Name on ballot:

Michael J. Konowicz

Running for:

Hawaii county council – District 9

Political party:

No answer submitted

Campaign website:

michael4hawaii.com

Current occupation:

Broadcast Meteorologist / Earth Science News Reporter

Age:

NA

Previous job history:

Board director, Waikoloa Village Association, 2022-current; board director, Elima Lani AOAO in Waikoloa Village, 2023; District 9 representative and chair, Hawaii County Cost of Government Commission, 2021-2022; Big Island Press Club and Big Island Press Club Scholarship Foundation, member 2017-current; vice-president 2021, treasurer 2021, president 2022-2024; member, Big Island Jeep Club, 2017-current; member, Hawaii Island Chamber of Commerce, 2022-current; member, American Meteorological Society and National Weather Association, 1991-current; member, Society of Professional Journalists, 1991-current, member, Honolulu Chapter, 2018-current, Hawaii County CERT (Community Emergency Response Team), 2024-Current

Previous elected office, if any:

None

Please describe your qualifications to represent the voters of your county.

I’m not a politician; instead, I’m a scientist and journalist that forecasts and reports on weather and Earth science news from around the world. I takes complex data and information and makes sense of it, telling people what to expect when it comes to the weather in the hours and days ahead or shares stories of earthquakes, volcanoes, pollution, hurricanes, climate, and more in easy to understand terms on TV, radio, online, and in newspapers/magazines. Every day I takes complex subjects, challenging problems, and lots of data and presents it to people in an easy-to-understand way for people to know about and empowers them to take action on important things around them. And I thinks that approach would work well in local government too. I’ve never worked in party politics and don’t owe any special interest groups any favors. And while I’ve volunteered for years in local government, non-profits, and other groups in our district, I haven’t spent years in office working at the expense of taxpayers. Instead, I’ve been an involved, educated, collaborative, active volunteer in our community, advocating for the community needs while trying to make our district and our island better for many years.

What is the most pressing issue facing the voters you seek to represent, and how would you address the problem?

There is a housing affordability crisis on the Big Island that is especially acute in our district. Last month, the median sales price for a single-family home in North Kohala was $3.1 million while the South Kohala median was $1.3 million. Work is underway on the new Nānā Kai subdivision in Waikoloa Village where the builder has approvals to build 1,750 residential units, with the first few hundred starting at a price-point around $2.5 million.

Meanwhile condo prices are also skyrocketing, climbing 62% in Waimea and 81% in Waikoloa over just the last 12 months. Rents are rising as a result, too, making it unaffordable for more and more people in our community, forcing blue- and white-collar workers, teachers, nurses and even doctors to leave.

We need to secure land for affordable housing much like we do with public open spaces; we need to broaden qualification standards for affordable housing, we need to eliminate county bureaucracy and red tape and streamline planning and permitting to encourage development while reducing its cost and we need to reinvent the County’s Chapter 11 code on affordable housing to produce more positive results for the people of our island.

Do you support or oppose the development of the Thirty Meter Telescope? Please explain.

Whether or not the Thirty Meter Telescope is built here is not the purview of the County Council; as such, as a council member, I would respect the final decision made by the stakeholders responsible for what happens on Mauna Kea.

Personally, though, as a man of science, and as someone with great appreciation of the science and discoveries made by Native Hawaiians and others here in our astronomy industry, I do support their mission, the advancement of the science of astronomy and all the scientific benefits they achieve that improve all of humankind.

What are the best ways for county government to alleviate homelessness on the island and to increase the availability of affordable housing?

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet available to fix the homelessness problem here nor is there any municipality anywhere in the U.S. where efforts seem to be truly working.

Our warm weather, our out-of-reach unaffordable housing, easy access to drugs, a lack of mental health facilities and inconsistent law enforcement are providing the perfect storm for homelessness to continue to be a growing problem here. While Hilo and Kailua-Kona are homeless hotspots, other communities in my district also see a growing homeless population, even in places like Waimea and Waikoloa.

Beyond making housing affordable and accessible, we need to improve drug, alcohol and mental health treatment facilities. Most of the chronically homeless, even those with grave emotional and mental disorders, have addiction issues. We must create infrastructure to treat these individuals.

With housing and treatment options available, we must also empower law enforcement to enforce the law, even among the homeless. They should leverage every offense, such as loitering, public urination, public nuisance, intoxication, trespassing and all drug-related offenses, as an opportunity to force the chronically homeless to enter treatment.

What can the county do to help island residents cope with the overall high cost of living in Hawaii?

If we tackle affordable housing and make ownable or rentable space reasonably priced for our local people, other costs will come back in line to more normal levels. If affordable housing isn’t addressed, our cost of living will only continue to grow.

How prepared is the county to deal with a major natural disaster and what would you do to improve preparedness and responsiveness?

Hawaii has many man-made crises facing it, such as an affordable housing crisis, a cost of living crisis and even a waste management crisis. And all of these man-made crises exist while we are perilously close to the next natural disaster, whether it be wildfire, earthquake, volcanic eruption, tsunami or hurricane.

We need to be proactive on every front to keep our community safe and secure from any threat it faces and need to focus on resiliency to anything we face, whether they be man-made or natural. We also need to make sure the county isn’t itself creating the next disaster: Are we keeping communities safe by having sufficient roads and access in/out of them to keep people away from fire and lava? Are we investing sufficiently in waste management to keep our environment clean and our people safe? Is our Civil Defense staffed to have people not only trained to tackle disasters, but do they also have plans in place and are our communities aware of those plans to keep themselves safe from our next quake, tsunami or fire?

What measures, if any, should county government take to regulate short-term vacation rentals?

Unfortunately, our island’s leaders did not future-proof housing and the tourism industries from an evolving landscape that created a thriving Short Term Vacation Rental (STVR) industry. With few parameters or rules, people were able to convert their homes or their investment homes to rentable units for tourists. While this has happened for decades, evolving technology platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo has accelerated the adoption of short term vacation rental units, especially in recent years.

Due to the lack of future-proofing in the past, some are trying to fix the situation today by outright banning vacation rental units or severely restricting them. In some cases, this pits our vibrant hotel and timeshare industry against private home owners, creating a battle where everyone is a loser. And while some argue that the over-abundance of short term rental inventory is hurting hotels and timeshares, others accuse the short term rental industry of being responsible for a lack of affordable housing. Or both.

I’m not yet convinced that short term rental units are to blame for harming our hotel industry nor an I convinced they’re having a material impact on our affordable housing crisis. But I am convinced that there does need to be a balanced approach to protecting private property rights and protecting our communities from the expenses and issues of bringing tourists deep into our residential communities. I welcome additional studies and data to sway my opinion more. But for now I believe:

– The current owners of short term vacation rentals should not be punished due to previous government inaction and their inability to future-proof the island. I do not support an outright ban of existing short term vacation rentals; there are people that have dedicated their careers or their finances to have a business of running some kind of short term vacation rental and the government should not pull the rug out from these people. Bad prior policies are the problem, not the owners of these properties.

– I believe short term vacation rentals should be restricted to resort or commercial zones where communities and amenities are designed with tourists in mind. I don’t believe new short term vacation rentals should exist out of these zones, but again, I don’t think those that have such established businesses should be forced to cease their business if they happen to have one outside of these zones for now. Should someone sell their current short term vacation rented home in a residential area, the ability to continue operating it as a vacation rental should not be allowed.

-I believe short term vacation rental guests do use services and facilities in residential areas not designed for transient tourists. As such, I want to make sure that these properties’ guests are paying all the same taxes that a hotel guest would be paying to make sure County and State services and their expense are covered; I also want to make sure that these properties are paying their fare share of property taxes as a commercial, hotel-like tax rate and not at a discounted residential rate.

-Like their hotel peers, short term vacation rentals should be registered and licensed to operate to keep their guests safe.

-Our farmers and ranchers are struggling to profit from their land and face increasing costs for things like power, labor, equipment, supplies, and water. With growing interest in agritourism, and the ability to showcase our agriculture in unique ways to visitors, I believe legitimate farms should be able to offer short term vacation rental options to tourists even if they aren’t in a resort or commercial zone. However, these must be legitimate farms with legitimate agritourism in mind for their guests. Planting a fruit tree on a parcel and renting out an ohana does not make for a legitimate agritourism venture; there should be requirements that make agriculture the overwhelming revenue generator for a property versus tourist rental income.

What more needs to be done to reduce crime on Hawaii island?

We need to work with state and federal partners to build more prisons for our criminals. Currently, our prison system is well beyond capacity resulting in a revolving door of inmates to make way for more. Due to that revolving door, we’re constantly returning criminals to our street and encouraging others to consider crime since there’s no repercussion for their crime. If we’re able to lock-up criminals and keep them in prison while provide a legitimate deterrence of an actual jail stay for prospective criminals, crime will drop in Hawaii.

What will be your top priority if elected?

Tackling the affordable and low-income housing crisis on our island.

Is there anything more that you would like voters to know about you?

As a member of the Big Island Press Club for many years and its president up to the time I announced my candidacy for County Council, it was always a mission of mine to make the county administration more transparent and accessible to the public. I have fought for and against multiple county and state bills that ultimately lead to more light shining on public issues, more access to government records, meetings and decisions, more protected freedoms of speech and press and greater government accountability.

That passion for the public’s right to know is why I’ve made having an open and honest government one of my core campaign platforms, along with affordable housing and infrastructure improvements.

I recently fought against Gov. Green’s veto threat of House Bill 2581, which if he vetoed, would allow the governor or any island mayor to shut down the press and any communication, for that matter, anytime they declare there’s an “emergency.” Fortunately he had a change of heart and the bill, which I had worked on with other partners to pass for more than two years, was signed into law.

With my journalism background, I want to over-communicate with my constituents: I want to keep them informed of local issues and actions and engage with them every step of the way to bring smart solutions to life.