Rebuilding or perhaps recreating Maui’s Lahaina community needs two things, according to U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, Hawaii’s senior U.S. senator.

In a sit-down interview last week in Honolulu, Schatz explained that Hawaii will first need a massive construction plan, but to accomplish that the state must also change how it thinks about the new construction.

Simply put, a new state mindset is needed, says the 52-year-old Democrat, who has risen through Hawaii’s political ranks from political reformer, to state legislator and lieutenant governor to now the leader of Hawaii’s congressional delegation.

Schatz is helping to steer an estimated $1.6 billion in new federal funding for Maui’s continued recovery, saying the money goes for building permanent housing for survivors of the Lahaina fires.

“I come from a progressive tradition,” Schatz said during the interview. He explains that he sees himself as someone who came of age as an “environmental activist,” but who now is alerting “some of my fellow environmental travelers that there is something they have to understand.

“There’s nothing progressive about preventing people from being able to live in Hawaii.”

He looked back at what he said has been decades of “stopping bad things from happening. And I’ve been proud to be a part of that — whether it was Waimea Valley or Sandy Beach or Sunset Beach or the surf spot ‘Flies.’” But now restraint on development has evolved into “a labyrinth of laws and regulations … so we somehow are not able to draw a distinction between a project that is obviously beneficial to the community and those that are obviously harmful.”

Schatz admitted his comments will “likely get me into trouble,” but he wanted to set a different bar for “folks who are not primarily concerned with national cultural resources but are concerned with protecting their views and their personal conveniences.”

Schatz fears that calls about “how to develop a two-bedroom unit where you can raise a family has become a debate about reversing centuries of injustice.

“We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” Schatz said.

When asked about local politics and fellow Democrat Gov. Josh Green, Schatz had only praise.

“I’m watching the work done by Josh Green, Josh is great. Josh is a friend. He’s decisive and I think that’s something that the public clearly wanted in the governor. He’s driving change.”

Although Green got his political start in the state Legislature, “He’s not a creature of the Legislature.”

“He’s managed those relationships skillfully and I think one of his great talents is he does understand people and he likes to solve people’s problems,” Schatz said

Looking at how Congress will change in the new term, Schatz acknowledges that with Republicans gaining a three-seat majority in the U.S. Senate and maintaining their control of the U.S. House of Representatives, in addition to gaining control of the White House, means that politics will change, but also stay the same.

“In some ways the Senate has always been a bipartisan enterprise,” Schatz said. “So I don’t think people should assume we are going to do terribly over the next four years.

“I don’t think the sky is falling. The president can’t reach into a state and remove funding,” Schatz said.

Still to be determined, however, will be how Hawaii fits into a Donald Trump worldview.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.