u/BrandonApplesauce

That really sums things up here! Classic... and Zippy's 🤣

>This past Monday, five council members — Esther Kiaʻāina, Tyler Dos Santos-Tam, Matt Weyer, Radiant Cordero and Augie Tulba – got together at Zippy’s in Waipahu to plan who would be the next council chair.

Word on the street — which was ferreted out via some good old-fashioned shoe leather reporting by Civil Beat city government reporter Ben Angarone — says the new leader will be Tyler Dos Santos-Tam.

“I have no comment,” Dos Santos-Tam told Angarone when asked about the meeting.<

>The City Council chair is a powerful position because the chair decides which bills get heard and which don’t, as well as who gets to chair influential committees and who doesn’t.<

https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/10/the-sunshine-blog-game-of-thrones-at-the-honolulu-city-council/

The video is crazy. Car upside down in a driveway or something. I think the driver fled. Two poles down and all the lines in the road. Road closed. 🙄

Yesterday Hawaii Kai traffic backed up for miles from 25? year old male weaving in an out - hit a curb and was ejected. In critical condition. 🙏 Young lady killed in hit and run last night.

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2026/10/11/single-car-collision-damages-utility-pole-laie-closes-part-kamehameha-highway/

&gt;The number of voters calling themselves independents keeps rising. More than 40% of voters nationally and probably less in Hawaiʻi now** **call themselves independents.

Think of two kinds of independent movements. One sees that increase as a sign that voters are sick of choosing between Democrats or Republicans. Call this a mass independent movement.<

https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/10/independents-rise-do-they-have-future-hawaii/

Unreal. Calm beautiful night

&gt;We're used to things taking time to get to Hawaiʻi. Overnight on the Mainland means at least two days to the Islands. But now the Post Office says that instead of Priority Mail taking two to three days, those packages are now expected in two to four days.

It's longer for the Ground Advantage service. A package that used to take two to five days now takes at least 10 days to arrive.<

https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/local-news/2026-10-09/longer-delivery-time-for-mail-from-hawaii

&gt;At a news conference Friday afternoon with his attorney, Eric Seitz, Pelletier made a bombshell claim of his own: that Bissen had him sidelined because Bissen has been under criminal investigation since August.

“I will tell you, it’s a felonious crime and the mayor is the suspect,” Pelletier said. He refused to provide any more details and he said he is recused from the investigation, apparently because of the bad blood with the Mayor.<

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2026/10/09/maui-police-chief-fights-paid-leave-with-accusation-against-mayor/

&gt;This week, 16,000 kūpuna received a troubling letter from the state’s largest health insurance company. 

At the top, in bold print, it said: “IMPORTANT NOTICE: Your Medicare plan won’t be offered in 2027.” It continued that action needed to be taken before the end of the year, or else patients with HMSA’s specific Medicare Advantage plans would lose their prescription drug coverage. <

https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/10/hmsas-medicare-changes-could-increase-costs-for-thousands/

&gt;Check in will begin earlier online and on the app, and mags must be dropped off at least 50 minutes beforehand instead of 30 minutes.<

https://www.kitv.com/news/hawaiian-airlines-changes-coming-for-neighbor-island-international-flights/article_65500b1e-60d1-4072-81f9-feb8327b8275.html

Molokai needs more time to prepare than a letter sent on Sept 11th. It's hard to find any lower watt generators anywhere right now let alone delivered to Molokai. But, food in the fridge and freezer should be fine for 8 hours per day. Fill it up with large water containers and set it low. Food will last. But still - six says of losing power for 8 hours should be more than

&gt;Now residents of half the island say their food stocks are at risk because of a six-day, eight-hour-per-day, planned power outage that Hawaiian Electric Co. announced last month for the east side of the Friendly Isle. The company says it needs to upgrade the island’s grid to help prevent wildfires.

Residents say they’re all for the upgrades, but have proposed various ways for HECO to change its work schedule to give them more time to prepare and mitigate food spoilage. <

&gt;One of the issues for Molokaʻi residents, Chow says, is that they had relatively little time to prepare. HECO sent out letters to affected customers on Sept. 11 and followed up with a series of emails starting Sept. 16, but Chow said many residents didn’t fully understand what was about to happen until HECO held a virtual webinar last week. 

Even if people had been fully informed weeks ago, she said, there’s simply not enough propane for generators and other emergency supplies on the island to supply the roughly 600 households to be affected.

HECO’s Decker wrote that the notices were more than adequate. <

https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/10/heco-blackout-half-of-molokai-may-lose-a-summers-fish-and-game/

&gt;HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - The state Attorney General has announced a settlement with Monsanto Company and two of its affiliates over contamination caused by PCBs in Hawaii waterways and natural resources.

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are man-made organic chemicals that were used in a wide variety of products until they were banned in 1979 following mounting evidence that they were toxic to human health and the environment.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says PCBs were once in everything from electrical equipment and motors and sealants and paper products, and could still be in old oil-based paints and plastics.

“PCBs, they’re very persistent, they don’t break down in the environment,” said Wayne Tanaka, chapter director of the Sierra Club Hawaii.<

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2026/10/02/state-reaches-settlement-with-monsanto-over-pcb-contamination/

&gt;Police departments in Hawaiʻi have been increasing the number of women in their ranks at a glacial pace over the last decade, but the Honolulu Police Department is making a push for progress. 

HPD, where female officers make up 14% of the ranks, signed a pledge earlier this month aiming to have 30% of its force made up of women by 2030 — doubling over the next three years. 

The pledge is part of a nationwide initiative called 30×30 launched in 2021 with the goal of increasing the representation of women in law enforcement across the country. The Hawaiʻi Department of Law Enforcement also signed the pledge, but no other county department in Hawaiʻi has. <

https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/09/the-latest-challenge-for-honolulu-police-hire-more-women/

&gt;Hawaiʻi has just been named the worst state in America to do business, dead last, out of 50, in CNBC’s 2026 “America’s Top States for Business” rankings. It’s the first time in the study’s 20-year history that Hawaiʻi has finished at the very bottom. Last year we were 49th. This year we found a way to be worse.<

&gt;And when we asked what’s actually driving the anxiety, the answer was consistent: cost of living, named by 54% of business leaders and 58% of the general public as the single biggest issue facing the state, with the cost of housing close behind.

That housing pressure falls hardest on Hawaiʻi’s future workforce. Renters, Millennials and Gen Zers were significantly more likely than anyone else to name housing costs among the state’s biggest problems, precisely the group Parsons’s retention credits are meant to keep from leaving. The “Paradise Tax” is scaring new businesses away and enraging small local business owners who would like to call Hawaiʻi home forever.<

https://www.hawaiibusiness.com/dead-last-now-what/

I didnt see anything wrong with the lauhala basket and names. Its was fair and 50/50 chance and it was very clear.

&gt;Acting Chief Justice Sabrina McKenna asked whether the eggs-in-a-basket method was tested so that it did not favor certain outcomes. Nago said he did not think so but argued that his office found that it worked better to put the slips of paper with names in capsules.< - REALLY? You can hear the balls moving around. 🤣🙄

&gt;Flip a coin, pick a card, draw straws — do anything except use plastic eggs and a lauhala basket, the state’s high court suggests.<

https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/09/how-should-hawaii-settle-tied-elections/

Here I am agree with Lee again 😁

&gt;Those commercials, paid for by the carpenters’ union and contractors, featured a montage of clips taken from Kawakami’s social media accounts and his voice lifted from a previous speech. They went past ubiquitous and became almost cloying, and the message that came through was not so much, “Kawakami is a good guy” but “The big union in town is telling us who to vote for.” The campaign may have helped Kawakami with name recognition, as he won the Democratic primary, but it felt like the boost of those slick ads and avalanche of mailers came with a cost.<

https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/09/lee-cataluna-sometimes-the-best-campaign-ad-is-no-campaign-ad/