rentals that have taken away far too many homes off the market.

So in the coming years, we will support the counties and the mayors who I'm so fond of as they bring more short term rentals back into the housing market so that more families go to more homes go to local families, not absentee wealthy investors. We, we will deliver at least 10,000 new homes this way.

Imagine returning 10,000 homes without having to build one for our people. It's important. We will fund phase two of the 99 year leasehold program on Oahu. We'll continue redeveloping public housing like Mayor Wright Homes through the Kalimomi program. Anyone's there, It's a lot of houses. Thank you.

We'll expand the use of our state lands for workforce housing so teachers and nurses and firefighters can afford to live where they work. All of these actions, all of them will help bring down the cost of housing gradually for everyone in our state in the coming years.

And we'll continue building Hawaii where every family feels they can afford a place to call home, stay here, raise their keiki here in the islands where they grew up. That is our goal on housing. And now I want to turn to discuss homelessness.

At the end of 2022, Hawaii faced the second highest rate of homelessness in the country, more than twice the national average. With over 6,000 people unsheltered and unhoused. In our state, the old approaches, sweeps, short term fixes and an over reliance on emergency rooms were not solving the problem, they were just recycling it.

As an emergency room doctor, I've seen what that cycle looks like. Too often people could only get care in the ER at an average cost of $82,000 per person per year, and then they'd be discharged right back onto the street. Now that's not humane and it's not smart policy.

So we adopted a new approach as a team, the idea that housing is health care. We began breaking that cycle that I described by placing unhoused individuals into dignified, social supportive communities of tiny homes, especially after hospital discharge, reducing the cost dramatically for those individuals and helping stabilize people's lives.

We began, we began breaking the cycle, which is just terrible, of homelessness. And the results are real. We cut through the red tape with an emergency proclamation right here together on homelessness. And we scaled up the number of Kauhali Villages, communities of tiny homes with shared areas for cooking and recreation and growing food.

A recent report found health care costs averaging over $8,000 per month for people experiencing homelessness dropped by 76% to less than $2,000 per month after being placed into permanent housing or a cow hale. And what does that look like?

When you see someone that's gone through this transformation, it means that lives are radically improved and taxpayer dollars are saved. When I took office, there was just one kauhale, which Brooke and I and our small team and I honor Brooke. Can I please ask for a moment of applause for Brooke, who has been by my side?

So we had just built one kauhale, and we built that in those four years as lieutenant Governor. Now today, with your support, we've opened 25 Kauhali villages statewide, providing nearly 1,000 beds, with a total of 30 villages planned by the opening by the end of this next year. 30 villages. I know it's new.

I know we're growing together with this idea. But this has been the largest investment in reducing chronic homelessness in Hawaii state history. And we've built more housing units for the homeless than any previous Administration. So more than any other issue, homelessness, though, it feels like it's about numbers and the stories we hear.

It's really about the human lives that have been touched and transformed by this process. So I want to tell you a story about Julia. Julia lost her only child and her father on the same day, and grief overwhelmed her. After more than a decade of sobriety, she relapsed and she became homeless.

She was broken, she felt alone, and she was lost. Finding a kahale changed everything for Julia. With a safe home, therapy, and supportive community, she finally had space to heal and rebuild. Today, Julia is sober. She works as a cook in a nursing home. She takes care of our kupuna. She pays her own rent.

And she's become a source of strength for her nieces. Her message to others facing this hardship is simple. Don't give up. Keep showing up. If one plan doesn't work, try something else. Try, try again. And that's what you have done with me. And I'm grateful for that work. Thank you. Thank you, colleagues.

Julia, we are incredibly proud of you, and we are listening. Your message is our approach to homelessness in our state. Thank you, Julia. So in 2026 and over the coming years, we will continue investing $50 million per year to expand Kauhali Villages statewide.

We will provide $10.8 million to strengthen family assessment centers and housing first programs, rapid rehousing programs, outreach, and civil legal services. We'll keep integrating mental health care and addiction treatment into our homeless strategy because housing stability and behavioral health have to go together.

And our goal remains the same, to cut chronic homelessness year over year and in half by the end of this year and then half again over the next four years by treating people with basic human dignity. Now let's talk about jobs and economic growth. In late 2022, Hawaii was still recovering from the economic shock of the pandemic.

We all remember that period. Tourism had begun to return, but too many local families were still struggling. As I've shared, too many young people looked at wages, rent, and job opportunities in our state and concluded that leaving was the only way to build a better life. Our team refused to accept that.

Our vision has been to build an economy that works for all of our people, not just a privileged few. An economy where working families can afford to stay here, where local talent can grow, and where there's really economic opportunity everywhere in our state.

Over the past three years, we've taken certain actions, really, to strengthen our economy with policies that cut taxes, as we've shared, while stimulating investment in housing, health care, and energy. And we're seeing clear results. Our transformational energy plan reduces dependence on oil.

It lowers our carbon footprint and grows our economy as we transition to fully renewable sources in the coming years, while reducing energy costs for everyone in Hawaii. We have to be committed to projects like this. Hawaii right now has the third lowest unemployment rate in the nation, so there are good signs.

Our GDP is forecast to be 5% higher in 2025 than in 2029. Personal income, believe it or not, is forecast to be 11% higher. And visitor spending per traveler is now the highest ever recorded. We've actually seen work to diversify our economy, but there's so much more we have to do.

We've been investing, investing in career pathways, especially in healthcare, in conservation, in construction, in education, and in the creative industries. This means things like supporting organizations that create opportunities here at home. For example, when Coopu's federal AmeriCorps dollars were suddenly frozen, state support helped keep conservation and career training programs running for local youth.

Young people who were counting on that paycheck had a way forward. We gave them that path forward. When we helped keep that pipeline open. We didn't just preserve a program. We preserved a future here for thousands of local kids. But we also know there has to be other opportunities.

We know that the creative economy, like film, has been a powerful engine for local jobs when it's designed specifically to hire and train local people. That's why in 2026 and beyond, my proposal is to expand stackable film tax credits for productions that hire local crew and local talent.

The specifics of the proposal are to remove the credit cap for large productions that spend $60 million or more in Hawaii, including streaming services productions for the first time. But they have to hire local people. We'll support that.

We'll support construction apprenticeships here in our state because we're building so much that are tied directly to affordable housing projects, building homes and building careers at the same time. We'll create public private workforce pathways in healthcare, energy and education sectors where jobs are growing and where communities really need these workers. That's the future we believe in.

And we're working to build a Hawaii where local kids don't have to leave our islands ever to succeed. Because we've invested in creating real opportunities here at home that they can take in, become part of their lives. I just want to say this openly to friends. Never lose hope. Never lose hope in Hawaii.

Give these policies some time to take effect. Creating new jobs, growing our economy, diversifying, yielding greater and greater results will take some years. It takes time. But if we're struggling, if we're committed, it will work for our kids. Now let me turn our attention to the environment.

Climate change is already reshaping our islands with stronger storms, coastal erosion and devastating drought. We saw that in person. And we know something else in Hawaii. The environment is not a special interest. It's our home, it's our water, it's our food, it's our culture. And protecting it is our Kuleana.

So we took immediate steps to protect our most precious resource, clean water. Six months ahead of schedule. Together, we safely removed 104 million gallons of fuel at Red Hill. And we are shutting down Red Hill for good so it can never again threaten our health or the safety of our people.

But we don't want to just respond to tragedy. We want to. We actually wanted to increase our real world readiness. So we updated emergency siren protocols in our state, re established the state fire marshal, deployed wildfire and wind sensors statewide. So we have early alert capabilities everywhere you go.

We also made historic progress by expanding land use for local ag and ranching and watershed protections and drought resilience across our islands by taking responsible actions to both protect critical pasture lands and native forests and protect our hunting areas. Now, these steps demonstrate our commitment to protecting the environment and investing in climate security in the coming years.

But we didn't want to Stop there. It has to be real. So working with my colleagues at the Legislature and I will be forever grateful for this, we passed the nation's first green fee, the largest dedicated source of revenue to fund climate action. So this program now funds our environmental protection in our state going forward in history.

It's the first of its kind in our country. By increasing the TAT tax by 0.75%, which just started three weeks ago, will generate over $100 million annually to invest in climate action, conservation and resilience, things we've talked about for decades, but now we can accomplish.

We also formed an environmental advisory council led by Jeff Michalina to help guide our comprehensive strategy for resilience. Jeff, I'd like to single you out. Raise your hand there because I so appreciate. This strategy that comes from him and a large team around him.

The leaders in our climate challenges, the people who know the most, will help us to mitigate climate risk. And it will do more than just that. It will also support sustainable tourism like we've all been asked to be committed to. Now we have the resources to do it.

And we did this all with full transparency and community input. Over 600 community proposals came into Jeff and his team for environmental projects reflecting local priorities, natural resource protection, resilience, infrastructure and managing our visitor impacts. Over 600 applications.

So in practice, this means that we will now have funding for restoration projects that protect our reefs and shorelines, watershed work that safeguards drinking water and wildfire mitigation that helps keep communities safe. In the coming years, we'll continue to expand wildfire prevention and preparedness with these dollars, including sensor networks, defensible space planning and coordinated community readiness.

We will partner with schools and nonprofits to train the next generation of climate stewards. Because the work of Malamalina belongs to all of us now and forever. Thank you again for that honor. Let me be clear.

Our vision is for a Hawaii that leads the world in climate resilience, meaning our commitments and protecting our land, our water and our way of life for future generations. Health care Healthcare is an issue that affects all of us. Three years ago, our state faced a crisis in health care access.

And it's been going on for a long time, especially on the neighbor islands. We have a serious provider shortage with an estimated unmet need of 757 physicians statewide. Patients were waiting too long to see a doctor or skipping one altogether. We had to do something about it. So we did a couple things.

We launched the Healthcare Education Loan Repayment Program. Help. It's a state funded initiative supported by philanthropy that provides educational loan repayment for more than 900 providers licensed or certified to practice in our state already. And we've added hundreds of providers.

I know we need more doctors, but now we have more social workers and nurse practitioners and physician assistants. And we will dedicate ourselves in the future to bring all of these providers back into the fold where we need them.

We've also dedicated funds across the health care sector, state and federal funds, so we can raise Medicaid rates, improving the care for almost 400,000 of our citizens who are vulnerable and on Medicaid. But healthcare is not just about the hospitals and the providers. It's about accountability. That's why I'm committed to protecting Hawaii coverage for Hawaii families.

I'm including in this year's budget $16.5 million in our proposed 2026 overview to cover the cost of the enhanced ACA tax credits for everyone in Hawaii that currently uses them to buy insurance to help keep coverage affordable for our families to seniors and children.

For perspective, there are 24,000 individuals that fall into that category right now, and we have to commit ourselves to caring for them now.

Years ago, before the ACA subsidies or even the ACA even existed, when I was working as an ER doc, a mother came up to me and confided in me that she only gave her daughter half of her daughter's asthma medication as often as it was recommended. She only gave it half as often.

She said she couldn't afford to use the full dose that was needed because it wouldn't last long enough. She needed to make it last twice as long. I asked her what would they do if their daughter got sicker or couldn't breathe. This is what she told me.

She said they would then have to decide as a family whether to go to the emergency room and pay that enormous cost and then be forced to skip the next month's rent and beg for forgiveness from their landlord or take care of their daughter.

Now, no family in Hawaii should ever, ever be forced to make those kind of choices. But if we allow the ACA subsidies to expire in Hawaii, stories like this will become way too common in 2026. In the coming years, we'll continue to improve healthcare together.

Healthcare Access Affordability will expand the help initiative, and that will bring hundreds more doctors, nurses, PAs to our state. And I'm also proud to announce that just a few weeks ago, three weeks ago, we successfully fought for and won nearly $190 million in federal funds for fiscal year 27 as a part of the Rural Health Transformation program.

Now, over the next five years, this program will bring nearly $1 billion to us to modernize rural health access, to grow our economy, to create thousands of good jobs in health care across our state.

The actions we've taken on Medicaid, rural health care transformation, the ACA subsidies, all of this has the end goal of lowering the cost of health care for everyone in our state. Look, you know I'm a physician, Governor.

Our goal, all of our goal, our values have to suggest that health care is a basic human right, not a privilege for just a lucky few. And so we will always be focused on health care for our families. We're building a health care system that reflects our values.

It's based on compassion and fairness of access and the human dignity of care for every person wherever they are. Now, let me briefly update you on the Maui recovery. On 8-8-23, the people of Maui lived through the deadliest disaster in Hawai' I's modern history.

From the beginning, our job has been to get people housed and Fed, keep families together, stand with Maui for the long run. We mounted an unprecedented emergency response together delivering housing, health care and food support at a scale never before, never before seen in Hawaii.

The state, our partners, the legislators in Maui, the council, everyone came together and provided 6,800 temporary housing solutions for survivors. We created the Maui Interim Housing Plan with the mayor, with private sector supporters, with philanthropy.

It brought $500 million in an effort to create a pool of more than 3000 housing units while building more than 1200 temporary housing units and providing direct rental assistance to over 5,600 displaced people immediately and working with our congressional delegation, and I am grateful to them, to every single one of them, and our federal partners, we've provided over $3 billion in federal disaster relief to support housing and recovery so far in total, the Maui recovery effort represents the largest coordinated humanitarian effort response in Hawaii state history.

And I'm so proud of our state and community for coming together for that respons. But recovery is more than dollars invested. It's the moment when a family gets housing keys again. Zoe. Zoe is a mother of two who was born and raised in Lahaina.

And after she lost her home in the Maui wildfires, she was afraid she'd never be able to return home. Her family was forced to relocate to the Big Island. They felt uncertain about their future.

They were disconnected from their Maui community and unsure about they'd ever find a stable housing situation again that would allow them to come home to Lahaina. Then we opened Kalai Ola, the place of peaceful recovery. It's a temporary housing community that includes 450 homes along with gathering spaces that offer healthcare and case management.

When a home opened at Kalaiola, Zoe and her family moved back in. They found the stability and support they had always needed but couldn't find. The community has given them belonging again, safety, a pathway back to Maui while they work towards permanent housing. Her kids love their new community and Zoe has returned to work.

She remains a source of positivity and resilience for everyone in that community. And she inspires others. That is what recovery looks like. Coming home, healing, building community again.

So in 2026, in the coming years, we're committed to doing several things to delivering another 1200 interim housing units to help families become stable again while they rebuild their homes permanently. And today, a couple key announcements.

Today I'm announcing we will support the rent for those in transitional housing into 2027 to give them a little more time to rebuild their lives.

And just last Friday, we were so, so honored that we convinced, all of us, convinced the Federal Government to also extend, extend their housing plan to match ours into 2027 so the people of Maui and Lahaina will not have to panic about where they will live. I am grateful for that collaboration. That's what recovery looks like.

Can't be temporary, however. So we'll start construction and financing pathways for now more than 2200 permanent homes over the coming several years that will include 685 deeply affordable units. We continue statewide fire mitigation so these fires never happen again, including sensors that I mentioned and emergency warning programs, coordinated readiness.

We can never have another tragedy like the one we had on Maui. It was simply too hard for so many people. So we'll preserve Lahaina's cultural identity. We rebuild it in a way that honors plan, place and history and community like we always try to do. Our commitment to Maui endures.

And stories like Zoe's should always remind us that recovery, rebuilding and healing are actually possible. So in conclusion today, I'm proud to report to you that after three years of overcoming enormous challenges together, the state of Hawaii remains strong and resilient. I'm proud of the progress we've made together over the past three years.

We passed the largest income tax cut in our state's history. We made record investments in affordable housing. We built more Kauhali villages than ever expected and ever before to reduce homelessness. We launched the HELP initiative to bring doctors and nurses back to our communities. So Our people can get the care they need.

We protected the water and the land, and we're working to lower the cost of housing, healthcare, and energy for everyone in our state. But there is still so much more work to do in the coming years. Today, we've shared a vision of what that work looks like and the future we aspire to.

A future where working families can afford to live, raise their children and care for their kupuna. A future that puts our shared values into action. The values of Aloha, Ohana, and Kuleana. Our commitment to care for our land and our people, compassion for those in need, tolerant of others, and respect for basic human dignity.

A future where every family in our state can afford housing and health care. A future where no child goes hungry, where chronic homelessness as we have known it for decades can be virtually eliminated. Where our kupuna live out their days with respect and security. A future.

This vision is a future where our economy grows, where we create new jobs and build new housing, but we also protect our environment, remember our history, and defend our cultural heritage.

And we will not stop working, we will not stop fighting, and we will not stop dreaming until all of us, every young graduate, every family, every, Every keiki, every kupuna, and every person struggling or who feels left behind until every one of us together reach that place we can see just ahead. Our Hawaii.

A home that is more hopeful. A place where our values guide us and where we always find a way forward together as one. Ohana, mahalo and thank you for this honor of service.

Sam, You may be seated. Well, thank you, Governor Green. You've shared quite a few stories of individuals or families facing adversity. The story of how they found the opportunity in the adversity and were not stymied by the catastrophe in front of them and got on their pathway to success.

What I'd like to share, for those sitting to my right, to my left and my right and you in the gallery, is one more story to reinforce the stories the Governor has shared so that you understand clearly how each of us can make a significant difference.

I walked into my office this morning, and a friend of mine was sitting there waiting to watch the State of the State on television. Last night he had gone to the Stan Shurf center where Charlie Wade and the, uh, men's volleyball team had their annual fundraising dinner.

At the dinner, they give an award recognizing a former player for the contributions that player has made the community. And he shared the story with me. He said the individual they recognized wanted to play football in high school. He was one of four siblings being raised by a single mother.

And when he went to the football field, he was not allowed to try out because he did not own a pair of shoes. As he sat outside of the gym waiting for the bus that was going to take him home, the volleyball coach walked out after tryouts and asked this young man, have you ever played volleyball before?

And he said, no. He said, well, would you like to try out? And he said, well, I would, but I don't have any shoes. And he asked him, what size do you need for shoes? And he said, 13. So he said, come with me. And he went to his van, and I used to coach youth volleyball.

So you get all of this equipment, it's in your van. You're helping all your kids. You lose money when you're coaching at that level, but you're doing it because you love the sport and you love the young people you work with.

The coach had boxes of shoes in the van, found size 13, gave the pair of shoes to that young man, and said, I will see you at practice tomorrow. Well, eventually, after graduating and playing volleyball, he got a scholarship to the University of Hawaii men's volleyball program. After graduating, he had a family of his own.

Every one of his children became volleyball players, and every one of his children went to college on a volleyball scholarship. That young man with size 13 shoes way back when is a volleyball coach today continuing to impact young people.

So while it may have seemed so random so many years ago that that coach happened to have a size 13 pair of shoes in his van that he gave to the young man, he wound up making a generational difference in that family.

And untold is the amount of lives that have been impacted by the young man who went on to coach and invest in the lives of young people. So don't hesitate when you have the opportunity to pay it forward, don't hesitate.

Thinking this might be too small of a gesture, there is nothing too small that any of us can do to contribute to make this state the best place to live in in the world.

And so I encourage you to take the stories from the Governor, take the inspiration of this young man's story as we continue to improve our community. And to my colleagues in the House, in the Senate, with chair Kahele Oha, Executive branch, going to leave you with a quote.

Usually on these things, I try to find Martin Luther King, because that was the day before, but we're so far removed, I'm not going to do that. But poet Ellen Sturgis Hooper reveals a little secret of life. I slept and dreamed that life was joy. I woke and found that life was service.

I acted and behold, service was joy. Let us all go find our joy in the service we provide for the people of Hawaii. Thank you. I declare this joint session a joy.