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Editor’s note: For Hawaii’s Nov. 5 General Election, Civil Beat asked candidates to answer some questions about where they stand on various issues and what their priorities will be if elected.

The following came from Tina Nakada Grandinetti, Democratic candidate for state House District 20, which includes Leahi, Kahala, Waialae, Kaimuki and Kapahulu. Her opponent is Republican Corinne Solomon.

Go to Civil Beat’s Election Guide for general information, and check out other candidates on the General Election Ballot.

1. What is the biggest issue facing your district, and what would you do about it?

While canvassing my district, the biggest issues that my community shared were all related to housing: rising housing costs, monster homes and increasing homelessness. In my view, all of these concerns are the result of decades of housing and land use policies that have made Hawaii a hub for a global real estate market that is disconnected from the local economy and the needs of everyday working families.

Our current approach has focused almost exclusively on new housing production that remains out of reach for working families. If elected, I would broaden our policy conversation to include a focus on strategies that center the needs of local people.

To address the housing and homelessness crisis, we need a ground-up, comprehensive housing policy agenda. This should include: disincentivizing speculation in our housing market, funding a comprehensive continuum of care for people experiencing homelessness, strengthening protections for low-income homeowners and the 48% of Hawaii households who rent, demanding accountability from developers and providing state support for community-ownership models that create a pool of truly and permanently affordable housing. 

2. How do you feel about the massive income tax cut just approved by the Legislature and the governor? Do you have any concerns that it will force reductions in state services in the years to come?

The recent income tax cuts provided the biggest benefit to Hawaii’s wealthiest residents. While the measure did put more money in the pockets of working families by doubling the amount that can be claimed by the standard deduction, it also implemented bracket adjustments that give away millions to wealthy households.

Hawaii already has a regressive tax structure that disproportionately burdens low-income people, and these tax bracket adjustments mean that in the first year, the top 1% of earners will receive a break of over $6,000, while the bottom 20%, those who are already struggling to make ends meet, will see an average of just $335.

The loss of this tax revenue will undoubtedly impact social services and other important programs that benefit working people. Rather than doubling down on trickle-down economics, we should work toward tax fairness to ensure that our community’s needs are met from the ground up. I believe that the wealthy should pay their fair share toward the common good, so that we can all collectively benefit from public investments in comprehensive systems of community care, stronger infrastructure, quality public education and so much more. 

3. Hawaii continues to struggle with pay-to-play politics and corruption in government. What meaningful reforms do you think would change state government for the better?

We need to get money out of politics and start building back trust in our public institutions by implementing good governance reforms.

I support ending pay-to-play donations by closing loopholes in campaign finance law so that all owners, officers, family members and employees of companies vying for government contracts are prohibited from donating to political campaigns, as well as establishing significant penalties for violators.

Beyond this, we should also work to enhance requirements for disclosing potential conflicts of interests and strengthen the criteria for determining what constitutes a conflict of interest.

Finally, under our current system, committee chairs have nearly unilateral power over whether a bill lives or dies. I support internal rule changes that more equitably distribute power among committee members so that our legislators can engage with each other more democratically, and so that constituents can count on the fact that their elected representatives have a voice in the Legislature. 

4. Candidates often say they will support reform proposals in the Legislature. And yet major reform proposals don’t pass. Will you back good-government proposals even if it means going against leadership? If you are an incumbent, can you point to an example of a reform that you supported?

I am commited to being a champion for good-government reforms, even if it means going against leadership.

We are seeing a deep and growing mistrust of our government that is leading to polarization, division and disengagement. If we do not begin to repair this trust by making meaningful reforms to increase transparency and accountability, we will further alienate our community.

I am committed to supporting reform proposals because I want Hawaii’s people to feel ownership over our democratic process so that they feel invested in working with government to come up with solutions to Hawaii’s biggest challenges. 

5. Do you support comprehensive public financing of elections for candidates who choose to participate? Why or why not?

I support the comprehensive public financing of elections. Our current system favors wealthy candidates and empowers monied interests who can make large donations to political campaigns.

As a grassroots candidate aiming to ensure that my donor list reflects my political values, I know firsthand that the costs of running a campaign are prohibitive, and that the pressure to seek out wealthy donors further enables their influence over politics. I also know that our current public financing option does not provide enough funding to run a competitive race.

A comprehensive public financing system would level the playing field by providing all candidates with equal resources, thereby allowing our candidate pool to better reflect the diversity of our community. It would also reduce the influence of big donors and specific interest groups.

And finally, it would benefit the broader community and enrich our democratic process by allowing candidates to focus less on fundraising and more on engaging voters and learning from district residents. 

6. Hawaii is the only Western state without a statewide citizens initiative process. Do you support such a process? Why or why not?

I support a statewide citizens initiative process because I see it is a pathway for community-driven policymaking that has the potential to increase civic participation and demand more responsiveness from our elected officials. The legislative system tends to be risk averse and resistant to change. In this context, citizen lawmaking via ballot initiative has been a helpful tool to bring important conversations to the table, allow communities to make their voices heard and usher in progressive legislation that serves the needs of working people.

Direct democratic process like citizens initiatives and participatory budgeting have the potential to engage voters and community members who have otherwise felt disenfranchised.

In tandem with a statewide citizens initiative, I would also like to see our state invest more in long-term civic education in order to better equip our community to participate in the decisions that impact their lives. 

7. Thanks to their campaign war chests and name familiarity, incumbents are almost always reelected in Hawaii legislative races. Should there be term limits for state legislators, as there are for the governor’s office and county councils? Why or why not?

I support term limits for state legislators because they can serve as an important check on the undue concentration of power and influence.

However, as we determine what those limits should be, I think it is also important to recognize that it takes some time and experience to learn how to be an effective legislator. Reasonable term limits should strike a balance between the need to limit power, allow for new voices and new perspectives and ensure that we have effective legislators.

We should also support campaign finance reforms and publicly financed elections to ensure that we do not have to wait for incumbents to term out before new candidates feel empowered to run. 

8. What will you do to ensure accountability at the Legislature? Do you support ideas such as requiring the Sunshine Law to apply to the Legislature or banning campaign contributions during session?

We need to implement robust reforms around accountability at the legislature. I strongly support banning all campaign contributions and fundraising during session, and I also support the expansion of Sunshine Law.

In addition, we should revisit the 2022 report from the Commission to Improve Standards of Conduct, which issued recommendations for improving ethics and accountability in government. We should also strengthen reporting for lobbying activities, and implement real-time disclosures of campaign contributions so that this information is more easily accessible to the public. 

9. How would you make the Legislature more transparent and accessible to the public? Opening conference committees to the public? Stricter disclosure requirements on lobbying and lobbyists? How could the Legislature change its own internal rules to be more open?

I support making conference committees more accessible to the public and enforcing stricter disclosure requirements on lobbyists.

One further way we could make the Legislature more transparent and accessible to the public is by making committee agenda-setting a more democratic process. Currently, committee chairs have unilateral power to decide whether a bill gets a hearing. We should explore implementing rules that democratize the agenda-setting process and make it more transparent to the public. This could be accomplished by requiring committees to take a vote on agenda-setting, or by requiring committee chairs to provide a reason for declining to schedule bills for hearings, as was recommended by the Commission to Improve Standards of Conduct in 2022.

10. Many people have talked about diversifying the local economy for many years now, and yet Hawaii is still heavily reliant on tourism. What, if anything, should be done differently about tourism and the economy?

We should lessen our dependence on tourism by making bold public investments in regenerative agriculture that produces local food for local consumption. We currently spend less than 1% of our state budget on agriculture and we still import roughly 80-90% of our food.

Investing in diversified, regenerative, local agriculture will help to enrich our economy and make us more resilient in the face of climate change and other disasters. I know so many young people who are eager to care for aina, revitalize indigenous food systems and grow food for our community, but are unable to pursue careers in agriculture because they are not paid a living wage or cannot access state agricultural lands.

It is also important to state that our labor movement has a critical role to play in this conversation. The people who profit most from our dependence on tourism are outside corporations, which amplifies the exploitative nature of the industry. We need to empower our workers to ensure that all industries, from tourism to agriculture, from construction to tech, are serving the needs of the working people who make them run. 

11. An estimated 60% of Hawaii residents are struggling to get by, a problem that reaches far beyond low-income and into the middle class, which is disappearing. What ideas do you have to help the middle class and working families who are finding it hard to continue to live here?

In order to strengthen our middle class and ensure that working families can afford to stay in Hawaii, we need to implement ground-up policies that directly support working people. This means investing in public education, early child care and kupuna care, so that families do not have to sacrifice large portions of their income simply to ensure that their family members are cared for.

We should also focus on addressing the cost of housing, which is by far the biggest expense most local families face. We can take bold action to lower housing cost burdens by implementing rent stabilization measures to protect the nearly 48% of Hawaii households who rent, and disincentivizing the kinds of speculative investments in our housing market that are driving up property taxes and gentrifying our neighborhoods.

Finally, we should revise our regressive tax system to ensure that middle- and low-income families are not disproportionately burdened by our tax policies.