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Governor defends controversial water commission appointment in exclusive interview

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Governor defends controversial water commission appointment in exclusive interview


HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Gov. Josh Green is making a strident defense of his nominee to the state Commission on Water Resource Management, and is calling for compromise on water and development issues.

He is speaking out after a key state senator said the nominee was not qualified and critics suspect he would side with developers.

The governor has been under fire from environmentalists for his handling of water issues since soon after the Maui wildfires, when his administration reassigned the commission’s top administrator after a false claim he delayed release of water needed to fight fires.

His appointment of retired state historic preservation official V.R. Hinano Rodrigues is the latest move to be challenged, including by a key state senator.

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Related post: Governor under fire again over water commission appointment

In an exclusive interview with Hawaii News Now, he called on his critics to compromise.

“These kind of stories that get rolled out and start from a place of confrontation, what do they get us? Nothing. They get us no housing, no progress, no water changes, no nothing,” he said.

After a nearly 11-month process, which water rights advocates said was intentional stalling, the governor nominated Rodrigues to a position reserved by law for a person with “substantial experience or expertise in traditional Hawaiian water resource management techniques and in traditional Hawaiian riparian usage.”

That’s to ensure that traditional kalo farmers have access to adequate stream water, which has created conflicts with large landowners and developers, especially on perpetually water short Maui.

Rodrigues was a cultural expert and manager with the state historic preservation agency.

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“Let them see this person’s resume. It’s fantastic,” Green said. “This is someone who’s committed years and years of service in the field, and, by the way, grows his own taro, for gosh sakes.”

But Sen. Lorraine Inouye, who chairs the Water and Land Committee, said that doesn’t meet the qualifications in the law.

“One needs to have some water resource management background. And certainly, from my standpoint, it doesn’t seem like this gentleman is qualified,” she said.

Inouye, whose committee will review Rodrigues’ confirmation, said there were more qualified candidates the governor passed over and would have been acceptable to the water rights and environmental communities.

“I can’t understand why the governor is already upsetting the community and not fulfilling the requirements of that particular seat,” she said.

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The governor responded to Inouye’s comments:

“All due respect, the senators should talk to the individual, find out where they’re coming from long before lobbing a little hand grenade behind their back,” he said.

In his interview, the governor described his decision-making process, involving two rounds of interviews and two sets of nominees from the screening committees:

“First person felt not to be Hawaiian enough, though it was Hawaiian and a leader, but not the guy people wanted. So, I didn’t do it. Second person got scared out of their, you know, their dress clothes. They didn’t want to deal with a conflict. And the third and fourth person, great people, but they brought an ideological perspective that was going to cause chaos as I try to work through some of these problems,” Green said, using the fingers of one hand to count off the nominees.

Green said advocates of stream restoration are blocking needed housing, although they dispute that, and says people are too quick to attack nominees who are willing to compromise.

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“In our beautiful state, if people don’t line up perfectly, then we demonize them,” he said.

“This is no way to move forward as a state, and so I would ask those who bring an ideological position to instead, trust that people are going to actually try to work in good faith,” Green said.

Rodrigues could take his seat on the water commission as early as Thursday, when the commission meets in Honolulu.

The commission is also scheduled to confirm the new deputy for the commission, Ciara Kahahane, whom the governor appointed in August.

Watch the governor’s full interview:

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In an exclusive interview with Hawaii News Now, Gov. Josh Green called on his critics to compromise.



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Suspect arrested in attempted armed robbery on North Shore

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Suspect arrested in attempted armed robbery on North Shore


HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Police have arrested a suspect in a violent attempted robbery on Oahu’s North Shore. Another suspect still has not been located.

Police said the two men approached another man in Mokuleia Friday night. One of the men allegedly assaulted the victim while the other one threatened him with a handgun.

According to police records, the suspects ran off when the victim called police.

Officers later identified one of the suspects as a 50-year-old man. He was arrested Tuesday and faces possible charges of robbery in the first degree.

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Few state bills this year face potential veto – West Hawaii Today

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Few state bills this year face potential veto – West Hawaii Today






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Hawaii displays historic photos of Martin Luther King Jr. wearing flower lei during Selma march

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Hawaii displays historic photos of Martin Luther King Jr. wearing flower lei during Selma march


HONOLULU — Photographs of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. adorned with flower lei from Hawaii residents who traveled to Selma, Alabama, to join him on a pivotal Civil Rights march went on public display Tuesday in the state Capitol in Honolulu.

The Selma-to-Montgomery marches galvanized passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which did away with most barriers such as poll taxes and other forms of voter discrimination targeting Black Americans in the Deep South.

A delegation of five people brought dozens of flower lei with them from Hawaii to Alabama in March 1965. Images of King wearing lei, garlands that are synonymous with Hawaiian culture, have been previously published — but most of the photos displayed in Hawaii’s new exhibit have never been seen before. Some photos have subtle variations, while others include figures who may have been deemed unimportant at the time. The exhibit runs through July 7.

One of the lei-bearers was Charles Campbell, a high school teacher and chairman of the Hawaii Civil Rights Conference, who a March 20, 1965 article in The Honolulu Advertiser quoted as saying: “Selma has the capability of becoming a real sore that could affect the entire nation.”

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King was photographed wearing lei about two weeks after the event known as Bloody Sunday when state troopers violently attacked Civil Rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on March 7, 1965.

The photos were taken by Civil Rights photographer Matt Herron, whose widow donated them to Hawaii’s Department of Accounting and General Services for the state’s archives.

After the photos were unveiled, Steven Springel stared at a photo of his mother, Nona Ferdon, who was a divorced mother of two children and a graduate student when she traveled to Selma.

This photo provided by Jeannine Herron shows Charles Campbell, who traveled to Alabama for the march from Selma to Montgomery, placing a lei on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Brown Chapel AME in Selma, Ala., March 21, 1965. Credit: AP/Matt Herron

Springel remembers he was just about to turn 7 and only realized as an adult how important her trip was. Growing up in Hawaii, “we never experienced segregation or racial inequality,” he said of his and his sister’s childhood. Ferdon died in 2021.

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The exhibit, part of Hawaii’s programming to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, is a reminder people from the Aloha State participated in an important event in history, said Keith Regan, who oversees the department as the state’s comptroller and presided over the photo unveiling as acting governor while Gov. Josh Green is out of state.

The small delegation traveled thousands of miles “to be a part of the Civil Rights movement, to show ‘aloha’ to the world that Hawaii was there holding hands with our fellow brothers and sisters to ensure equality and justice were heard throughout the nation,” he said.

The Hawaii members also wore lei during first day of the 50-mile (80.46-kilometer) march. Mothers of Kawaiahaʻo Church in Honolulu strung together fragrant plumeria plucked from church grounds to assemble the lei.

This photo provided by Jeannine Herron shows Nona Ferdon, a...

This photo provided by Jeannine Herron shows Nona Ferdon, a graduate student who accompanied the Hawaii delegation that traveled to Alabama in 1965 for the march for voting rights, attends the march in Selma, Ala., March 21, 1965. Credit: AP/Matt Herron

Giving lei, a word that is both singular and plural in the Hawaiian language, continues to be a way to share the “aloha” spirit. People in Hawaii give and receive lei for all kinds of reasons, including to celebrate birthdays and promotions, or to show appreciation or recognition.

Tomi Knaefler, who had traveled with the delegation as a reporter with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, planned to attend Tuesday’s news conference. But at 96 years old, she wasn’t feeling up to it, said her daughter, Pamela MacDonald, who did attend.

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MacDonald said she was 14 when her mother went on the assignment, “the one that she holds dearest to her heart.”

The exhibit comes at the end of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2026 term, which included a ruling gutting the remaining piece of the Voting Rights Act, setting off a wave of partisan gerrymandering in states in the South and endangering generations of gains in Black political representation.



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